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This article belongs to a forthcoming special cluster, "Contention Politics and International Statebuilding in Southeast Europe" guest-edited by Nemanja Džuverovic, Julia Rone and Tom Junes. Massive protest waves, mainly led by younger citizens, appeared during the past years in Romania. Gubernat and Rammelt provide an analysis of the production of meaning by the "Romanian street" as a collective actor. They argue that "Vrem o ţară ca afară! (We want a country like abroad!)" became the leitmotif for important parts of the Romanian protests of the past eight years. For so doing, Gubernat and Rammelt analyze the discursive underpinnings and the constructed frames in recent protests in Romania. Their demonstration synthesizes a social phenomenon that appeared during the Roșia Montană protests of 2013, continued with the Colectiv protests of 2015 and was reconfirmed during the 2017–2018 anti-corruption protests: the dichotomy between the discursive appropriation of the West, as a benchmark of progress and social modernization and the "self-racism" manifested in these movements. The use of Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis for the study of these waves of protests enables them to show how the Western hegemonic discourse on state-building provides the cultural conditions for social action as well as it enables mobilizing agents to frame national discontent. "'Vrem o ţară ca afară!' Redefining state-building through a pro-European discourse in Romania" concludes that recent protests in Romania reproduce Western ideals of modern state and politics through a value-based discourse around the idea of belonging to Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 refugee crisis has held the attention of Romanian news media, as one of the most challenging issues for the European Union in the last decade, even though Romania is not situated on the main routes on which refugees arrive. Our research focuses on the variation of issue-specific news frames in time, according to media type, and by the countries covered, also addressing the locally salient issue of religion. Articles from the websites of the top-ranked six Romanian news outlets were analyzed, including three quality papers and three tabloids (N=6,183), from 1 April 2015 to 30 September 2017. Using a computer-assisted, cluster-based frame analysis, we identify six primary, mutually exclusive and six secondary, nonexclusive frames: European crisis, context/victimization, relocation/distribution, international conflict, and social problem, national costs, religious issues, US immigration policy, humanitarian/international. The variations in their salience follow the general European tendency toward securitization. At the same time, the emphasis on the issue as a European crisis indicates a tendency characteristic of Central and Eastern European media coverage. Co-occurrence patterns of frames and specific countries also indicate that the salience of some globally recurrent frames varies by countries covered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the development of knowledge management systems in Romanian academic libraries. Particular focus is given to the organizational culture of Romanian academic libraries in preparation for developing a strategy for changes in information management styles and structures. Organizational developments following the 1990 political changes in Romania are examined and the benefits of knowledge management in developing knowledge-based societies are explored. The article explores the organizational values, administration style, knowledge sharing, and innovation in several Romanian academic libraries.

This paper aims to present an image of the main economic and social indicators of Romania in the perspective of 2040. Its purpose is to set possible targets according to the real potential of the Romanian economy in order to create a viable long-term development strategy. Our analysis starts from the current situation of Romania - the insufficiently structured economy, burdened by the existing development gaps compared to other EU member states, while aiming to expose a series of hypotheses regarding Romania's future European path. The paper will also highlight other important topic for the future development of Romania: the evolution of population, overcoming divergences between the state and markets, the impact of adopting the euro, the impact of shifting power balances between the main developed economies, as well as the possible consequences of EU's future enlargements. From a methodological perspective, the forecasts were based on previous evolutions of indicators, using the extrapolation method. The last part of the paper contains a series of recommendations for policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instagram is among the most popular social network sites with more than 800 million active users worldwide (Statista 2017) and it is one of the fastest growing social platforms in Romania as well. According to recent studies the photo-sharing app plays a vital role in choosing our next destination; thus, it provides a valuable tool for destinations to reach their audience and communicate through visually appealing content. This paper examines how Romanian cities use this platform for destination branding. Out of the 21 cities, considered as relevant destinations, this article presents a comparative analysis for three major cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the onset of the study it is necessary to mention that its topic will be circumscribed to "Reflections on the regulation of the principle of non-discrimination in the Romanian Constitutions and in the International Bill of Human Rights - Selective aspects". By this approach, the proposed study opens a complex and complete vision, but not exhaustive, on the "Reflections on the regulation of non-discrimination in the Romanian Constitutions and in the International Bill of Human Rights - Selective aspects". In the analysis of the International Bill of Human Rights, we will keep a symmetrical approach to identifying regulations concerning non-discrimination. The subject of the scientific endeavour will be circumscribed to the scientific analysis of its parts, as follows: 1. Preliminary considerations. 2. Identification of constitutional rules on the principle of non-discrimination in the Romanian Constitutions. 3. Identification of rules on the non-discrimination in the International Bill of Human Rights. 