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Ambient intelligence (AmI) emerged in Europe with the idea that the computational support available in a living environment can help people's lives. AmI introduces new challenges and critical issues because this technology differs from the traditional form of interaction that is centered on a device or system. In this work, we aim to contribute to this topic by conducting a systematic literature review in order to identify Human-Computer Interaction guidelines for the design of ambient intelligence systems. We found a total of 120 guidelines from 27 papers, and we grouped similar guidelines creating different categories. These categories of guidelines later became a unified guideline incorporating also some of our own ideas. As a result, this paper identifies ten categories and guidelines to improve user interaction with ambient intelligence systems. We believe that these guidelines significantly contribute to designing more intuitive AmI systems for users, including those with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of recent populist upheavals in Europe, nationalist economic policies challenge the overly positive view on economic integration and the reduction of trade barriers established by standard economic theory. For quite a long time the great majority of economists supported trade liberalisation policies, at least those actively engaged in policy advice or public debates. In this paper, we examine the elite economics discourse on trade policies during the last 20 years regarding specific characteristics of authors, affiliations, citation patterns, the overall attitude towards trade, as well as the methodological approach applied in these papers. Our analysis yields the following results: First, the hierarchical structure of economics also manifests in the debate about trade. Second, while we found some indications of a shift towards more empirically oriented work, quite often empirical data is solely used to calibrate models rather than to challenge potentially biased theoretical assumptions. Third, top economic discourses on trade are predominantly characterised by a normative bias in favour of trade-liberalisation-policies. Forth, we found that other-than-economic impacts and implications of trade policies (political, social and cultural as well as environmental issues) to a great extent either remain unmentioned or are rationalised by means of pure economic criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, there have been numerous studies on the rise, characteristics, and consequences of the emergence of populist parties in Western liberal democracies. However, most analyses of European populist parties have focused on the right-wing populist parties. Although some scholars have made valuable efforts to understand left-wing populism in Europe, these studies have paid attention to their ideological-organizational idiosyncrasies or the characteristics of their electoral bases. This paper aims to fill the gap in the economic and political contexts in which Radical Left Populist Parties have achieved significant electoral results putting into practice a fsQCA analysis and examining their uneven electoral performance in Europe. Following some previous work applying QCA techniques, this paper tests the theory on the importance of economic and political factors. Findings indicate that the electoral performance of radical left populism cannot be explained in a univocal way, highlighting the crucial role of equifinality in understanding this political phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humanity is vividly witnessing the loss of life, the massive destruction, and human rights violations due to new authoritarian regimes and protracted wars that have intensified in the last few decades, particularly in countries of the Global South. Such conflictual situations have also resulted in devastating attacks against academic institutions and values and, in turn, the displacement of scholars, mainly to neighbouring countries and to Europe. In a pressing situation involving the radical disruption of scientists' social and academic lives in their homelands, international support networks, the history of which goes back to the 1920s, could quickly respond to the scholars' urgent needs. This paper analyzes the impacts of this recent migration flow of scholars on 'academic humanitarianism' in Europe, which is a form of humanitarianism and a regime of governing that emerged at the intersection of humanitarianism and academia. While analyzing the changing nature of this regime, the paper focuses on governing discourses, technologies, and strategies of the following organisations: Cara (UK), PSI (Germany), and PAUSE (France). It concludes that the flow of scholars from the countries of the Global South to Europe has resulted in important changes in their humanitarian approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a Polanyian frame to place the plight of Roma in Europe in the context of an age of crisis, as evidenced by faltering neoliberal economies and a corresponding rise in xenophobia and extreme manifestations of nationalism. The situation of the Roma remains precarious, a situation exacerbated by the 2008 economic crises and the COVID-pandemic. Despite a number of social inclusion measures in recent decades, at the national and European level which target the Roma, Roma exclusion remains a serious challenge. The paper assesses why previous policy regimes failed but also reflects on what is the way forward in terms of inclusive policy frameworks. The article seeks to provide some answers to these questions with a vision of a Polanyian countermovement in the form of a New Social Europe predicated on redistribution, recognition and community action but also a re-envisioning of integration and transformative change in structural and cultural terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Age of Revolutions, the Habsburg monarchy initially opposed nationalist movements as revolutionary. While the monarchy later sought to co-opt loyal patriots, historical memory often imagines the Habsburg state as implacably opposed to both nationalism and nationalist movements. In practice, however, Habsburg officials and central European nationalisms overlapped and engaged with each other in surprising ways. Their interaction problematizes a sharp line between monarchism and nationalism. This essay speficially introduces a special issue of Central Europe, consisting of two papers presented at a 2022 conference on the Habsburg state apparatus. The two papers explored the tensions and interactions between Habsburg officials and patriot circles as they played out in international relations. Polish exiles sought to recruit Habsburg officials to the national cause, while Habsburg agents sought to recruit patriots to the spy network of the Habsburg political police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on maintaining the highest profile for European social work policy, practice, and education. Topics include popular special issues of the European Journal of Social Work being the issue on neoliberalism in social work; and important in the pursuit of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility, and respect for diversities.

