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Copyright of European Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper deals with the conflicts associated with the so-called 'Dieselgate' affair. It explains the interaction of civil society, law firms and political actors which reshapes the legal systems in Europe. Once the federal government in Germany had decided that European car owners should not get any kind of financial compensation, a transnational coalition of consumer organizations and law firms successfully initiated a legal mobilization campaign to counteract the political decision. As a consequence, collective litigation rights were strengthened in Germany and at the European level. Theoretically, the paper refers to the literature on adversarial legalism. Whether this judicialized style of conflict resolution is spreading to Europe ('Eurolegalism') has been a hotly debated topic in political science. Our main argument is that the Dieselgate case is a catalyst event to foster the transformation process towards 'Eurolegalism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marc Adelman's Stelen is a collection of 150 images of men posing at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Germany. Understanding the photographs that compromise Stelen involves tracking a number of shifts that have taken place across different fields: a change in the understanding of the role of the public memorial which has seen the construction of 'anti-memorials' or 'counter-monuments' such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; a turn towards participatory memory practices in museums and at memorial sites; digital photography and the impact of social media. In the first part of this paper, I explore how these trends intersect in order to give an account of the conditions of production of the photographs. Adelman has proposed that the photographs might be understood in relation to the role that the memory of the Holocaust plays in contemporary queer life. In the second part of this paper, I use Michael Rothberg's concept of Multidirectional Memory to consider Stelen as a counter-archive that offers a multidirectional articulation of grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explored the cultural and career transition experiences of two elite West African footballers in Germany using the approach of interpretive biography. By analysing data collected through semi--structured interviews, the players' narratives revealed a range of experiences emerging at different temporal points or life domains. The experiences included the psychosocial states of pre-transition, the challenges associated with language and weather, the increased demands of professionalism, the challenge of adapting to a new environment and routines of daily life, the superficiality of relationships and the attendant loneliness. It however, advanced literature by demonstrating how an African footballer in Europe may locate self and progress career within the European football economy and how a high-status African migrant athlete may use his social position to characterise self in a certain manner so as to exercise the right to belong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mosques in Europe have long been and are still at the centre of political debates, despite the decades-long presence of migrant Muslim communities in Europe. Scholars within geography and other disciplines have studied mosques extensively with a focus on urban space politics, and examined tensions and conflicts between migrant mosque communities and the broader segments of the local people. In this paper, I focus on DITIB, a Turkish umbrella mosque organization in Germany, and I carry these debates into a transnational terrain, re-theorizing mosques not only as political sites, but also everyday geopolitical spaces where national imaginaries and territorial struggles take place in the daily lives of mosque communities. Through this approach, I draw on the studies of feminist geographers who have provided a renewed perspective to classical geopolitics discussions by revealing how geopolitical relations, struggles, and interactions also operate in everyday spaces, relations, and bodies of ordinary people by reproducing the deep-seated exclusions, discriminations and contestations. This paper contributes to critical geopolitics and geographies of religion literatures as well as to broader discussions on the geopolitics of religion by analysing how a mosque organization is situated at the centre of geopolitical tensions, and how transnational and transregional controversies operate on the walls and properties of mosques and in everyday social/cultural activities of mosque communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains regulators’ preferences concerning the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM)? The paper answers this question by providing an alternative account of the creation of the SSM using an institutionalist perspective. It is argued that the creation of the SSM does not simply reflect the material interests of governments and domestic financial firms, but that regulators’ positions were also significantly affected by the institutional environment in which they operated. Two characteristics of domestic supervisory governance are identified: the institutional responsibilities of banking regulators (microprudential and/or macroprudential) and the fragmentation of supervisory and monetary policies. The empirical analysis demonstrates the relevance of these factors for shaping regulators’ preferences both within and across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on research undertaken as part of the EU funded EPPIC project, this paper aims to update and elaborate on the relationship between drug use and offending behaviours by exploring variations within a cross-national sample of drug-experienced young people in