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This paper investigates direct peer influence in upper-secondary track choice in the stratified and selective Hungarian educational system and makes two contributions to the literature. First, it tests both peer-contrasting and peer-conforming influences by considering peers' GPA and endogenous educational choices. Second, the paper investigates mechanisms behind peer-conforming educational choices (such as peers' normative pressure and information potential), with a focus on two structurally different peer relationships: self-selected friends and randomly assigned deskmates. The study uses a unique dataset that merges administrative data with randomized field experiment data. The results show no evidence of peer influence, after accounting for unobserved classroom homogeneity. Within the classroom, peers' ability did not decrease, and peers' ambitious endogenous educational choices did not increase students' own choice of the academic upper-secondary track. Concerning the mechanisms of peer-conforming educational choices, the results reveal that peers' informational potential (but not their normative pressure) might be the mechanism that drives students to conform to peers' choices. Thus, the absence of peer influence may contribute to the reproduction of pre-existing social inequalities in upper-secondary track choices since peer influence cannot derail students' socially determined educational choices in Hungary.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies socioeconomic gradients in parents' selection of developmentally appropriate children's books from public libraries. I draw on developmental gradients research to hypothesize that families with high socioeconomic status (SES) select a higher share of books that match children's developmental stage in order to best improve children's learning environments. Based on Danish registry data on all books borrowed from public libraries in 2020, I find that highly educated families are more likely to use libraries and borrow more books, but they do not select a larger share of developmentally appropriate books; in fact, they select a slightly lower share. In contrast, high-income families borrow both a little more books and a little higher share of developmentally appropriate books, than low-income families. The supplementary analyses show that results are robust across families with children of different ages and to account for nonrandom selection into the sample of library users, socioeconomic differences in children's reading skills, and the impact of library lockdowns due to Covid-19. I conclude that stratification in library book selection is more prominent concerning the voraciousness with which highly educated parents provide reading inputs (more books) than how discriminating they are in terms of selecting developmentally appropriate books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014–2022, the Ukrainian-American non-profits took a leading role in supporting Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. While before Russia's full-scale invasion, these organizations were focused primarily on humanitarian projects, since 2022, they took up the challenge to launch advocacy initiatives, fundraising campaigns, and rallies, provide military and medical assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces, and deliver humanitarian aid to all parts of Ukraine. The paper reveals the key narratives of the Ukrainian-American non-profits, which represent the diasporic Ukrainian identity in the USA. These narratives focus on the Ukrainian-American diaspora agency, Ukrainians and Ukraine, Ukrainian local and global subjectivity, and critical geopolitical issues. Articulated in interactions with local and global online and offline communities, the narratives become multifunctional representations serving to inform, report, inspire, consolidate, and engage the audience. The paper shows how these non-profits are making efforts to narrate a shared past, engage in the present, and visualize the future. Despite the heterogeneity of the Ukrainian diaspora members, represented by different migration waves, their narratives unveil a distinct identity on the individual, institutional, community, and national levels. The discursively constructed diasporic Ukrainian identity is dynamic, heterogeneous, and performative, and it combines ethnic and civic identifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 resulted in millions of people being internally displaced and seeking refuge abroad. European countries responded with favorable socio-legal conditions and a welcoming political climate. In this paper, we are interested in how people make and rationalize their decisions and destination choices following forced displacement. The paper sheds light on the particular conditions under which Ukrainians made their migration decisions and illustrates how this case of displacement allows focusing on the decision-making process when many external constraints faced by other migrant populations are absent. The analysis draws on recently conducted qualitative interviews with internally displaced people and those displaced to several European countries. The study shows how displaced people exercise agency through migration-related decisions and choices based on specific rationalities, which contributes to the discussion on the rigid binary between forced and voluntary migration. The paper adapts the threshold approach to migration decision-making for the investigation of war-driven displacement and shows how it highlights the role of timing and affect in the decision- making process as well as its relational nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-established hierarchies of power between territories persist in the so- called global art world. Spanish participants in the art world take advantage of the European free movement regime to internationalise their profiles and improve their chances of global success by migrating to global art hubs like Berlin, Paris or London. Institutional programmes fostering international mobility of European citizens serve a double function. Firstly, they provide a migration channel and advantages to individuals seeking to acquire international experience. Secondly, because of their selective nature, they can function as quality signals for individuals involved in the art world. Thus, institutional mobility programmes can be seen as tools that help manage the uncertainties of both the artistic career and the migration project. Taking Spanish art world participants currently living in European capitals as a case study, this paper presents three empirical types that represent individual profiles emerging from the examined population. These profiles are defined by repeated, lack of or occasional resorting to institutional mobility programmes, as well as to their career orientation and their visions of art and migration. Social characteristics such as gender, social class background and age appear as important factors shaping strategies of career development through migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has examined the relationship between ethnic outgroup-size at the neighbourhood level and Brexit support, yet there is a lack of understanding on the factors that moderate these effects. This paper critically extends prior debate by focusing on how personality traits moderate not only