Labor Force Trends and Immigration in Europe1

Labor force trends up to 2025 for the fifteen countries (before May 1, 2004) of the European Community are examined. Will demographic decline have an early effect on manpower volume? An estimation is made to determine whether present migratory flow levels in these countries will be sufficient to counter labor force stagnation. Manpower trend scenarios are proposed for each country. They show highly contrasting situations. These countries favor different policies for mobilizing and increasing their manpower volume. There is wide divergence between the various EU countries as concerns their demogra hic situation and labor force partici ation rate as well as their social security systems. labor force partici ation rate as well as their social security systems. Considering these highly diverse national characteristics, the difficulty in arrivin at a consensus on EU migratory policy harmonization is stressed     

Labor Market Experiences of Canadian Immigrants with Focus on Foreign Education and Experience1

Recent Canadian immigrants have increasing education levels but decreasing earnings, partly due to the devaluation of foreign education and work experience. This study uses 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey data and examines the value attributed to foreign education for immigrants based on their duration of stay in Canada, which proves to be an important methodological distinction. Immigrants from developing countries experience the most acute devaluation. The findings outline the limitations of human capital theory in explaining the labor market experience of Canadian immigrants and have implications for the current “point system” used to select immigrants to Canada.     

Foreign Scientists at the National Institutes of Health: Ramifications of U.S. Immigration and Labor Policies1

This article describes the findings of a study undertaken to shed light on some of the factors that determine the employment of foreign biomedical scientists in the United States by examining their presence at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH was selected as the focus of the study for its unique combination of characteristics. It is a federal agency with the ambiance of academe that carries out biomedical research and training internally while supporting like activities externally through grant‐ and contract‐based linkages with a host of academic institutions and biotechnology firms in the United States and abroad. Over a two‐year period, in‐depth interviews were conducted with more than 200 stakeholders at the NIH campus and elsewhere, as well as ethnographic observations. The study identified several hitherto unreported important functions that NIH plays in facilitating the inflow of talented foreign scientists to meet its manpower needs and those of the broader national economy.     

Innovation Policy Challenges in Transition Countries: Foreign Business R&D in the Czech Republic and Hungary

R&D expenditures of national firms decreased considerably and structural changes of R&D financing followed the fall of planned economy in the transition period of Central Eastern European economies. In the middle of the 1990s, business R&D started to grow in the Czech Republic and Hungary due to investments of foreign affiliates and restructuring of domestic companies. Nowadays multinational companies have a decisive share in business R&D in these countries, which entails special challenges for national innovation policy. In this paper, we look through the development of the Czech and Hungarian innovation policy considering MNEs R&D. We use case studies of the Czech automobile industry, the Hungarian pharmaceutical industry, and the new MNE-related university units and private universities to show how these companies influence innovation systems in transition economies.      

(Un)expected exception: validating acquiescent response style factor in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT

This study explores the acquiescent response style (ARS) among respondents in the Czech Republic. To analyse ARS, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed and the response style (RS) was modelled as a latent variable. The RS factor in the CFA model must be validated by its relationship to education and age, i.e. proxies of cognitive ability. The two studies presented in this article use large amount of data as all available balanced batteries of items were analysed. In Study 1, the RS factor showed no correlation with age/education in most of the models. Study 2 employed additional measures of cognitive ability and education and confirmed the overall absence of the relationship. Author concludes that the modelled RS factor then cannot be considered the ARS and deduces that the most likely explanation of the identified systematic error variance is the respondents’ carelessness manifested by automatically choosing the extreme agreement, or choosing the first presented answer as a result of memory effect.     

Women,Employment and Feminism in the Czech Republic

Following the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, one feature of the newly emerging ‘post-communist’ societies which disturbed many feminists was the apparent antipathy to western feminist thinking which characterized men and women alike. In attempting to explain this situation, commentators in Eastern Europe have argued that in Eastern Europe, women’s experiences have been shaped by ‘state paternalism’, rather than specifically masculine exclusionary practices. Drawing upon material from a cross-national study, this paper examines the employment and domestic life experiences of women bankers and doctors in the Czech Republic. This evidence suggests that women in these occupations are fully conscious of, and resent, both masculine exlusionary practices within employment as well as inequalities in the domestic division of labour. These findings are supported by evidence from a national attitudinal survey which reveals that Czech women are more progressive in their attitudes to gender roles than Czech men. A number of parallels can be drawn between the contemporary experiences and attitudes of Czech women and those of British women of twenty years ago (i.e. before the impact of ‘second-wave’ feminism). This suggests that if and when feminism develops in Eastern Europe, it will engage with these direct masculine exclusionary practices, and not just ‘state paternalism’.     

Immigration to the Federal Republic of Germany as a demographic and social problem

"Addressing the question of immigration to Western Europe and especially to Germany from east and southeast Europe and from developing countries of the South, this article considers whether such immigration can compensate for reductions in population in developed countries. It is argued that the demographic deficits of an aging population can only be corrected to a limited extent through immigration. Any solution, in order to be effective, must include a simultaneous increase in the birthrates of Germany and other European Community countries. With particular regard to future social development in Germany and the EC, it would be advisable for governments to effect measures that will provide both for controlled admissions of immigrants from outside the EC and an increase in local reproductive capabilities."     

