Measuring Economic and Social Impacts of Membership in a Community Development Financial Institution

This study uses qualitative and quantitative measures to answer the question: “does a community development financial institution (CDFI) provide a measurable level of social benefit to its members?” Results indicate that a CDFI does change lives in many important ways, from providing members with the ability to get their financial houses in order, to helping members take control of their financial futures, and finally through building a sense of empowerment that reaches beyond the finances of an individual or family. In general, impacts were greater for lower income and less educated households, households with children, households that used more services, and for households that indicated wealth and asset building services were most important.     

Economic Freedom and Economic Growth in South East Europe

Economic freedom, understood as absence of barriers for business entry, business operations and business exit, is a source of economic development. Its impact is indirect: through institutions framework creation and environment that encourages economic development. Primarily, economic freedoms are a reflection of institutional arrangement, which makes business operations and the realization of business ideas easier for entrepreneurs and managers, who are two extremely important groups for economic development. The aim of the paper is to present empirical analysis of interrelation between economic freedom and economic development, expressed through several indicators, such as gross domestic product, income per capita, foreign direct investment per capita.     

The Commodification of International Marriages: Cross-border Marriage Business in Taiwan and Viet Nam

In this article, we attempt to place the issue of international marriage in an institutionalized profit-oriented social context, which is described as "the commodification process". The starting point included measuring the scale of the international marriage market in Taiwan.
Socio-demographic change in Taiwan and Viet Nam has created a market for profit-pursuing marriage agents. Agents scattered in different social spheres have gradually linked to form a profitable industry. Two different industrial organization types have emerged in the matchmaking process to meet different market constraints. As the cross-border marriage market matures, more and more people enter the market, and competitive price, good quality and delivery on time become the necessary conditions for success. In this competitive process, female migrant partners become increasingly commodified to conform to the new situation. They are required to accept reduced prices, to be "good enough" to marry and to be married when there is demand. The social networks of individuals are gradually transformed by agents in pursuit of profit.     

Social welfare in rural Europe

Rural development has been identified by EU leaders as one of the priorities of European structural policies, and as one of the objectives of cohesion policy. Yet despite this commitment, we are very poorly informed about how ordinary people live across the rural areas of Europe, their incomes and quality of life, and their perceptions of policies and economic and social change. This paper argues that greater attention should be devoted to issues of poverty, disadvantage and social exclusion in rural Europe by both policymakers and researchers. This is particularly crucial at the present time as rural Europe is subject to major structural changes deriving both from changes in rural economy and society and from policy initiatives such as the Maastricht Treaty and the Single European Act. These are over and above the wider trends operating throughout Europe in relation to employment, fiscal crisis and ageing, for example. A central requirement is for the articulation of policies for tackling economic and social exclusion (e.g. Poverty 3, Exclusion 1), on the one hand, with those directed towards rural development (e.g. Leader 2), on the other. Fundamental household survey work is required to increase our understanding of what constitutes rural disadvantage, which client groups are affected, and how policies can contribute towards relieving their disadvantage, preferably through client-based instruments rather than less appropriate area-based approaches. The last part of this paper presents preliminary results of such a survey, focusing on issues of employment, housing, poverty and quality of life.     

Industrial Social Work in Europe

No abstract available for this article.     

International Labour Migrants' Return to Meiji-era Yamaguchi and Hiroshima: Economic and Social Effects

International labour migration from Meiji era (1868–1912) Japan was intensely concentrated: over 60 per cent of the 29,000 participants in the government-managed Hawai'i emigration programme ( kan'yaku imin , 1885–1894) came from seven coastal counties around the Hiroshima-Yamaguchi prefectural border in southwest Japan. Almost half of the emigrants became long-term settlers instead of returning to their hometowns, but this paper examines what happened to returning emigrants and to their home communities. Since the migration was primarily economic in nature, the effect of migrant earnings was carefully monitored and is frequently cited by scholars. Surveys showed high rates of debt repayment and savings, and improved living conditions, but investment and entrepreneurship were limited. High-emigration regions rarely became economic centers of any importance. Less carefully studied are non-economic effects, partially because the labour programme was structured to minimize contact with Hawaiian or Caucasian culture, and thus returnees had little cultural experience to transfer to their hometowns. Local officials in Yamaguchi seemed proud of the lack of social change. Even long-term sojourners, who returned due to family needs after a decade or more overseas, exhibited no readjustment difficulties. Returnees, particularly in Yamaguchi, sometimes moved on to Japanese colonial territories, creating multilateral and complex relationships with overseas communities. This sojourning migration, like contemporary analogs, was a powerful form of poverty relief in the midst of dislocating globalization, but did not produce a rise in entrepreneurship or a Westernization of local culture. Because this sojourning migration was structurally similar to our modern-day patterns, it provides evidence of the longevity of those patterns and the possible long-term effects, and raises questions about our expectations for migration policy.     