the extent to which the levels (2011) of ethnic outgroup-size in individuals’ residential neighbourhoods but also the increase thereof (2001-2011) are associated with individuals’ preferences about the 2016 Brexit referendum. Using data from Understanding Society, we find that two personality traits, agreeableness and openness, are key moderators affecting the above-mentioned relationship. High-agreeable and high-open individuals are less likely than low-agreeable and low-open individuals to support Brexit. However, while the gap between low and highly agreeable individuals shrinks as ethnic outgroup-size increases, the gap widens between those higher vs. lower in openness. Our findings highlight the multifaceted role of personality traits as a driver of heterogeneous effects on political behaviour. In sum, this paper shows that analysing the complex and intertwined nature of both contextual and individual factors is fundamental for a better understanding, not only of the Brexit referendum but, more broadly, of anti-immigrant sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unequal division of cognitive labor within households, and its potential association with mental load and stress, has gained substantial interest in recent public and scholarly discussions. We aim to deepen this debate theoretically and empirically. First, going beyond the question of whether the division of cognitive labor is gendered, we connect cognitive household labor with existing stress theories and ask whether men and women typically perform cognitive labor tasks that involve different levels of stress. We then discuss whether women perform these stressful tasks more often, making them more prone to higher levels of family–work conflict. Second, we test the association between the division of cognitive labor and family–work conflict empirically using large-scale survey data from 10 European countries within the Generations & Gender Programme (GGP). Results based on logistic regressions confirm that a high share of cognitive labor increases women's family–work conflict, but not men's. We discuss future directions in the conceptualization and measurement of cognitive labor in the household and its implications for mental load. Through its contributions, this paper lays the foundations for a comprehensive understanding of the implications of an unequal division of cognitive labor in the household for gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School teachers' sickness absence has been shown to affect student achievement in the short run. However, we know little about whether socioeconomic backgrounds may compensate for reductions in instructional quality and to what extent teacher absence effects persist over time. This paper examines the socioeconomic differences in the short- and long-term effects of teacher absence. We use population-wide Norwegian register data to study the effects of certified teacher absence during lower secondary school (grades 8–10) on non-completion of upper secondary education by age 21 (i.e. school dropout) as well as academic achievement in 10th grade. In a school fixed effects model, we find that an increase in teacher absence of 5 percentage points reduces students' examination grades by 2.3% of a standard deviation and increases the dropout probability by 0.6 percentage points. However, the teacher absence effects vary considerably by family background, with large effects for low-SES students driving the overall effects. Overall, our findings indicate that reductions in instructional quality increase social inequality in long-term educational outcomes. This result highlights that studying heterogeneous impacts of contextual exposures is needed to understand the role of schools in shaping inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Russian social science in the state of Russia's war in Ukraine. Post-socialist coloniality of Russian scholars eventually led to the desire to contest the scientific hegemony of the West and to have a unique local sociology, mostly inspired by political context. These ideas became part of the political agenda and Putin constantly claims that Russia is a leader of the anti-colonial world. His claims are accompanied by the desire to epistemicide everything western both in the structure of knowledge and at the institutional level. It nominally interrelates with international discussions about the possible emergence of unique local sociologies outside Western hegemony. Political will and its nominal 'decolonial' perspective bring Russian science closer to isolationism, using arguments paradoxically similar to decolonial narratives. The necessity to 'decolonize' science and education from Western-centric structures became part of the political and scientific agenda. Being a subaltern empire Russia finds itself in a state of war, which creates two problems for Russian social science: decolonial isolationism, meaning the disguise of epistemicide of western models of knowledge production as decolonial liberation and tuzemnaya nauka, a general rejection of scientific standards of the outer world with an attempt to prove the local agenda's superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK young adults saw sharp mental health declines during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines whether living with siblings helped moderate this negative effect. We compare the outcomes of young adults (age 19), i) who were living with parents and siblings, with ii) those who were living with only parents, and iii) with those who were living away from parents. We used data from the Millennium Cohort Study COVID-19 survey, linked with the mainstage survey (N = 2,578), and captured mental health with: the Shortened Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale and the Kessler-6 Psychological Distress scale. As young men and women may be differently affected by sibling co-residence, we vary living arrangements effects by gender. While average young adult mental health deteriorated during the first national lockdown, there were variations by gender and living arrangements. For young men, living with siblings was associated with improved mental health on both measures during the first COVID-19 lockdown. For young women, living with parents was associated with lower psychological distress than living away from home, but siblings provided no additional benefit. Data from later in the pandemic suggests that, as young adults became more accustomed to social restrictions, the importance of family living arrangements declined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emergence of Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, youth climate activism has attracted increasing attention. Climate strikes are part of a long trajectory of mobilizations for climate justice, rooted in global justice and environmental struggles. Although research on social movements has analyzed differences and continuities within these, there have been few systematic comparisons between youth climate strikes and ‘traditional’ climate justice marches. Our paper contributes to fill this gap. We focus on the framing of climate change in two different protest actions that took place in Milan, Italy, during the Pre-COP26 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2021: a climate strike by Fridays for Future, and a ‘traditional’ climate justice march by a wide coalition of actors. Relying on