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This paper centres the colonial pre-histories of 'the digital' to complicate posthumanist theorisations of subjectivity. Posthumanism helpfully undercuts human exceptionalism by presenting subjectivity as always-already co-constituted by technology. However, this paper argues that it insufficiently engages the human as the historico-political effect of negating the assumed non-technological colonial Other. Focusing on liberal humanism between the 16th and 19th centuries, the paper theorises the modern human as bound up in 'technological onticide'. The presumed absence of technology became a (theo-centric, ratio-centric, bio-centric) measure of the Other's sub-humanity, at the same time as this Other was expected to be humanised through its technologisation. An emphasis on technological onticide complicates universalist theories of subjectivity that take it as always a matter of human-technology co-constitution. The paper argues that, to confront the legacies of ontological murder, conceptual room needs to be made for in human, counter human or un human theories of subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban lab is an experimental governance approach for the co-creation of innovative solutions to urban challenges, such as climate change. However, urban lab scholarship has overlooked lab formation as a distinct process and is almost exclusively based on European cases. Therefore, little is known about the role of context conditions for lab formation in general and beyond Europe in particular. To address these gaps, this paper inductively analyses urban lab formation in five cities in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, develops a framework for the comparative analysis of lab formation challenges, and asks: What do the challenges encountered and the solutions developed during lab formation in these cities tell us about the context dependence of the urban lab approach and what are the implications for its potential beyond Europe? Comparing insights from Europe to the findings from Latin America, the paper answers these questions and identifies future research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Economic burden studies can provide insights into the drivers leading to increasing healthcare costs. It can also provide a more holistic view of how diseases impact the welfare of patients and their families. Having concrete estimates of the economic burden across multiple diseases can help policymakers determine which diseases are economically more burdensome. This study aimed to review and summarise comprehensively economic burden studies across multiple diseases in the Nordic countries between 2000 and 2020. Methods: According to the 2020 PRISMA statement, a systematic literature review was conducted in PubMed, CINAHL, Academic Search Premier and Global Health databases using key terms related to the economic burden of any disease in Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Grey literature was also reviewed. Results: A total of 10,050 potential titles and abstracts were identified and screened, and 254 full-text papers that met the inclusion criteria were evaluated by two independent reviewers. Of these, 119 articles were included in a qualitative synthesis. Twenty-nine had clearly defined comparison groups, thus able to attribute the costs to the disease. Large variations concerning methodology and cost components were noted. Across diseases, the economic burden ranged from EUR 1668 per patient annually for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to EUR 93,041 for multiple sclerosis. However, estimates varied widely, even within each disease. Conclusions: Our review highlights the need for more comparable economic burden studies. Future studies should focus on applying robust methodology and homogeneous cost-reporting methods to inform policymakers about which diseases are economically more burdensome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of European social dialogue, little is known about the social policy preferences of EU employers' organizations (EEOs). Building on the literature on industrial relations and the role of business in welfare state development, this article explores the preferences of key EEOs (BusinessEurope, SGI Europe and SMEunited) in vocational education and training (VET), active and passive labour market policies, pensions and work–family reconciliation. Software-based qualitative content analysis of 75 position papers and 19 joint declarations, triangulated with four elite semi-structured interviews, is employed to assess employers' preferences along four national and two European dimensions. Largely in line with the power resources theory, EEOs favour cost containment and social investment, by strengthening labour market flexicurity and reducing skills mismatches through VET. Conflicting logics of membership and influence guide the actions of EEOs: members are wary of legislation impinging on national social policy traditions; yet, greater European assertiveness makes lobbying efforts unavoidable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. 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.)

We examine job quality effects of new digital technologies, using the European frame of seven job quality domains: Pay, Working Time Quality, Prospects, Skills and Discretion, Work Intensity, Social Environment, and Physical Environment. Theoretical effects are ambivalent across all domains. The analysis of these effects confirms that digital technologies can both improve and harm job quality depending on how they are used. In light of this analysis and to think through the challenge of regulating digital technologies, we review emerging regulations across several European countries. Drawing on the principles of human-centred design, we argue that worker participation is important for securing good job quality outcomes, at both the innovation and adoption stages. We also consider the application of data protection legislation to the regulation of job quality. Overall, the paper extends debate about the future of work beyond employment and pay, on to a consideration of job quality more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reviews the literature published on job crafting using bibliometric techniques. It utilizes the papers published on the topic from 1990 to 2023, retrieved from the Scopus database. The purpose of the paper is to draw the intellectual, conceptual and social structure of the field of research on job crafting. It uses the bibliometric method to review the literature on "job crafting." The findings of the study reveal both the micro and macro aspect of the research published so far such as Europe is the epicenter of research on the topic, while experiments and questionnaires a popular choice in methods adopted. This review gives a unique view of the past and outlines a number of future directions for research on the topic and it will be of interest to existing scholars in the field as well as doctoral students who might be interested in the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many argue populist radical-right parties to be the largest contemporary threat to democracy, much of the evidence either focuses on the rare case of a populist radical-right prime minister, or conflates right-populist prime ministers with right-populist government participation, with some asserting that it would be difficult for