Digital connectivity of queer migrants on the move to Europe plays a crucial role in confronting border regimes, heteronormativity and racist oppression. ICTs at the disposal of queer migrants interrupt the material politics of silence and violence. However, digital technology also implies serious hazards. Queer migrants use digital space to empower themselves, to build networks, and to trace, reach and create safer spaces of care. This paper conceptualises how care is materialised in self-organised actions and horizontal relationships that question power regimes and commodification practices while introducing the notion of radical digital care. Digital spaces of (radical) care constitute safe spaces of compassion where people can be heard and believed. They act as points of reference for queer people seeking recognition and care. Moreover, queer migration constitutes constant shifting between subject and care positions that redefine the notion of home and safety and the material ordering of migration itself. Based on a qualitative study of ten semi-structured interviews with solidarians and migrants, this paper reveals how the appropriation of digital media by queer migrants re-arranges the material politics of the borderland by contesting border technologies, and through radical care, allows communities to live through hardship, fear, and abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many papers on international student mobility have analysed different macro factors influencing the decision making of international students. However, only a limited number of studies have considered the role of language distance on international educational choices. This paper aims to fill that gap by identifying the role of language proximity in international degree seeking student flows among 21 countries of the European Economic Area in the years 2005, 2010 and 2015. Our gravity models reveal a statistically significant influence of language proximity on student flows within these 21 countries. We argue that language proximity simplifies academic, cultural and socio-economic integration of international students in the destination country and as a result makes the process of their adaptation to a new environment easier and smoother. Future research should expand on the mechanisms of that influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on European Journal of Social Work being committed to social work as a scientific discipline and as a professional practice. Topics include examining and extending the knowledge through solid scientific research and using the knowledge in improving the services social work; and diversity of research taking place in social work ranging from interviews, focusing groups, and ethnographic research.

This paper investigates the multifaceted dimensions of sport promotion, development, and integrity within the context of men's football in Europe. It specifically focuses on the impact of a newly introduced competition, the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Nations League (UNL), on these three dimensions. The study utilises a dataset comprising 1,058 games played over two distinct periods: 503 games from 2014–2016 (pre-UNL) and 555 games from 2018–2021 (UNL era). The primary areas of interest are competitive balance (CB) and competitive intensity (CI), measured at the intra-match (both CB and CI) and post-match (CB only) levels, and fairness. Regressions and statistical tests were conducted to explain the determinants of CB and compare CB and CI between both periods. The analysis reveals that CB deteriorated, primarily attributed to changing incentives for the strongest and weakest teams during Euro qualifying matches. By contrast, CI increased due to the UNL's replacement of most friendly games. While recent literature has raised potential fairness issues due to the establishment of the UNL, findings of this study suggest that the integrity of national men's football team competitions and games in Europe remained intact during this period. This article advances knowledge of CB and CI. Besides, it also provides empirical evidence that the UNL did not compromise the fairness of national men's football team competitions and games in Europe. By bringing CB, CI, and fairness together, this study highlights the crucial role of sports organisations in promoting and developing their sport, while also safeguarding its integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between equality and social Europe, which has remained underdeveloped in the process of European integration. In contrast to the social dimension of the EU, the principle of equality has been significant from the beginning of European integration. The paper opens with an overview of how equality functions as the basis for a social Europe. Next, two interpretations of equality are introduced. The EU's preferred interpretation, which is based on merit, is in sync with market ideals. One of the shortcomings of merit-based equality as a foundation of social Europe, however, is its inability to properly disconnect the vulnerable person from the employment market. This paper argues that an alternative interpretation of equality based on value is more suitable, because value-based equality can challenge the potentially harmful social structure of the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Damages Directive victims of infringements of competition law are entitled to full compensation. To achieve this goal overcharges, passing-on, and volume effects should play a role in the calculation of damages (for any purchaser who is not yet the final consumer). Whereas the Damages Directive promotes the passing-on defence for the defendants, it does not regulate volume effects in depth. The computation of these effects requires information on counterfactual prices and quantities. Since this information cannot be observed, the size of the volume effect tends to be uncertain. This paper discusses policy-options that aspire to bring compensation closer to full compensation, given uncertainty about the size of the volume effect. Based on the maximin-principle, a principle for decision-making under uncertainty, not allowing a passing-on defence appears to be an attractive option since this may lead to the minimization of the maximum gap between actual and full compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to critical and popular geopolitics by exploring the production of BBC Radio 4’s reportage on Europe’s migration ‘crisis’. It draws on original interviews conducted with journalists, producers, editors, and senior commissioners at the BBC to uncover the thought-processes and practices that lie behind its diverse coverage. The paper identifies the professional codes that govern BBC journalists and documents the strategies of storytelling journalists employ to try and secure listener engagement and spark their geographical imaginations. It highlights the power and agency of journalists to construct geopolitical scripts on migration, but also points to creative room for journalists to inflect broadcasts with personal styles of witnessing and reporting. The journalists interviewed emerge as thoughtful and self-reflexive geopolitical ‘agents’ who are aware of their representational power and recognise the tension between objective and impartial BBC reportage and critical issues of emotion, positionality, and situated knowledge. Overall, the paper answers calls for more ‘peopled’ accounts of geopolitics and highlights the importance of investigating the production and practice of journalistic storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roma in Europe are suffering from manifold injustices and are subject to serious discrimination; carried out both interpersonally as well as institutionally. As with most forms of oppression, the oppression of Roma has a long history in Europe. This paper shows how a genealogy of the oppression of Roma in Europe provides a more adequate understanding of the oppression that Roma face within Europe nowadays. Furthermore, the paper delineates the particular epistemic features of said oppression with the help of some examples and argues that it takes three forms: epistemic segregation, dominant intelligibility frameworks of white supremacy, and dismissal of ‘the right to be known’. The paper then uses the epistemic dimension of the ongoing oppression to argue that Roma can be accurately described as (a) internally colonized subjects and (b) as suffering from internal colonization – in the midst of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the unprecedented growth of international research collaboration (IRC) in Europe during the period 2009–2018 in terms of co-authorship and citation distribution of globally indexed publications. The results reveal the dynamics of this change, as growing IRC moves European science systems away from institutional collaboration, with stable and strong national collaboration. Domestic output has remained flat. The growth in publications in major European systems is almost entirely attributable to internationally co-authored papers. A comparison of trends within the four complementary collaboration modes clearly reveals that the growth of European science is driven solely by internationally co-authored papers. With the emergence of global network science, which diminishes the role of national policies in IRC and foregrounds the role of scientists, the individual scientist's willingness to collaborate internationally is central to advancing IRC in Europe. Scientists collaborate internationally when it enhances their academic prestige, scientific recognition, and access to research funding, as indicated by the credibility cycle, prestige maximization, and global science models. The study encompassed 5.5 million Scopus-indexed articles, including 2.2 million involving international collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that analyzing education policies through the lens of affect theory provides possibilities for understanding how particular concepts are associated with certain affective ideologies. To illustrate this, the paper analyzes the case of a recent publication by the Council of Europe titled Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. The analysis shows how various concepts related to 'democratic competences' are invested with affective meanings, cultural connotations and political rhetoric. The paper argues that democratic competences are effectively conflated with emotional competences, opening up an analysis of democratic education as a form of individual and psychological therapy. The conclusion addresses the implications of this argument for education policy research and practice. In particular, it highlights the importance of paying attention not only to the ways that affect shapes the production of policy text, but also how a policy seeks to invoke certain affective dispositions at the point of enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shares an early-career perspective on potential themes for the upcoming International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Scientific Decade (SD). This opinion paper synthesizes six discussion sessions in western Europe identifying three themes that all offer a different perspective on the hydrological threats the world faces and could serve to direct the broader hydrological community: "Tipping points and thresholds in hydrology," "Intensification of the water cycle," and "Water services under pressure." Additionally, four trends were distinguished concerning the way in which hydrological research is conducted: big data, bridging science and practice, open science, and inter- and multidisciplinarity. These themes and trends will provide valuable input for future discussions on the theme for the next IAHS SD. We encourage other early-career scientists to voice their opinion by organizing their own discussion sessions and commenting on this paper to make this initiative grow from a regional initiative to a global movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we are interested in modelling and solving a flow and resource planning problem related to the trade-in, treatment and resale of pre-owned consumer electronic products. This problem is motivated and inspired by the flows and the processes of the company Recommerce Group, which mainly handles traded-in used smartphones in Europe, but also used tablets, smartwatches, game consoles, laptops, etc. Collected products must be directed to refurbishment centres. After having been recorded, cleaned, tested and reset, they may be refurbished, or remanufactured by a subcontractor. They may also remain in their initial state. Finally, they are sold on diversified channels. This problem can be generalised to other refurbishment and remanufacturing activities of used consumer electronic products. We first formulate the problem as a mixed-integer linear program and show its NP-hardness. In order to solve large size real-life instances, mixed-integer programming based heuristic approaches are proposed. Extensive computational experiments on realistic instances are conducted to show