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The paper contributes to the current debate on just transitions which is exploring what factors and conditions can lead to a twin transition that can also achieve an equitable redistribution of the outputs. The paper draws on the theories of justice, by bringing together three dimensions of justice: distributive, procedural and substantive justice. We apply this framework to explain the socio-economic impact of technology-pushed structural change on the future of work. We define just transition as a triple transition that requires digital and green shifts and crucially, a competence and skill transition that transversally cuts across industries, jobs and professions. The paper analyses the case of a specific region, Emilia Romagna in Italy, which has implemented, particularly since 2010, an original holistic approach to industrial development policy, comprising social and education policies. We conclude that within a national education framework tasked with pivoting the mix of necessary basic knowledge, regions have an important role to play by designing and implementing place-based education and training initiatives that are specific to the regional socio-economic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pandemics refract sociopolitical tensions within societies and highlight how national belonging hinges on informal performances as much as legal status. While return migration has become a common practice and institutionalized strategy of state development, little scholarly work has probed how domestic populations view returnees and their claims to national membership. Using a large-scale, pre-registered online survey experiment deploying a give-or-take Dictator Game, this paper leverages the dynamics of COVID-19 to explore how Chinese nationals envision and treat returnees. First, our results illustrate that the Chinese population imagines returnees as a group of elites with substantial social and financial capital, even though returnees are a socio-economically diverse population. Next, by applying information priming, we demonstrate that Chinese nationals discriminated against overseas returnees during the pandemic and that this behavior was not primarily driven by fears of viral contagion. Finally, using mediation analysis, we show that participants' differential behavior towards returnees can largely be explained by participants' perceptions of returnees' class status and adherence to key markers of national membership. Ultimately, this paper broadens our understanding of the informal dynamics of national membership and intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a campus climate survey conducted at an Australian university. Unprecedented compositional diversity now exists in higher education, with students enrolled from different religious, socio-economic, geographic, and cultural backgrounds. Despite this diversity, little research has been conducted into the ways that different student groups experience university, including marginalised and 'hidden' groups such as LGBTIQA+ students. The survey aimed to uncover the impact of diversity on student experiences, including the extent to which students associated with others from different backgrounds, the extent to which their own views and beliefs were challenged, and the extent to which they felt safe on campus. Findings suggest a need for more targeted research, particularly into the experiences of marginalised groups, and for reform of both institutional policy and curriculum. Further, we found that students are frequently thinking about identity, diversity, and bias, and their own voices need to be elevated within institutional strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite obvious gravitation towards child adoption in recent times, resistance to the practice is still strong among Igbos in southern Nigeria. The paper explains this resistance from the Igbo cultural orientation of the past, which survives in the present, and the socio-economic realities of contemporary times. It demonstrates how the Igbo socio-cultural contexts provide both a formidable force against the identity of the adopted and a basis to contest against such for socio-economic privileges in the contemporary context. The paper further explains the implications of this development – a gradual creation of a new group of the Igbo with unshared identity in urban centers, who unlike the conventional migrant Igbo, has little or no link with the 'traditional homeland'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores aspirations among the youth in India by seeing connections to two themes – ambition and satisfaction. While aspirations can call on a range of values, what is it that drives people as they deal with aspirations? Is dissatisfaction a driver of ambition, or a hurdle for future progress? How does one look at ambition and satisfaction in the larger field of aspirations as sociological phenomena? Using macro-data to establish a broader context, along with in-depth interviews with working women from a range of occupations in Delhi, and a detailed case-study of one woman , this paper studies the role ambition and satisfaction play in women's lives in urban India. It underscores the barriers and risks young women face in the labour market, which vary by their occupation, socio-economic status, and level of education. These barriers constrain and, at times, motivate women to be ambitious, to aspire, and to achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interprets the concept of δοῦλος in 1 Timothy 6:1-2 in the context of socio-economic slavery in Nigeria. Using