these parties to have any real effect without holding the prime ministership. In this paper I conduct a large-scale analysis of European nations to quantify the effect right-populist junior coalition partners have on liberal democracy. I argue that as junior coalition partners, they will indeed affect democratic quality, albeit in ways that differ from that of a right-populist prime minister. While previous literature has demonstrated that populist radical-right parties bring with them decreases in the level of democratic quality pertaining to institutional constraints on power and mass civil liberties, junior coalition partners are only able to effect the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While transnational research infrastructure projects long preceded the formal integration process that created the European Union, their advancement is an increasingly central part of EU research policy and of European integration in general. This paper analyses the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure–European Research Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRI–ERIC) as a recent example of institutionalized scientific collaboration in Europe that has formally been established as part of EU science policy. BBMRI–ERIC, a network of European biobanks, is expected to contribute to both European science and European integration. Yet its achievements in these domains are interpreted differently by various actors involved. This paper draws on STS conceptualizations of infrastructures as relational, experimental, and promissory assemblages. These support the formulation of a working definition of research infrastructures that in turn helps to explore the heterogeneous meanings attributed to BBMRI–ERIC. The paper describes the creation of this distributed European research infrastructure, and divergent understandings of what it means for BBMRI–ERIC to be distributed, to be European and to be a research infrastructure. This analysis demonstrates how building a research infrastructure is also an effort to define what it means to be European—a process in which what is European about science and what science can do for Europe is continuously (re-)imagined, contested and negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government formation in multiparty systems requires election winners to strike deals to form a coalition government. Do voters respond and how do they respond to coalition government deals? This paper examines the short-term consequences of coalition government formation on voters in European democracies relying on survey panel data and original content analysis of coalition agreements. It tests theoretical expectations that deal with both the actual and perceived ideological shifts parties make when joining coalition deals as well as the effect of a much simpler heuristic cue based on preferences. The findings indicate that coalition deals have consequences on party preferences, but voter perceptions play a much stronger effect than the actual content of coalition deals. These results have important implications for our understanding of public opinion and provide important insights into the current difficulties and challenges of government formation and representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a steady increase in popular music programs at Higher Music Education Institutions (HMEIs) across Europe. However, what students actually are supposed to learn at popular music bachelor/master programs has remained largely understudied. Based on 12 in-depth interviews with leaders in higher popular music education, this paper addresses: (1) how popular music is defined and possibly canonized, (2) what the position of popular music programs is, and (3) how the content of popular music programs is constructed—at HMEIs. First, participants struggle to provide a clear definition of popular music. Therefore, they differ in how they name their program – as popular music, pop music or something else. Because there is little consensus over a canon of popular music, our interviewees work from a mini-canon of British/American popular music, add local music to the curriculum, use jazz as a basis and/or work without a canon. Second, despite their growing popularity, popular music programs still struggle to position themselves, particularly at HMEIs with strong classical music departments. Third, program leaders navigate between different approaches of content construction within the constraints of their institution: (a) craft-centered (top-down, teacher-driven, skill-oriented), (b) arts-centered (bottom-up, student-driven, creativity-oriented), and (c) market-centered (side-to-side, industry-driven, commercially-oriented). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article assesses Will Kymlicka's targeted approach to cultural rights by focusing on the case of the Roma minority in Europe. In Multicultural Odysseys, Kymlicka praises the European management of Roma issues as a promising way to overcome the flaws of the generic approach to cultural rights that dominates European minority rights otherwise. The article intends to evaluate Kymlicka's statement in two ways : it combines an empirical study of the arguments that justify the institutional targeting of the Roma in the Council of Europe and a normative analysis about the specific type of transnational minority that these populations seem to form. The empirical part of the paper casts doubts on the assumption that cultural recognition matters primarily in the case of the Roma. The normative part of the paper argues that the concept of transnational minority gains more normative consistency when it is understood in terms of political mobilization against racial oppression than when it is justified in terms of cultural recognition. It concludes that Iris M. Young's "politics of difference" provides a fruitful normative approach to make sense of the Roma's claims of justice in Europe and that it is as such likely to refine and possibly complete the targeted to approach to multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of 'Islamophobia' has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. 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.)

There is a high prevalence of mental health disorders on probation staffs' caseloads. Approximately 40% of all clients will have a mental health disorder often compounded by drug or alcohol problems. It is therefore important that a probation officer can recognise mental illness and refer to the appropriate local agency. It is therefore important to know how much probation staff understand about mental illness. The Mental Health Literacy Scale (MHLS) was distributed to probation staff in all countries registered as members of the Confederation of Europe. In this paper, overall average scores for the MHLS for each country are presented. Factors which help to explain the variation in scores are also examined such a caseload size and gender of staff member. The results are discussed within the context of a possible European curriculum for probation training. Probation (CEP) organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The concept of stigma has been widely used to understand patterns of discrimination and negative ideas surrounding people with mental health problems, yet we know little of the specific nuances of how this might operate beyond the 'Global North'. Aim: This paper aims to explore the notion of stigma in an Indian context