4. The highlights of Romanian doctrine on the nondiscrimination. 5. Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court regarding non-discrimination (Selective aspects) 6. Conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the gendered aspects of changes affecting the life course of Romanians post-socialism, and the meanings men and women—with ages spanning across various age cohorts—employ to make sense of their experiences. Based on qualitative data collected during research on precarious prosperity among Romanian households conducted in 2013, the findings show that major shifts occurred in the timing of life events. Romanians’ life courses and their work trajectories have been unevenly affected depending on their intersectional belonging to gender, area of residence and life stage at the moment of the political transition. The analysis of work trajectories unravels increasing gender differentiation among younger cohorts and reinforcement of the gendered life paths taken. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interdisciplinary investigations of the human osteological remains help us to understand the genetic diversity, the mobility or the paleodiet of the past communities and offer us insights on the diagenetic processes. The present study aims to assess the results of chemical, mineralogical and microscopic analyses performed on different human osteological remains selected from archaeological sites situated in Eastern Romania in order to understand the diagenetic transformations involved in the site formation processes and to estimate their influence on the historical interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines the need to identify appropriate explanations for various acts of deviant behaviour, mental illness and violent reactions in Romanian contemporary society which is facing a crisis of values and character. The objective of the article is to provide empirical evidence and raise awareness regarding the relationship between crime and socioeconomic factors in Romania over the period 1990–2014, based on statistics for testing co-integration theory and causal relationships. Specifically, the proposed analysis intends to capture the complexity of socioeconomic pressures on individuals and to clarify the ways in which the vitiation of modern society represents a manifestation of implemented economic mechanisms. By using data related to income, unemployment, inflation, inequality, development, education and population density as socioeconomic factors and also data on crime divided by region and type, the article supports the hypothesis of significant causality between socioeconomic factors and crime. Two directions can be considered for revealing the general result of the proposed analysis: one is that an increase in income inequality has a strong and robust effect regarding crime rates rising, and the second reveals that the place of residence is essential, the urban agglomeration being a generating factor for crime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Feminist activism is only at an early stage in Romania, yet feminist activists have been able to mobilise mass street protests over the past few years. By looking at the 2012 mobilisations in Romania, this essay aims to understand how feminist movement participation affected the dynamics of these protest events. It is argued that feminist activists have drawn attention to some of the current difficulties faced by women in bringing to the fore alternative voices and messages and resisting patriarchal modes of mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article develops a typology of political strategies of coming to terms with the past as a theoretical frame of reference against which it assesses the transitional politics of memory pursued in Romanian post-communist society. It argues that after an initial ‘elusive’ strategy based on a politics of amnesia gave way to a confrontationist stance promoting a politics of anamnesis, the communist past was both politically criminalised and symbolically demonised. The article concludes by arguing that the failure of the ‘mastering the past’ paradigm epitomised by the 2006 Tismăneanu Report needs to give way to a ‘normalising’ paradigm of remembering Romanian communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the social economy from the perspective of NGOs and voluntary work. The research was conducted on four different territorial levels in the Western Region of Romania and employed both quantitative (questionnaires administered to the general population and within NGOs, bivariate analyses) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews within NGOs) methods of analysis. This method of working has allowed a picture of NGOs and volunteering to be formed that is correlated with territorial realities in the western part of Romania. It has thus been possible to see what underlies the coming into existence of NGOs, their economic scale, and what areas they succeed in addressing. Secondly, a description is provided of the typical Western Region volunteer, focusing mainly on social and motivational aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During recent years, social networks have changed the paradigm in mass communication, introducing speed and interactivity that were not possible by using traditional mobilization resources. In a few years, social networks have become the voice of society, as they represent a new source of information and expression that provides resourceful means to mobilize the citizens. No other means of communication have had such a rapid development as the Internet, a medium that is undoubtedly changing the rules of the political game. In this article, we take a look at the use of social networks during social and political movements, with particular focus on the 2014, 2015 and 2017 Romanian protests. We conclude that social networks alone do not instigate revolutions, but they are valuable tools for citizens to organize free protests, recruit and train participants, which can lead to further collective action and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the idea of “recuperative memory” with respect to the process of coming to terms with the past after the fall of the Romanian Communist regime in 1989. Its method is to examine the mechanisms used by recuperative memory in order to re-appropriate the past and emphasize the inherently mediated and multifaceted nature of this process. Using various examples from oral testimonies, autobiographical writings, literary works, and cinema, the paper argues that the role of recuperative memory is not only to facilitate the process of coming to terms with the past, but also to offer the material necessary to sustain a viable politics of memory. This entails providing a platform for the intergenerational transmission of memory and knowledge for those who did not live under the Communist regime, filling in this way the intergenerational gap, despite the lack of political class engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author examines the political urgency and moral indispensability of coming to terms with the traumatic legacies of the past following the revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. Topics covered include the impact of several intellectuals that emerged during the period and several conclusions that were formed based on analyses of the struggles of former communist countries like Romania and Czechoslovakia.

