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Since the end of the Cold War, millions of migrants from Eastern Europe have sought better opportunities in Western European countries, yet few studies have assessed the impact of such moves on these migrants' children. In the aim of isolating a 'treatment effect' of migration on educational outcomes, this study analyzes Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores from 2012, 2015, and 2018 for adolescents born in twelve Eastern European countries and living in eight Western European countries. It employs propensity-score matching within a homeland dissimilation framework, comparing immigrants' outcomes on reading, math, and science assessments to similar stay-at-homes in their countries of origin. In unadjusted comparisons to their counterparts who remained behind, migrant children attain lower scores across all three subjects. Once immigrant children are matched to non-immigrants with similar propensities to migrate, the disparity for math scores disappears, while those for reading and science remain. Disparities are wider for adolescents who come from within the EU, migrate at older ages, or speak a foreign language at home. This paper indicates the need for policymakers and educational administrators to better handle the negative academic effects that migration can have on children from within Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the educational experiences of Eastern European Roma undergraduates and analyses how the mobility process influences their access to university in different countries of the European Union. Drawing on 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews, the paper highlights the ability of students to (re)define their identity and to utilize the language skills acquired practicing mobility across several countries as well as the university degrees obtained, to combat Roma discrimination after finishing their studies. Findings suggest that education may become a tool to overcome the marginality and stigmatization of Roma. The paper concludes with observations about the new ways opened up by undergraduate Roma, which demand the reinterpretation of mobility and identity as a transformative experience and an essential strategy to fight the discrimination against and the exclusion of mobile Roma citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if foreign-born academics employed in Poland and Slovakia have a sense of being marginalised in the global world of knowledge production, and, if so, what are the basic indicators of this marginalisation. The paper is based on 100 qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in Poland and 40 interviews conducted in Slovakia. All interviewees agreed that Poland and Slovakia were peripheries but they conceptualised their peripheral status in many distinctive ways. The paper discusses six indicators of peripheral status of Eastern Europe academic systems, referred to as 'status periphery', 'career periphery', 'workplace periphery', 'mental periphery', 'language periphery', and 'relational periphery'. The discussion focusses on how these two exemplary post-communist European peripheries differ from other academic peripheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have shown that childhood circumstances can have long term consequences that persist until old age. To better understand the transmission of early life circumstances, this paper analyses the effects of health and financial situation during childhood on quality of life after retirement as well as the mediating role of later life health, educational level, and income in this association. Moreover, this study is the first to compare these pathways across European regions. The analyses are based on data of 13,092 retirees aged ≥ 60 and ≤ 85 years from the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with full information on childhood and later life measures of health, educational level, financial situation, and quality of life as well as relevant covariates. Five European regions are studied: Central-Western Europe (Austria, Germany), Central-Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia), Northern Europe (Denmark, Sweden), Southern Europe (Italy, Spain), and Western Europe (Belgium, France, The Netherlands). Path analysis is used to identify the direct and indirect effects of childhood measures on quality of life. We find retirees’ quality of life to be associated with childhood finances and health in all five European regions. While both the direct and indirect effects of childhood health are rather moderate and homogeneous across regions, especially the direct effects of childhood finances on quality of life after retirement display a distinct North-South gradient being strongest in Southern Europe. Potential explanations for the regional variations are differences in the countries’ welfare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unequal turnout, namely that educated citizens are more likely to vote, has been a long-standing pre-occupation of scholars of political participation and has been shown to exist across established democracies in varying degrees. Using pooled cross-sectional individual level data covering the period from 1990 to 2007 across 12 post-communist new democracies, this paper examines the applicability of existing explanations for unequal turnout in the Eastern European context. The paper shows that while voting procedures explain some cross-national variation in unequal turnout, turnout inequality is likewise shaped over time by processes related to the transition from communism, primarily the fading of initial excitement with democratic elections. The mechanism of learning among mature voters rather than generational replacement dominates the latter process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the 1995 and 2000 World Values Survey to examine and compare the relationship between social capital, education and political participation in Western and Eastern Europe. The concept of social capital is measured using indicators of trust and membership in voluntary organizations, while the concept of political participation is put into operation through indicators of political action. The research uncovers clear indicators showing that social capital is a factor in political participation in Eastern Europe and that the existence of general social trust is a characteristic of the most successful transitions. The paper finds evidence to support the theory that a trust-building mechanism based on reciprocity and a "critical mass" is indeed at work in the democratization process and that social capital is an integral part of transition for the Eastern European states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aimof this paper is to assess the role of human capital in attracting fdi in the light of selected empirical studies conducted in Poland and globally. The literature on factors determining fdi location, including those relating to the importance of