by considering the lived experience of patients, carers and community members. Methods: A sample of 204 participants, representing mental health patients, informal carers and community members was recruited from urban and rural areas in Kerala, India. Participants took part in interviews where they were encouraged to talk about their experiences of mental ill health, attitudes towards these problems, barriers encountered and sources of support. Results: Experiences akin to the experience of stigma in Europe and the United States were elicited but there were important local dimensions specific to the Indian context. The difficulties faced by people with diagnoses of mental disorders in finding marriage partners was seen as an important problem, leading to marriage proposals being refused in some cases, and secrecy on the part of those with mental health problems. Rather than the 'self-stigma' identified in the US, participants were more likely to see this as a collective problem in that it could reflect badly on the family group as a whole rather than just the sufferer. Conclusions: In the Indian context, the idioms of stigma emphasised impairments in marriage eligibility and the implications for the family group rather than just the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is presented in the context of a gradual move from energy management at a Building level to energy management at Component level. This move requires specific energy consumption and power demand benchmarks to allow measured component energy use and power demands to be put into context. The paper presents a methodology for collecting and collating the data needed for producing these benchmarks from measured operational data. This methodology was tested in the European iSERVcmb project. Example benchmarks from iSERVcmb are provided along with links to the full published data. The paper concludes that large scale measurement and comparison of detailed operational data are possible and useful in support of achieving operationally low energy buildings.Practical application: The explosion of low-cost operational data availability at the level of individual components can be used to improve understanding of their operational energy efficiency in the context of the overall efficiency of a building. The paper shows this data can: Be collected from all types of buildings across all EU Member States Produce benchmark ranges of operational energy consumption and power demands at the level of individual components serving given activities Applying this benchmarked data in the design and operation of buildings will: Improve their operational energy efficiency, Enable legislation using this data to show compliance [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been concerns about the decline of health promotion as a practice and discipline and, alongside this, calls for a clearer articulation of health promotion research and what, if anything, makes it distinct. This discussion paper, based on a review of the literature, the authors’ own experiences in the field, and a workshop delivered by two of the authors at the 8th Nordic Health Promotion Conference, seeks to state the reasons why health promotion research is distinctive. While by no means exhaustive, the paper suggests four distinctive features. The paper hopes to be a catalyst to enable health promotion researchers to be explicit in their practice and to begin the process of developing an agreed set of research principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Based on the ideal type classification of European countries done in Part I of this paper, Part II explores whether the real ‘danger’ to public health is the interplay between austerity and crisis, rather than recession itself. Methods: We constructed two fuzzy sets of changes in population health based on a pooled file of European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data (2008 and 2013) including 29 European countries. The linear probability analyses of ‘limiting long-standing illness’ and ‘less than good’ health were restricted to the age group 20–64 years. We performed fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and studied whether configurations of ‘severe crisis’ and ‘austerity’ were linked to changes in population health. Results: Overall, the results of this fsQCA do not support the ‘crisis–austerity’ thesis. Results on ‘less than good’ health were highly inconsistent, while results on ‘limiting long-standing illness’, contrary to the thesis, showed a two-path model. Countries with either no severe crisis or no austerity were subsets of the set of countries that experienced deteriorated health. Results also show that several countries combined both paths. Conclusions: This fuzzy set analysis does not support Stuckler and Basu’s ‘crisis–austerity’ thesis, as those European countries that experienced recession and austerity were not consistently the countries with deteriorating health. There may be multiple reasons for this result, including analytical approach and operationalization of key concepts, but also resilient forces such as family support. We suggest more research on the topic based on more recent data and possibly other, or more, dimensions of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many urban development projects (UDPs) in Europe take place on lands belonging to public bodies and administrations, and publicly owned firms. Yet, the literature has failed to explain why a substantial proportion of the remaking of European cities is shaped on public properties, and with what outcomes. My underlying hypothesis is that the redevelopment of such properties depends primarily on the restructuring of the state. Firstly, this paper provides evidence of the relationships between three dynamics of state restructuring and the disposal of public land and real estate properties owned by one sector of the French state, that is, the railways. Secondly, the paper focuses on two UDPs of railway sites, respectively located in Paris and Nantes, in order to disclose the specificity of the redevelopment process associated with public railway properties, due to the socio-legal infrastructure of railway land disposal stemming from these dynamics. The paper demonstrates that (i) state restructuring impels various levels and organisations of the state to redevelop public land and real estate properties; and (ii) the effects of state restructuring can be explained only by analysing the mediating role of the socio-legal infrastructure of these properties, which frames the processes and outcomes of the redevelopment projects. In so doing, the paper offers a specific account of the explanatory factors, processes and outcomes of the relationship between state restructuring and a significant proportion of the restructuring of urban areas in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While in the Nordic countries we have well-developed welfare policies and several structural, statutory measures in place aiming to promote public health, studies from these countries are often absent from systematic reviews of research literature assessing the effects of policy measures designed to promote health. Using adolescent health promotion and efforts related to primary prevention of obesity as an example, this short commentary aims to illustrate the paucity of well-designed studies investigating the effects of public health policies affecting adolescents. This paper argues that the Nordic