Poverty is a current problem whose effects spill over the entire world and cause vicissitude to all the people under it. Fighting poverty requires humanitarian considerations, social justice and economic efficiency reasons. The importance of this paper is the fact that we approached the poverty on a theoretical perspective, referring to doctrinal aspects of poverty developments and its features, but also reports on poverty in Romania compared with the Member States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new European and global policy emphasis on creation and developing cooperative structures in the agricultural sector as the best way to overcome the gaps between rural and urban. While northern countries talk about the reforming of the cooperative system and introducing new management models for it, in south Europe the system still has great social and economic results. There are still countries, like Romania, where the system had to be started over many times in the last century, which led to today ‘situation when the cooperative system is almost inexistent. The paper aims to analyze how much the Romanian rural area is prepared to integrate into its way of functioning a cooperative system by comparing to Italy, a country with history close to Romania, but with a cooperative system as the base of agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper submits the results of a visual research on the perception of inequality within Romanian society. The data were collected by means of drawings, an uncommon method used in studying social stratification. The analysis was applied to 82 drawings obtained from 41 Romanians (and 16 drawings obtained from 8 Italians added to the former, in an attempt to explore differences cross-nationally). The results refer to the resources that are perceived to be unequally distributed in Romania, to the acceptable sources of inequality in Romania and, in exploratory terms, to the comparative analysis upon the perception of inequality in Romania and Italy. The commonest inequality perceived in Romania is the economic inequality. Here, one of the acceptable sources of inequality is related to the prestige of professions, and one of the unacceptable sources of inequality is the qualitative dimension of lifestyle: dissatisfaction, discontent, unhappiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the educational attainment, employment and living conditions of young Roma adults in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania with the aid of national generations and gender surveys and other sources of information. It shows that in spite of a small improvement in the educational attainment of young Roma in comparison to the generation of their parents, the educational achievement and employment gaps have increased considerably during the post-communist period. The article also compares living conditions of the Roma with other population groups. It concludes with a discussion of policy challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper looks at both poverty and a specific layer of population in Romania we call precarious prosperity with the goal of understanding the household-level factors that contribute to the likelihood of being in this respective category. Drawing upon the emerging literature on precarious prosperity, this approach is an attempt to look beyond measures of poverty that are limited from appropriately capturing the relevant economic circumstances of disadvantaged households. Based on the latest wave of available EU-SILC data, multinomial logistic regression shows that similar household-level factors like housing type, unemployment, household production and household type have an impact on the likelihood of being in poverty or precarious prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite attempts to harmonize social policies, EU countries differ greatly in the support they provide. Social policies have different traditions that emerged and developed in different social and historical contexts, so there are considerable differences in terms of resources, organization and coverage. As a result, family policies are even more heterogeneous than is suggested by the standard welfare state regimes. Despite the fact that it was one of the few expansionary welfare areas from the European Union in the last years, family policy is characterized by a small degree of institutionalization. This paper studies the cross-country differences of state family support, using secondary data analysis on statistical indicators and legislative or formal documents information. The accounted types of support are financial transfers, leave entitlements, and provision of services. The study analyzes the specific features of these instruments and how they merge to form a more or less comprehensive policy package, with a special focus on Romania. The results reveal a scarcity model of family policy, with a familialisation trend doubled by the passive and rather reactive support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The territorial system of the Apuseni Mountains can be considered a critical region from a geo-demographic viewpoint. This is due to two major geo-demographic risks that affect it at present, namely the massive migration, mainly of the young and adult population, and the severe decrease in birth rate, also as a consequence of migration. These two processes determine the main two geodemographic risks within the Apuseni Mountains: on the one hand, depopulation and the geodemographic decline of the settlements and, on the other hand, population ageing. The present study aims to analyse