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Immigrants in rural areas and immigrant employment in the agricultural sector have been studied from a variety of perspectives. However, we currently lack a bird's-eye view of these two phenomena covering all EU member states through time. This paper tackles that gap, first by describing the main features of immigrant settlement and economic integration in rural areas in the EU. Second, it offers an EU-wide overview of immigrants' integration in the agricultural sector. Then, it investigates empirically the degree to which the different characteristics of agricultural production in two member states – Italy and Spain – are associated with a migrant presence in the area. The study finds that, in the context of a shrinking agricultural labour force, the share of migrant workers in that sector in several regions is increasing over time. Migrants living in rural areas are more likely to be unemployed and face economic hardship than locals. Migrants employed in agriculture are, also, more likely to work in elementary occupations and temporary jobs. Finally, the case studies on Italy and Spain demonstrate that the relative size of the migrant population is related to the typology of agricultural land use and to the labour intensity and seasonality of cultivation.

"This paper seeks to contribute to the development of institutional options for the management of public goods in Central and Eastern Europe. It assesses the potential of different governance structures, including administrative hierarchies, market approaches, and efforts at local non-market co-ordination. The paper examines the management of public goods in Central and Eastern Europe through a study of open space management and urban sprawl in a semi-urban county near Warsaw, Poland. The protection of open space poses significant challenges to semi-urban land management, as its benefits cannot be captured by individual entities and accrue as much to urban residents as to local people. The concrete institutional options investigated comprehend the use of land registers for monitoring land conversion, establishment of land trusts in part financed by a development gains tax, and technical and organisational support for local environmental organisations. The evaluation of options builds on an analysis of causes underlying rapid land conversion in the past decade. The causal analysis demonstrates that privatisation and decentralisation have evoked the radical changes in land use. The demand for housing land motivated farmers to sell semi-urban land, as the state could not enforce its legal oversight over land use. Land conversion was driven by local alliances of farmers eager to "cash in" on their newly acquired rights of alienation, a broader rural society primarily interested in economic development, and local authorities lured by increasing tax revenues." [author's abstract]

"The amount of water used for irrigation has sharply declined during transition in Bulgaria. Large sections of existing irrigation systems were abandoned, and the ones still in use are barely maintained. Crops such as wheat and barley have replaced more water-intensive crops, including vegetables, rice and maize. This problem has an impact on the future development of agriculture and the allocation of the country's water resources. The central argument is that land fragmentation in the wake of decollectivization and restitution contributes to the irrigation systems' abandonment. This paper concentrates on the institutional factors, but also considers additional factors, that may have influenced the process; further, it examines the causes driving these changes and analyses their effect on irrigation. It is based upon a review of relevant legislation, as well as field work in 17 villages located in the Plovdiv region of Bulgaria. The paper concludes that, in addition to changes in large-scale market forces and weakening of the state enforcement mechanism, institutional settings have contributed to the decline of irrigation in Bulgaria." (author's abstract) Die Wassermenge, die in Bulgarien während des Transformationsprozesses zur Bewässerung verwendet wurde ist, im Vergleich zu früher, stark zurückgegangen. Große Bereiche der vorhandenen Bewässerungssysteme wurden aufgegeben, und diejenigen, die noch in Gebrauch sind, werden nicht ausreichend gewartet. Getreide wie Weizen und Gerste haben andere, wasserintensivere Kulturen wie Gemüse, Reis und Mais ersetzt. Dieses Problem hat Auswirkungen auf die zukünftige Entwicklung der Landwirtschaft und die Verteilung der Wasserressourcen des Landes. Die zentrale These lautet, dass die Landfragmentierung, die unmittelbar nach der Entkollektivierung einsetzte, sowie die Rückerstattungen zur Aufgabe der Bewässerungssysteme beigetragen haben. Der vorliegende Beitrag konzentriert sich auf die institutionellen Faktoren, betrachtet aber auch zusätzliche Faktoren, die diesen Prozess beeinflusst haben. Des Weiteren untersucht der Autor die Ursachen, die zu diesen Veränderungen geführt haben, und analysiert deren Auswirkungen auf die Bewässerung. Der Beitrag basiert auf einem Überblick über die relevante Gesetzgebung sowie einer Feldarbeit in 17 Dörfern der Region Plovdiv in Bulgarien. Der Autor stellt fest, dass zusätzlich zu den Veränderungen im Bereich der Marktdynamik und der Schwächung der staatlichen Zwangsmechanismen institutionelle Parameter zur Abnahme der Bewässerung in Bulgarien beigetragen haben. (ICDÜbers)