research community is in a good position to help fill this gap, and to contribute more widely to the international literature on evaluation of policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the politics of (dis)assembling borders within Europe. It examines the performance of the Berlin-based artist collective Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Center for Political Beauty, ZPS) in 2014, in which artist activists temporarily removed white border crosses commemorating death at the former Berlin Wall. With this unauthorized displacement, ZPS sought to problematize ongoing violence and death at European borders. Via a three-part analysis of the performance Erster Europäischer Mauerfall (First European Fall of the Wall), the paper outlines a political framework for understanding art around and against borders – contributing to accounts on border art and the politics of borders. Staged as critique against the official commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, perceived by ZPS as festivalized and thus apolitical event, the multiple performance acts highlight material and emotional movements. They oscillate between past and present border death, commemorated and forgotten border objects, bodies, places. In particular, ZPS aimed to denounce (implicit) hierarchies regarding how and whose death at European borders is remembered via acts of (dis)assembling. By unsolicitedly (re)moving Berlin's border crosses (Act I), mobilizing over 100 activists to dismantle border fences and temporarily installing replica crosses at Southern EU borders and placing them in the hands of contemporary refugees (Act III), ZPS mobilized public concern about contemporary border politics and commemoration. The paper contributes to border studies that view borders as inherently complex and contingent symbolic, socio-spatial arrangements, which affect and are affected by objects, bodies, and policies that oscillate between contested absence and presence. Accompanied by controversial media coverage, the performance gathered (im)mobile bodies, moving objects, and multiple emotional responses about the what, where and who of Europe. Ultimately, politics of (dis)assembling unfold absence and presence to articulate mo(ve)ments of 'the political' as contestation against complacency and border violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Means-tested transfer schemes in Europe and elsewhere tend to include not only income tests but also asset tests of various sorts. The role of asset tests in minimum income protection provisions has been extensively researched in the Anglo-Saxon context. Far fewer authors have assessed the role of asset tests on social policy in a continental European context. Although asset tests may be useful in singling out the more deserving of the poor, we know relatively little of their actual impact on eligibility and social outcomes in European welfare states. This paper looks at the prevalence and design of asset tests in European minimum income protection schemes. We distinguish between two main types of asset tests: outright disqualification when assets reach a certain value, versus a more gradual tapering at a fictional rate of return. We then analyse in greater detail how asset tests in Belgium and Germany, as representatives of these two types, affect minimum income protection eligibility and poverty outcomes. We use the EUROMOD microsimulation model on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey data in order to assess the effects of asset tests. This survey was explicitly designed to more realistically reflect assets and capital incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the traditional gravity model to explain the effect of digitalization on international tourism flows to five Southern European countries, where tourism plays an important economic role. The analysis is based on balanced panel data covering the period 2004–2019. Internet-user statistics and Google Trends search data are used as a proxy for digital adoption and virtual proximity, respectively, by source markets. Results lend support to the notion that virtual proximity rather than digital adoption aided international travel, demonstrating that digitalization cannot be interpreted as a fluid and vague concept that exerts a consistent effect. Results also present evidence that Southern European countries should not be treated as a block of homogenous destinations. These findings inform stakeholders regarding the significance of digital platforms as strategic tools to empower consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This is the first part of a two-part paper that takes an explorative approach to assess crisis and austerity in European countries during the Great Recession. The ultimate aim of this two-part paper is to explore the “crisis–austerity” thesis by Stuckler and Basu and assess whether it is the interplay between austerity and crisis, rather than the current economic crisis per se, that can led to deterioration in population health. In Part I of this paper we offer one way of operationalizing crisis severity and austerity. We examine countries as specific configurations of crisis and policy responses and classify European countries into “ideal types.” Methods: Cases included were 29 countries participating in the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) surveys. Based on fuzzy set methodology, we constructed two fuzzy sets, “austerity” and “severe crisis.” Austerity was measured by changes in welfare generosity; severe crisis was measured by changes in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth. Results: In the initial phase of the Great Recession, most countries faced severe crisis combined with no austerity. From 2010–2011 onward, there was a divide between countries. Some countries consistently showed signs of austerity policies (with or without severe crisis); others consistently did not. Conclusions: The fuzzy set ideal-type analysis shows that the European countries position themselves, by and large, in configurations of crisis and austerity in meaningful ways that allow us to explore the “crisis–austerity” thesis by Stuckler and Basu. This exploration is the undertaking of Part II of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, most European countries have experienced substantial demographic changes and rising cultural diversity. Understanding the social and economic impacts of these shifts is a major challenge for policymakers. Richard Florida’s ideas have provided a popular – and pervasive – framework for doing so. This paper assess Florida’s legacy and sets out a ‘post-Florida’ framework for ‘technology, talent and tolerance’ research. The paper first traces the development of Florida’s ideas. ‘Florida 1.0’, encapsulated by the Three Ts framework, has performed badly in practice. There are problems in bringing causality to the fundamental relationships, and in consistently replicating the results in other countries. ‘Florida 2.0’, though suggests that Creative Class metrics have value as alternative measures of human capital. This create space for a post-Florida agenda based on economic micro-foundations. I argue that the growing body of ‘economics of diversity’ research meets these conditions, and review theory and empirics. Urban ‘diversity shocks’ shift the size and composition of populations and workforces, with impacts operating via labour markets, and through wider production and consumption networks. While short-term labour market effects are small, over time low-value industrial sectors may become migrant-dependent. Diversity may help raise productivity and wages through innovation, entrepreneurship, market access and trade channels. Bigger, more diverse cities help generate hybridised goods and services, but may also raise local costs through crowding. All of this presents new challenges for policymakers, who need to manage diversity’s net effects, and address both economic costs and benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article announces the names of the winners including Maribel Casas-Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias and John Pickle, for the journal's first Jim Lewis Prize as of July 2014. It mentions that the Prize marks contributions of the former Editor Jim Lewis and highlights the most innovative paper published previously in the journal. The recipients are awarded for their paper "Re-bordering the neighbourhood: Europe's emerging geographies of non-accession integration."