protest surveys and qualitative interviews, we discuss differences, similarities, and spaces for convergence among activists in these different fora, focusing on the framing of climate change, and on the meanings attached to ‘system change’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of successive global crises and rising household food insecurity in wealthy European countries there is renewed attention to the role of school meals as a welfare intervention. However, little is known about the extent to which school meals are a resource for low-income families living in different contexts. Drawing on a mixed methods study of food in low-income families in three European countries, this paper adopts a realist ontological stance and an embedded case study approach to address this question. The research concerns low-income families with children aged 11–15 years in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in the UK, Portugal and Norway. Based on a comparative, multi-layered analysis of macro-, meso- and micro-level contexts, we argue that publicly funded, nutritious school meals protect children from the direct effects of poverty on their food security, whilst underfunded and weakly regulated school food provision compounds children's experiences of disadvantage and exclusion. The paper concludes with recommendations for public policies that conceptualise school meals as a collective resource, like education, to which young people as bearers of the right to food are entitled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus pandemic, which first impacted European societies in early 2020, has created a twofold crisis by combining a health threat with economic turmoil. While the crisis has affected all European societies very significantly, its impact varies across countries, social groups, and societal domains. In an effort to provide a first overview of the effect of the coronavirus crisis, in this editorial we discuss contributions of 58 papers published as part of this special issue. These early research papers illustrate the varied impact of the pandemic on various areas of social life. The first group of studies in this special issue analyzes the effect of the pandemic on social inequalities with respect to gender, ethnic otherness, education, and work. A second stream of research focuses on the psychological consequences of the pandemic, especially with respect to wellbeing and resilience. Thirdly, the crisis is discussed on a societal level, in regard to welfare states, social policies, and approaches to crisis governance. In a fourth line of inquiry, several studies have analyzed the impact of the pandemic on social solidarity and cohesion. A fifth strand of research is devoted to examining the role of culture and lifestyles. This review ends with a discussion of areas for future research trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the preliminary results of the 'Pandemic Diaries' research project, carried out by a 5-member team of Polish researchers under a form of open diary writing competition. Its aim was to gather a possibly widest body of personal accounts of the coronavirus pandemic experiences. Within it, 403 entries were submitted, providing a detailed insight into the daily practices, emotional and material difficulties of all age, gender and education-based groups of the Polish society. The paper presents initial observations on the dataset and the most often expressed notions that arise, including a widespread exacerbation of mental health issues as well as the process of defining the period of pandemic through references to collective memory and patriotic milieus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper unfolds how informal civil society quickly mobilised citizen-to-citizen support when government and non-government organisations locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper focuses on two elements of the mobilisation: the role of social networks and social media groups. It reveals that the vast majority of this support was distributed through existing social networks and, therefore, not available to those lacking social connections. However, we also find that social media groups played an important role in the mobilisation, that support organised on social media does not diverge significantly in commitment or kind from support organised in other settings. The paper concludes by discussing the potential of social media to mitigate the impact of social networks on the distribution of support, pointing to some of the potential barriers to social media groups' successful facilitation of support to those without a social network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are people in Central and Eastern Europe more hesitant towards COVID-19 vaccination and more prone to believe in COVID-19 related conspiracy theories than other Europeans? The article claims that the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs in the post-communist region might be fostered by communist nostalgia. Drawing on the survey data from Lithuania, I show that communist nostalgia is one of the best predictors of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, controlling for other related factors such as populist attitudes, trust in political institutions, confidence in media and scientists and pro-Western attitudes. The paper claims that communist nostalgia in Central and Eastern Europe is conducive to conspiracy beliefs in a similar vein as nostalgic narratives employed by populist radical right in Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on social class occupies a particular pedestal in British sociology. However, recent research into the connections between religion and social position is conspicuously absent. Using a UK-wide survey, I employ Bourdieu and various statistical methods to investigate the complex cultural capital compositions of various religious identities. The findings identify a four-group typology of cultural engagement. I also identify those holding multiple religious identities as a new and prominent religious identity in the UK today, one that is highly culturally active. I explain these results through neo-Bourdieusian theories of the reconfiguration of distinction in the forms of openness and cosmopolitanism, and through arguments for the importance of cultural and social variety in accumulating capital. The unique group that has these multiple religious identities is also a prime candidate for further research into how religious dispositions may operate as its own form of cultural capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools are an important setting wherein different identity dimensions are made available to youth. This paper argues that European identity can be a relevant unifying collective identity in ethnically diverse contexts. We study whether (or not) students who are confronted with a European and/or a multicultural dimension in their school curriculum, identify more strongly with a European identity. More specifically, we analyse whether the importance of these dimensions for European identification differs between a sample of ethnic majority and ethnic minority students. The results show that both the European and the multicultural curriculum predicted a stronger European identity for both groups. The effects of both dimensions on European identity were similar for ethnic majority students, while the multicultural