the liberation hermeneutics approach, the paper argues that the concept of δοῦλος in 1 Timothy 6:1-2 is a typical reflection of injustice and oppression to the person or group being socio-economically exploited. The resonance of the text with the Ibibio narrative of socio-economic slavery in Nigeria is the similarity of treatments accorded the δοῦλος in domestic and economic affairs in first-century Greco-Roman setting. Drawing on existing literature and the text in view, it interrogates the meaning of δοῦλος in a Greco-Roman setting and the status accorded the δοῦλος in the original and contemporary socio-economic settings of the study. The result shows that δοῦλος is interpreted to mean slavery. It recommends that the Church and state should put resources together to carry out economic and educational empowerment for the youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The AV1 robotic device has a growing evidence base, both internationally and in the UK, for supporting pupils with physical/emotional health needs. The device allows pupils to access their school lessons remotely through telepresence technology. Previous papers have highlighted the growing relevance to the education field, although, to date, there is no published UK academic research. In consideration of this, the purpose of the present paper was to explore the views of school staff who have trialled the AV1 device in the UK. Semi-structured interviews were held with 10 staff members from different school settings before data were analysed thematically. Key themes related to potential for impact, opportunities/challenges, and wider socio-economic considerations. Implications are considered in relation to (1) future research and professional practice, and (2) the introduction of a proposed implementation framework to support practitioners when trialling the AV1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the constitutive impact of the 'international' on the sociopolitical transformations in Syria and Libya through the lens of the theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD). The conventional and numerous critical analyses of Syrian and Libyan sociopolitical change suffer from a Eurocentric and stagist understanding of development. This paper argues that development problems can be better conceptualized with an interactive framework made possible by the UCD theory. In this context, we focus on how the expansion and consolidation of capitalism through the dynamics of UCD have concretely shaped the process of sociopolitical transformation in Syria and Libya to shed light on how the international and the local have articulated to produce the socioeconomic and political outcomes in these two states. We conclude by arguing that the theory of UCD provides an alternative conceptualization in explaining the specific development trajectories in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which teacher factors of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness can explain variation in student achievement in mathematics. It also searches for the extent to which any of these factors matters more for academically resilient students than for all the other low-socioeconomic-status students. Participants were all teachers (N = 66) of 14 schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas who teach mathematics to students of Grades 4–6 (N = 904). Teacher factors were measured through a student questionnaire, whereas mathematics achievement at the beginning and the end of the school year was measured through written tests. Student background characteristics were measured through a student questionnaire. Information on parents' occupational status was also collected. Multilevel modelling analysis revealed that all teacher factors explain variation in mathematics achievement. Differential effects for all factors but modelling and assessment were identified. Implications of findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss the pressing need for a just transition in one of our most environmentally and socially problematic contemporary industries: the fashion and textiles industry. We detail the current injustices in the industry, from both environmental and socio-economic standpoints, and then move on to providing some suggestions as to how these entrenched problems with the industry could be addressed. Specifically, we identify five key action areas that could take us towards a just transition for the fashion and textiles industry: establishing limits, developing new indicators, promoting fairness, implementing just modes of governance, and creating new exchange systems. We propose policy interventions in each of these five action areas and discuss how they could practically be put into practice. In doing so, we develop a novel theoretical concept for a more just version of the global fashion industry: the 'Wellbeing Wardrobe', which draws on wellbeing economics and de-growth thinking applied to the contemporary fashion industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the high-speed rail debate (HSR) there has been lacking in-depth theoretical and evidential research on the role HSR has on tacit knowledge flows between industrial clusters or regions of economic productivity. The research that has begun to emerge has focused on knowledge indicators such as patents for social/tacit knowledge exchange, which this paper raises concerns over. This review aims to discover new links for HSR with cluster economics through social knowledge theory and aims to create a conceptual framework that will provide a new perspective for future research in the HSR debate concerning social knowledge