An often suggested method for waste prevention is substitution of currently-used materials with materials which are less bulky, contain less hazardous components or are easier to recycle. For policy makers it is important to have tools available that provide information on the impact of this substitution on the changes in total amounts of waste generated and managed. The purpose of this paper is to see how much changes in the mix of 15 waste streams generated in eight economic sectors from 30 European countries have influenced the amounts of waste generated and managed in the period 2004–2012. In order to determine these impacts, two variations of the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) analysis model were developed and applied. The results show that the changes in the mix of waste streams in most cases did not have a considerable influence on the changes in the amounts of generated waste. In the analyses of waste sent for landfill, incineration without energy recovery, incineration with energy recovery and recovery other than energy recovery, the results also show that the changes in the mix of waste streams in most cases did not have the expected/desired influence on the changes in the amounts of managed waste. This paper provides an example on the possibilities of applying the LMDI analysis as a tool for quantifying the potential of effects which implemented or planned measures could have on the changes in waste management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the constructions and dynamics of subaltern migrant subjectivities in three arrival cities, Athens, Istanbul and Nicosia. The paper draws on empirical research in three cities geopolitically located in the most south-eastern part of the Mediterranean basin and the boundary triangle connecting Europe, Asia and Africa. This is essentially a process where the will, agency and praxis of subaltern migrants in the context of social struggles are interwoven with precarious spaces. Precarity is at the core of their daily existence: precarious labour, precarious stay and precarious lives. The generation, maintenance, evolution, even erosion of mobile commons are consequential of social processes and struggles driven by subaltern and precarious subjects, migrants and non-migrants alike. The article explores how the generation of claims to rights is restructuring Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’, as new forms of commons through mobility, resistance and digital materialities are contesting the sovereign governance and surveillance technologies in Europe and beyond. The paper contends that such perspectives from the borders of Europe, that is, in and out of Europe, are not only crucial to the understanding of what is happening in Europe, but are an advanced glimpse into potentialities of the world ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recordkeeping and record-using were important in Classical societies and early medieval Europe, rapid evolution and change characterized recordkeeping practices from the late Middle Ages throughout the early modern period. This paper recasts changes in Western European recordkeeping from the fourteenth to eighteenth century in terms of the differentiation of spaces and practices, thus challenging older literature that sees increasing accumulation around a foundational archivum as the primary mode of expansion. Empirically, the argument concentrates on developments in the German lands that produced highly sophisticated Registratur (practices that tracked and indexed a wide variety of circulating records) across the German sphere after 1400. As first argued by Ernst Pitz, early modern German archivists began differentiating conceptual and physical spaces for recordkeeping in the fifteenth century, thus producing both archives of charters and registries of informational records of many kinds. A close examination of developments in Habsburg Innsbruck confirms that both an ordered archive and a powerful comprehensive system of registry emerged simultaneously in the 1520s in one of the most sophisticated recordkeeping venues of the era. The paper also reconsiders the historiography of archives, emphasizing how the cultural, medial and spatial turns have transformed current research. By contrasting relatively stable medial forms – pen, ink and paper; roll, bundle and codex – with more dynamic and transformative medial configurations which can be studied through the systematic comparison of specific cases, I argue that new research on archival history offers fresh and less culturally bound approaches to the preservation of records in the archives that remain the foundation for historical research into the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on the globalisation of services in economic geography continues to develop in multiple directions, some service industries are still largely under-researched. The hotel industry is one of the most striking examples. Given that the hotel sector is much more global in terms of number of countries covered by each company than many other service industries, one of the crucial aspects of hotel sector globalisation that requires attention from a geographical perspective is the territorial embeddedness of expanding hotel groups in the variety of institutional, political and economic contexts. Grounded in the global production networks (GPNs) approach, this paper aims to address this lacuna in empirical and theoretical terms. Drawing from extensive research carried out in Poland, Estonia and Bulgaria, the paper examines the impact of post-communist transformations on the expansion of international hotel groups into Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyses how different hotel GPNs interact with the various contexts across the region. It is argued that the ways in which post-communist transformations influence the expansion of hotel groups into CEE depend upon the degree of territorial embeddedness of the hotel group, which, in turn, is reflective of the group’s business model and the architecture of its GPN. In theoretical terms, the paper illustrates how, to better account for the particularities of CEE, the GPN approach can incorporate the ‘alternative approach’ – the theory of post-communist transformations that challenges the neoliberal orthodoxy which drove the post-communist restructuring in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 created dangerous public