dimension had significantly stronger effects on European identity for ethnic minority students. The paper thus highlights how curricula contribute to changing patterns of identification in a diversifying society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manifestation of Russian imperial ambitions in February 2022 caught many around the world by surprise, but Ukrainian scholarly attempts at decolonization had been ongoing for years prior to the invasion. Intellectuals have strived to re-imagine Ukrainian identity beyond the conceptualization of the country in imperial discourse as 'little Russia'. This paper examines how the phenomenon of the intelligentsia has been re-interpreted, by performing a critical discourse analysis of Ukrainian scholarly discourse on the dichotomy between 'intellectuals' and 'intelligentsia', a dichotomy previously used by the Soviet Union to juxtapose Western and Soviet academics. The study focuses on scholarship that has been underrepresented in the global science system because its research outputs have been communicated in Ukrainian rather than English. The analysis demonstrates how the scholarly discourse reclaims the agency of Ukrainian intellectuals and challenges the Soviet collectivist understanding of the term 'intelligentsia'. Ukrainian academics approach the reassessment of colonial legacies critically. They reject the intellectuals–intelligentsia dichotomy by reconciling the two terms to accommodate the identity of Ukrainian scholars who are able to shape their individual purpose through their restored academic freedom and individual agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the reasons for citizens' refusal to participate in public deliberation through the Georgian mechanism of the General Assembly of a Settlement (GAofS) in the remote communities of Georgia. This paper draws on the existing academic literature on effective deliberation processes and reasons behind the public's disengagement from them to explain Georgian public's withdrawal from the deliberation processes. By applying the analytical framework on effective deliberation and logic of non-participation, this article uses the case study approach and qualitative research methods to show how façade deliberation processes cause public disenchantment with engagement in local decision-making processes and reinforce the public image of civic participation mechanisms as pointless efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the small-scale exploratory study presented in this article is to examine the digital mediation of grassroots processes unfolding within Bulgarian civil society that contribute to the strengthening of the social base and cultural influence of illiberal ideologies and citizen organisations. While ample attention has been paid to the utility of digital media in progressive movements and mobilizations, much less is known about their use by illiberal activists. The methodology comprises two case studies, each focused on a different collective actor that espouses 'illiberal', nationalist and intolerant views. Using the concept of 'uncivil society' proposed by Kopecký and Mudde ([2003]. Uncivil Society: Contentious Politics in Post-Communist Europe, London: Routledge), the paper approaches the analysis of the positions and activities of these organisations from two angles: (1) the way in which these actors appropriate discourses of 'patriotism' and 'civil society' and (2) the way they employ digital media to construct collective identities and build up support. The analysis casts light on the role digital media play – at the hands of such actors – in the rise of illiberal and 'uncivil' advocacy that could lead to the conquest of civil society by illiberalism and a continuing political backslide of liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature on solidarity mobilizations and the framings of social and political change in the context of the shrinking welfare state, de-democratization, and repressive state policies towards civil society. These issues are explored through the lens of interview-based research on Hungarian solidarity initiatives that emerged in response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic between March and June 2020. We specifically look at the ways in which volunteers and activists engaged in solidarity activities associated with healthcare, care-work, and education; accounted for their aspirations; conceptualized social responsibility; and reflected on the crisis management of the state. We found that newly emerging grassroots actors reinforced the documented trend of depoliticization in civil society. Although most respondents formulated a depoliticizing narrative, they did offer interpretations of their public role and collective action, values, and responsibilities, and pronounced a desire for social change. Nevertheless, to account for these framings, we need to move beyond the binary understanding of politics in solidarity and civil society research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment does not always guarantee sufficient income and a decent standard of living anymore. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between income poverty and material deprivation for employed and unemployed individuals across Europe. To do so, we focus on relevant mechanisms at the individual and institutional levels. We examine how economic, structural and institutional factors shape the relationship between employment, poverty and deprivation. We explore our subject using EU-SILC data from 2015 and cross-national macro-level data from the OECD, Eurostat and UNECE. According to our findings, employment is associated with a higher standard of living even among the poor and when controlling for savings and income level, which may point to the non-monetary benefits of employment. At the macro level, we show that the impact of employment on the living standard of the poor varies according to economic conditions and institutional settings. Our results suggest that policies that promote integration into the labour market without taking into account the quality of jobs and working conditions devalue gainful employment in terms of maintaining a decent standard of living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Christian migrant groups make up a sizeable part of the immigrant population in Europe, little is known about their religiosity. This paper studies patterns of intergenerational change and proposes and tests hypotheses that specify when and why changes across generations are stronger. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–2018) on 33 European countries, it is found that there is a strong pattern of intergenerational decline in the level of religiosity among Christian migrant groups in Europe. This process of religious decline is by no means universal. Results show that children from two foreign-born parents are much more religious than children from intermarried (foreign-born and native) couples. We also observe that intergenerational decline is much less pronounced in European countries that are more religious. Finally, when Christian migrant groups belong to a religious minority group, this is associated with higher levels of religiosity in both the first and second generation. It is argued that these insights can explain the 'puzzling' strong intergenerational religious transmission among Muslim migrant groups in Western European societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses a topic still largely under-researched in comparative welfare state literature: the role of right parties in the reform of last resort safety nets. More precisely, the study investigates minimum income schemes' reforms promoted during the Great Recession (2008-2013) by centre-right governments in three countries belonging to the European periphery: Italy, Portugal and Latvia. Despite common political orientation and increased problem pressure, these countries have gone through distinct reform trajectories in their social safety nets that may be labelled expansion (Latvia), retrenchment (Portugal), and continuity (Italy). Against this backdrop, the paper suggests that right parties display substantially different positions and pursue different reform strategies in anti-poverty policies. These differences can be explained by the diverse types of right parties and varying competition and coalition dynamics in the three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a conception that contemporary work lives become ever more complex. Pioneering research has indicated that work lives have indeed become more complex, yet at a modestly increasing pace. This paper uses Swedish registry data across an exceptionally long time period, including cohorts born from 1931 to 1983. The following conclusions are drawn using state-of-the-art methods of measuring sequence complexity. For early-careers, an increasing complexity trend is evident between the 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts, yet complexity fluctuates around a stable trend for the 1970s birth cohorts and onward. For mid-careers, which are considerably more stable on average, complexity has decreased among women born between the 1930s and the early-1950s. However, the opposite trend holds true for men, resulting in a gender convergence in work complexity. We observe a subsequent standstill of the mid-career complexity trend across both genders, followed by a modest decline for the last observed cohorts. Analyses point to educational expansion as an important driver of the initial increase of early-career complexity. Taken together, this study affirms an initial shift to more work life complexity in the twentieth century, yet we find no unidirectional trend toward more complexity over the last decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic has created a widespread need for social support. Similar to previous crises, we can observe activation in society to meet these needs: citizens have offered practical, emotional, and financial support, often within their social networks, but also to strangers and civil society organizations. In this paper, we examine the role of social capital in receiving social support during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany using unique micro-level survey data. We investigate the importance of three aspects of social capital – the size of one's support network, social trust, and organizational membership – for receiving (sufficient) social support. We focus on three types of support networks: family and friends, neighbors, and civil society actors. First, we find that while all three elements of social capital matter for receiving social support, a larger support network and organizational embeddedness matter primarily for receiving support beyond family and friendship networks. Second, civil society actors have been less likely to provide sufficient support in the pandemic, mainly acting in addition to strong ties and providing complementary support for individuals in particular need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Covid-19 has produced a set of social characters during the corona crisis and that these characters represent different approaches toward control. Social characters emerge as constructs responding to current discourses. They may function as role models in uncertain times and offer orientation. The paper identifies such characters in communication on the online platform Jodel. It analyses and discusses the properties of the following social characters, which are reconstructed inductively from the data, classifying 156 Jodel posts into the following typology: the social worker, the crisis entrepreneur, the worried and depressed loner, the crisis manager, the admonisher, and the health expert. All these characters also display different approaches to how the crisis could be controlled. Some of them highlight economic discourses, others psychological discourses, and again others bureaucratic discourses. The analysis of the social characters and their approaches to control contributes to research on the role of discourses in modern European societies and on how these discourses contribute to different approaches to controlling a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The socio-spatial density of cities creates a critical setting for the spread of viral infections. Urban public space provides a ground for people to interact with others outside of their immediate social network. Interaction with weak or absent social ties is critical in the spread of the pandemic, as it represents a connection with strangers. Accordingly, non-pharmaceutical urban measures often aim to limit these interactions as a means for mitigating the spread of COVID-19. This paper explores the effects of these control measures, comparing the mean distances between geotagged tweets within an eight-month timeframe in the city of Kyrenia, Cyprus. Furthermore, the paper questions the lasting effects of these measures on the socio-spatial structure of the city. The results indicate that the mean distance between tweets increases during the full quarantine and goes down immediately after the restrictions are lifted, but it does not reach its pre-pandemic status. The outcome also shows the localisation of activities during the outbreak which necessitates further elaboration on the relationship between newly emerged social norms and urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between the emergence of a 'crisis society', social innovation and community resilience in Italian inner areas. Arguing that the concept of 'crisis society' – as a further development of a 'risk society' – can help to frame both the increasing of uncertainty and the possibility for social change, the paper outlines a theoretical reflection on how context of crisis can influence social arrangements and forms of solidarity. In particular, it proposes to adopt the analytical lenses of social innovation and community resilience to discuss the relation between crisis, local dynamism and collective action. Secondly, it identifies Italian inner areas as an interesting field of research were to analyse how innovative initiatives and narratives can emerge in context of crisis, with a special focus on the Covid-19 pandemic. Without denying the negative consequences of this crisis, this early research paper sheds light on how crisis can be redefined on a double level. Firstly, by opening new windows of opportunities for collective action and bottom-up resilience. Secondly, by reframing inner areas, usually represented as vulnerable territories, as spaces where the creative capacity of local community can emerge. Finally, the paper identifies further trajectories of investigation for empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned with the spatial dimension of the coronavirus