the advantages and the limits of the proposed approaches. Several managerial insights are investigated and analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to shed light on the link between 'onward migration' and 'onward precarity' as an experience of continuous precariousness by paying attention to crisis/post-crisis contexts and how these contexts have led to precarity becoming structurally embedded in migrant labour markets in Europe. Onward migration studies have centrally focused on crisis contexts, but very little attention has been paid to post-crisis contexts. Thus, this article contributes to complementing the previous research on onward migration and onward precarity. The paper follows a qualitative and multi-sited approach based on in-depth interviews and discussion groups with Latin American migrants living in Madrid, Lisbon, and London. Our empirical analysis elucidates that labour mobility and onward migration are embedded in intersectional dynamics of exclusion which entail a continuous experience of multifaceted precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the removal of various monuments commemorating colonial figures, this paper introduces the Empty Plinth as epitomizing postcolonial Europe's identity crisis. As Europe negotiates new discursive foundations for an increasingly multicultural society, this paper argues for a re-membering of Europe through a materialization of Black narratives in the European memoryscape for their potential to: 1) tackle white ignorance and exclusionary nativism by uncovering Europe's contingency upon other(ed) geographies, 2) contribute to creating/fostering a Black sense of place in European cities, and 3) addressing Europe's identity crisis and lay new conceptual foundations for a hybrid and inclusive "Europe." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into pedagogical approaches used in early years' nature education, more specifically European and UK forest schools, remains according to Leather, 'undertheorised.' In a similar situation in Australia, the bush kindergarten programmes (referred to as 'bush kinders'), have had limited research attention. Influenced by European and UK forest school approaches, bush kinders are a recent development in Australian early years nature education. We discuss an ethnographic study where teaching and learning in three bush kinder settings was observed, each with different pedagogical approaches. The paper reports one main finding, where a wide range of pedagogical approaches were observed across the different bush kinder sites. To theoretically frame these pedagogical approaches, our analysis builds on Edwards' notion of play-based learning, along with a model of inquiry-based teaching proposed by Furtak et al. Using ethnographic methods we draw on fieldwork data and research literature to analyse bush kinder pedagogies. The paper contributes to the conceptualisation of pedagogy in early childhood nature and bush kinder programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Service Industries Journal is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper considers how Family Support is conceptualised in the European context with respect to its primary beneficiaries. The central question considers the focus of concern in a child welfare system and what it means when Family Support is focused on children, on parents, or involves the family unit as a whole. Informed by a body of relevant literature reviewed as part of a wider project, Family Support is seen as more often conceptualised as being targeted toward parents as the primary service user, and to a lesser extent described as being tailored toward children or whole families. This approach to Family Support provision is somewhat at odds with a systemic understanding of families, which is foundational to much social care and child welfare work, and which takes account of the multi-layered relationships between individuals within families, and between individuals, families and their social world. Applying an ecological systems perspective, this paper critically discusses the consequences for the involved stakeholders and the implementation of services at different system levels when support and interventions are targeted at the child, the parents or at the family as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse the existence of clusters in self-employment rates, segregating by place of birth, i.e. native vs foreign-born, in a group of 17 European countries. The analysis suggests that natives behave differently in peripheral and core countries, whereas their foreign-born self-employed counterparts show a similar behaviour irrespective of the characteristics of the recipient economy. These findings augment the scant available evidence about this topic in Europe (as most previous studies have focused on the United States) and confirm the existence of important differences in the entrepreneurial skills and mindset of native and migrant populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines imaginative geographies of forced migration and refugee settlement in a BBC radio series that follows and gives voice to a Syrian family as they journey to Europe. Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 2015 and 2017, the episodes have since been repackaged as a podcast on BBC Sounds. The paper answers Horton's (2019) call for greater engagement with media and popular culture by foregrounding radio as an understudied medium with the capacity to shape listeners' geographical imaginations. It explores how this series, presented by Manveen Rana, broke new ground through its journalistic-ethnographic form, eyewitness reporting and amplification of refugee voices, and analyses how two imaginative geographies of journey and settlement are constructed through sounds and the spoken word. The paper concludes by theorising radio as a slow medium and demonstrating how Rana's journalism pushes beyond Toal's (1996, p. 171) 'anti-geopolitical eye' to evidence an anti-geopolitical ear: that is to say, Rana encourages a way of listening to Europe's migration 'crisis' that disrupts discursive framings of refugees as 'victims' or 'threats' by recasting the family as tangible and relatable human beings. This finding has significant implications for media reporting on migration and scholarship on journalistic storytelling and the construction of geographical imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does growing reliance on private military and security companies (PMSCs) lead to the re-configuration of the state as a security and defence actor in Europe? Building on the multiple-networks-approach in organisation theory (Padgett and Powell), the current paper develops an analytical approach for studying the rise of new organizational forms in interstitial spaces via