the latter by focussing on the Land of the Moţi. Conclusions emphasise a rather severe process of demographic ageing. The rate of the old age group increased from 17.9% in 1992 to 25.2% in 2011. All the 16 administrative-territorial units under analysis recorded an increase in the rate of the old age group. In 2011, the ratio of the extreme age groups (young population/old age group) is above the unit (1) both in the region as a whole and in the majority of its administrative units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research study focused on the current state of the urban space in the historical Moldavian Region from an urban legislative perspective. Since the 2003-2005 stage, the settlement system in North-East Romania has undergone severe transformation. Thus, some villages were raised to the rank of towns, without meeting the legally defined minimum conditions, in terms of quantitative and qualitative indicators. By using the GIS technique and basic statistics, it was possible to analyse the current network of urban settlements in Moldavia (21 cities and 33 towns) from the perspective of 16 urban indicators. The indicators ranged from demography, access to safe water, sewerage, central heating, number of beds in hospitals, number of doctors to education facility access, culture and sports, hotels, road access and wastewater treatment facilities. All of the 16 indicators were summed and a final urban coefficient was obtained. The results were interpreted and particularly pointed out in GIS environment. The conclusions emphasise that, after nearly a decade, none of the current towns meets the minimum conditions of being an urban settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The territorial system overlapping cross-border areas shapes a particularly dynamic and complex functional area. This paper synthesises several research outcomes regarding the social and environmental dysfunctions and opportunities defining the marginal territories that were emphasised during the "Analysis and diagnosis of the current situation in the cross-border area', a phase of the project "Common Strategy of Sustainable Territorial Development of the Romanian-Bulgarian Cross- Border Area' (SPATIAL). The main indicators concerning the population structure and movement highlight a series of problematic aspects within the cross-border area: population decline, significant rural population concentration on the Romanian side, demographic ageing, increase in the age dependency ratio, and a negative natural growth and migration rate. The analysis also indicates areas of socio-demographic potential that are marked by population growth, a significant young population presence that is convergent with an important share of active population. In this perspective, the spatial analysis also focused on identifying natural drivers affecting development and restrictive factors, on the environmental quality evaluation, as well as on establishing areas exposed to natural and technological risks. Therefore, delineating and analysing components underlying social and environmental processes were intended to determine those issues and opportunities considered to influence the evolution of this potentially functional area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fall of the communist regime caused a massive flow of humanitarian aid to Romania, from all over the world. Pharmaciens sans frontières (PSF) Anjou, a departmental branch of PSF France, was one of them. After retrieving and sorting unused medication for three years, its members decided to take matters into their own hands and go to Romania. This also led to the development of other types of projects, such as internships and inter-university collaboration. In this article I argue that, at a local level, actions are highly influenced by individual stakeholders. Therefore, this study aims to better understand and illustrate the role of everyday practices in the evolution of humanitarian aid to Romania during the 1990s. The article will also question the purpose and utility of these person-to-person contacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a unique case in recent Romanian history of an identity shift from Carasovans to Croats and the complex socio-political context which made it possible. Given their debated ethnic origins, the identity of Carasovans is considered an ‘ethnic enigma’. The aim of our research is to offer a critical interpretation of the dynamics of ethnic identification of the Carasovans. In particular, we discuss the processes of national and ethnic identification in order to reveal how the Carasovan community was recently reinvented along the lines of the Croat identity. In close connection to these processes, the paper examines the political, economic and cultural elements involved in the dynamics of Carasovans' self-identification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Assuming that child abandonment is a social problem our country is facing, this article presents a qualitative study of child abandonment in Romania, seen from the perspective of social workers. The study was applied to the territorial area of Bucharest-Ilfov and addresses issues such as: the causes and determinants of child abandonment in Romania, the abandonment consequences on the psychosocial development of the child, the implications of maintaining the abandoned child relationship with the parents or the extended family members, the role of specialized services in order to overcome the traumatic experience, the abandoned child resilience and the personality description of the child who has managed to accept and overcome the life he or she has, the identification of the factors that lead to the abandoned child's resilience, the social workers' perception regarding the social problem of child abandonment and the measures that should be taken in order to reduce the number of the abandoned children. Fourteen social workers, working in the child protection system, as case managers, were interviewed. In addition, in order to prove the point of the article, the document analysis method and the method of observation were used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Romania, the issue of child offender, who is not criminally culpable because of age related reasons raises serious difficulties both in preventing and limiting this phenomenon, and in providing effective measures for rehabilitation and social integration for this target group. Byadopting the „Convention on the Rights of the Child”, Romania hasaligned with the rest of the countries involved in respecting the international law regarding the protection of children's rights. However, theinterventions aiming atspecific practices of these cases have failed to outline a strategic line that defines the type of approach: punitive or restorative? In this context, this article describes the laws, principles, authorities, services and specific interventions for children who break the law, who are not criminally liable. For those who are interested in such community problems, this article would representan excellent study on Romania's position both with regard to welfare policies (purely assistance) and in relation to workfare policies (involvement). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a well-known fact today that work, as an economical, rational, social, and political attitude survives by being supported by its own ideology. Our study will try to find some answers to some questions addressed by different authors: What is there so peculiar to Romanians and their way of life that makes them so conspicuous in their "work ethics?" What are the potential causes behind their peculiar mindset towards work? And, finally, is there a link between facts and words, or is their alleged "work ethics" a mere rumor, hearsay? Is there a gap between the representation of work and work itself in Romanian society? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of ageing on community well-being has been part of the policy discourse in the West, but it is a relatively new problem for the post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe. This study focuses on the patterns of ageing in rural Romania and Bulgaria, offering a holistic view of vulnerabilities, including persistent rural disadvantages, ageing in the countryside and the post-socialist transformation. Aggregate statistics and community case studies reveal the links between demographic processes and community development. This paper contributes to the country-specific analysis of the ageing European periphery in the context of social cohesion as a fundamental European goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study carries out a comparative analysis between Romania and Hungary, at the NUTS II level between two border regions: 5 West Region from Romania and Dél-Alföld Region from Hungary. The article highlights the fact that the main cities play a central role in the area development, taking into account the fact that most public institutions, higher education institutions, as well as the large economic actors are concentrated in these cities. All county capitals, except for Nyíregyháza and Timişoara – are located in the immediate proximity (on a 10-30 km radius). Their potential impact surpasses the border by far. Given the natural particularities of the Dél-Alföld and West Region, they present a significant internal touristic potential but also on external level. Regarding the labour force market, the two regions, Dél-Alföld and the West Region is situated approximately around the national average. However, a fact must be made clear here, namely that the West Region is the second most developed region in Romania, while the Dél-Alföld Region is situated only on the fifth place in Hungary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we try to analyze the extent to which economic and social cohesion of the enlarged European Union in order to develop a harmonious, balanced and sustainable community has been achieved with the Funds, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and other financial instruments and how Romania attracts or not such funds. We analyzed using the statistical data, the absorption and implementation of funds in Romania. Consequently, we present only the results. Conclusions outlined the reducing of the economic, social and territorial disparities which have arisen particularly in regions with developmental delays and in relation to economic and social reorganization. The most important benefits of funding (in general) are the growth, the competitive advantage, the employment and improvement of the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present social/economic conditions of our country, the problem of objective analysis and research of the population's everyday social life, of its wellbeing, of final consumption and possibilities of satisfying vital necessities, of the living standard and lifestyle, of the quality of life as a whole, becomes more and more present and significant. The notion of "quality of life" aims, on the one hand, the objective conditions in living individuals, and on the other hand, what they think about the individuals. In fact, in its essence, the quality of life implies a qualitative approach to social and human life, as assessed by experts and how it is experienced by the subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If a physical or mental problem may be, as causality and treatment, exclusively medically approached, a social problem is never exclusively social, embodying ramifications that affect all the aspects of human life. In this case, it is needed a proper approach to provide complex, rapid, effective and efficient answers. The integrated care is such a proper approach. Unlike others, the Romanian society had identified and defined in a slower and heavier pace its real problems, delaying thus the process of formulating and implementing appropriate solutions in order to improve its functioning. But the last strategies and reforms, both from the medical and social domains, could represent productive steps towards adequately addressing these problems. And if the society's proper functioning depends on the functioning of each individual and vice versa, it stands out the necessity to provide adequate support for individuals, families and communities in order to identify and better manage their resources - and there is a public agreement on the fact that the health is, par excellence, both means and end, both resource and goal. In this context, the concept of empowerment, applied in communitary context, represents an appropriate and available solution to generate development and better quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communist welfare system has played an important role in preventing and combating poverty and, accordingly, social exclusion, being more efficient than the current social security system to providing replacement income of wage earnings for those who are unable to work because of old age, disability or illness, as well as to