crisis and the tensions it created in multilevel governance in the Polish–German border region. Regarding the spatial dimension of the crisis, territoriality is referred to as the political competence to exert control over a national territory and over places particularly affected by the coronavirus crisis and its management – from local hubs of outbreaks to twin cities in border regions facing closed borders. Territoriality was mirrored in the unilateral decisions of the central governments to close national borders in Europe. Considering spatiality as well as the asymmetric multilevel setting of cross-border Polish–German relations, this paper investigates to what extent subnational actors were able to interact in a cross-border sense in this situation. The paper shows the relevance of subnational political authorities and highlights the significance of civil society actors in times of crisis, as they were able to lobby for a less restrictive border management response and helped to hold – merely through digital activities – the web of bilateral relations together. In this light, it may enhance the ability of further research to take a multilevel territorial perspective for a more nuanced picture of the pandemic's effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide-reaching government restrictions in the fight against COVID-19 are compelling religious communities in Switzerland to modify their ritual practice in order to comply with the state's stipulations. With a focus on religious authority following Bourdieu, this paper researches the ritual modifications in the Roman Catholic Church and an Islamic organisation via the three categories of change, shift, and cancellation. Modifications were implemented to avoid the cancellation of public rituals which highlights their importance. As it finally became inevitable, the decision-makers within the two communities were confronted with the need to justify their compliance to state rules within the community and towards the secular outside world. This paper shows that the constitution of religious authority in response to ritual restrictions is dependent on the degree of establishment within the societal context and the division of religious labour in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movement of individuals across territories has been shown to be a primary vector of COVID-19 transmission. As a result, lockdown policies have been decreed in many countries to stop the spread of the disease. Using information from an online survey conducted in Spain, we found a significant number of residential moves made in response to the lockdown. The current context has created new triggers for residential mobility: economic problems, feelings of fear and loneliness, the search for better housing and situations in which to spend the lockdown, and the need to be cared for and to care for others. This paper analyses the residential changes that occurred in Spain during the 2020 lockdown and the later de-escalation period, focusing on movement triggers, motivations and destinations. The results show how residential mobility changes, but also persists even when restricted, fuelled by the conditions of each social group, both pre-existing and generated by the new situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the discrimination and racism experienced by Chinese migrants and their descendants during the Covid-19 pandemic. It analyses this group's increasing awareness and activism toward racial discrimination in French society. The paper is based on an empirical investigation using qualitative and quantitative research methods (online surveys and interviews) with people of Chinese origin living in France. In addition, qualitative data from news media and activists is also crucial to this study because of the important role they play in the social construction of the anti-racism movement. This study shows that the Covid-19 pandemic highlights how the discrimination and racism experienced by people of Chinese origin can take various forms. The epidemic has become a catalyst for Chinese immigration to resist racism, especially among descendants, and among more recent and highly-skilled Chinese immigrants, who have broken their silence, united, and participated in a more activist manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Polish government decided to shut down all public and private institutions, including schools, from 12 March 2020. Since then, 4.58 million students from 24,000 schools have remained in their homes and practiced distance learning. Distance learning has greatly affected children's social practices, including domestic, everyday, specialist, and cultural practices. This paper applies social practice theory, rooted in Schatzki's ontological theory of practices, and Shove, Pantzar, and Watson's structure of social practices to study the changes to migrant primary school children's social practices during distance learning in Poland. The data are derived from a subsample of a larger qualitative study of the transnational transition processes of migrant children in Poland. This paper investigates how the COVID-19 lockdown and distance learning have prompted migrant primary school children to reflect on the transformation of traditional social practices and the value of school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent COVID crisis has had many consequences on social life. This paper focuses on potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on fertility intentions. We employ a theoretical approach, analysing the nexus between fertility and the COVID crisis through the lens of gender roles. The purpose of our analysis is to frame the theoretical paths and to prepare a background for further in-depth analysis based on empirical data. We show that biological reduction of fertility is less likely to occur but that behavioural mechanisms in couple's decision-making will drive the impact on fertility intentions. The health emergency, economic crisis and social distancing will lead to an adjustment of fertility behaviour, while gender roles and social values will moderate the impact of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak and the far-reaching lockdown measures are having direct and indirect effects on complex social domains, including opportunities for crime offline and online. This paper presents preliminary analyses about the short-term effect of COVID-19 and lockdown measures on cyber-dependent crime and online fraud in the UK. Time series analyses from data about crimes known to police between May 2019 and May 2020 are used to explore the extent to which cybercrime has been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. More specifically, we examine whether cybercrime has suffered an increase during the months with the strictest lockdown restrictions, as an effect of the displacement of crime opportunities from physical to online environments. Results indicate that reports of cybercrime have increased during the COVID-19 outbreak, and these were remarkably large during the two months with the strictest lockdown policies and measures. In particular, the number of frauds associated with online shopping and auctions, and the hacking of social media and email, which are the two most common cybercrime categories in the UK, have seen the largest increases in the number of incidents. The increase in cyber-dependent crimes has mainly been