Integration Needs and Support Offered: The Effects of Support on Young Spaniards in Germany

In this article we compare the perceived cultural integration challenges by young Spanish migrants in Germany with the support offered by one national government initiative and one local migrant organisation. Based on qualitative interviews, we identified four inequality-related and interrelated challenges: personal relationships, housing, company culture and bureaucracy. Our findings show that MobiPro-EU, as an example of a government initiative, emphasises labour market integration and thereby neglects the cultural dimension of integration. The German-Spanish Association, which is a regional example for migrant self-support, lacks the financial means, staff and geographic scope to provide large-scale support. We conclude that both initiatives follow a different support strategy and demonstrate shortcomings in supporting migrants. As a consequence, particularly for migrants who cannot draw on social support, for instance provided by their personal networks, the absence of effective support measures can negatively affect cultural integration into society as well as career development.     

Human Security Perspectives on Refugee Children in Germany

This research identifies challenges and solutions for the situation of accompanied children in German refugee accommodations along the seven human security dimensions (economy, environment, food, health, personal, community and political rights). It analyses existing binding and non‐binding standards for the protection of refugee children at federal, state and municipal level, and their development since 2014. In particular, the United Nations Children's Fund's role for the development of voluntary protection standards is discussed as a role model to enhance the awareness for the protection of refugee children in Germany.     

The new privatized market: A question of ideology or pragmatism within the Swedish addiction treatment system?

Given its traditions of universal welfarism and social democracy, Sweden had already scored unexpectedly high on New Public Management by the 1980s. Health and welfare services remain primarily tax‐funded, but the production of care is increasingly transferred to a competitive quasi‐market. To what extent can this development be understood in terms of right‐wing governments, and to what extent in terms of other, socioeconomic and pragmatic factors? We examined this question through official statistics on providers of institutional addiction care since 1976, and through the total expenditure and purchases by local‐level municipal social services of interventions for substance users in Sweden in 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014. We have analyzed the distribution across public and private providers within the addiction treatment system, and whether national developments and local differences across the 290 municipalities—which bear the major treatment responsibility—can be understood in terms of local‐level political majority, population size, and local wealth. The share of purchased services has remained stable, but the treatment system shows increasing financial turnover and an increasing share of for‐profit providers among producers of purchased care, especially in outpatient treatment. While venture capital enterprises emerged as a new actor, non‐governmental organizations lost out in importance. Bourgeois government correlated with larger shares of purchasing and purchases from for‐profit providers. However, purchasing on a market dominated by for‐profit providers has also become the “new normal”, regardless of ideology, and recent years have shown a reversed effect of left‐wing municipalities purchasing more services than right‐wing governments. Pragmatic reasons also influence local‐level purchasing.     

Praktiken der Grenzüberschreitung und die Grenzen des Feldparadigmas

So far, the phenomenon of the so-called avant-garde has rarely been the subject of sociological scrutiny. In order to approach the historical avant-garde in sociological terms, Pierre Bourdieu??s field concept is applied. This sheds new light on the avant-garde, which traditionally has been subject to related disciplines. However, Bourdieu??s field theory fails to capture the empirical phenomenon of the historical avant-garde sufficiently. This suggests that sociology ought to regard the principle of the avant-garde as a distinct concept.     

Mental preparation during pregnancy in women with substance addiction: a qualitative interview‐study

The interplay between pregnancy and addiction is usually studied quantitatively, and the focus is often on the adverse effects of intrauterine substance exposure. This study explores the perspective of the mothers‐to‐be by examining the subjective experience of pregnancy in substance‐addicted women. Fourteen women in family treatment for substance use disorder participated in eight focus groups. The data were analysed according to interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings show that recognition of pregnancy was distorted and delayed, and strong feelings of ambivalence and guilt persisted throughout pregnancy, along with hope for change. Addiction and an intense preoccupation with external expectations are seen as a threat to intrauterine attachment and mental preparation for the caregiving role. Interventions must take into account the specific ways in which addiction influences the psychological processes of pregnancy; specifically, providing adequate social support and security should be considered.     