exchange. Potential implications are presented for future transport policy decision-making, based on the relationship HSR may have with inter-regional tacit knowledge flows and accessibility benefits in regional balancing. Future research considerations are pointed out that argue to measure the flow of knowledge from HSR, research needs to go in-depth to the social aspect of interactions and relationship buildings, as quantitative data will struggle to capture tacit knowledge flow itself, due to the tacit nature of such information. The presented framework highlights the tacit nature of interactions facilitated by HSR connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of birth order on educational attainment in the United States and the underlying mechanism producing these effects. Using a family fixed effects model, we find negative birth order effects on educational outcomes. However, this effect varies depending on the household's income, being the strongest for households with the highest income and diminishing as households' income decreases. In addition, we show that the timing of income across childhood is important for completed education, as the largest gap in educational attainment between siblings emerges between those who were born and spent their early childhood in wealthier households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the twists and turns that characterise the political reactions of some 'left-behind' places. Offering a situated, context-sensitive and temporal analysis of Turkey's once extractive heartland, we unveil a volatile and particularly fragile political terrain and throw light on its contingency on changing modes of state intervention and power-laden strategies responsive to disaffection and discontent. We suggest that this power-laden mechanism that plays down, if not eradicates, the ability of places to transform and thrive precludes conceptions that invariably position left-behind places as 'vengeful' and invites dynamic and context-sensitive comprehensions of discontent and agential and processual reconceptions of left-behindness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rural–urban poverty gap exists in most countries around the world, and this paper employs a novel approach to explain this difference, using logistic regression to examine the effects of rural–urban residence type, individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics, and changes in government policies on the likelihood of being poor in England. Unusually, rural areas in England have lower poverty rates than urban areas, so the direction of the typical rural–urban poverty gap is reversed, but the method employed here would be applicable in either direction. We disaggregate micro-data from the Understanding Society Survey (USS) into three residence types (predominantly rural; significantly rural and predominantly urban), and combine these USS data with information on changes in councils' spending power, in service spending and in per capita income lost from cuts to welfare benefits since 2010. The results demonstrate that rural residence provides a buffer against poverty in England, a so-called 'rural advantage effect', but this is reduced or becomes non-significant after controlling for individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics and changes in government policies. Furthermore, working-age poverty has increased more rapidly in rural areas than urban between 2010 and 2018. Our analysis also reveals how national policies have differential spatial impacts on local populations according to their diverse characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the fraught status paradoxes and settlement impediments of European migrants in Asian cities like Tokyo, Singapore, and Dubai. Global European emigration is predominantly imagined as professional ‘expatriation’, framed as temporary if not steeped in linear career pathways of manifest privilege. The implied bifurcation between voluntary European mobilities and economic migrations from the Global South is complicated here by foregrounding the existential aspirations of middling European emigrants who are anxious about their future class position in Europe and therefore resettle along a wider trans-Asian economic corridor. While this European mobile middle retains global advantages in terms of transnational circulation and entry by virtue of their European citizenship capital, they face under-documented legal hurdles and social precarities in their quest for overseas permanence. We conceptualise this transcontinental process, marked by a complex set of mobility ambivalences over time, as ‘migratory classmaking’, the distinctive aspirations of which elucidate that structural socioeconomic incentives are equally bound up with contemporary forms of European migration. Enmeshed in this global process of migratory class-making lays a European predicament that speaks of blighted existential hopes about middle-class stability imagined to be the ideal result of multi-year investments in class-making across Europe and Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to identify functional regions that reflect the contiguous spatial economic reach of major Brazilian urban centres. We use data from commuting to work and study between municipalities and apply network analysis methods for the periods of 1980, 2000 and 2010, aiming to find regions with the maximal internal consistency of their commuting flows in each period. Our results provide functional regions that serve as an alternative geographical division for Brazil, with the advantage of broadening the scope for regional