touch with criminal justice systems. Adopting a trajectory-based approach, interviews were undertaken with 198 young people aged 15–25 in six European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, and UK). Data were analysed by applying the Bennett and Holloway categorization of the drugs-crime link, with a focus on the concept of social exclusion as developed by Seddon. Three main types of mechanisms (economic, pharmaceutical, and lifestyles) are used to interpret the data, showing how the relationship between drugs and offending can vary according to type of substances and over time. Furthermore, it can be associated with very different degrees of social exclusion and needs. The results suggest that while economic inequalities still play key roles in explaining drug use and offending, both behaviours can originate from a state of relative deprivation, resulting from the contradictions inherent in 'bulimic societies' that raise aspirations and desires while providing young people scarce opportunities for self-realisation and social recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the initial results of an anonymous pilot quantitative survey on Muslims' conception of marriage and divorce, which was conducted in Germany between February and June 2018. The goal of the survey was to assess the attitudes held by Muslims towards these issues. Specifically, the questions aimed at identifying the potential role of the European context in the modification of German Muslims' understanding of marriage and divorce and gender roles, as well as interreligious marriage, mediation, and the role of the secular state in daily life. The results of this survey, although not representative of all Muslim perspectives on secular law, indicate dialogic exchange between Islamic and Western secular conceptions of family law. Contrary to some current assumptions concerning Islamic family law in Europe, the survey shows that there are many Muslims who are in favour of both conceptions (the religious and the secular) and wish to find a balance between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging is exacerbating the loss of competences in the workforce and simultaneously young people neither in employment nor in education and training (NEETs) are struggling to be reengaged in employment. These issues, which are deemed priorities for the European policy agenda, could be addressed by triggering active aging dimensions, valuing and exploiting older adult entrepreneurs' knowledge for enhancing youngsters' entrepreneurial attitudes, through mentoring. This paper reports the results of a study based on an intergenerational learning program, carried out in 2018 in Germany, Italy and Slovenia. The study was aimed at developing and testing one training on mentoring addressing 41 older adult entrepreneurs (55 and over), and two intergenerational learning trainings aiming at boosting entrepreneurial competences of 33 NEETs (aged 18–29). The impact of the program on older adult entrepreneurs and NEETs was assessed through a pre and post-evaluation using qualitative and quantitative tools. Findings at country level were treated as national case-studies and then the latter were compared by considering them as a multiple embedded case-study. Results indicated that, to different extent in the study countries, mentors learned and enhanced mentoring competences, e.g. active listening and the capability of orienting, improved well-being and self-esteem, social inclusion and active aging attitude. Moreover, NEETs acquired entrepreneurial and socio-relational competences by benefiting from the full exploitation of mentors' know-how and the trust relationship with them. Companies, trade unions, educational and voluntary organizations should cooperate to adopt intergenerational learning programs as good practices for older adults and NEETs' lifelong learning promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the diversity in patients' experience of biomedicine and contrasts it with the normative view characteristic of health professionals. Ethnographic fieldwork among Polish migrant women in London, Barcelona and Berlin included interviews about their experiences with local healthcare and health professionals. Themes drawn from the narratives are differences between the cities in terms of communication between patients and health professionals, respect for patients' choices and dignity, attitudes to pregnancy and birth (different levels of medicalization), and paediatric care. It is argued that patients continuously negotiate among their own views and expectations based on previous experiences and knowledge from personal communication; internet forums and publications; and the offer of medical services in the countries of their settlement. Patients experience pluralism of therapeutic traditions within and outside bio-medicine. In turn, representatives of bio-medicine are rarely aware of other medical practices and beliefs and this leads to various misunderstandings. By highlighting the pluralism of medical practices in European countries and the increasing mobility of patients, this case study has useful implications for medical anthropologists and health professionals in a broader Western context, such as raising sensitivity to different communication strategies and a diversity of curing traditions and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to national elections, both parties and voters are assumed to think that ‘less is at stake’ in European elections: Campaigns are less intense, turnout is lower, and citizens are more inclined to ‘vote with their hearts’. The latter should be reflected in differing rationales of voting – party choice should not be based on identical determinants in national and European elections. However, this hypothesis has not been sufficiently tested and most of the research is based on the analysis of aggregated data