health conditions which pressured governments and health systems to respond in a rapid and effective manner. However, this type of rapid response required many governments to bypass standing; bureaucratic structures of health sector administration and political governance to quickly take; essential measures against a rapidly evolving public health threat. Each government's particular; configuration of governmental and health system decision-making created specific structural and functional challenges to these necessary centrally developed and coordinated strategies. Most East Asian governments (except Japan) succeeded relatively quickly in centralizing essential disease control and treatment initiatives in a timely manner. In contrast, a number of European countries, especially those with predominantly tax-based financing and politically managed health delivery systems, had greater difficulty in escaping bureaucratic governance and management constraints. Drawing on data about these governments' early stage COVID-19 control experiences, this article suggests that structural changes will be necessary if low-performing governments are to better respond to a pandemic. This paper also summarizes other relatively successful strategies. By adopting such strategies, nations can help overcome structural bureaucratic and administrative obstacles in responding to further waves of COVID-19 or similar future pandemic events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although European blood collection organizations are currently obtaining sufficient and safe blood from the majority population, they report having difficulty recruiting first and second-generation immigrants from non-European countries. Most existing studies on these underrepresented groups, who have been coined the " missing minorities " in blood donation, have adopted an instrumental approach that focuses on the development of targeted recruitment strategies to overcome specific barriers to donation faced by members of these minorities. Although this approach does offer several short-term benefits, our central argument is that it is one-sided in its questioning of the non-participation of ethnic minorities. The literature currently lacks research on how the blood procurement system is failing to include minorities. Drawing on recent social theory, we seek a broader sociological understanding of minority under-representation in blood donor populations by shifting the analytic focus toward a critical examination of the main pillars of the procurement system within the European context. This paper advances a novel analytical framework based on two general propositions. First, we apply the literature on "citizenship regimes" to argue that blood donation is part of one specific institutionalization of citizenship and solidarity. We then reconceptualize the "problem" of missing minorities in European blood donation as an application for social change, suggesting avenues related to blood collection as a way of renegotiating minority-majority relations of solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines place-specific factors affecting geographies of innovation, that is, the transfer of research from the laboratory to bedside in the healthcare sector in four European bioscience regions. These regions are Medical Delta (MD; Leiden, Rotterdam and Delft, Netherlands) Oxford and the Thames Valley (OTV; UK), Biocat (Catalonia, Spain) and Life Science Zurich (LSZ; Switzerland). Evidence is drawn from the European Union-funded Healthcare Technology and Innovation for Economic Success (HealthTIES) project (2010–2013). The analytical framework, the HealthTIES Innovation Cycle, is organised into resources (inputs), innovation system elements and outcomes. The paper shows that each region represents different positions within international value chains of innovation in the healthcare sector. They range from the highly research intensive but with relatively less in the way of commercial exploitation location (OTV) to the less research intensive but with more commercialisation (LSZ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent migration from three little-studied European Union (EU) countries, the Baltic states, focusing on early-career graduates who move to London. It looks at how these young migrants explain the reasons for their move, their work and living experiences in London, and their plans for the future, based on 78 interviews with individual migrants. A key objective of this paper is to rejuvenate the core–periphery structural framework through the theoretical lens of London as an ‘escalator’ region for career development. We add a necessary nuance on how the time dimension is crucial in understanding how an escalator region functions – both in terms of macro-events such as EU enlargement or economic crisis, and for life-course events such as career advancement or family formation. Our findings indicate that these educated young adults from the EU’s north-eastern periphery migrate for a combination of economic, career, lifestyle and personal-development reasons. They are ambivalent about their futures and when, and whether, they will return-migrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writings on urban development and planning in Europe have been dominated by a combination of technical studies of the real estate sector and more structural political economy approaches on land expropriation and financialisation. In this paper we draw on the example of the London Landed Estates, to critically assess how land-owning real estate companies, that we call city-owners, perform their roles and what models and knowledge sources they draw upon in managing and carefully curating urban spaces and places. Data sources include interviews with estate managers, others involved in, or affected by, their management, and other corporate public information. Our theoretical framing draws on performativity theory that we see as a valuable addition to existing research approaches. We describe and analyse the ways these agencies construct narratives and practices of socially responsible and historically established forms of performance, that they label place stewardship, and the specific mechanisms they use to bring places into existence. Collectively, the discussion calls for an increased focus on how models abstracted from local context and politics can be 'localised', in the study of the governance of the built environment. Greater attention also needs to be paid to the work that place does in influencing the strategies, tactics and activities of property owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are few analyses available of the role played by finance and business consultancies in post-socialist economic geographies and even fewer on the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Both issues are addressed in this paper with a focus on Italian banks and business services as well as their relationship to SME outsourcing in Central and Eastern Europe. The basic premise of this paper is that a relationship exists between the internationalization of banks, services, and SMEs when analyzed within the framework of the Uppsala Internationalization Process Model. Specifically, banks and services allow the mobilization of resources forming knowledge pipelines between Italian firms and Central and Eastern European regional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The present paper aims to situate Macaronic Latin, a