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This article has sought to explain a research process where a senior researcher felt the need to form an alliance with local researchers in order to enable more authentic research with marginalised youngsters. The aim of this paper is to suggest a useful model demonstrating the focal role of the primary investigator in creating an inclusive and participatory setting to produce knowledge challenging epistemic injustices. By cooperating with novice researchers in the countries we study, our methodology recognised and fostered their epistemic agency. As knowledge mediators, they helped us access many self-identified Muslim youth and native youths who are labelled as far-right in Europe. In addition to emphasising the relevance of local setting in knowledge production, the paper will also question the epistemic injustice that these youngsters have been exposed to. Both groups have been clustered in two distinct categories by previous research that has been overwhelmingly engaged in the civilisational discourse that sets these groups apart in two culturally, religiously and civilisationally defined boxes. We believe that our participatory commitment to producing high-quality knowledge will be helpful in the scientific consideration of socio-economically, politically, spatially, and nostalgically deprived youths, who feel pressurised by the perils of modernisation and globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European nations allocate public sector resources with the general aim of increasing the well-being and welfare of their citizens through a fair and efficient distribution of these public goods and services. However, "who" delivers these goods and services and "how well" they are delivered are essential in determining outcomes in terms of well-being. Drawing on data from the European Social Survey database, this paper uses Amartya Sen's social welfare index framework—accounting for the trade-off between the maximization of public sector resources and an equitable distribution of these resources—to examine the influence of political decentralisation ("who" delivers the resources) and whether this influence is moderated by governance quality ("how well" they are delivered) on individual subjective well-being. The findings of the econometric analysis reveal that decentralisation does not always lead to higher well-being, as the benefits of political decentralisation are highly mediated by the quality of national governance. In countries with high governance quality, political decentralisation results in a greater satisfaction with health provision, while in lower quality governance countries, a more decentralized government can increase the overall satisfaction with life, the economy, government, democracy and the provision of education, but not necessarily with health-related services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the observed impact of past economic downturns on human development indicators in 29 countries of the region. We estimate empirical elasticities of key human development indicators covering demographics, crime, epidemiology, unemployment, and poverty with respect to changes in per-capita purchase power parity (PPP) gross domestic product. Based on published gross domestic product growth projections from the IMF, we then project the likely impact on the human development indicators in coming years for the countries in the region. The results suggest that the adverse impact of past downturn in income on poverty, public health, mortality, and suicide and homicide rates is likely to be considerable, long-lasting, and to affect the poorest disproportionately. Based on our results, we argue that policy-makers will need better and more timely data to provide the evidence base for policies; and that those policies need to take into account the looming substantial backslide in human development indicators stemming from the global economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three recent European Court of Human Rights cases of discrimination in education against Roma raise the question of what conditions must be present for parents to give 'meaningful' consent in decisions pertaining to their children and whether such consent can be meaningful when a fundamental freedom is at stake. The paper investigates the nature and limits of parental consent and makes the case for a 'threshold' above which respect for the dignity of the parents requires meaningful consent for any decision pertaining to their children and below which respect for the human rights of the child prohibits interference with the exercise of a right. Identifying the exact location of the threshold in any specific case requires local-level public deliberation; insisting that decisions meet those threshold conditions, and enforcing their recognition, is a job for the Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on creating space for social innovation in Europe for reductive interpretations of economic and social development and mentions the impact on human capabilities; and innovations in fertilizer and pesticide use can yield water quality problems due to high pollution.