while causal explanations are located on the micro level. This paper compares vote functions of individuals in regard to the 2009 European Parliament election as well as the 2009 German Federal election. Using data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), comparison of explanatory models shows that party choice on both levels is neither fundamentally different nor does it fit into the pattern of second-order electoral behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research into educational inequalities has shown the importance of decomposing social origins into parental class, status and education, representing economic, socio-cultural and educational family resources, respectively. But we know little about how inequalities in educational attainment at the micro-level map onto institutional characteristics of educational systems at the macro-level, if we treat social origins in a multidimensional way. Drawing on the rich over-time variation in educational systems in four European countries – Britain, Sweden, Germany and Italy – this paper develops and tests a number of hypotheses regarding the effects of various components of social origins on individuals’ educational attainment in different institutional contexts. It is evident from our results that a great deal of similarity exists across nations with different educational systems in the persisting importance for individuals’ educational attainment of parental class, status and education. But our findings also indicate that changes in the institutional features of educational systems have, in some instances although not in others, served to reinforce or to offset the social processes generating educational inequalities at the micro level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to investigate, from a generational perspective, the effect of human capital on individual earnings and earnings differences in Germany, France and Italy, three developed countries in Western Europe with similarconservativewelfare regimes but with important differences in their education systems. Income inequalitiesbetweenandwithineducation levels are explored using a two-stage probit model with quantile regressions in the second stage. More precisely, drawing upon 2005 EU-SILC data, returns on schooling and experience are estimated separately for employees and self-employed full-time workers by means of Mincerian earnings equations with sample selection; the sample selection correction accounts for the potential individual self-selection into the two labour force types. Although some determinants appear to be relatively similar across countries, state-specific differentials are drawn in light of the institutional features of each national context. The study reveals how each dimension of human capital differently affects individuals’ earnings and earnings inequality and, most of all, how their impacts differ along the conditional earnings distribution and across countries. In the comparative perspective, the country's leading position in terms of the highest rewards on education also depends on which earnings distribution (employee vs. self-employed) is analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I investigate the resonance of the volumeThe Empire Strikes Backwithin the debates on racism in Germany since the late 1970s. I am interested in this long-term intellectual exchange in light of the current need to conceptualize racism in a European framework and thereby reflect upon the characteristics, concepts and possibilities of such a framework. I begin by situating the debate at that time within the context of the New Left. What connected both situations, in Germany and the UK, was an inscription of the then-ongoing anti-colonial and decolonial struggles of the South in the North, not least through the ‘retaliatory effect’ of migration movements and struggles of migration arriving in Europe. I argue that the understandings of racism and anti-racism are grounded in a materialist framework and that the concept of articulation helped and continues to help thinking the complexity and heterogeneity of the social. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aims. Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are prevalent in Europe but occurrence in primary care and the proportion of treated cases are understudied. This study reports prevalence of AUDs and their treatment in European primary health care settings and compares them with general population estimates.Procedure. We sampled 358 general practitioners (GPs, refusal rate: 56.4%) across six European countries (Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, and Spain) who assessed 13,003 patients including providing AUD diagnoses. A subsample of 8,476 patients (refusal rate: 17.8%) was interviewed subsequently, assessing DSM-IV AUD diagnoses via the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Final AUD diagnoses combined GP and patient interview information.Findings. Past year AUDs were prevalent with 11.8% (95% CI: 11.2–12.5%) across all regions, which is 1.6 times the European general population AUD estimate. Of those diagnosed with AUDs, 17.7% (95% CI: 15.4–20.0%) received professional help. Compared to general population estimates, AUDs and their treatment were more prevalent in primary care settings in most countries, with disproportionally high AUD rates in Italy and Spain and unexpectedly low AUD rates in Hungary.Conclusions. We found higher prevalence and treatment rates of AUDs in primary health care compared to general population surveys, with large variability between the observed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the prospects for trilateral concord among Britain, France and Germany in terms of defence policies? Would more institutionalised links among them lead to more convergence of their defence policies? To answer these interrogations, this article investigates