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Natural forest regrowth on abandoned land represents a major land use change in some regions of Europe. This is driven by various factors related to land abandonment, particularly changing socioeconomic conditions for agriculture and rural depopulation. Little research exists about how the issue is addressed at the policy level. This paper looks into the policymaking related to natural forest regrowth in France and Spain, two countries where land abandonment and natural forest regrowth occur at significant scales. We conduct a policy discourse analysis building upon 27 interviews carried out between 2018 and 2020 with policy actors from various fields that connect with these topics. We find four competing storylines in both countries: extensive agriculture, forestry, landscape conservation, and wilderness. These storylines differ regarding the framing of natural forest regrowth as a problem or an opportunity, and the preferred policy solutions. While storylines rooted in extensive agriculture, landscape conservation and forestry tend to problematize the phenomenon, a wilderness storyline voices an opportunity perspective. In France, a few actors voice elements of an insignificance storyline. Given its spatial importance, natural forest regrowth will likely become more important for future policymaking in the EU. Engaging in further research across disciplines and policy fields is necessary to study the phenomenon and its possible management and governance options. • Policy actors narrate natural forest regrowth on abandoned land through storylines. • Interview results distinguish four storylines on natural forest regrowth. • Three storylines tend to highlight the threat of natural forest regrowth. • Natural forest regrowth has not yet received much political attention. • Shifts towards a rewilding perspective may strengthen an opportunity framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ecological and social desirability of forest regeneration in uplands is disputed. • We propose a conceptual framework for comparative discourse analysis. • We identify three discourses within four European protected areas. • Discourses derive from different ecologies, ideas, interests and institutions. • Power struggles and discourse-coalitions shape forest regeneration policies. Forest regeneration is a major land-use change in European uplands, and whether or not this is a desirable change for biodiversity is disputed. While this debate seems to be largely situated in the field of natural sciences, this paper aims to also examine its social dimensions. To do so, we adopt a comparative discourse analysis with four cases of protected areas in France, Spain, and Scotland. We draw on a conceptual framework highlighting both the ecological and social factors underpinning the construction of environmental discourses. It notably emphasises the role of interests, ideas and institutions, and the power dynamics underpinning discourse-coalitions. We show how diverging discourses emerged, gained ground, coalesced and competed differently in different contexts, explaining the adoption of seemingly opposite discourses by protected area authorities. These findings reaffirm the need to conceive environmental governance as an on-going deliberative process in order to achieve environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Financial inclusion is the sustainable provision of financial services. • Financial exclusion can be conceived as financial discrimination. • We find a complex intra-urban 'financial ecology' of low-income consumers. • Use difficulties are the main difficulties that vulnerable financial consumers face. The financial exclusion phenomenon has been approached from different perspectives. After reviewing the recent literature, we adopt a financial ecology approach and propose a comprehensive framework to analyse the different types of difficulties (access, use and perception) that vulnerable financial consumers face in relationships with banking institutions as well as their underlying causes. We consider financial inclusion as the sustainable provision of financial services and products and an adjustment to individual needs. We examine a special group of urban vulnerable consumers: underbanked people facing poverty and social exclusion. Data were obtained from focus groups and were coded and analysed using qualitative data analysis software. The results show that use difficulties predominate, followed by perception difficulties. Bank pressure and lack of financial training stood out among the main causes of these financial difficulties. We conclude that poorer neighbourhoods constitute a distinctive financial ecology produced by the 'discrimination' of a significant number of their inhabitants in the use of mainstream financial services. The study provides evidence of the socio-spatial nature of the exclusion process and calls for further research on the role of policy responses to restrict abusive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish far-right party Vox has undergone, together with other similar forces in Europe, an "ecological turn". To analyze this case, the article starts from the premise of the need to understand better the far-right parties' discursive mechanisms and their engagement with environmental issues. Theoretically, we criticize the ideological and ontological approaches to the current wave of national populism; instead, we argue that the dominant form of authoritarian national populism is more usefully analyzed in terms of embodied narratives, metaphorical imagination, mythmaking, and affective intensification. Empirically, using discourse analysis (Laclau, 2005) and drawing on the affective turn in political ecology, first, we argue that Vox's eco-narrative is interpretable as a combination of national populism and biopolitical imaginary pitting a "culture of death" against the "culture of life". Vox's key rhetorical mechanisms, we intimate, are hyperbolical metaphorization and rhetorical inversion, have an