Female Labor Force Participation in Urban and Rural China1

Abstract The objective of this study is to examine female labor force participation and its determinants in rural and urban China. The sociological literature has demonstrated that participation tends to increase in urban and industrialized places where women have higher levels of education and fewer children, where more workers are engaged in service pursuits, and where family structure is less traditional. With the use of data on counties and cities (N = 2,377) from the I-percent sample of the 1982 census of the People's Republic of China, it was found that female labor force participation is likely to rise in areas with increased agricultural employment, educational levels, proportion of female-headed households, and higher male-to-female sex ratios. Both the size of the service sector and the fertility rate had negligible effects on female labor force participation. Although, on average, rural places have slightly higher levels of female labor force participation, when other variables are controlled, urban places have a higher rate of female participation. In addition, the findings suggest that market factors (i.e., education) are more likely to determine the rate of female labor force participation in urban areas; whereas demographic and social factors (i.e., sex ratio and household structure) play a more important role in explaining the female labor force participation in rural counties.     

Care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children in the Czech Republic

The problematic issue of care for vulnerable and disadvantaged children in the Czech Republic, highlighted in this article, stems from the large number of children in institutional care. Workers from the Department for Social and Legal Child Protection (OSPOD) may get involved if there are factors in the family jeopardising the child's healthy development that cannot be improved, and institutional care may be recommended. This article discusses factors that influence and many times complicate the worker's job and are often the reason for an adversely high number of children living without a family. Attempts to reunite children with their biological families are complicated by the fact that the family situation rarely improves. Therefore children returning to live with their own families face the same conditions they were previously removed from. A more positive option for some children placed in institutional care is adoption or long-term foster care. However, many children continue to spend their whole childhood in a care home. The authors describe the care system in the Czech Republic and point out its weaknesses and some controversial facts. They also discuss and evaluate the ‘National Action Plan’, a government policy document, which articulates aspirations and obligations for all government departments and organisations involved in the Czech childcare system.     

Nonprofits and Democratic Development: Lessons from the Czech Republic

This article argues that existing concepts of the civil society–democracy relationship are misleading guides for analyzing political development because they incorporate limited perspectives on the nature and activities of civil society, particularly the nonprofit sector. First, three contemporary conceptualizations of civil society are critiqued, and a contradiction is noted between the importance assigned to ideational functions and the inadequacy of reliance upon elections and party systems. Particular emphasis is placed on civil society's involvement in policy formation, for it is there that a weak state–society connection may be discovered, with significant ramifications for democratic development. Second, recent political instability in the Czech Republic is related to negative trends in political attitudes, indicating a weak connection. Third, the general nature of Czech policy-making processes is examined, and then a closer look is taken at the formation of nonprofit legislation and environmental policy. Finally, implications for the future development of Czech democracy are drawn.     

U.S. Data Sources on the Foreign Born and Immigration

Migration data can be divided into two broad types: “stock” or census and survey data and “flow” or administrative data. Both stock and flow data are valuable resources for analyzing the migration process. In the statistical system of the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau is the primary source for census and survey data on the foreign born. The Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. State Department provide several different administrative sources for studying immigration. The goal of this study is to review the best sources of government data available for analyzing (1) the size, distribution, and characteristics of the foreign‐born population and their households and (2) the level of immigration into the United States, and the distribution and characteristics of immigrants by status.     

Educational inequalities and educational mobility under socialism in the Czech Republic

The sociology of education on the Czech Republic has focused almost entirely on relative measures of inequality (based on odds ratio data) than to trends in educational mobility (based on mobility tables). Therefore, there is a significant gap in our knowledge of how the Czech education system has evolved in the long term. Although the periods before and after the onset of socialism appear to have had very specific mobility patterns, we know relatively little about their differences. Therefore, this article attempts 1) to verify the findings to date about the character and extent of educational inequalities in the Czech half of socialist Czechoslovakia, and 2) to update these findings with a new mobility analysis. In this context the article poses two key questions: In what ways are the two mobility systems (pre‐socialist and socialist) different? Was the Czech education system becoming more or less open? Using the mobility perspective and log‐linear modelling, the analysis identifies some specific structural contexts and shows that the level of intergenerational educational reproduction that existed between 1906 and 1938 gradually diminished thereafter, except among women, who experienced a re‐strengthening after 1948. Although after the Prague Spring in 1968 the association between the education of parents and their children began to strengthen, the mother‐daughter association in educational reproduction weakened at the end of socialism.     

Divergent responses to a common past: Transitional justice in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

This article addresses the question of why, despite having shared a communist regime and a revolution against it, the Czechs and Slovaks have dealt differently with that regime's former high officials and secret police agents, files, and collaborators. I argue that this divergence challenges theories of transitional justice put forward by such scholars as Samuel Huntington and John P. Moran, who respectively identify transition type and levels of regime repression as the key factors shaping a new regime's response to its predecessor. I propose that a stronger influencing factor is the level of the preceding regime's legitimacy, as indicated during the communist period by levels of societal cooptation, opposition, or internal exile, and during the post-communist period by levels of elite re-legitimization and public interest in decommunization. In drawing this link between past and more recent developments, I also argue that struggles over transitional justice issues should not be considered exclusively as the politics of the present. Finally, I examine the cases of Poland, Hungary, and Romania to assess the broader applicability and limits of my theory.     