the relation between policy convergence and institutionalised cooperation, in particular by studying whether and when one is a prerequisite to the other. First, this article examines the extent to which these countries' defence policies have converged since the end of the cold war based on several indicators: their attitudes towards international forums, their defence budgets, the structure of their armed forces and their willingness to use force. Second, we study each of the bilateral relations between the three states to qualitatively analyse their degree of institutionalisation and the convergence of their defence policies. This article concludes that contrary to the arguments of many discussions, think-tank reports and political actors, there is no evidence that institutionalised cooperation leads to policy convergence as far as defence is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Establishing and implementing rules that would teach pupils to become citizens became a crucial technique for turning those spots on the map of Europe whose sovereignty had shifted after the First World War into lived social spaces. This article uses Arnold Van Gennep's notion that a shift in social status possesses a spatiality and temporality of its own, in order to analyse how principals of secondary schools negotiated transformation in the Belgian–German borderlands. It asks whether and how they were called on to offer training that would make the borderlands more cohesive with the rest of Belgium in terms of the social origins of pupils and the content of study, and examines the extent to which they were historical actors with room for their own decision-making on creating and abolishing a liminal phase, thereby leading secondary education through its rites of passage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined the relationship between perception of COVID-19, travel risk perception and travel behaviour among travellers in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) – an important tourism market and, after Italy, the second region in Europe that was impacted by COVID-19. Data were collected at two points of time: the sample of the study in Period 1 (n = 1158) was collected at a critical point in time in the beginning of March 2020, when Italy was already massively affected by COVID-19; the sample of the study in Period 2 (n = 212) was collected two weeks later, when Europe has seen immense impacts and COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Cluster analysis was performed and defined three unique clusters in both periods with distinctive characteristics. In addition, results revealed a significant increase in risk perception of COVID-19, travel risk perception and travel behaviour over a short period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the topic of termination of life has been growing for 2 decades. After legalisation of active euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) in the Netherlands in 2002, movements to implement similar laws started in other European countries. However, many people objected to legalisation on the basis of the experiences in the Netherlands and as a matter of principal. This selected and focussed review presents the theoretical discussions about EAS and describes the respective parliamentary discussions in Germany and the data and experiences in the Netherlands. It also considers people with mental disorders in the context of termination-of-life services. So far, only a few European countries have introduced legislation on EAS. Legalisation of EAS in the Netherlands resulted in an unexpectedly large increase in cases. The number of people with mental disorders who terminate their lives on request remains low. Experience from the Netherlands shows that widening criteria for EAS has problematic consequences. Termination of life on request, which a subgroup of people support, is a matter of ongoing debate. Because of several problematic aspects, including ethical considerations, only a few countries in the world allow active euthanasia or assisted suicide. Even if euthanasia is well regulated, legalising it can have problematic consequences that are difficult to control, such as an unwanted excessive increase in euthanasia cases. The well-documented experiences with the euthanasia law in the Netherlands serve as an example of what is to be expected when euthanasia is legalised. We need to pay close attention to the relationship between suicide and suicide prevention on the one hand and euthanasia acts and promotion of euthanasia on the other. Further ethical, psychological and legal research is needed. In particular, the role of palliative medicine in societies' approach to end-of-life care must be explored in much more detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global spread of degree courses taught in English as a Medium of Instruction raises questions about the identity or "branding" of English-taught degree programs in non-Anglophone countries and whether they differ from their equivalents in the national languages. To answer this question, we have examined a sample of master's degree programs in the same domain, International Relations, across Italy, France and Germany from a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. Our findings suggest that they present a similar branding strategy in line with the standardization process of EU higher education, also reflecting the global trend toward the "entrepreneurial university." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to universal healthcare is a normative expectation of citizens in European welfare states. As part of a comparative study of healthcare in diverse European neighbourhoods, we met women who described failures of the public healthcare system, together with gratitude for that system. Challenges to European welfare states of ageing populations, the retraction of resources available for healthcare, and globalised migration streams have been linked to xenophobic 'welfarist' attempts to restrict access to services for new arrivals and those seen as failing to contribute sufficiently. Stories of healthcare systems' failure to treat symptoms, pain, and suffering in a timely and caring fashion came from eight women of non-European migrant backgrounds as part of a wider interview study in four European cities (Birmingham, Uppsala, Lisbon, Bremen). These accounts suggest that a normative aspect of welfare provision has been reproduced – that is, the expression of gratitude – despite inadequate services. Where welfarist attitudes to migration meet normative aspects of healthcare, suffering may be compounded by an expectation of gratitude. The regrettable unmet healthcare need of the eight women whose cases are presented suggests that other marginalised healthcare users may also be under-served in apparently universal healthcare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Almost three decades ago, a paradigm change in funding policies for rural regions took effect in Europe and Germany involving a move towards cooperative, actor-oriented regional development. Although meanwhile a large number of elaborated evaluations of different types on the effects of programmes for regional development was provided in particular, the results of impact evaluations do not allow distinct conclusions if the programmes have the intended impacts on the economic and demographic development of the German regions. Presented here is the first impact evaluation for Germany - if not for Europe - comprising projects and competitions from various policy fields of regional development, covering 27 programmes in five policy fields in the period from 1991 to 2016. Although the number of programmes and not the amount of funding gional development policies in a multi-level political system has emerged. Measures to develop business-support infrastructures and trade investments, e.g. ERDF (European Regional Development Fund), are completed by increasing supportive instruments like regional cooperation, networking and management structures. However, the funding is remote from classic development programmes. The basic theoretical framework behind this paradigm shift is provided by the concepts of "relational economic geography" (Bathelt, Glückler 2002), which focuses more on the institutional context of a space and interactions between actors than classical regional-economic approaches. The theoretical stringency of these concepts and their empirical underpinnings are, however, the subject of dispute within economic geography (Schätzl 2003: 243). The effectiveness of these was analysed, the results serve to strengthen doubts about the effectiveness of the regional development programmes. In any case, a simple accumulation of a large number of funded regional development activities does not have measurable effects on the demographic and economic evolution of the regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The objective of this study was to explore the evolution footprints of simulated driving research in the past 20 years through rigorous and systematic bibliometric analysis, to provide insights regarding when and where the research was performed and by whom and how the mainstream content evolved over the years.Methods: The analysis began with data retrieval in Web of Science with defined search terms related to simulated driving. BibExcel and CiteSpace were employed to conduct the performance analysis and co-citation network analysis; that is, probe of the performance of institutes, journals, authors, and research hotspots.Results: A total of 3,766 documents were filtered out and presented an exponential growth from 1997 to 2016. The United States contributed the most publications as well as international collaborations followed by Germany and China. In addition, several universities in The Netherlands and the United States dominated the list of contributing institutes. The leading journals were in transportation and ergonomics. The leading researchers were also recognized among the 8,721 contributing authors, such as J. D. Lee, D. L. Fisher, J. H. Kim, and K. A. Brookhuis. Finally, the co-citation analysis illuminated the evolution of simulated driving research that covered the following topics roughly in chronological order: task-induced stress, drivers with neurological disorders, alertness and sleepiness while driving, trust toward driving assistance systems, driver distraction, the effect of drug use, the validity of simulators, and automated driving.Conclusions: This article employed bibliometric tools to probe the contributing countries, institutes, journals, authors, and mainstream hotspots of simulated driving research in the past 20 years. A systematic bibliometric analysis of this field will help researchers realize the panorama of global simulated driving and establish future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The main goal of this study was to determine the knowledge and beliefs of otorhinolaryngologists in a secondary setting in selected economically advanced European countries concerning severe hearing loss, hearing aids, and cochlear implants (CIs). Secondary goals of the study looked into the information sources of the otorhinolaryngologists and into key topics of importance for these professionals. In Europe, many adults, who could benefit from a CI, do not have one despite their availability via national health care systems. This lack of coverage might be due, in part, to the knowledge and beliefs of otorhinolaryngologists.Methods: Otorhinolaryngologists in a secondary setting in Germany, England, France, Austria, and Sweden were emailed a custom-made questionnaire on their knowledge and beliefs regarding hearing loss and its treatments. Results were presented in relative frequencies (%) according to each nation.Results: Two-hundred and forty otorhinolaryngologists responded (50 from each nation except Sweden). Each nation regarded rehabilitation and hearing preservation as particularly important in CIs. National and international conferences and conversations with colleagues were much more popular methods of keeping abreast of medical issues than other information sources such as online media or company information.Conclusion: The otorhinolaryngologists of the surveyed nations share many common beliefs about hearing loss, hearing aids, and CIs, although some national variation in opinion is present. The otorhinolaryngologists of each nation are knowledgeable, but could still benefit from an increased knowledge and awareness of hearing loss treatment modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the summer of 2015 onwards the high influx of migrants and its effects have dominated the public debate in Europe. At first this influx posed mainly an administrative challenge in host countries such as Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Yet the seemingly incessant flow of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, seeking refuge from war or economic deprivation, soon sparked a heated controversy on the (im-)possibility of integrating people from very different cultural and religious backgrounds into European societies. Security concerns following the Paris attacks of November 2015 fuelled support for right-wing parties and extremist movements all over Europe. Meanwhile, one EU member state after another introduced restrictive policies contravening the open border policy introduced by the Schengen Agreement (1995) in their attempt to shift the administrative burden of handling the migrant crisis onto neighbouring states. The growing anxiety around questions of identity and security was compounded by growing concerns about the economy and welfare. In this essay I delineate the role played by public intellectuals in the debate about this crisis. Drawing on Richard Posner’s broad definition of a public intellectual as someone who writes knowledgeably about ideas for a popular audience on matters of public concern, I focus on how German public intellectuals debated the questions of national identity and the role of the nation-state in the EU migration crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess the cyclicality of current account balances for the period 2001Q1–2014Q4, focusing on Portugal and using Germany as a benchmark. We find that the cyclical component of the current account was positively explained by 3-month Euribor, but negatively by the financial crisis, systemic stress in Europe, employment and compensation of employees. Moreover, the noncyclical current account was positively affected by the period of the economic and financial adjustment programme and the terms of trade, but negatively influenced by financial integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany might be considered as the European country that has suffered the most from the spatial diffusion of Turkey's internal conflicts. It has received the highest number of Kurdish migrants in Europe and it became the core of Kurdish mobilization in transnational space. Germany's approach to the Kurdish Question on its own soil—combined with the strategies that the Kurdish activists used—determined the scope of opportunity structures for the mobilization of the Kurdish movement. This article explains how Kurdish activism has come to be perceived in Germany, and analyzes the German political environment by focusing on the criminalization and stigmatization of the Kurdish movement, especially during the 1990s. It then describes the discursive shift and change in framing strategies that the Kurdish diaspora experienced after the capture of the the Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) leader in 1999. Lastly, it touches upon the recent developments in the Middle East, especially in Kobane, and their impact on the image of the Kurdish movement. The article is based on extensive fieldwork in Germany and includes testimonies of Kurdish diaspora activists, with a focus on their own perceptions about their situation and how they respond to securitization policies in the host country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Enjoying a surge of national pride, the German media celebrated the 2010 German World Cup team's success in South Africa. A dominant theme in this coverage was the 'immigration background' of 11 of the 23 players on the team and their claim to German identity despite their ethnic diversity. Amid debate over the changing nature of German citizenship, the national team's 'multicultural kickers' became the focal point for those who wished to reframe German identity. This article examines German newspaper and magazine coverage of the national soccer team emphasizing the role that media played in constructing competing definitions of the German citizen and nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance is a 65-year history of retrenchment and renewal. When Washington has sought a retrenchment from the world, it traditionally increased burden sharing pressure on Europe to do more. During times of increased global ambition, the USA reaffirmed its traditional leadership role in the Alliance and its commitment to NATO effectiveness and relevance. This cycle of NATO retrenchment and renewal, however, is halting. Though the USA will continue to go through periods of relative increases and decreases in security policy ambition, signs point to a permanent defense and security retrenchment in Europe. Germany is the ally singularly capable of filling the resulting security gap. If NATO is to avoid the drift toward irrelevance many critics have predicted, Germany will need to cast off old inhibitions toward security and defense leadership. These trends and their implications