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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]

Between March and May, Spain was one of the hardest-hit European countries by the COVID-19 pandemic and registered one of the highest death rates in the world. Among other measures, the political response was a lockdown of more than three months that was applied by means of six fifteen-day extensions. The Spanish Sociological Research Centre (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas; CIS, in its Spanish acronym) carried out a survey in early June (n = 4,258) asking respondents about their rating of the response to the situation and their ability to cope with further extensions of the state of emergency. The concept of resilience is key to understanding this situation and the population's ability to face up to it. This paper analyses factors that help bolster resilience, which include confidence in the political leader and in the perception or rating of the measures adopted. The conclusion highlights the importance of political communication, both of leadership and of political measures, in fostering social resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic interest on skilled migration patterns has increased at the same time as the flows of skilled migrants around the world. Despite this tendency, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the migratory projects of particular ethnic communities or in specific receiving contexts. The current paper examines the migratory experiences of Romanian professionals and the extent to which the incorporation into the Spanish labor market represents a turning point or a transition in their overall life trajectory. Based on a qualitative design, the paper highlights how some profiles are more sensitive to sending and receiving contexts (structural elements), display strategies through mobilization of universities or social networks and shape disrupted trajectories. Others, respond to globalized dynamics, mobilize corporations and finally develop smooth labor transitions. The main elements explaining these patterns are tackled and explained in three profiles of professionals: those who arrive to Spain thanks to the transfer by a multinational company; those who complement their tertiary education with Master degree in Spain and finally, those who correspond to the economic migrant profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at childcare provision in Spain from the perspective of policies for the reconciliation of work and family life. The goal is to understand how social care - and childcare in particular - has been placed within the different policy domains of the welfare state, and how this condition affects its opportunities for policy development and innovation. As a point of reference, the study takes into consideration the recent EU benchmark regarding childcare provision in the context of the European Employment Strategy. The investigation looks at the impact of the institutional configuration of the welfare system and the labour market on the development of childcare provision and policies for the reconciliation of work and family. The paper suggests that, given a strong policy legacy in family policy and social services, childcare provision is expanding under the decentralized education system although it has not been articulated in terms of policies for the reconciliation of work and family life, which impacts on female employment. Legislative changes improving the conditions of female employees who give birth have recently been introduced in labour law, although the structure of the labour market and practices in employment relations pose obstacles to their effective implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how unstable employment influences becoming a mother in Italy and Spain. Results suggest that institutional factors foster dynamics of social inequality and hinder family formation. We show that in southern Europe (Italy and Spain), but not in other institutional contexts, the lack of employment stability produces a delay in fertility decision. We attribute this impact of the employment situation on demographic decisions to the sub-protective southern European welfare systems and the insider–outsider labor market configuration, as enhanced by the partial and targeted labor market deregulations of recent decades. In the context of low levels of welfare, unstable employment often comes with persistently reduced entitlement to social and welfare rights, and, therefore, with notable social and demographic consequences. We provide support for this institutional argument by showing that fertility decisions are independent of employment stability in other contexts. Analyses are based on longitudinal data using event history analysis and simultaneous equation models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse the health effects of fixed-term contract status for men and women in West-Germany and Spain using panel data. This paper asks whether changes in the employment relationship, as a result of the liberalisation of employment law, have altered the positive health effects associated with employment (Jahoda 1982; Goldsmith et al. 1996). Using information on switches between unemployment and employment by contract type we analyze whether transitions to different contracts have different health effects. We find that unemployed workers show positive health effects at job acquisition, and also find the positive effect to be smaller for workers who obtain a fixed-term job. We also establish surprising differences by gender and country, with women less likely to report positive health effects at job acquisition. For West-Germany, this was found to be a function of the dual-burden of paid and unpaid care within the home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is Europe converging on a single dominant model of the family and women's role which provides the basis for convergence on a single set of social policies? This paper concludes that the European Commission is wrong to expect a single dominant trend. On the contrary, recent research shows that three quite different, even conflicting, models of the family, and of women's role, continue to attract roughly equal support across the European Union as a whole, and within all EU countries. Two revolutions have occurred: the contraceptive revolution and the equal opportunities revolution, which have given women genuine choices for the first time in history. In the new scenario, women make divergent choices, producing at least three family models. In the future, social policy and employment policy need to recognize, and support, all three models of the family and of women's role. This makes EU policy-making more difficult, and sheds new light on national differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the work-family conflict as perceived by working parents in two European countries, Spain and Great Britain (GB). Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, ISSP 2002, we examine the factors that explain the high level of conflict in the two countries, for both men and women. Whereas sex, age and having children at home impact the level of conflict in Spain, education level as a proxy for class is more relevant in the GB. The contrasting perceptions of the work-family conflict in the two countries may be taken as indicators of each country's stage in what has been called the 'modernization process'. This study seeks to understand the relationship between the level of 'modernization' and the perception of a high level of conflict in the attempt to reconcile the work-family conflict, focusing on the process of 'individualization' on the one hand and measurement of 'the perception of the level of conflict by sex' on the other. The study argues that the difference between these high levels of conflict is explained by variables that refer to ascribed status in Spain (a pro-traditional model) but to acquired status in GB (a non-interventionist model) indicated by the influence of education level as a variable resulting from a person's effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to several international surveys Spain is among the western countries with the most negative views of Jews. While quantitative data on the topic accumulates, there is a significant lack of interpretative approaches that might explain the particular Spanish case. This paper presents the background, methodology and major results of a discussion group-based study on antisemitism, which was conducted in Spain in the autumn of 2009. The study identifies and locates in different socio-economic and ideological milieus the range of stereotypical discourses on Jews, Judaism and the Arab–Israeli conflict in Spain. Analysis of the group meetings shows that, despite growing secularization in Spanish society, the central explanatory variable for persisting and resurging antisemitism in this country is still religion in a broad cultural sense. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates to what extent variation in the distribution across occupational categories in the labour market affects women's demographic behaviour. It specifically explores which occupational categories are more beneficial for women in the transition to first, second and third birth in Spain. Event-history analyses are applied to retrospective data from the Spanish Fertility and Family Survey (1995). The results show that there are differences in women's fertility according to their occupational choice and demonstrate that health and teaching professionals show an advantage in harmonizing work and motherhood in Spain. This finding is consistent with the idea that not only the impact of occupational sex-segregation on women's fertility is explicable by each woman's specific attitudes towards motherhood and career but also by her employment conditions at the workplace. This effect is particularly strong in Spain due to the specific national context of combining family responsibilities and labour force participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper will be to analyse changes in family and gender roles in Spain within the process of individualization in the European context. The focus is thus to evaluate the extent to which institutional factors (family policies) and individual factors interact in the development of cultural models that explain differences in preferences and family and labour strategies adopted by citizens. With the objective of determining to what extent a transition process towards an egalitarian family model is being made, socio-demographic factors that explain preference groups with regard to labour and family life-styles will be analysed in two countries with very different traditions of labour and family conciliation, such as Spain and Finland. Therefore, in a second part of the work, individual factors linked to population segments identified with the egalitarian model of family roles and with the traditional model of family in Spain and Finland will be clarified. This research has highlighted the fact that a difference between family life-styles is explained by variables such as education and marital status in Spain, whereas in Finland, analyses of segmentation have underlined that age is the best variable to explain differences regarding the desired role of females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper distinguishes the characteristics of recent trends towards older ages of leaving home in Spain. Based on analysis of in-depth interviews with young people and parents from Bilbao in the Basque Country, I explore how familism and family solidarity play a key role in the current trend towards delayed family formation, focusing on the postponement of leaving home. This analysis illustrates the various leaving home strategies that young Basque people adopt, and how these are negotiated with parents and other family members. The analysis of the interview data also captures the ways in which young people negotiate with and recreate family culture, both while living in and leaving the parental home. The different strategies adopted by young people are classified by a typology based on the extent to which young people recognise and conform to a prescribed cultural model of behaviour, namely leaving home to get married and (preferably) buy a property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in one-person households is one of the most significant sociodemographic phenomena Western societies have undergone since the mid-twentieth century. It is a phenomenon of particular interest in societies where family has traditionally held an important role in determining living arrangements. In Spain, only 4.1% of the population lived alone in 1991 while currently such percentage is more than 10% and approximately one in four homes are one-person households. This study analyses the process of generational replacement of these households taking into consideration four sociodemographic variables: age, sex, marital status and level of education. The influence of these variables, together