intensifying effect at two interconnected levels: fear and indignation concerning the degeneration of Spain, pride and hope regarding Vox's and its male hero's promise of salvation and the Reconquista of the Spanish way of life. Second, by looking into key policy areas (energy and water), we argue that Vox has systematically chosen the former in conflicts between capitalist interests and environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acculturation is a bidirectional process in which both the majority and minority groups change as they relate to each other. In Spain, studies have usually focused on the acculturation of minorities (e.g., Moroccans) upon their arrival in Spanish society, but little has been said about the acculturation of the majority. In this study, we analyzed whether making salient the richness of the Moroccan culture can affect the stereotypes of (im)morality of a sample of Spanish participants regarding Moroccan immigrants as well as their attitude toward adopting Moroccan cultural patterns through a process of self-perceived unfreezing of previous beliefs. In a preliminary study, we explored what people of Moroccan origin would like Spaniards to learn from Moroccans. Then, using an intergroup experimental design, we randomly assigned participants to one of the following three conditions: (a) enrichment of Moroccan culture (using excerpts from actual discourses, n = 222), (b) exposure to Moroccan immigration rates (n = 238), or (c) a control condition (n = 181). The results revealed that the participants in the cultural enrichment condition experienced more self-perceived unfreezing of previous beliefs, perceived Moroccans as more moral (only vs. the immigration rates condition), and reduced their resistance to adopting Moroccan cultural patterns, even though the effects were small. Furthermore, self-perceived unfreezing of previous beliefs mediated the effect of the cultural enrichment condition on perceived morality (but not immorality) and on the adoption of Moroccan cultural patterns. We discuss how, by emphasizing the enrichment of Moroccan culture, we can increase the morality attributed to Moroccans and decrease the resistance of Spaniards to adopting that minority culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety is a key aspect for the continuity of nuclear energy as one of the most widely used energy options worldwide for producing electricity. However, previous studies have shown that the nuclear industry needs to meet social, technological, normative, environmental, economic, and organizational challenges. Due to this need, this study attempts to understand the challenges that Spain's nuclear industry faces with regard to safety. The study was conducted with 122 experts who responded to the question: “What is the main challenge that Spain's nuclear industry faces in the field of safety?” A discourse analysis was performed to identify the most important challenges and how they are characterized by experts. Findings have shown that Spain's nuclear industry must face multiple and very diverse challenges. The main social challenge is the high concern for the continuity of Spain's nuclear industry, generated in large part by the socio-political context of uncertainty and the lack of social acceptance. Technologically, lifetime extension of the nuclear facilities in operation is the main challenge. The experts do not note other challenges present within the industry, such as ensuring new technological developments or building new nuclear plants. Regarding normative challenges, integrating new requirements within the current regulatory framework and coordinating the extensive and diverse existing regulation are noteworthy. The main economic challenge lies in achieving an efficient economic management system that ensures the nuclear plants' operation and makes them profitable. Organizationally, the main challenges are the generational shift and organizational learning. It is noted that the experts do not indicate other organizational issues that have been involved in important events within Spain's nuclear industry. Finally, the experts do not indicate any environmental challenges related to safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Spain's organ procurement organization produces national identity discourses. • Its messages highlight Spain's national unity and international legitimacy. • This points at situated nation-building in nations with conflictive histories. • These nations may rely more on unusual sources of national identity. • Reputed actors leap to new discursive fields and may carry built-in interpretations. Spain is the global leader in organ donation and transplantation since 1992, an achievement that has become a source of national pride, in a country where national symbols are heavily contested. In this article I demonstrate that Spain's organ procurement organization is an active producer of national identity discourses oriented to increasing the legitimacy of the Spanish national project and generating affective adherence to the state institutions. Through a qualitative analysis of 43 press releases, 27 media interviews, 3200 tweets, and 35 YouTube videos, I show that the organization reproduces Spain as a frame of reference, redefines the bonds and boundaries of the national community by linking them to the circulation of organs, and attributes positive moral values to Spain's citizenry. It highlights Spain's internal unity, presenting organ procurement as a national enterprise that binds together different social actors and territories in a common project. It also leverages Spain's success in this area to depict the country as a global exemplar comparable to its neighbors in Western and Northern Europe. My study contributes to a better understanding of contemporary Spanish national identity discourses and raises theoretical questions about the role of alternative sources of national identity in countries with histories of conflict around national narratives and symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]