Between international student mobility and work migration: experiences of students from EU’s newer member states in Denmark

ABSTRACT

Since 2009, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of students from EU’s newer member states, who enrol as full-degree students at Danish universities. Attracted by the fee-free access to highly ranked universities, these students often arrive with dreams of creating better lives for themselves, and of accumulating Western educational capital. Students from the EU’s newer member states are usually reliant on jobs to sustain themselves in Denmark. However, many find it hard to get regular jobs, and some of them become trapped in semi-legal employment or in low-status, low-paid jobs. Drawing on empirical material collected during a long-term ethnographic fieldwork among full-degree students attending English-medium MA-programmes at a Danish university, this article explores how students from the EU’s newer member states make sense of their lives as students and workers in Denmark, and how they respond to experiences of unequal access to student jobs.     

Returning children home from care: What can be learned from local authority data?

International Human Rights and child rights conventions as well as U.K. wide legislation and guidance require that children in care should be returned home to one or both parents wherever possible. Reunification with parents is the most common route out of care, but rates of re‐entry are often higher than for other exit routes. This study used 8 years of administrative data (on 2,208 care entrants), collected by one large English local authority, to examine how many children were returned home and to explore factors associated with stable reunification (not re‐entering care for at least 2 years). One‐third of children (36%) had been reunified, with adolescent entrants being the most likely age group to return home. Three quarters (75%) of reunified children had a stable reunification. In a fully adjusted regression model, age at entry, being on a care order prior to return home, staying longer in care, being of minority ethnicity, and having fewer placements in care were all significant in predicting chances of stable reunification. The results underline the importance of properly resourcing reunification services. The methods demonstrate the value to local authorities of analysing their own data longitudinally to understand the care pathways for children they look after.     

Estimating Willingness‐to‐pay with Choice‐based Conjoint Analysis – Can Consumer Characteristics Explain Variations in Accuracy?

Knowing consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) is crucial for making effective pricing decisions. We assess the accuracy of choice‐based conjoint analysis (CBCA), a method strongly supported by behavioural theory, in the context of WTP measurement at the individual level. Furthermore, we analyse whether variations in the accuracy of WTP estimates derived by CBCA can be explained by consumers' involvement, brand awareness and the strength of consumer preferences. The results show that CBCA does not provide accurate WTP estimates and, on average, grossly overestimates the true WTP of consumers. No empirical evidence can be found that consideration of the above‐mentioned consumer characteristics results in more accurate WTP values.     

Social media,small businesses,and the control of information

Much of the discussion regarding privacy and social media has focused on consumers of social media, but social media is also popular among businesses. This article explores the privacy tensions of small business owners using social media to disseminate and gather information to better engage and serve their customers while maintaining customer trust. Drawing on Communication Privacy Management theory [Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, Petronio, S. (2007). Translational research endeavors and the practices of communication privacy management. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 35(3), 218–222], we argue that there is a dialectical tension between control and engagement. As information is disclosed via social media, it creates new opportunities for engagement, surveillance, and commodification. Based on group interviews with small business owners, we identify the kinds of information that small businesses must manage as participants on social media platforms and the privacy rules they develop.     

Adolescents' and parents' affect in relation to discrepant perceptions of parental warmth in daily life

The current study aimed to evaluate how adolescents' and parents' perceptions of daily parenting—and their discrepancies—relate to daily parent and adolescent affect. Daily parental warmth and affect were assessed using electronic diaries in 150 American adolescent–parent dyads (61.3% females, M_age = 14.6, 83.3% White; 95.3% mothers, M_age = 43.4; 89.3% White) and in 80 Dutch adolescents with 79 mothers and 72 fathers (63.8% females, M_age = 15.9, 91.3% White; M_age = 49.0, 97.4% White). Results of preregistered models indicated that individuals' affect may be more important for perceptions of parenting than discrepancies between parent–adolescent reports of parenting for affect, stressing the need to be aware of this influence of affect on parenting reports in clinical and research settings.     

Community orientation of services for persons with a psychiatric disability. Comparison between Estonia,Hungary and the Netherlands

This article explores the way mental health services and social services are orientated on assisting people with a psychiatric disability to participate in different areas of community life. A large research project about community participation in three different countries (Estonia, Hungary and the Netherlands) confirms the findings of other studies that – regardless of geographical location – people with a psychiatric disability have difficulty fulfilling social roles in the community. They are often faced with fewer opportunities than other citizens, due to their health problems, stigma, discrimination and poverty [World Health Organisation. (2011). World report on disability. Geneva: WHO]. An important objective of social work is to help people find their way in society. Surprisingly enough, in all three countries, most social workers are mainly focused on solving individual problems, and not on community participation. Shifting the focus starts by having a clear awareness of the notion of community participation. Social workers have to work both on supporting individuals to find their way in the community (individual support), and on supporting social networks in the community to accommodate persons with a disability on the basis of equal and valued citizenship (community support).     

How smart is smart? Theoretical and empirical considerations on implementing smart city objectives – a case study of Dutch railway station areas

The current widespread attention on the concept of smart city in both policy and practice has stimulated academic discussion regarding the scope and applicability of this concept. An important question is whether cities and regions are truly advanced in implementing the concept in their policies and practices relative to its conceptual elaborations in academia. The aim of this paper is to analyse this congruence between theory and practice in the context of the ongoing transformations of railway station areas in European urban regions. Based on in-depth interviewing using aspects of Q-methodology, this paper investigates whether and how smart city concepts are implemented by stakeholders in three station redevelopment projects in the Netherlands. The results show that the current implementation of smart city concepts in practice is varied but modest and not (yet) very advanced. Knowledge exchange and innovations are currently hampered by a lack of acceptance and know-how among stakeholders, as well as by institutional and competitive constraints. For instance, stakeholders stress that data privacy regulations should be well organized before further implementation can occur. Transparency about how and what data are used may create more willingness among users to assist in developing and accepting new data technologies. However, the technologies are not yet completely developed, and concerns about the “loss” of personal privacy are holding back the widespread and advanced use of data supplied technologies. Although stakeholders seem to be aware of the opportunities the smart city concept offers, for now, the widespread implementation of innovative and advanced smart city concepts remains in the future.