with labour status, on solo-living is examined between 1991 and 2011 by applying demographic analysis and multivariate logistic regression models to census microdata samples from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics. Results show an inter-generational increase in solo living, affecting all age groups, as well as a diversification of the demographic profile of solo dwellers in Spain over the last three decades. This trend did not interrupt during the economic recession although being employed increased the probability of living alone invariably. Other factors contributing to a higher probability of living alone were being man and having higher education level (particularly among women). We find notable changes in the sociological profile of these households: an increase in the relative weight of young solo-dwellers and a drop in the weight of widowhood in favour of singlehood. These results are discussed in the context of the social changes that Spain has undergone [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the factors that have had a differential effect on the labour trajectories of individuals up to 40 years old during the economic and employment crisis in Spain. To this end, the study specifically examines labour trajectories in the period 2007-2011 using data from a longitudinal panel for Catalonia. First, it uses cluster analysis to classify the types of labour trajectory that were developed by the population aged under 40. Second, it uses a multinomial logit model to distinguish the individual, sectoral and familial characteristics influencing the development of a particular trajectory. The results show the importance of traditional lines of segmentation of the Spanish labour market, such as age and gender. However, they also highlight the importance of variables associated to social background (parents' educational level and occupation). It is concluded that the factors linked to the different types of labour trajectories are similar to those identified in the literature for previous periods, although the role of family background seems to be more important than in the past, especially in trajectories marked by temporary employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of time dedicated to child care has potentially positive effects on children's life chances. However, the determinants of parental time allocation to child care remain largely unexplored. We assess two main explanations for differences among parents in the amount of time spent with children. The first, based on the relative resources hypothesis, links variation in time spent with children to the relative attributes (occupation, education or income) of one partner with the other. The second, derived from the social status hypothesis, suggests that variation in time spent with children can be attributed to the relative social position of the couple (i.e. higher status couples spend more time with children regardless of within-couple difference). To investigate these questions, we use a sample of parents living in a partnership with children younger than 10 years old from the 2002 to 2003 Spanish Time Use Survey (STUS) (n= 7438). We find little support for the ‘relative resources hypothesis’, although it has some explanatory power on supervisory and routine activities performed with children. Instead, consistent with the ‘social status hypothesis’, we find that time spent on child care is attributable to the social position of the couple, regardless of between-parent differences in income or education. The ‘social status hypothesis’ is especially relevant for explaining the time that parents devote to activities that have a higher potential for the development of the child's cognitive and social capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Finland and Spain, marriage rates are equally low, yet cohabitation is rare in Spain and common in Finland. The fertility rate has fallen sharply in Spain, whereas in Finland it is relatively high. Spaniards delay childbearing later than Finns. These characteristics of family formation are not attributed to modern contraceptives, cohabitation or to the female employment rate. Neither women's labour market position nor family policy is the key explanatory factor for the differences in patterns of first family formation and fertility. However, the employment and financial insecurity of young people seem to be an influential factor having negative effects on the first family formation in Finland and Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the relationship between family and employment from the perspective of working mothers. In a context of increasing convergence of women's activity all over Europe what makes a difference between countries is the extent to which women's new roles in paid work are being acknowledged through new practices in the family, social policies, perceptions and symbols. The concept of strategy is used as an analytical tool to understand how women manage their double role in everyday life. Working mothers' strategies to cope with both worlds can be considered as an indicator of the social recognition of women as workers. This hypothesis is examined taking the case of Spain as an example of an extreme contradiction between the new position of women in the labour market and the traditional social organization that does not seem to be concerned by the change. Spanish working mothers, most of them working full time, are developing a wide range of private, individual strategies to make their jobs compatible with family responsibilities. The main strategies are based on substitute mothers, who are either relatives - very often the mother of the working mother - or somebody hired to take care of the children. These kind of strategies raise, among other questions, the issue of the extent to which the organization of domestic life continues to be based on the traditional gendered family or if they can be a model for the future. Complementary strategies to do with the organisation of time, reducing distances between home, work and school, collective childcare and the help of men are also studied, as well as extreme strategies - taking the children to work or leaving them alone at home - and indirect strategies like delaying and reducing the number of children. Primary sources of information, both qualitative and quantitative are used, based on six discussion groups, twenty-five in-depth interviews and a 1,200 cases survey representative of Spanish working mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]