analysis, policies and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French language as a subject was formally re-injected in the mainstream schools as a pilot project in 2009 in Lesotho. This language, which was initially introduced in schools in 1868 and whose popularity decreased following the missionaries' departure from Lesotho, is viewed by the Ministry of Education and Training as an instrumental tool in promoting individual, national and socio-economic development. French, vis-à-vis English and Sesotho, is at the basis of the concept of multilingualism in a country that is officially recognised as being bilingual. It is against this backdrop that this article sought to explore learners' attitudes towards multilingualism through the re-introduction of French as a subject. Purposive sampling was used to select 9 secondary school participants where French was taught. Data were generated using focus group interviews and open-ended questionnaires. The findings demonstrate that most participants display positive affective attitudes towards multilingualism, viewing it as a step towards attainment of an idealised self, as creating job opportunities and as promoting globalisation. Seemingly, habitual attitudes influence social and/or factual attitudes. The paper is nuanced by the neoliberalism theory to demonstrate that the students' understanding of the utility of languages is largely informed by the logic of the market and business, reducing education to a clinical activity. This article thus recommends the inclusion of three propositions of affective attitudes in the language policy in order to contribute to the development of a holistic individual who would work towards the attainment of an idealised self through qualification, socialisation and subjectification, thereby preserving the concept of multilingualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse how State policies, on the book and in practice, shape family reunification. It focuses on child migration under constraint in France, by analysing the timing and factors of (non-)reunification among foreign immigrants, whose legal conditions for family reunification are much more restrictive than for those who obtained the French citizenship. Using a quantitative approach with a nationally representative survey, the article analyses to what extent and in what circumstances migrants took one or the other of three paths during the 1973–2009 period: bringing their children in France through the administrative channel of family reunification (de jure reunification), turning to an alternative channel of child migration (de facto reunification), or leaving their child behind in their birth country. Results show that de jure reunification is not the predominant option and strongly suggest that this pathway is impaired both by an official state selection based on socioeconomic criteria enshrined in law, and by an unofficial state selection in policy implementation due to discriminatory treatments and regional inequalities in administration resources. In response to these restrictions, families adapt either by turning to de facto reunification or by maintaining transnational ways of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing countries, research evidence on the socio-economic impact is a crucial issue in motivating and encouraging community-based restoration of degraded watershed ecosystems. This paper focuses on exploring the socio-economic impacts of rehabilitating a watershed area in two villages (kebeles) using two independently pooled cross-sectional data sets. 240 households were selected at random to provide the data. Half of the households (120) were randomly chosen from the records of the rural land and agricultural development office in 2007 and the other half (120) were randomly selected and interviewed in 2022 using semi-structured questionnaires. Our results show that the contribution of the restored area to the economy of the local communities dramatically increased between 2007 and 2022. The main economic activities encountered in the restored area are fuelwood collection, the harvesting of construction wood, collecting grasses, and harvesting fodder, which are practiced by 75%, 68%, 59% and 41% of sampled households in 2022, respectively, while the same activities were practiced by 5%, 0%, 0%, and 2.5% households in 2007, respectively. Rehabilitation intervention also created job opportunities, and strengthened social networking among local households. These findings can help government and non-government stakeholders those implement ecosystem restoration by enhancing community-based rehabilitation of watersheds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tracks the arrival of investors in the housing market of Dudelange, Luxembourg. In so doing, it focuses on the socio-economic changes accompanying the transformation of homes into assets, since the first apartment was built in the city in the mid-1960s until 2018. Drawing on complete land registry data, we chart the structure of apartment ownership in the context of the city's transition from an industrial to a financialised economy, with particular attention to three characteristics of buyers: age at purchase, country of birth and occupation. We investigate how homeowner characteristics have shifted over time in a context where housing policies have incentivised investor activity and demand. We highlight how three policies put in place in the early 2000s to encourage real estate investments seem to have strengthened the position of the group already most advantaged on the Luxembourg housing market: those born in Luxembourg and over 45 years of age. Given