Teenagers in the U.S. Labor Force: Local Labor Markets,Race, and Family1

Abstract Drawing on theories of family organization and labor-market structures, it is argued that teenagers represent a useful target population for research on the effects of race, household characteristics, and local labor markets on labor-force participation. Toward this end, predictive models of labor-force participation are applied to a sample of all white and black 16- to 18-year-olds living at home in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan labor-market areas in the United States. Beyond the higher labor-force participation of white youths, both local labor-market characteristics and family resources affect teenage labor-force participation. Participation of white youths was more closely linked to family resources and local economic conditions than that of black youths. Queuing theories of labor-force participation are used to interpret these findings.     

Analysis of environmental flow requirements for macroinvertebrates in a creek affected by urban drainage (Prague metropolitan area,Czech Republic)

The habitat suitability index and environmental flow requirements were assessed for ten species of macroinvertebrates in a 2 km length section of the urban Boti? creek (average flow 0.4 m³ s^?1) in Prague. Boti? creek has been affected by two combined sewer overflows (CSO). Spring, summer and fall seasonal environmental flow requirements were identified using the Physical HABitat SIMulation System (PHABSIM) approach for the whole macroinvertebrate community: Spring – optimal flow 0.32–0.38 m³ s^?1, minimal flow 0.20–0.21 m³ s^?1 and maximal acceptable flow 0.91–0.93 m³ s^?1; Summer - optimal flow 0.42–0.45 m³ s^?1, minimal flow 0.19–0.21 m³ s^?1 and maximal acceptable flow 0.95–1.00 m³ s^?1; Fall - optimal flow 0.38–0.48 m³ s^?1, minimal flow 0.22–0.23 m³ s^?1 and maximal acceptable flow 0.95–0.98 m³ s^?1. The seasonal variability of environmental flow for all three categories is approximately 10%. Environmental flow requirements of the studied species and their life stages vary with depth, velocity and bottom substratum. Due to inflow from the CSOs, the optimal and maximal acceptable flow are not maintained and the maximal flow is exceeded by more than twice its value. Although the Instream Flow Incremental Methodology (IFIM) was primarily designed for large impounded rivers, the study proved its applicability in small streams affected by urbanization and urban drainage.     

Consumer activism in the Czech Republic: the role of exit and voice in a changing economy

The question “Are consumers actively pursuing their market responsibilities in transforming economies?” is at the center of this article. It reports on a study of Czech consumers using Hirschman's “exit/voice” theory. The research focuses on what actions consumers, who had never experienced the freedom to express complaints, would take when confronted with market disappointments and failures. Analysis of a randomized cross section of consumers indicates that they acknowledge their responsibility to the market by going beyond the choice stage of consumption and actively giving voice to their concerns to retailers and manufacturers. This evidence represents the first milestone describing consumer voice behavior in a transforming economy.     

Privatization and Income Change in the Czech Republic: Tensions in the Lives of Rural and Urban Employed Men1

In the Czech Republic, the privatization of property and the emergence of a market economy after the fall of communism created a unique “experiment in nature.” Before 1989, there was virtually no private sector and salary differences between rural and urban workers were relatively small. By the end of 1993, a substantial portion of both the rural and urban labor force had moved into the private sector. Using data from a sample of 443 men who were employed in 1989 and at the beginning of 1994, we found that urban workers who moved to the private sector had obtained larger salary increases and felt less economic pressure than rural workers and those who stayed in the public sector. Economic pressure, in turn, mediated between salary change and subsequent reports of health problems and psychological distress. Respondents also reported that the private sector offered them greater job flexibility. Job flexibility may reduce depressive symptoms by improving the match of workers' skills with the demands of the job, but private sector jobs may also be a source of uncertainty. Tensions associated with increasing rural disadvantage and with moving to the private sector are discussed.     

Immigration and the American Obesity Epidemic1

Immigration is an important population dynamic at work in the U.S., but we know little about its impact on American obesity. Built on nutrition transition and immigration theories, this paper provides explanations for immigrants’ initial body composition advantage, its partial erosion over time, and the gender difference in the erosion. We find evidence that the American obesity epidemic would be much more severe without the mass immigration that began in 1965. In addition to confirming the erosion in immigrants’ body composition advantage, we further find that this erosion is weaker for men than for women. Once immigration’s impact is teased out, racial/ethnic disparities in body composition greatly differ from what we observe. This study provides gender‐specific estimates for the differences in obesity by nativity and residence duration and the net level of Hispanic‐white and Asian‐white disparities at the mean body mass index (BMI) as well as the overweight, Stage‐1, and Stage‐2 obesity cutoffs. Our findings suggest that immigration must be taken into account when addressing public health concerns.