experienced by individual victims rather than organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been hypothesized that the capacity of universal basic income (UBI) to attract wider public support is impaired by the strength of productivist cultural norms and values, common to the majority of develope societies. The paper contributes to literature on attitudes towards UBI by empirically investigating this hypothesis from a multi-level cross-national perspective, using the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 8 data on UBI support for 23 countries. It seeks to determine whether and to what extent the strength of cultural productivism can explain cross-national variation in public support for the implementation of UBI. Two main findings are reported. First, the results demonstrate that the public are less susceptible to supporting UBI in countries where average employment commitment is higher. Second, the results show that, even though employment commitment is a strong predictor of cross-national variation in the public support for UBI, the effect is surpassed and explained by GDP, which itself is negatively related to the outcome. The study argues that the capacity of UBI to appeal to the general public is limited by the prosperity of post-industrial societies, rather than by the cultural attachment of their populations to paid work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do members of the committees under the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) find that there are coalitions of specific member states in these committees? If so, then what kind of side payments hold these coalitions together? For the first time in scholarly literature, and based on an empirical investigation, the findings in this paper document that two opposing coalitions - with the United Kingdom and France as the respective leaders - exist in OMC committees where mutual learning is the raison d'etre. In the existing theory on this subject in the EU, it is claimed that consensus decision-making leads to a weakening of coalition-building. All three committees analysed in this paper build on consensus decision-making, which is achieved after intensive meetings between all the members. However, it is contended that the 'argumentative contest' working method of the OMC committees leads to more - not less - coalition-building. On the basis of a test, it is also shown that these committees are primarily held together by side payments in the form of 'promises relating to policy among the like-minded'; however, 'payments allied to subsequent decisions' add to the cement of the coalition-building processes stemming from the OMC working method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most sociological studies on the economic elite have focused on groups holding formal power in the economic field. In this paper, the Swedish economic elite is constructed in line with Thomas Piketty’s notions on the richest top one per cent, but the scope extended beyond the economic analysis by combining it with a sociological perspective. Differences within this distributional group are found in the volume and composition of economic capital - as well as in other forms of capital. The elite is structured by an opposition between, first, those holding large wealth and those receiving high-wage incomes and, second, between the established elite and newcomers. Moreover, many elite studies pay attention to the routes to elite position. This paper also examines modes of reproduction from elite positions, using the education strategies employed by children of the economic elite within Swedish higher education. Such strategies are more important - and narrow - for the children of the high-income elite, revealed by their overrepresentation at certain highly selective educational institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the returns to attending a prestigious higher education institution have increased in Norway for students who graduated in 1975 to students who graduated in 1999. A handful of published studies find that the returns to attending prestigious institutions have increased in the last decades. However, they all study the USA, which has a decentralized wage bargaining system. The results in this paper shed light on whether a centralized wage bargaining system, typical for many west-European countries, prevents the returns to attending prestigious institutions from increasing. I find that attending prestigious institutions pays off economically in Norway and that the returns have increased throughout the investigated period. Another aim of this paper is to investigate whether the returns have increased more at the top of the earnings distribution than at the bottom. I find that the returns are highest at the top of the earnings distribution and have increased the most at the top. At the 90th quantile, for instance, students who attended a prestigious business school between 1975 and 1979 obtained 80% higher earnings than students attending nonprestigious institutions in the same period. Among students who graduate 20 years later, this difference is 139%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between the provision of informal care and three specific feelings important in later life – loneliness, meaningfulness of life, and overload. The paper contributes to the research of this frequently studied topic through examining effects of the intensity and multiplicity of care as well as the availability of formal care at the national level to consider the complexity and context-dependence of the effect of caregiving. Data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for 14 countries is analysed using multilevel regression with important domains of subjective quality of life in older ages as dependent variables. The general effect of providing care is enhancing and this effect is even more pronounced for multiple caregiving. However, this beneficial effect is not significant for very intensive care. Further, higher availability of formal care increases the quality of life, but reduces the beneficial effect of caregiving on loneliness. Overall, the theory of role accumulation is more suitable to explain the provision of care at older ages than the theory of role strain, but the crucial factor for understanding the effect of caregiving is context-sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, Europe has been affected by several crises, which had and still have detrimental consequences for the life of many people, suffering from unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. The special issue seeks to explore how these crises have challenged and promoted solidarities within and between European countries. In the introductory paper, first a typology of different types of solidarity – social, political and welfare – is developed to account for the varied meanings and uses of the term. Second, the origins and scopes of the different types of solidarity and their link to crises are discussed. After introducing the special issue papers, five contributions to the understanding of crises and solidarities are highlighted, namely: the meanings of solidarity are varied and discursively contested; different types of solidarity merge and interact; crises are a necessary, but not sufficient condition for solidarity to emerge; crises alter the scope of solidarity; economic shocks can have long-term effects on