encouragement of births by supplementing the income of families with children, through various supportive measures, by providing free health care. After the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, social security has undergone numerous transformations generated by the decline in the standard of living, inflation, rising unemployment, deepening poverty and extending it to the blankets of the broader population. By using the analysing of these indicators and the comparison with the previous regulations as methodology, the authors intended to measure Romanian social assistance system's performance and determine the causes of non-performance. The main conclusion of this paper is that economic difficulties and budgetary restrictions have led to the decrease in the protection capacity of main social assistance benefits provided by the new law on social assistance system no. 292/2011: income support, minimum insertion income, family allowances and indemnities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is thought of as a correlation between the theoretical and the applied approach to make a cutting up on the issue of state of education. Thus, we intend to submit to discussions a number of indicators on which are based educational policy documents and assessment reports on the status Romanian education in the last 20 years. Based on our pedagogical concept, as trainer of trainers, but also by the documents studied, is described the structure of the education system, identifying some changes introduced also in relation to key indicators detached from studies issued by Institute of Sciences of Education, Ministry of National Education (MEN) and so on. Such indicators refer to human resources (pupils/students, teachers), participation in education, quality of results, the correlation of outcomes with labor market. A major milestone of analyses is the national context and the specific of the statistics, a context that has a definite explanatory value. Also, very important is the comparison with European context, being given our desire of connecting our education to the requirements of the European Commission, the compatibility of study programs at the European level. Starting from the educational ideal, from the principles assumed in education, can be summarized the trends of current system. In terms of application, we present the results of the investigation of representations and opinions of a part of the students preparing to be teachers about the contemporary education, following administration of Osgood semantic differentiator. Critical analysis is constructive if it is complemented by proposing solutions and directions for future development, which by their reflective character, remain open to additions. These possibilities of ameliorative action are formulated by the perspective of skills development for the teaching profession, one of the key-factor of education system in any school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While migration scholars often neglect the national and transnational relations of production and exchange within which labor migration occurs, international political economists tend to treat labor migration as a mere side effect of transnational capitalism. By contrast, this article considers the constitutive role that post-socialist transformations and the EU integration played in shaping the various patterns of intra-European east–west labor migration since 1989. We argue that labor migration was not driven by development differentials between the west and the east as such, but rather by the particular type of development the latter adopted after the fall of communist regimes and by the way post-socialist countries were integrated in transnational circuits of production and exchange. We are sustaining our claims by a comparative assessment across time of the articulations between the different modes of production and different labor migration patterns during different stages of Romania's post-socialist transformation. This historical comparison enables us to insulate the influence of changing levels of development and modes of production on labor migration because our focus on a single country is keeping the influence of other national institutional factors constant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 1983, European Years (EY) have been implemented by the European Parliament and the European Council to raise the awareness of the local, regional, and national authorities on a common European issue. This article develops a visual framing analysis of the photographic representation of the European Year of Volunteering (2011) and the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations (2012) at a national level. The data will focus on the photographic images uploaded on the campaign blogs of two Romanian non-governmental organizations. This study has a threefold aim: first, to compare and contrast the use of photographic images in the blogs of two Romanian public communication campaigns; second, to develop a model of visual framing analysis focused on types of represented participants, social actions, and shots; third, to argue that the objectives and outcomes of the public communication campaigns on EY issues depend on the type of “I-ness" versus “we-ness" society a country is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is aimed at presenting an analysis of the punishment system of crimes in Romania and China. The authors have conducted a wide research based on the punishment and law systems in China with a comparison with the Romanian juridical system. A new juridical key value unit (JKVU) is introduced, regarding the different aspects between juridical notion of "incrimination" and "incarceration." The article represents an interdisciplinary research in applied law and language with the aim of giving the lawmakers the necessary background for the future improvements of laws and the punishments within a common European Criminal Code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the impact of certain aspects (such as the adoption of Western style democracy, the adoption of profit as implicit rule of the game and the accession to the European Union) on the direction and achievements of the transition process in Romania. The aim of the paper is to identify and differentiate the role of objective and intrinsic factors versus the role of subjective factors in the establishment of a new institutional and legislative framework in Romania since 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]