human capital, is dominated with studies at national or supranational level. Attracting foreign investment has become a key component of national strategies for the cee countries. The paper makes an attempt to assess the relevance of human capital for fdi inflow at regional and local levels in Poland. At the same time, results of analyses were contrasted with quantitative surveys conducted in Central and Eastern Europe. Investing in education and human capital is important for creating good climate for investment. Evidence shows that achieving a certainminimumlevel of education is the precondition for a country to attract andmaintain foreign direct investment andmaximise indirect effects connected with human capital and resulting from the presence of businesses with foreign capital and maximise indirect effects connected with human capital and resulting from the presence of businesses with foreign capital. We should also stress that such aminimum is different for different sectors of the economy. Results of the study conducted in the Lodz Region demonstrated that human capital is an important factor, which attracts fdi to the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a comparison between the basic psychological views on reflection of the most eminent authors of the twentieth century: John Dewey, Donald Schon, Lev Vygotsky, Vladimir Lefebvre and Georgii Shchedrovitsky. The paper is specifically designed to bring together understandings of reflection from two different perspectives. The first perspective is that commonly seen as encompassing the Western English speaking cultures (e.g. United Kingdom, North America, Australia, New Zealand), the second is that of the Russian speaking cultures of Eastern Europe. Through a comparison of these two world views it becomes possible to reconsider not only how the conceptual development of reflection can be better understood, but also the value placed upon it as an integral component of quality practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the history of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945-1991, presenting material from a research project which has included thirty-two oral history interviews. Oral history is an especially fruitful research methodology in this context due to the distinct issues of formality and informality involved in researching the Soviet bloc. After discussing the nature of the subdiscipline and the Cold War context, including the role of the British state in shaping the field, the paper considers the role of formal academic meetings and exchanges, and the place of unofficial spaces of encounter in the formation of an intellectual culture. The paper concludes by reflecting on the merits of oral history in studies of the production of geographical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geography of education, especially at subnational level, is a huge black box. Little is known about the distribution of educational attainment and inequality across regions in Europe. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by mapping educational attainment and inequality in 102 regions in Western Europe, using data extracted from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) covering more than 100,000 individuals over the period 1995–2000. The results of this Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) reveal a strong correlation between levels of educational attainment and inequality across regions in Europe. Regions with similar educational conditions tend to cluster, often within national borders. In addition, a North–South and an urban–rural dimension are evident. Northern regions and large European metropoli have not only the most-educated labour force but also the lowest levels of inequality. Educational inequality seems to be, in any case, a fundamentally within-region phenomenon: 90 percent of the educational inequality in Europe occurs among individuals living in the same region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international non-governmental community has played a major role in developing schools of public health and continues to do so. Nearly a century ago, seminal investments of the Rockefeller Foundation played a pivotal role in developing schools of public health in North America and several abroad. Today, involvement of non-governmental organizations in continuing development of schools of public health is needed, as many countries throughout the world continue to battle the burden of disease with insufficient numbers and quality of trained public health workers. In this paper we discuss in particular the roles of the Open Society Institute working together with the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region to foster the development of schools of public health in formerly socialist countries. We describe the development process in three example countries (Ukraine, Lithuania, and Macedonia), along with the difficulties they have faced. Government support and accreditation processes are needed to sustain the efforts to launch new schools of public health and to ensure their quality. The lessons learned in these initiatives are relevant to future development of public health education to provide the workforce required to address needs of professional public health in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data drawn from the European Union Labour Force Survey 2000 Ad Hoc Module on School to Work Transitions to explore the influence of gender and social background (measured in terms of parental education) on young people's educational and early labour market outcomes across 12 European countries. Our results show that social background is strongly related to the level of education achieved while gender is found to have a stronger effect on the field of study selected. Countries vary in the extent to which gender and social background affect young people's outcomes. Gender differentiation in labour market outcomes reflects the nature of the welfare regime, being more pronounced in familial and conservative systems. Social inequality in educational attainment and early labour market outcomes are less marked in Finland and Sweden, reflecting the combination of less differentiated educational systems, mass higher education and social-democratic welfare regimes. In contrast, social inequality is more marked in the Eastern European countries, due partly to their highly differentiated educational systems but more notably to rapid changes taking place in post-communist systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the history of the periodical as of its 40th anniversary, noting its focus on nationalities in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Topics include the periodical's association with the organization Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), the journal's approach to the study of nationalism and ethnicity, and the role of emigres from the Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the early history of the journal.