A Field of Contention: Evidence from Housing Struggles in Bucharest and Budapest

The article offers a study of housing movements in Budapest and Bucharest, with the main focus on the developments since the financial crisis of 2008, stressing the role that both structural and contingent factors play in shaping the dynamics of this “field of contention.” It is argued that a structural view is enlightening for understanding the factors that form the interactive field between activists, such as differences in social positionality as well as ideological conflicts. Moreover, conceiving of a structurally produced field of contention can help explain the differences in housing contention in the two cities. The analysis situates housing movements and their allied, parallel, or opposing actors within the long-term processes of urbanization and global dynamics of commodification, including housing financialization. It demonstrates that to understand how structural and political factors interact in a complex field of contention, attention to processes beyond short-term local movements is necessary.     

Labor Market Outcomes for Legal Mexican Immigrants Under the New Regime of Immigration Enforcement

OBJECTIVES: This paper documents the effects of increasingly restrictive immigration and border policies on Mexican migrant workers in the United States. METHODS: Drawing on data from the Mexican Migration Project we create a data file that links age, education, English language ability, and cumulative U.S. experience in three legal categories (documented, undocumented, guest worker) to the occupational status and wage attained by migrant household heads on their most recent U.S. trip. RESULTS: We find that the wage and occupational returns to various forms of human capital generally declined after harsher policies were imposed and enforcement dramatically increased after 1996, especially for U.S. experience and English language ability. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that the labor market status of legal immigrants has deteriorated significantly in recent years as larger shares of the migrant workforce came to lack labor rights, either because they were undocumented or because they held temporary visas that did not allow mobility or bargaining over wages and working conditions.     

Target groups for prevention of neck/shoulder and low back disorders: an exploratory cluster analysis of working and living conditions

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) have a multifactorial etiology. Therefore, a holistic approach to identifying target groups for primary/secondary prevention is essential. In this study, an exploratory person-oriented approach was applied, using cluster analysis of variables related to physical and psychosocial work conditions, and conditions in the private sphere, on a data set of 1,341 Swedish women and men who had not sought care for MSDs the 6 months preceding enrollment in the study. Three groups at risk and five "healthy" groups regarding MSDs were identified. Two of the risk groups had a strained situation regarding psychosocial work conditions or domestic/family conditions, respectively. The majority of individuals in these groups were women. The third risk group had a strained situation regarding both physical and psychosocial work conditions. This group consisted largely of men working in male-dominated jobs. The five healthy groups had low/moderate metabolic demands at work, and all of them having high proportions of subjects with moderate to high education, and fairly even distributions of men and women. In conclusion, the results indicate that gender-specific working and living conditions are associated with an increased risk for MSDs. The identification of these subgroups in the population may facilitate a selective prevention approach.     

Auswirkungen der IFRS-Umstellung auf die Risikoprämie von Unternehmensanleihen – Eine empirische Studie für Deutschland, Österreich und die Schweiz

Does an IFRS-adoption reduce the information asymmetry between firms and providers of debt capital and therefore the risk premium of corporate bonds? Contrary to prior empirical studies we examine the relationship between disclosure and cost of capital for debt financing. We analyse the impact of an IFRS-adoption on the risk premium of German, Austrian, and Swiss corporate bonds between 1997 and 2005. Our results indicate that the change in risk premium declines after an IFRS-adoption by 40%. However, the effect occurs with a time-lag.     

Zerbrochene Liebe: Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten in den Ursachenzuschreibungen der beiden Partner — Eine Interviewstudie —

This essay analyses the subjective attribution processes of six couples after the separation. The theoretical basis for this exploration of attributions is a classification scheme (Debler, W. 1984) with dimensions location, stability, globalisation and control. The result is the predominating manifestation of external attribution in the sense of making the partner responsible. The hypothesis that all cases of women desiring the separation show a stronger internal attribution cannot be confirmed. In a second evaluation, concrete attributions in connection with communication, personal characteristics of the partner, birth of the first child and sexuality are pointed out in the context of the overall stories. In connection with personal characteristics of the partners the phenomenon of “changing attribution” can be observed — a trait of the partner that initially rated positive is seen as a cause of separation at the end of the relationship.