that this group has on average the highest median incomes and the highest homeownership rates, we argue that these policies that incentivised property investments are likely to have accelerated housing (and wider) inequalities in an overheated housing market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on an intervention study focussing on translanguaging pedagogies. The study was carried out in 2020–2022 in collaboration with principals and teachers at one school located in a socioeconomic disadvantaged area in Sweden. Drawing on teachers' logbooks, the aim was to investigate in what ways the theoretical concept of translanguaging is understood and transformed into teaching and learning within multilingual classroom practices with students aged 6–12. The analysed data reveal that opportunities for communication and interaction are designed through the organisation of language groups, the approaches of comparing and translating, and using multimodal and digital reinforcements. Teachers expressed stances around providing opportunities for students to interact and communicate various subject content through all their languages. A shift in pedagogical thinking was made visible regarding how the teachers chose to describe and categorise students' multilingual and cultural experiences. Identified paradoxes concern students' experiences of using all their languages for learning, possibilities for integrating several languages in classroom practices, and the status of various languages in society. Possible collaborations between schools and students' homes were highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People have been raising the alarm about a language education crisis in the UK, particularly in England, for twenty years. Yet the crisis continues: the number of young people studying languages at school is low, especially in socioeconomically less-privileged areas. University programmes – particularly in universities with below average entry tariffs – are closing, but we do not understand the regional impact of this decline. This paper fills that gap by identifying 'cold spots': areas of the country where no universities offer language degrees. The programming language R was used to analyse the location of universities at various entry tariffs, and areas of the country further than a commutable distance of 60 km were identified. Large cold spots were found in the North, East and South West of England for universities offering languages at below average entry tariff, with the cold spot in the South West also present at higher entry tariffs. This is a social justice issue, since most students attend university close to home, with students from less-privileged socioeconomic backgrounds and some ethnic minority backgrounds more likely to commute. This leads to a key strategic recommendation: to open language degree programmes at one lower tariff university in each cold spot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it has been shown that university attendance is strongly predicted by parental education, we know very little about why some potential first-generation students make it to university and others do not. This paper looks at the role of non-cognitive skills in the university participation of this disadvantaged group in England. We find that having higher levels of locus of control, academic self-concept, work ethic, and self-esteem in adolescence is positively related to intergenerational educational mobility to university. Our results indicate these skills help potential first-generation students to compensate for their relative disadvantage, and they are especially crucial for boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs an explorative case study methodology, which utilises interviews, historical analysis and observations to identify and analyse the local powers and politics that influence large-scale mining development in developing societies. It uses the Trident Mine Project in Kalumbila in rural North-Western Zambia as a case study. The Trident Project comprises an existing copper mining/processing operation at Sentinel Mine and a nickel mining development project at Enterprise Mine. It is owned by Kalumbila Minerals Ltd, a subsidiary of the Canadian-listed metal and mining company First Quantum Minerals Ltd. Situated on land previously managed under customary tenure, the Trident Project presents a useful case study to explore the tensions and contradictions that arose in this large-scale mining development. The findings reveal how several local actors influence large-scale mining and the nature and direction of the mining-induced socio-economic benefits. This implies that the state is not limited to a duality (civil and customary powers) of the type identified by Mahmood Mamdani. Instead, the paper explores several public and 'private' power poles that often function as a fractured state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital storytelling combines traditional storytelling with digital technologies. Although recognised as a powerful creative method across many domains, its application in the context of widening participation remains underexplored. This study from Australia sought to investigate teachers' perceptions of the benefits and limitations of using digital storytelling in a widening participation programme. Five partner schools engaged in a programme that involved creating a digital narrative about students' post-school futures. A total of 36 teachers delivering the 10-week programme to students of 13–14 years of age participated in focus groups, with 12 completing post-delivery surveys. Data were analysed