Are there electoral cycles of emigration? An empirical investigation based on European data

Economic literature suggests that economic factors and the availability of amenities act as determinants of migration choices together with socio‐demographic factors. Migration has also been found to be the consequence of political instability. This article argues that specific political events, i.e., democratic elections, may be linked to migration flows. By using European data over the 1999‐2012 time period, our system GMM estimations reveal that there is an emigration political cycle across European democracies and across the young democracies of Central and Eastern European countries. We observe that regular elections tend to diminish emigration ratios, whereas endogenous elections have the opposite effect. These results suggest special challenges for governments and oppositions, which are also discussed.     

Effects of variations in water quantity and quality in the structure and functions of invertebrates’ community of a Mediterranean urban stream

Urban Ecosystems - Urban streams provide important ecosystem services to cities’ population, from the maintenance of urban biodiversity, temperature, humidity and air quality to improving...     

Town Centre Management: Outlook from Portugal

In the last two decades, the Portuguese Government has responded to the decline of centres of commerce. In this paper, we analyse the three different experiences of town centre management (TCM) schemes developed in Portugal since the turn of the millennium. The first two stages were developed using public sector initiatives and their impacts were limited. The third stage is still under way and is composed of private projects created by local business owners. Taking Lisbon as a case study for this third stage we conclude that these projects have become a pro-active means of intervention in Portuguese town centres.     

Inter‐country wage differences in the European Union

This article investigates the determinants of wage gaps between European Union countries along the wage distribution, applying the methodology proposed by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2009) and Fortin, Lemieux and Firpo (2011). The authors conclude that both wage structure and composition effects contribute to explaining wage differentials, but that the wage structure effect is more important. This latter effect would appear to derive from differences between unknown factors, while the composition effect can largely be explained by differences in the following areas: education, proportion of workers with supervisory responsibilities, occupational structure, and, to a lesser extent, industrial structure.     

Keeping in Touch with Context: Non-verbal Behavior as a Manifestation of Communality and Dominance

This research investigated the influence of observed touch on the perceptions of communality and dominance in dyadic interactions. We manipulated four key situational features of haptic behavior in two experiments: the initiation, reciprocity, the degree of formality of touch (Studies 1 and 2), and the context of the interaction (Study 2). The results showed that the default perception of touch, irrespective of whether it is initiated or reciprocated, is the communal intention of the toucher. Furthermore, the initiation of touch was seen as an act of dominance, particularly, when the contact between the actors was primed as being hierarchical. Reciprocation neutralized the perceived asymmetry in dominance, but such inferences seemed to hinge on the fit of the touch with the context: reciprocation of formal touch reduced the asymmetry in the hierarchical context, whereas reciprocation of informal touch reduced the asymmetry in the non-hierarchical context.     

Emplaced mobilities: Lisbon as a translocality in the migration journeys of Punjabi Sikhs to Europe

The arrival in Portugal of recent migrants from the Indian subcontinent is normally a secondary movement from within Europe tied to the search for a regular pathway into legal integration in the EU. However, as favourable migration policy is not paired with easy economic integration onward migration is common. We argue that such complex migration strategies cannot be amply explored through an origin–destination model; instead we suggest that a translocal perspective provides a framework to examine connections and experiences of emplacement in places of passage/reception like Lisbon. Through a qualitative study of the migration journeys and emplaced practices of Punjabi migrants in Lisbon, our findings highlight relationality between multiple scales, elucidating how agency and structure interact at micro and macro levels in shaping migration experiences and outcomes. We show how the materiality of local community structures ensures the navigation of daily life in the city and provides pathways toward legality contributing to wider mobility regimes. Moreover, we illustrate how onward migration represents an individual strategy to realise different aspects of integration in other EU destinations challenging nation-state-bound understandings of citizenship/settlement and integration.     

Neoliberalism as a real utopia? Karl Polanyi and the theoretical practice of F. A. Hayek

ABSTRACT

This article interprets Hayek’s theoretical practice with the help of Polanyi’s framework. Hayek aimed at renewing liberalism after the interwar period, thus helping transforming it into neoliberalism, a real utopia instrumentally concerned with the political and moral economies underpinning markets. The distance between neoliberal theory and practice is less pronounced than it is sometimes assumed. The strength of neoliberalism partially stems from a capacity to articulate an effort to think about real-world mechanisms with an effort to demolish, reconfigure or transform existing structures. Despite his failure to anticipate neoliberalism, Polanyi gives ample intellectual resources to critically interpret the tasks that neoliberals would collectively have to face at the theoretical level, in an epoch of ideological marginality, before their triumphal political deployment at the global level.