solidarity. Thus, crises have led to a reconfiguration of solidarities in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is aimed at understanding how collective action has been organised, sustained and transformed in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis by looking at three different Italian cases of Sustainable Community Movement Organisations (SCMOs): the Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (solidarity-based consumer groups or solidarity purchasing groups – SPGs), Addiopizzo (a relatively new anti-racket organisation which literally means 'goodbye to protection money' or 'pizzo' solicited by organised crime) and Rimaflow (an Italian factory 'recovered' by its workers in 2013). More specifically, the paper aims to discuss whether, how and why Sustainable Community Movement Organisations have grown even in times of crisis. Data for the analysis come from semi-directive interviews with key actors from the three SCMOs, surveys among activists and participant observation. Our findings suggest that pre-existing crises (social and political) have provided a context for new networks of solidarity-based economy to emerge – such as in case of SPGs and Addiopizzo – but the economic crisis has either provided a way to consolidate such experiences (as in the two cases mentioned above) or it has provided an opportunity for new actions to emerge and rapidly consolidate – such as in the case of Rimaflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of economic crisis and welfare retrenchment in Spain, food banks have been an emergency solution for those at risk of social exclusion. Food banks have been criticised for playing a significant role in perpetuating dependency and, therefore, exacerbating inequality between those who donate and receive help. However, in Madrid, in the years after the 15M movement grassroots food banks initiatives resignified an old mode of assistance by creating solidarity forms. In this paper, we analyse these grassroots food banks with a particular emphasis on the case of Tetuán. We show how political and interpersonal solidarity is built among grassroots foodbanks' members. We argue that these banks' political motto leads to inter-recognition among their participants. Furthermore, through a shared – and permanently reinforced – discourse, food recipients identify the root causes of their excruciating living conditions. Thus, a 'we-ness' (defined here as a sense of cohesion and fellowship) is created, which challenges the inequality and stigma reinforced by traditional, and charitable, forms of assistance. In sum, grassroots food banks promote social inclusion as they not only provide aid, but also endorse new venues for solidarity building that challenges the hierarchical relationships, ingrained in traditional forms of charity giving, typical of formal food banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main 'promises' that populist parties seek to deliver is to bring politics closer to the 'people'. While the literature focused mainly on the relationship between voters and those parties, less attention has been given to the role of members' priorities in shaping parties' legislative activity. In this paper, we focus on a paradigmatic technopopulist case, the Italian Five Star Movement (FSM): one of the founding trademarks of the party was the involvement of the members in the party activities via a digital platform. FSM's digital platform included participative digital law-making features, which matched member priorities and élite policymaking. We built an original dataset which comprises the law-making activities of members and parliamentarians from 2013 to 2019. We analysed 2000 law proposals and found that FSM elected representatives' agenda, albeit partly diverging from that of members, still changed in the direction of member priorities through time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a long period in the doldrums with austerity measures and consecutive bailouts, Greece still bears the scars of the recent financial adventure while strives to recover in a new economic environment. As one of the hardest-hit by the economic crisis Member states, Greece has seen its economic capacity reduced, the unemployment and poverty levels rising, and the living conditions for a significant part of the population and social groups deteriorating. Despite the plethora of analyses on the political and socio-economic perspectives, the evolution of social vulnerability remains a largely unexplored area that merits further investigation and analysis in a crisis-ridden country of the European South. The paper aims to study how social vulnerability has evolved in Greece from 2008 to 2017 using secondary data and descriptive statistics that focus on five key variables (disposable income, education, employment, gender, urban/rural environment) for a better understanding of the domestic social vulnerability dynamics in a period of stark contrasts. Overall, our findings demonstrate an increased risk of social exclusion and a widening of inequality and poverty rates during the stated period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the Vatican in the mobilization against the so-called gender ideology is structural and well established in the public arena, in Italy as in Europe. However, signs of a growing ambivalence in its attitude towards the protest have lately emerged, for example in relation to the visibility of far-right movements and aggressively right-wing parties within the movement. The paper investigates the same ambivalence among Italian Catholics groups and networks involved in the anti-gender fight. The analysis is based on 17 interviews with Catholic mothers and/or teachers who attended anti-gender conferences in 2015 and expressed their willingness to engage in school surveillance in order to prevent allegedly pro-gender activities. Results show a broad convergence towards the idea that the 'ideology of gender' exists and represents a serious danger for children. At the same time, interviewees express different political and cultural stances in relation to their protest. The dissimilarity detected in anti-gender narratives shed some lights on the different ways Italian Catholic activists try to oppose, manage, or solve issues related to state secularization and sexual pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis uses the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data for 2006–2011 to examine whether there is an identifiable relationship between public and private provision of financial assistance and whether increased public support is associated with receiving more or less private support. In line with previous research, the findings suggest that households in receipt of certain public financial assistance are more likely to receive financial assistance from their friends and family. Yet the paper goes further and argues that the effect is dependent on the nature of the policy. Specifically, active policies not related to previous labour market participation appear to be associated with greater financial assistance from friends and family compared to traditional, passive forms of welfare assistance which themselves show no effect. The paper therefore concludes that the association between private and public financial assistance is dependent upon the type of public assistance that is being considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]