qualitatively. The analysis suggested that, according to the teacher participants, digital narrative can be an effective tool for maximising student engagement in widening participation activities. However, emphasis was placed on the impact of the digital divide, which disproportionately affects students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in under-resourced school environments. The study highlights the potential of using digital storytelling in a widening participation context. It also underscores how support for developing teacher and student digital literacies, as well as reliable access to technology and infrastructure, needs to be in place if the digital narrative is to be strongly embedded into future widening participation outreach activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The war that has been raging in Ukraine since 24 February has claimed thousands of lives. The attacks by Russian forces on residential and public buildings have caused material damage on a scale not seen since the Second World War, in violation of existing international conventions. Military operations have also targeted Ukrainian cultural heritage. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which was to some extent similar, also resulted in the destruction of a large amount of immovable heritage. This article outlines promising approaches to solving the key problems of post-war heritage restoration in Ukraine, taking into account the relevant experiences of the Balkan countries. The Balkan case can provide scientific added value derived from the synthesis of the Balkan and Ukrainian experiences to increase the effectiveness of reconstruction assistance from international institutions. Practical recommendations for the establishment of an efficient post-war heritage management system are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children undergo significant changes as they enter secondary school, a time during which their social and academic self-concept is fluid and the pressures to adjust and show positive attitudes and behaviours are intense. Utilising data from the Millennium Cohort Study (Waves 4 and 5) the purpose of this study was two-fold: to examine longitudinal changes in academic self-concept, self-esteem and school attitudes in pre and mid adolescents through the lenses of gender and SES; and to trace the unique and cumulative effects of SES, gender and parenting on academic self-concept, self-esteem and school attitudes in 14- year-olds. The findings showed that academic self-concept, self-esteem and positive school attitudes decreased considerably between the ages of 11 and 14, and that girls rated themselves lower in self-esteem and school attitudes than did boys. The observed drop in academic self-concept was sharper in 14-year-olds from economically less well-off families. Parent behaviour and practices and the home learning environment contributed significantly to 14-year-olds' school attitudes, self-esteem and self-concept. These findings have implications for developing school policies that support self-esteem especially during the first years of secondary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic-associated learning losses were unequal across school subjects and sociodemographic groups. This study posits that these losses are also heterogeneous based on pre-pandemic school effectiveness, that is, the value schools added above the expected students' learning based on their socioeconomic background. Using national-scale standardized mathematics and reading test scores, we compared learning losses between 2013–2018 (pre-pandemic) and 2022 at the school level in Chile and examined how they varied according to an indicator of schools' pre-pandemic effectiveness. Schools with high effectiveness underwent the highest pandemic-driven losses, especially in mathematics. These losses were more pronounced as schools reopened later and students' post-pandemic attendance decreased. Educational policies should adjust to this heterogeneity. While high-vulnerability, high-effectiveness schools require support to mitigate the pandemic's effects, low-effectiveness schools must enhance their capacity to foster student learning beyond these impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student performance data is increasingly used to monitor and evaluate teachers. This study examines whether the turnover intentions – if teachers would change schools given the chance – of teachers in socioeconomically disadvantaged classrooms are moderated by teacher appraisal practices based on student academic performance data at the school system-level. Three-level hierarchical modelling in 46 education systems is conducted based on the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) from 2018. Results show that the effect of classroom socioeconomic composition on teacher turnover intentions increases as a function of performance-based teacher appraisal. However, this is only true when the appraisal is conducted by external authorities, and not so when conducted by the school management team. The models are then re-run by school consequences of appraisal such as dismissal, financial bonuses, or sanctions, and then by teacher characteristics, including gender, experience, and teaching subject. Experienced teachers in socioeconomically disadvantaged classrooms are more likely to change schools in school systems with more performance data-based teacher appraisal. These results underscore the potential pitfalls of performance data-based accountability systems for students in socioeconomically disadvantaged educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]