mechanisms including extension and differentiation; fusion and hybridity; transposition and refunctionality; and multivocality. The empirical analysis focuses on the rules and practices of Vesper Group - a PMSC working closely with the Swedish government. Several findings are reported. First, a new organizational form seems to be emerging as a result of the ongoing multiple network dynamics – national defence entrepreneurial firm. This is a type of a firm different from mainstream PMSCs in that it is owned by venture capital companies from their home state and also in that it is closely associated with its respective state in terms of its personnel policies, expertise and operational goals and scope. Second, the case of Sweden's Vesper Group and its cooperation with the Swedish government indicates that some EU member states may also be in the process of structural and institutional mutation as providers of defence and crisis management capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European defence policy offers opportunities for spending more and better where better achieves more from existing resources. Increased defence spending needs to be justified by the threats to Europe which have to be identified and defined. Higher defence expenditure usually focuses on inputs rather than final outputs in the form of greater peace, protection, security and the safety of a nation's citizens. The task is to show the opportunities for applying economic analysis to the complexities of European defence policy and collaborative defence projects. Economic efficiency criteria identify the contribution of final outputs, substitution and competition to the formulation of European defence policy, but the final outcomes are likely to be determined by military-political factors rather than economic efficiency criteria. The paper provides a critique of European defence policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, several private and political cloud initiatives emerged in Europe. This paper demonstrates how the sociotechnical imaginaries of three European cloud projects reveal a performative coupling of innovation and political ideas of control, territoriality and sovereignty. I ascertain three elements of the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (innovation, boundary making and material properties) guiding the empirical analysis. Taking technology in the making and its role in (geo)politics seriously, this paper shows how imaginaries shape and interact with current geostrategic and political developments in Europe. The analysis of Microsoft's cloud, Bundescloud and GAIA-X reveals that rising privacy and data security issues have been integrated into cloud imaginaries that traditionally highlight progress and innovation. More specifically, state actors and cloud providers link and sometimes merge allegedly opposing technological aspects of innovation and politicised ideas of control such as digital sovereignty. This shift constitutes a move towards erecting political borders and localising IT within a global infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we think about European integration practices, we rarely consider how they may extend to outer space. Yet, a new global space race is in full swing, in which commercial and government actors worldwide are putting forward bold visions of human futures in outer space. Europe is at the cusp of deciding which role to play in this new Space Age, with the European rocket program Ariane being at the centre of many debates about the future of Europe in space. Controversies about the future of the jointly built and heavily subsidised rocket entangle questions of innovation, in/security, and geopolitical power constellations. This paper traces which kind of space futures are projected onto and realised through Ariane, how the current geopolitical dynamics in the accelerating New Space Age are co-constitutive of how European strategic autonomy is envisioned, and how these futures relate to ideals and tensions of European integration. Mobilising work in science and technology studies (STS) on sociotechnical imaginaries and insights from the emerging social studies of outer space (SSOS), the paper offers unique and timely insights into how future visions of space shape forms of European collaboration in the present and how, conversely, geopolitical relations on Earth shape how and by whom these futures are imagined. The empirical part builds on two years of fieldwork in the European space sector, including interviews and participant observation. It presents three vignettes that highlight different aspects of strategic autonomy. The vignettes concern (1) the broader geopolitical dimension of the European rocket programme, (2) the issue of dual-use and the blurring of boundaries between civilian and military innovation, and (3) European technopolitical integration and the question of power in changing actor configurations. It is argued that the current emphasis on strategic autonomy in the European context represents a significant transformation of the role of space for European (security) integration and direct response to both the commercialisation and the securitisation of space. Moreover, it is shown how the securitisation of (access to) outer space has become a vital force to spur innovation – channelling resources, marshalling funds, and creating political legitimacy, entangling political economies of innovation with geopolitical transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigrant minority (IM) languages have a significant presence in certain European regions. Nonetheless, these languages are not usually included in the school curriculum. This paper aims to analyse the studies published between 2010 and 2020 considering IM languages in multilingual European education contexts. The method included a search of academic papers published in the databases ERIC, Web of Science and Scopus, which yielded 42 studies. The studies were analysed by considering (1) the demographic characteristics of the countries where the studies were conducted, (2) the sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic focus of the papers in relation to the European country, and (3) the characteristics of the bi-multilingual education programme including IM languages. The results indicate that (1) the demographic characteristics of the country are not strictly related to the number of studies published, (2) most studies have a sociolinguistic approach even though many studies analyse both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors, and (3) only seven multilingual education programmes including IM languages were described in these papers. We conclude that there is a lack of research focusing on IM languages in educational settings and discuss how addressing these gaps could create