for NATO's future are explored through historical case studies and the shifting contemporary security environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ideas are at their most powerful as an explanatory variable when they lead agents to go against any broadly reasonable interpretation of their material self-interests. They become even more intriguing when they are instrumental in actuallycausinga crisis, in which actors undercut their own stated goals and then continue to make matters worse by sticking to those same ideas, even in the light of clear evidence that the policies they inspire are not working. This contribution shows two dynamics between power and ideas to explain Germany's behavior during the euro crisis. The first dynamic examines the changing macroeconomic consensus on how to conduct monetary and fiscal policy that governed the euro from 1999 to 2012. The second dynamic shows how a strict adherence to Germany's ordoliberal ideas of budgetary rules and structural reform turned a containable Greek fiscal problem into a full-blown systemic sovereign debt crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1924 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a volume investigating the teaching of school history in former belligerent states in Europe. The project sought to reconcile former enemies through mutual understanding and educational exchange and reflected a widely held belief that although the military conflict had finished, its ideas still resounded and served to perpetuate antagonism. The CEIP project, conceived in the internationalist spirit, was itself derailed by nationalist enmity, a consequence of the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, demonstrating the limits of cultural reconciliation in the early 1920s, and the resultant volume showed that belligerent views of recent history were still being taught to schoolchildren in France and Germany in the early 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the review of Europe's integration.The article also discusses Europe's threats to integration but stronger co-operation on defence. It also discusses the affairs of France including the Charlie Hebdo attack,affairs of United Kingdom, Germany and Turkey.

A forum is presented on the book "Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe," by Esra Özyürek. Participants include scholars such as Ruth Mandel, Nasa Meer, and Paul A. Silverstein. Emphasis is given to topics such as Islamophobia in Europe, the social identity of Muslims, and the relationship between Islam and nationalism.

Understood as a philosophy counselling group rights and concomitant public policies undertaken by governments to preserve and enhance group identities, multiculturalism has little purchase in European immigrant integration debates. However, based on interviews with various actors engaged in policies that affect immigrants in the Netherlands and Germany, we argue that multiculturalism remains a going concern if it is understood as a problem-solving practice through which governments acknowledge and work with ethnic and religious groups to address issues of mutual concern, particularly on issues related to gender. We label this ‘multicultural governance’ and argue that it supports the principal ends of integration policy: the socialization of immigrants into prevailing national languages, norms and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at the impact of national and European elections on turnout in German local council elections. The focus is first on effects from the timing of local council elections in between two federal elections and second on turnout effects from the combination of local council elections and European parliamentary elections. Starting from considerations about the relationships between high- and low-stimulus elections the article analyses data from 111 German local council elections held between 1951 and 2008. The analyses show first that upcoming national elections do mobilise voters to cast their ballots in regions where local council turnout traditionally is low. Second, combining European and local elections tends to reinforce turnout as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the political discourse on the resolution of the Eurozone of the second Merkel government and its political contestation in plenary debates of the Bundestag. The empirical part demonstrates the high relevance of normative arguments in the debate, both for the case made by the government parties for a Stability Union and related concepts of austerity and economic reform, and for the competing discourse by the opposition parties for investment and debt mutualisation in the Eurozone. Moreover, the analysis reveals that a strong value- and identity-based commitment to European integration continues to be supported by all political parties in the Bundestag. To conclude, the final section discusses party political and institutional factors to explain why the political contestation of the European leadership by the Merkel government in the Bundestag played only a very limited role at the federal election in September 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Some observers still regard John Maynard Keynes’ polemic against the Treaty of Versailles as serious economic analysis. In fact, Keynes continued to play an unacknowledged partisan role in reparation diplomacy during the 1920s. He suggests in a memoir that he never saw the Hamburg banker Carl Melchior alone again after October 1919. Using German sources not exploited by Keynes’ principal biographers, this analysis shows that the intimate relationship continued. Melchior drew Keynes into the highest governing circles of the Reich. Keynes supported the 1922–1923 German hyper-inflation on political grounds and helped craft the German reparations note of June 1923. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]