peculiar type of linguistic mixture that was used in literary works in early modern Europe, within the context of phenomena such as code-switching and borrowing, as well as mixed and constructed languages. The main objective is to see whether and how it can be compared to various instances of linguistic structures originating from more than one source language. Design/Methodology/Approach: After a description of its historical background and sociolinguistic features, main linguistic traits of Macaronic Latin are sketched and, finally, compared to other language contact phenomena, with particular reference to the fusion hypothesis. Data and Analysis: The main data for the analysis are sixty samples from macaronic works belonging to eleven language pairs. The analysis shows that mixed words in Macaronic Latin have properties of both borrowings and loans, being very similar to nonce formations. When compared to mixed and constructed languages, Macaronic Latin shows peculiarities that set it apart from either group. Findings/Conclusions: Although individual structural aspects of Macaronic Latin align its individual aspects with various outcomes of linguistic contact, the sociolinguistic pattern of its creation and later development make it a rather untypical case of linguistic mixing. Originality: Latin served as the main language of learned communication in medieval and early modern Europe; yet, this paper is the first study devoted to putting it in the context of mixed language debate. Significance/Implications: The study suggests that the preservation of the widespread use of a language with no native speakers requires sociolinguistic forces so strong so as to override many trends of what has been established as regular linguistic development. This implies that in investigating such cases we might need a modified research methodology and an extended terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the foundation pillars of European unification, namely solidarity and democracy, are under serious threat, perhaps more serious than that from the 2008 economic crisis, Brexit, the migration crisis and COVID-19 combined. As happened in the past, space and geography are again at the forefront asking for interpretations. A once progressive academic field such as urban and regional research is due now to regain its progressive reflexes together with broader political concerns about the future of the European Union (EU). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a variety of methods of statistical cluster analysis to examine how EU countries (other than the new East European members) are grouped. Using the four dimensions, family, market vs state, religion and clientelism, the results of the analysis are that Southern European/Mediterranean (SE/M) countries form a distinct cluster that, both in its existence and in its difference from the conservative cluster, contradicts the notion of ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’. In addition Ireland, though not geographically contiguous, falls into the SE/M grouping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant inclusion in a society is a process that ultimately succeeds or fails at the local level and cities have increasingly taken a proactive stance in delivering their own policies for integration. The literature on the topic has focused particularly on the cooperation between local political institutions and civil society organizations, underestimating the key role played by social partners. This paper demonstrates the participation of social partners in the local governance of migrant integration in three European cities: Barcelona, Lyon and Gothenburg. Drawing on process tracing analysis and qualitative interviews, the article illustrates the different responses of local unions and employers' organizations to immigration and the variety of approaches to supporting migrant integration into employment and society. The article argues that these approaches, which take place within different institutional and structural contexts, shape different patterns of migrant inclusion and allow us to explain the new and traditional ways in which social partners operate as social and political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current phase of intensive globalisation, digitisation, the expansion of fintech companies and the overall impacts of the recent crisis seem to spur further concentration in the banking sector in terms of both the number of banks in operation and the number of banking centres. This research is motivated by the fact that, in contrast to leading financial and banking centres that attract considerable research attention, small banking centres have remained under-researched, despite their large number and the important role they play in their host communities and regions. This paper deals with the recent evolutionary dynamics of 199 small European banking centres and is based on an analysis of the economic performance of individual banks aggregated at the city level where they have their headquarters. The analysed indicators cover size, profitability and the level of risk of particular banks over the 2004–2015 period. In addition, the data were analysed for three basic European macro-regions (western Europe, southern Europe and central and eastern Europe) and in terms of the ownership of the banks headquartered in particular centres (foreign versus domestic). Our investigation shows that, even though a significant decline has been observed in the number of these centres, the financial performance of banks headquartered in small financial centres differs widely, depending significantly upon the European macro-region (a decisive number of defunct banking centres was concentrated in southern Europe) and the ownership structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the population transition model for Vietnam, based on Grover's five stages of population transition. Compatible with the transitional model of Western Europe and other advanced Asian countries, this process in Vietnam has some significant differences: (a) the initial shift or transition of fertility of the population in Vietnam is later than in Asian countries by about 13 years while compared to Europe it is nearly 108 years later; and (b) while the period of initial transition of mortality in Vietnam may not be very different from other Asian countries, it is more than 100 years later than in European countries, especially those in Western Europe. One of the main factors influencing the late transition of Vietnam's population process is, of course, colonialism and the consecutive wars (1945–1954 and 1955–1975). After 1975, Vietnam's population was stable as industrialisation and urbanisation led to the development of health services, education and an urban lifestyle, as well as effective population policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrants living in Europe constitute over half of the world's international migrants and are at higher risk of poor mental health than non-migrants, yet also face more barriers in accessing and engaging with services. Furthermore, the quality of care received is shaped by the experiences and attitudes of health professionals. The aim of this review was to identify professionals' attitudes towards migrants receiving mental healthcare and their perceptions of barriers and facilitators to service provision. Four electronic databases were searched, and 23 studies met the inclusion