opportunities for building equitable multilingual communities in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of lack of control, a diffuse attitude closely associated with emotions, on support for radical populist parties of the left and right. Lack of control is the perception of not having control over one's own life. Although this is not political per se, it is hypothesized that underlying emotions and associated feelings shape political preferences. We argue that as populist parties offer a clear distinction between in – and out-group and promise order, less complexity, as well as economic protection for ordinary people, they have a greater appeal to such citizens. In doing so, the paper tests three hypotheses. The findings of two cross-country analyses carried out with data of the European Values Study 2017 lend empirical support for the theoretical arguments made. The two pooled analyses of 12 radical right populist parties and six radical left populist parties yield that lack of control increases support for radical populist parties of both the left and the right. An examination of interaction effects suggests that sensing a lack of control tends to have a reinforcing effect on voters with nativist attitudes in support of RRPP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we empirically analyse the redistributive efficiency of fiscal policy considering its degree of decentralization for a sample of thirty-five countries over the 2000–2016 period. To do this, we follow a two-stage process where we first employ a bootstrap Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method to estimate the redistributive efficiency of cash transfers and direct taxes at the central and subnational levels. We obtain evidence that redistributive efficiency has diminished after the Great Recession (2007–2008), and is lower in the Southern European countries, and higher in almost the rest of Europe and the Latin American countries. Second, a bootstrap truncated regression analysis is used to identify the contextual factors that might explain redistributive efficiency variation across countries and time, supporting the argument that good governance is a requirement for decentralization to be efficient in promoting policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of EU rural development policies and imaginaries have entailed that rural areas in Europe and their residents have been assigned specific roles concerning local responsibility and identities when it comes to attaining positive territorial development. The paper approaches the rationality of rural development as community-led through a lens of Governmentality and Europeanisation to explore how the local alignment of actions and government rationalities are linked. The presented research outlines rural development discourse first in EU rural policy and then at the local level through an analysis of text data published by a local development association. The paper traces the linkage between the two institutional levels and establishes how the success of rural development is not only to constitute issues and themes in a particular form but also to have these embedded locally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings attention to the notion of 'religious affects', namely, the affects, emotions and feelings related to religion and religious experience. It is argued that educators and students have a lot to gain from paying attention to and exploring the meaning and role of religious feelings in the context of controversies and debates surrounding Islam in the West. In particular, the paper suggests that by exploring the affective dimensions of religious injury (e.g. irritation, dishonour, insult, injury, offense, outrage), educators and students can enhance their understanding of how religious emotions are involved in religious controversies such as the recent cartoon controversies in several European countries. It is argued that a richer comprehension of affective dimensions of religious controversies will help promote inter-religious understanding and respect, an important educational aim in contemporary times, especially in school subjects such as religious education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accompanied by public demands to reduce migration by creating perspectives 'at home', employability projects have become an important component of migration and development policies. While research has revealed the sedentarism underlying these policies and questioned the effectiveness thereof, more recent work has found that stakeholders are, in fact, aware of the potential increase of migration. However, contrary to analyses that hold that such interventions are carried out because they meet the different interests of both migration and development actors, this paper argues that migration and development interventions are mutually implicated. Examining European employability projects in Tunisia and drawing on interviews with representatives of donors and implementing organisations as well as policy documents, this paper argues that employability activities operate through twofold depoliticised logics. Whereas the focus on employability enables isolating migration from politicised debates across Europe, these interventions promote depoliticised logics of neoliberal selectivity. In centring skills in these interventions, some subjects are rendered employable for the Tunisian and, potentially, European labour market. Others, in turn, are excluded from the participation in migration and development due to a lack of sought-after skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of a set of shared or common values constitutes a substantial component of EU-discourse. Values are mentioned at the beginning of the Lisbon Treaty, and can be easily found in any communication material produced by the European Union. This paper argues for the relevance of studying from a semiotic perspective the link between values, the European Union and the broader idea of "Europe". Specifically, it discusses the place of values in the discursive construction of the European Union and "Europe" as distinct cultural units of meaning. As it is argued, values have a salient place in the discourses, narratives and social imaginaries about what "Europe" is and who and what "is" "European". The paper draws on Fornäs (2012) study of the symbols of Europe and argues that values constitute a central nodal point in the discursive articulation of the EU – and with it, of the idea of Europe – in the level of the "forms of life". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade we have witnessed the rise of radical left parties (RLPs) in several European countries. According to the prevalent definition in the literature, the key feature of this party family is the goal to overcome capitalism. However, based on content analysis of party and governmental documents, this paper argues that the two most prominent RLPs today, SYRIZA (Greece) and Podemos (Spain), fall short in their socio-economic policies of that definition. Why are they still classified as radical left then? In addressing this puzzle, the paper critically revisits the established notion of the "party family" coined by Mair and Mudde, arguing instead that parties are what they choose to do and should therefore be classified according to their policy. Based on this, it is argued that parties such as SYRIZA and Podemos would be more accurately described as "neo-reformist left," as a sub-type of the social democratic party family. Clarifying the character of these parties is not only important for conceptual consistency. By labelling "radical" parties that are not so, political scientists risk reinforcing the legitimacy of the neoliberal status quo, not the least by excluding from the conversation the actual radical alternatives. This is particularly relevant today, with the resurgence of anti-capitalist ideas among younger generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the interwar period in Europe, cacti emerged as significant architectural devices that challenged traditional notions of architecture, offering an alternative understanding of the discipline while embodying the politics of their time. Investigating the overlooked prevalence of cacti in early modernist writings, photographs, artwork, and spaces, this paper reveals a European obsession with the desert plant in the early twentieth century that has been hidden in plain sight. The transmaterial entanglements of cacti with the architecture of the Bauhaus and its other human, vegetal, and material occupants forged a biochemical interspecies contract, signaling shifting attitudes toward gender inequities and industrialized labor. Celebrated for their machinic qualities, their mind-altering and time-bending chemical properties, and their sexual suggestiveness, many species of cacti—while objectified—were instrumental witnesses and silent provocateurs of the period, offering whimsical and exoticized additions to the modern aesthetic. They represented a different aesthetic realm coming from the desert, and spurred radical new imaginaries concerning gender, economics, and politics. Cacti emerged as trans-geographical agents, instrumentalized as both symbols of the modern environment in Europe and of the arid geographies from which they originated—shaping a new media ecology. Further, the ingestions of cactus-based chemicals in this period transformed the consciousness of early modernists, instigating lysergic experiences that challenged linear conceptions of time, fostering queer temporality and novel futurities. By examining the role of environmental elements in shaping architectural modernism, this paper suggests correspondences between the built environment and the natural world, offering a new perspective on a significant period in architectural history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With immensely growing pressure on land and its scarcity, conflicting societal expectations concerning land use increasingly result in land use conflicts (LUCs). In this paper, we explore local LUCs, which we define as the complex situations, where fragmented planning policies encounter place-based societal conceptions and perceptions of site-specific developmental priorities. The paper adopts a dynamic approach and introduces a theory-driven typology of potentially conflicting planning decisions. The typology is employed as an analytic framework to reveal the open-ended successive planning decisions that lead to complex local LUCs. Two case studies from Central Europe are explored to narrate the evolutionary complexity of LUCs. Our results show that local LUCs emerged as the past planning decisions lined-up into a sequence creating lock-in situations, where different planning policies can be hardly reconciled. Finally, we discuss applicability, transferability and limits of the proposed typology as an analytic framework advancing management of planning conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The permanent changes in society affect, among other, the environment. This is why environmental efficiency plays a very important role, being quantified in different forms. In our paper we have developed a composite index of ecological efficiency taking into account two dimensions, environmental pollution and resource consumption, each one being characterized by specific indicators. Thus, using this index, the aim was to evaluate and rank the level of greening of each country in Europe. Crises over time, including the health crisis caused by coronavirus, have focused to resilience, so we have highlighted whether it is significantly influenced by the ecological efficiency index. In addition, we analyzed whether ecological efficiency is related to investments in a country, financial, material and technological potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial paper introduces the relevance of trust in educational settings. It discusses interdisciplinary approaches to trust, reflects upon the relationships between trust and education and how trust has so far been studied in educational research. In addition, a comprehensive model of trust is introduced as a framework for the individual papers of this special issue that altogether, through different disciplinary and methodological lenses, investigate trust in various realms of education in five European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines industrial policy responses to the 2008 crisis in four European countries and gauges their long-term significance by asking: to what extent were these politicised, short term remedies; or enduring policy changes? We find that policy responses varied significantly in their coherence and long-term impact and argue that the key influential factors were: the presence of large, globally competitive manufacturing bases spanning several adjacent sectors; and the existence of strong public-private elite networks, rather than pre-existing institutional structures – which proved surprisingly malleable. The paper contributes to the understanding of the determinants of policy-making in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of accessibility to the information associated with European built heritage is a significant factor of exclusion that precludes many European citizens from appropriating a shared cultural heritage. Nowadays, three-dimensional scanning, modelling, and rendering technologies provide many highly effective tools to virtually access the available digital heritage of many European buildings in different historical periods through images, videos, texts, libraries, or