Economic and Social Impacts on Well-Being: A Cross-National Multilevel Analysis of Determinants of Access to Water and Sanitation

Development research identifies water and sanitation access as vital indicators of well-being. Despite recent improvements, billions still lack access. Case studies and cross-national research reveal that economic and social processes are associated with water and sanitation access. However, prior research does not control for factors associated with access at multiple levels of analysis. This analysis uses hierarchical generalized linear models for 640,506 households nested within 49 nations to fill this gap. The findings suggest that household wealth and education have robust effects on water and sanitation access, while national characteristics have smaller effects. Furthermore, intraclass correlation coefficients demonstrate that cross-national analyses miss up to 78 percent of variation by not accounting for subnational variation. While the results highlight the importance of subnational factors, cross-level interactions between household wealth and education and national characteristics reveal how household wealth and education affect access differently depending on national context. This study synthesizes theories of economic growth and societal capabilities at multiple levels of analysis for understanding water and sanitation access within and between countries.     

The U.S. Economic Polity,Social Identity,and International Human Rights

In this essay, I provide some complementary perspectives on certain themes that emerge in Judith Blau's (2016) timely and insightful article, “Human Rights: What the United States Might Learn from the Rest of the World and, Yes, from American Sociology.” In response, I offer some very brief reflections structured through two prisms by which we might think further about the United States and human rights. These perspectives pick up on the core issue of Blau's article, the U.S. rejection of socioeconomic rights, and how this issue in turn relates first to the “social identity” of the United States as a whole, and second to the role of the political economy in states' recognition of human rights.     

International Migration and State Sovereignty in an Integrating Europe

This article examines the development of migration policy competencies of the European Union (EU) since the 1990s. It pays particular attention to policy framework that developed after the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties entered into effect in 1993 and 1999 respectively.
In order to chart these developments, the article focuses on five analytical themes that illustrate key trends in EU migration policy. Reasons for and implications of shift from "pillarization" in the Maastricht Treaty to "communitarization" in the Amsterdam Treaty.
— Blurring of the distinction between external and internal security.
— The role that supranational institutions such as the European Commission are playing (or trying to play) in policy development.
— Debates about migrants' rights in an integrating Europe.
— Links between migration and EU enlargement.
It is argued that far from weakening EU member states or symbolizing some "loss of control", EU cooperation and integration have thus far helped member states consolidate and reassert their ability to regulate international migration through the use of new EU-level institutional venues. This raises legitimacy issues as the EU moves into politically sensitive policy areas.
Although talk of "fortress Europe" is overblown, the EU is likely to face legitimacy challenges on both the "input" (democracy, openness and accountability of decision-making) and "output" (implementation and compliance) elements of decision-making.     

The Role of International Organisations in Central and Eastern Europe

The international (financial) organisations had a leading role in the transformation process of Central and Eastern Europe, although most of them were not designed for this task. They learnt some valuable lessons out of more than 15 years of transition and were trying to adapt their strategies to the consequences of the reforms in this transformation process. Nevertheless, there could have been a better way of transformation in Eastern Europe which could have avoided the strong GDP fall in the 1990s.     

International Migration and the Role of Remittances in Eastern Europe

In this paper we analyse the effect of remittances on employment performance for Central and East European (CEE) economies. We show that the impact of remittances on unemployment depends on its effect on productivity growth and investment. In order to empirically analyse the impact of remittances we estimate a productivity equation using a set of 11 transition countries during the 1990 to 1999 period. Our results show support for the view that remittances have a positive impact on productivity and employment both directly and indirectly through its effect on investment.