"Die Bildungspolitik im wiedervereinigten Deutschland muß davon ausgehen, daß in den neuen Bundesländem geschichtlich überbrachte Bildungsunterschiede zwischen Regionen fortwirken. Es gibt in Ostdeutschland soziale Räume mit gleichem sozialgeograpischem Verhalten. Sie stellen unterschiedliche Strukturierungskontexte sozialer Lagen und Handlungschancen von Individuen dar. Obwohl die DDR in den 40 Jahren ihrer Existenz im Rahmen von Modernisierungsprozessen gleiche Bildungschancen für alle Bürger proklamierte und ein hohes Maß an Einheitlichkeit in der Bildungspolitik - auch sozialräumlich gesehen - anstrebte, blieben sowohl beim Erwerb der Hochschulreife und beim Zugang zum Studium als auch in der Entwicklung der schulischen und beruflichen Bildung der Bevölkerung bemerkenswerte regionale Differenzierungen bestehen. Sie existieren zwischen städtischen Dienstleistungszentren, besonders den Universitätsstädten und den agrarisch strukturieren Räumen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Brandenburg sowie den Industrierevieren in Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt und Thüringen. Auffallend hohe Bildungsniveaus der Bevölkerung und eine hohe Bildungsbeteiligung weisen die Universitätsstädte im mitteldeutschen Raum auf, die Zentren frühbürgerlicher Entwicklung waren und geschichtlich starke Bindungen an den Protestantismus besitzen. Offensichtlich wirken in den hier in Wissenschaft, Bildung, Kultur und Administration besonders stark konzentrieren Kreisen der Intelligenz und der Angestellten protestantische bildungbürgerliche Traditionen fort. Ländliche, agrarisch strukturierte Räume in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Brandenburg haben ihre traditionelle Bildungsferne nicht verloren, obwohl die Bildungspolitik der DDR dazu beigetragen hat, die Bildungsunterschiede außerhalb der großen Städte zu mildern und das Bildungsniveau der hier lebenden Bevölkerung sukzessive zu erhöhen. Die Differenzen ländlicher Regionen gegenüber Industrieregionen beim Erwerb der Hochschulreife und beim Zugang zum Studium haben sich deutlich verringert." (Autorenreferat)

The South of the old Russia, especially the Ukraine, has for generations been known as a granary. This statement is based on one hand on reports about the earth’s fertility, and on the other hand on formerly important exports of cereals; what is mostly neglected in corresponding discussions is the cereal economy’s dependence on the natural conditions and their changeability. Despite unfavourable economic circumstances as a whole, Russia still exported 10.6 million tons of cereals in 1904, for example. Since then, economic conditions have changed several times and there has been a clear increase in population. During the past decades, the cereal production of the Ukraine was sometimes nota in a position to meet the existing need. Owing to the natural geography of the Ukraine, the largest part of the agriculturally useful areas are situated within the natural vegetation zones of the forested steppe and of the prairie as well as in the region of continental and warmtemperate climate. This means that black earths and forest soils exist in large parts of the country, but at the same time, two thirds of the country surface receives too little precipitation and too much heat. Owing to the associated winter and summer conditions, several million hectares of winter wheat are year by year threatened both by freezing and by drought. Winter wheat has for a long time been the most cultivated crop plant. Its share is especially high in the Oblast Odessa district and in the north-south strip extending from Kharkov to the mouth of the Dnieper river and to the Azov Sea. In respect of area share, winter wheat is followed by spring barley, maïze, pulses and oats; their regional distribution is shown in table 2. The economic repurcussions following the seperation of the Ukraine from the Soviet Union in 1990/91 have remained moderate for cereal production. More important are the consequences resulting from inappropriate agricultural development over the preceding 20 years. Since in 1995, after half a century of directive agriculture in State farms and agricultural cooperatives, privatisation is still in the very first phases, new steps are only taken very hesitantly and the forces of the market economy are only slowly taking effect, directives on economic management are still necessary. But in addition to this, a new purchase price mechanism is being linked with the appeal to adapt the regional crop planning structures to the natural conditions and to the human need and the need of animals. A tax-in-kind was introduced by the State in order to ensure an approximately evenly distributed basic supply to the population. In order to avoid continuing large harvest losses, efforts are being taken to renew and to complete grain storage and milling capacities as well as to improve the trafic connections of the villages and public transport. Of continuing importance is foreplanning in arable farming since the previous predatory exploitation of the soil, i.e. discontinuance of crop rotation, incorrect cultivation, inappropriate irrigation, erosion-causing soil management weakened agriculture. Ukraine can again become a granary in the real sense of the word. To achieve this objective, agronomy and economy must once again be meaningfully linked and the farmer must once again play an active role.

Die Verteilung einer Anzahl von Ernten in ausgewählten Regionen Belgiens wird als Resultat eines Entscheidungprozesses gesehen, der sich (unter anderen Faktoren) hauptsächlich am finanziellen Ertrag orientiert. Dieses Allokationsproblem wird analog der Portofolio-Selection-Theorie angegangen; die Entscheidungen beim Anlageverhalten in Wertpapieren (Aktien oder Investmentzertifikate oder festverzinsliche Wertpapiere usw.) ist von der Erwartung der voraussichtlichen Erträge sowie der Wahrscheinlichkeit ihres Eintreffens abhängig. Auch der Landwirt hat zu entscheiden, wie er sein "Vermögen" beim Anbau (Weizen oder Zuckerrüben oder Kartoffeln oder Flachs usw.) verteilt. Die Daten für den untersuchten Zeitraum passen gut auf die Annahmen des Portofolio-Modells. (pmb) The observed distribution of a number of crops in a certain area can be thought of as the result of a decision process influenced, among other factors, by the expected financial yields. This allocation problem is very similar to the one encountered in portfolio theory, that is, the distribution of certain wealth into different assets given a fixed interest rate structure (for example, Parkin, Gray and Barrett (1970), Bettedorf and Verjans (1988)). This led us to the idea of estimation of a modified portfolio model with data collected from Belgian agriculture. The results of this model allow interesting interpretations about the sensitivity of the different cultivated areas to change in the total available area and in financial yields. In the next section the specification of the allocation model will be theoretically derived. After the description of the data used, the results will be discussed in section 4. The last section is devoted to conclusion remarks.