specific databases of information associated with historical-scientific knowledge. However, several factors, such as the availability of human, economic, and technical resources, the heterogeneity of the standards and the lack of regulations, still hinder the possibility of translating data into usable content for a wider audience and the chances of creating collaboration between professional experts and scholars. Considering that, the paper focuses on defining the User Experience (UX) of INCEPTION's web platform, a European-funded multidisciplinary research project that has adopted new web technologies to develop open-source three-dimensional models of cultural heritage buildings for digital architectural conservation. The paper evaluates the importance of adopting a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach and involving stakeholders and end-users throughout the design development process, as they actively contributed to fostering more accessibility and inclusiveness for the final INCEPTION's web configuration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has made the development of a circular economy one of the central ambitions of its Green Deal, in which plastics are a defined priority. Current policies, however, have drawn criticism that the narrow focus on techno-innovation opportunities and economic growth falls short of addressing multifaceted socio-ecological challenges, overlooks trade-offs between proposed solutions, and conceals conflicts of interest among different actors. This paper contributes to opening-up the critical political debate on the circular plastics economy using discourse analysis. Looking at how arguments are framed, which priorities are defined, and how actors take positions, we identify three circular plastics economy discourses in Europe: 'Plastic fantastic' (material-focused), 'Circular economy will fly us to the moon' (plastics economy-focused), and 'Even plastic flowers are dead in this system' (socio-ecological systems-focused). Our paper demonstrates that the circular plastics economy is inherently political and is actively imagined, built, and created through discursive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper documents and tries to explain a striking negative correlation between COVID-19 mortality across countries and deaths during World War II. The correlation persists with various controls for observables and allowing for latent omitted variables, using the pre-war distribution of the Jewish population for identification. The correlation also survives influence and falsification tests, measurement-error adjustments, and tests for spatial autocorrelation, which can generate spurious historical dependence. We suggest a theoretical explanation whereby large shocks promote institutions and cooperative behavioral norms – interpretable as civic capital – that initially help attenuate losses from future large shocks, though with fading impact over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cosmopolitanism, which is often defined as openness to other cultures and individuals, is significant for understanding processes of stratification in contemporary, globalised societies that are home to increasingly diverse populations. In this paper, we broaden the perspective on cosmopolitanism to include cultural, interpersonal, and political dimensions. We test the associations between these types of cosmopolitanism and three types of correlates: socio-demographic characteristics, personal exposure to other cultures, and exposure to other cultures via various media. We analyse data from nine European countries that differ in the characteristics of their population, cultural traditions, and political models. Results indicate that differences between respondents in the nine countries are better explained by individual characteristics than by country characteristics. Furthermore, it is mainly personal and mediated exposure to other cultures, rather than socio-demographic variables, that play a significant role in influencing respondents' cosmopolitan tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at assessing whether party organizational profiles and policy issue saliency converged in 7 European democracies (Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK), from the 1970s to the 2010s. Building on the theoretical premises of the cartel party thesis and historical new-institutionalism, the paper argues that general tendencies in party policy issue saliency and organizational evolution driven by contextual factors have been taken for granted by party literature based on ideal-typical models. We maintain that party convergence is mainly associated to higher levels of socialization to government. Our empirical analysis shows that patterns of cross-country convergence among parties actually emerge concerning the saliency of the issues placed on the classical left-right divide, as well as party resources, while higher variance characterizes all the other organizational dimensions and post-materialist/value-based policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide further evidence about the influence of corruption on corporate investment. Using a large sample of the European region non-financial firms for the period 2011–2020, our results suggest that corruption in Europe negatively affects corporate investment, thus, supporting the 'sanding the wheel' hypothesis. This relationship is moderated by all six dimensions of the national culture proposed by Hofstede. Using appropriate panel data methodology, namely GMM estimations, we find that a higher degree of uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity, and indulgence exacerbate the adverse effects of corruption on corporate investment while a higher degree of long-term orientation and individualism alleviates this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public sector corruption affects economic and financial outcomes, such as GDP growth, foreign direct investment, and government funding costs. Less is known about the spillovers from perceptions of public sector corruption on the private sector corporate bond market. In this paper, we assess the role of public sector corruption perception on corporate bond market variables in Europe using data of both country-level corporate bond indexes and firm-level corporate bond market issuances. At the aggregate country level, we find some evidence that country indices of corporate bonds' yields and coupons are higher in countries with more corruption. While we do not find effects of corruption on coupon rates at the individual firm level, we show that higher government corruption perception increases their yield to maturity and reduces the amounts raised by corporations through their bond issuances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]