Search

In western Europe, municipal or otherwise state‐commissioned cemeteries and crematoria are public spaces and services, open to all. Cemeteries and crematoria grounds are neglected in geographical, planning and policy debates about the character, design, management, use and accessibility of public spaces, and likewise debates about the social inclusion of migrants and minorities. This may reflect a tendency to situate cemeteries socially and geographically in the peripheries of contemporary European society, but they are, nonetheless, sites of vital public health infrastructure, as well as being highly significant symbolic, religious‐spiritual, secular‐sacred, and emotionally laden places. Examining cemeteries‐crematoria against a criteria of inclusive public space provides new insights into (1) the nature of public space and its governance; (2) rights and barriers to shared public spaces and associated infrastructure in everyday multicultural contexts; (3) national–local negotiations of majority‐minorities social relations and cultural practices in and through public spaces; and (4) the need to place municipal cemeteries‐crematoria centre stage in scholarship and policy on public space which is culturally inclusive and serves all citizens. Municipal cemeteries and crematoria grounds are important but neglected spaces in geographical, Planning and policy debates about the character, design, use, governance and accessibility of public spaces. This paper highlights the political and cultural importance of cemeteries‐crematoria as public spaces, and their role in social inclusion/exclusion in multicultural and post‐secular European societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Adequate levels of physical activity are important for population health. Policy databases can track, monitor, and compare the development and implementation of physical activity policy actions and are populated by different methods. The new MOVING database, developed through the Confronting Obesity: Co‐creating Policy with Youth (CO‐CREATE) project, collates governmental policy actions designed to increase physical activity and is populated by an in‐depth scan of implemented national policy actions. This paper presents lessons learned from conducting the policy scan across 27 European countries. Policy actions were identified using a structured search protocol from preselected sources, assessed against pre‐specified inclusion criteria and verified by an in‐country expert. 625 eligible national implemented policy actions were identified. Challenges included policy actions falling out of scope, a lack of available information on policy actions, difficulty in identifying policy actions using specific search terms, and increased resource requirements for translation of policy actions into English. The scan indicated improvements, which informed protocol modifications. Identifying the challenges and opportunities around conducting a policy scan is necessary to understand and assess the reliability, validity, and utility of a policy database. The policy scan will help to deliver a comprehensive picture of physical activity policy actions across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper aims to provide a short guide on how community psychologists can contribute to the improvement of rural young people's prospects. After briefly introducing the demographic trends of these young people in continental Europe for the past decade, we list the current challenges faced by rural European young generations, as well as the opportunities emerging for them from the twin transition that can inspire the community psychology field. We then contextualize community psychologists' interventions in this domain according to an ecological‐systemic standpoint and by embracing a Participatory Action Research (PAR) perspective on research and practice. We further detail the reasons for adopting a PAR approach in research and practice to address rural young people's challenges and opportunities. Finally, we highlight four potential intermediation missions to uphold community psychologists' rural youth development input, based on the adopted theoretical and methodological standpoint. We conclude that our short guide can facilitate community psychology professionals' complete understanding of rural young generations' prospects, in line with the expected increase in the need for rural young people's participation. Our proposal may also have long‐term benefits for rural communities by contributing to the redesigning of intergenerational relationships and securing critical mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst the link between young people's well‐being and the creative arts is strengthening, there is a lack of research which focuses on the roles that artists play to help teachers and parents engage young people in the creative arts. This paper explores the benefits of and barriers to artists working in education in six European countries (England, Iceland, Germany, Greece, Italy and Austria). Using the '5A's model of creativity' and a view of professional development taking place within 'landscapes of practice', the data were analysed in order to explain how creativity is operationalised in the different contexts. Our study highlights the need for policy at a national and transnational level to value the creative arts in order to help teachers cross boundaries and utilise the full potential of the creative arts in schools. Our study also highlights that further research is needed into how artists shape teaching and curriculum and how schools engage parents in the creative arts in order to build an evidence‐base relating to young people's positive mental health that can affect policy at these levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of the last 30 years, inclusive education has emerged as a key aim of education policies around the world. Also in Europe, most countries took efforts to make their education systems more inclusive—which led to growing numbers of children and young persons with disabilities in general education in Europe. The implementation processes of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) fuelled these efforts. However, as some authors have argued, not all students with disabilities seem to have benefited in the same way from these developments—such as children and young persons with intellectual disability (ID). This paper aims to explore this phenomenon in more depth by comparing some measures in relation to the implementation processes of the UNCRPD of seven European countries. Doing so, we analyze trends in placements (mainstream and special schools) of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in general and of students with intellectual disability specifically. As we show, an increase of students identified as having SEN in mainstream schools can be observed in all countries during the implementation process of the UNCRPD. However, in comparison to this rather broad group of learners, the percentage of students with intellectual disability in mainstream settings did not increase as much. Furthermore, the calculation of the "exclusion rate" revealed that this group of learners remains a key population of special schools. These results need to be understood as effects of specific shortcomings in the implementation of the UNCRPD, as we discuss in a further section. We conclude our paper with recommendations on future research and policies on inclusive education regarding students with intellectual disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVES: The involvement of individuals and communities in health decision‐making