criteria. Using thematic synthesis, we identified three themes: 1) the management of multifaceted and complex challenges associated with the migrant status; 2) professionals' emotional responses to working with migrants; and 3) delivering care in the context of cultural difference. Professionals employed multiple strategies to overcome challenges in providing care yet attitudes towards this patient group were polarized. Professionals described mental health issues as being inseparable from material and social disadvantage, highlighting a need for effective collaboration between health services and voluntary organizations, and partnerships with migrant communities. Specialist supervision, reflective practice, increased training for professionals, and the adoption of a person-centered approach are also needed to overcome the current challenges in meeting migrants' needs. The challenges experienced by health professionals in attempting to meet migrant needs reflect frustrations in being part of a system with insufficient resources and without universal access to care that effectively stigmatizes the migrant status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the transformations that have taken place in Irish higher education under neoliberalism and, in particular, during the period of austerity since 2008. We adopt a critical political economic framework conceptualizing Ireland as a prototypical neoliberal state and maintain that the period of economic crisis since 2008 has witnessed a deepening of neoliberalism. We argue that restructuring in the education sector has been shaped by forces originating from the European Union, global institutions, as well as from the interests of Irish political and economic elites. We examine several aspects of the neoliberalization of the education sector, including privatization, commercialization, labor casualization and the erosion of work conditions. Empirically, the paper synthesizes and conceptualizes available data on neoliberalism and higher education in Ireland. Theoretically, it presents a useful framework to investigate similar cases in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, research has emphasised a shift from city government to urban governance. Such a shift brings about its very own challenges, namely governance gaps, uncertain configurations in governance and a limited capacity to act. In this paper, we argue that the concurrent rise of strategy documents in city administration addresses these challenges. Our central claim is that strategy documents can be understood as a distinct discursive device through which local governments enact aspired governance configurations. We illustrate our argument empirically using two prominent examples that, while showing similar features and characteristics, are anchored in different administrative traditions and institutional frameworks: the city administrations of Sydney, Australia, and Vienna, Austria. The contribution of the paper is to show how strategy documents enact governance configurations along four core dimensions: the setting in space and time, the definition of the public, the framing of the res publica and legitimacy issues. Moreover, our comparative analysis of Sydney and Vienna gives evidence of differences in governance configurations enacted through strategy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades many cities have experienced growing pressure to produce and stage cultural events of different sorts to promote themselves and improve economic development. Culture-led development often relies on significant public investment and major private-sector sponsoring. In the context of strained public finances and profound economic crisis in European peripheral countries, local community low-budget events that manage to create significant fluxes of visitors and visibility assume a particular relevance. This paper looks at the four editions (2011–2014) of Noc-Noc, an arts festival organized by a local association in the city of Guimarães, Portugal, which is based on creating transient spaces of culture by transforming numerous homes, commercial outlets and other buildings into ephemeral convivial and playful ‘public’ environments. By interviewing a sample of people who have hosted (sometimes doubling as artists) these transitory art performances and exhibitions, artists and the events’ organizers and by experiencing the four editions of the event and engaging in multiple informal conversations with the public, this paper attempts to discuss how urban citizens may disrupt the cleavages between public and private space permitting various transgressions, and unsettling the hegemonic condition of the city council as the patron of the large majority of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of candidate-centered electoral systems, that encourage politicians to seek personal votes, have focused on the impact of such institutions. This paper focuses instead on their origins in new democracies. It hypothesizes that voter demands for local and individual benefits and party access to government resources for such benefits are likely to lead politicians to choose a candidate-centered electoral rule during a transition to democracy. Cross-national quantitative studies of 97 new democracies from 1950 to 2008 support these claims, revealing that (1) the poorer the average voter, the more likely a candidate-centered electoral institution will be adopted and (2) where incumbent governing parties are more influential in selecting new rules, candidate-centered electoral systems are more likely to be selected. Nonetheless, (3) in highly developed countries even those governing party members tend to opt for a party-centered system; conversely, (4) in extremely less-developed countries even opposition politicians, who would otherwise select a party-centered electoral system, are likely to choose a candidate-centered system if they are dominant at the time of writing the new institution. These findings shed light on the endogeneity of electoral systems and suggest a powerful impact of social context on institutional choice. The paper also contributes more generally to theories of electoral system choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Borrowed size' is an emerging policy concept in several European countries, presenting theoretical potential to explain contemporary urban dynamics unaddressed through conventional urban growth theories that emphasise the role of agglomeration economies. In its original conceptualisation by Alonso, the concept describes and explains the situation that especially smaller cities that are located in a larger 'megapolitan complex' do perform better because they have access to agglomeration benefits of larger neighbouring cities. This paper scrutinises the concept of borrowed size, thereby focusing on its conceptualisation and reviewing its empirical justification thus far. Our empirical analyses show that the concept must be stretched in terms of scale and scope to enhance its policy value. Borrowed size occurs when a city possesses urban functions and/or performance levels normally associated with larger cities. This is enabled through interactions in networks of cities across multiple spatial scales. These networks serve as a substitute for the benefits of agglomeration. Theoretically, the borrowed size concept demands a recasting of the geographical foundations of agglomeration theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]