is enshrined in WHO policies. However, migrant groups are under‐represented in health decision‐making processes. Our aim was to explore migrants' involvement in health policy, service development and research in the WHO European Region to identify levers for inclusive and meaningful practice. METHODS: We conducted a narrative review of grey literature and peer‐reviewed research on migrants' involvement in health decision‐making across the 53 countries in WHO Europe. We searched for articles published in English between 2010 and the present in two electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus), IOM MIPEX Health Strand country reports, the EU SOPHIE project and using a Google advanced search. Findings were analysed descriptively and using Normalisation Process Theory to investigate levers and barriers to implementation of policy into practice. RESULTS: Of 1,444 articles retrieved, 79 met the inclusion criteria. We identified 20 policies promoting migrants' involvement, but national‐level policies were present in only two countries. We identified 59 examples of migrants' involvement in practice from half of the WHO Europe countries (n = 27). Our Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) analysis of 14 peer‐reviewed empirical papers found that participatory research approaches are a lever to putting policy into practice in a meaningful way. CONCLUSIONS: Migrants' involvement in health decision‐making requires explicit national policies that are implemented evenly across policymaking, service provider and research activities in all countries in the WHO European Region. Participatory approaches to involvement activities are encouraged because they are a lever to perceived barriers to migrants' involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates the association between the Great Recession and educational inequalities in self‐rated general health in 25 European countries. We investigate four different indicators related to economic recession: GDP; unemployment; austerity and a ‘crisis’ indicator signifying severe simultaneous drops in GDP and welfare generosity. We also assess the extent to which health inequality changes can be attributed to changes in the economic conditions and social capital in the European populations. The paper uses data from the European Social Survey (2002–2014). The analyses include both cross‐sectional and lagged associations using multilevel linear regression models with country fixed effects. This approach allows us to identify health inequality changes net of all time‐invariant differences between countries. GDP drops and increasing unemployment were associated with decreasing health inequalities. Austerity, however, was related to increasing health inequalities, an association that grew stronger with time. The strongest increase in health inequality was found for the more robust ‘crisis’ indicator. Changes in trust, social relationships and in the experience of economic hardship of the populations accounted for much of the increase in health inequality. The paper concludes that social policy has an important role in the development of health inequalities, particularly during times of economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when the belief in a welfare crisis is being connected to a so‐called "migration crisis", in particular in the United Kingdom, it is important to look at the lived experiences of mobile EU citizens and the influence of transnational social protection practices. The article introduces the concept of a "migration‐welfare corridor" – as opposed to the widespread welfare magnet hypothesis – taking into consideration the role of welfare systems in origin and destination countries at different stages of a migrant's life cycle, the changing nature of the welfare habitus as well as migrants' attitudes towards what can be defined as welfare chauvinism. Looking specifically at the case of Spanish and Polish migrants in the UK who have reacted to this protracted environment of deterrence, particularly in respect to their welfare rights, this paper discusses several dimensions that should be taken into consideration when analyzing transnational social protection practices from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse discourses about Europe in Greek debates about immigration and citizenship and highlight the complexities of 'Europeanness' as a symbolic resource for argumentation in these debates. Our data consist of lay discourses from 2 rounds of online public deliberation (2009-2010 and 2015) about a controversial new citizenship law in Greece. Our analysis shows that Europe is an ambivalent category. On the one hand, Europe symbolises progress, but, on the other hand, it is also constructed in terms of decline and 'contamination' by multiculturalism. Further, our analysis shows that the category of Europe can be mobilised in contradictory ways, in order to support arguments for and against citizenship rights for migrants. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which constructions of Europe are implicated in processes of othering and inclusion in the context of current immigration debates. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cartographies for "migration management" are part and parcel of controversial border practices far from conventional borderlines. Focusing on the i‐Map, this study renders how the European Union's current practices of remote border control are visualised among migration policy circles and expert security actors through a "mapping migration matrix". The lines portraying migration flows in recurrent maps generate a shared expert language and a common geographical imaginary reinforcing practices of contention and classification of those assumed to move toward the European Union irregularly. It is argued that illegality is constructed in ways that target border crossing long before any border is crossed, making someone illegal at the very moment and place where s/he might decide to migrate. This paper analyses the cartopolitics and limits of cartographic expertise in the production of a "routes thinking" able to legitimise extra‐territorial interceptions and practices of remote border control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims Prohibitions on producing, distributing and selling cannabis are loosening in various jurisdictions around the world. This paper describes the diversification of cannabis supply laws and discusses the challenges to and opportunities for learning from these changes. Methods We document changes in cannabis supply laws that de jure legalized cannabis production for medical and/or non-medical purposes (excluding industrial hemp) in Australasia, Europe, North America and South America. We also highlight challenges to evaluating these legal changes based on our experiences studying cannabis laws and policies in the United States. Findings As of August 2016, two countries have passed laws to legalize large-scale cannabis production for non-medical purposes at the national (Uruguay) or subnational level (four US states). At least nine other countries legally allow (or will soon allow) cannabis to be supplied for medicinal purposes. Most of the changes in cannabis supply laws have occurred since 2010. The data available in most countries are inadequate for rigorously evaluating the changes in cannabis supply laws. Conclusion The evidence base for assessing changes in cannabis supply laws remains weak. Efforts should focus upon collecting information about quantities consumed and market transactions as well as validating self-report surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]