‘Brain circulation’ and transnational knowledge networks: studying long‐term effects of academic mobility to Germany, 1954–2000

‘Brain circulation’ has become a buzzword for describing the increasingly networked character of highly skilled migration. In this article, the concept is linked to academics' work on circular mobility to explore the long‐term effects of their research stays in Germany during the second half of the twentieth century. Based on original survey data on more than 1800 former visiting academics from 93 countries, it is argued that this type of brain circulation launched a cumulative process of subsequent academic mobility and collaboration that contributed significantly to the reintegration of Germany into the international scientific community after the Second World War and enabled the country's rise to the most important source for international co‐authors of US scientists and engineers in the twenty‐first century. In this article I discuss regional and disciplinary specificities in the formation of transnational knowledge networks through circulating academics and suggest that the long‐term effects can be fruitfully conceptualized as accumulation processes in ‘centres of calculation’.     

Rural and Urban Differences in Economic Experiences,Anxiety and Support for the Post-communist Reforms in the Czech and Slovak Republics1

Abstract The economic experiences and economic anxiety of rural and urban residents of the Czech and Slovak Republics during the postcommunist reforms are compared and related to their support for the reforms. The analysis is based on five national surveys, 1992–1996, collected by the Sociology Institute of the now Czech Academy of Sciences. Net of controls, both Czech and Slovak rural respondents report more economic strain and unemployment, a difference that persists over the surveys. These experiences account for rural residents' greater economic anxiety, their fear of economic development and unemployment, which also persists over the surveys. These experiences and anxiety explain, in turn, their lower level of support for the reforms, and endorsement of a return to socialism and strong-hand government. Rural and urban respondents of the two countries have experienced the world differently since 1990, and this is expressed in their economic anxiety and political preferences.     

Constructing border ethnic identities along the frontier of Central and Eastern Europe

The analysis is based on an empirical sociological study (interplay of European, National and Regional Identities: nations between states along the new eastern borders of the European Union Project) aimed at exploring the various aspects of people’s diaspora affiliations and their ethnic and national identity on the Eastern borderland of Europe. We surveyed ethnic minority groups in eight countries along the frontier of Central Eastern Europe. With the ethnic minorities having a similar ethnic status along the border, we demonstrated how ethnic minorities ‘deal’ with their minority status in their ‘host’ country. The analysis reconstructs the image of the ethnic minority at the societal level. We model personal and collective ethnic identities as a stock of knowledge based on cognitive and affective components, and test them along the different ethnic dyads. The paper shows how successive generations are able to transfer the pattern of ethnic identity within the family, and also how language use practices and personal networks play a role in preserving personal ethnic identity.     

Suitability of biodiversity-area and biodiversity-perimeter relationships in ecology: a case study of urban ecosystems

Urban areas are probably the most fragmented environments with respect to the presence of semi-natural habitats and shape of these habitats may be significantly affected by urbanization. Patch perimeter in landscape or habitat studies is much less popular to study than patch area. The studied sites were situated in the industrial city of Pardubice, which is one of the ten largest cities in the Czech Republic with nearly 100,000 inhabitants. In total, 40 grasslands were studied within a circular area of 314 km². Butterflies and beetles with diurnal activity were studied during timed survey walks. A Simultaneous autoregressive model was used for test of the effect of biodiversity-area and biodiversity-perimeter relationships and for exclusion of potential bias caused by spatial autocorrelation. The models including patch perimeter performed better than those using patch area in explaining species richness, abundance and diversity of investigated organisms and were less influenced by spatial autocorrelation. The main conclusion and recommendation of the present study is that researchers should pay more attention to the possible influence of the patch perimeter as a potential predictor or co-predictor for landscape and habitat studies – especially in urban areas, where the negative effects of fragmentation might be much higher than in rural or more natural landscapes. Performing preliminary tests on comparisons between area and perimeter is highly recommended.     

Child protection systems within the Danish,Finnish and Norwegian welfare states—time for a child centric approach?

This article explores the relationship between the child protection systems and the Nordic welfare state in Denmark, Finland and Norway. Despite an ideological focus on prevention and provision of a fair amount of universal services and in-home child protection services for families and children, there is, nevertheless, a relatively high number of children in the child protection system, even children placed out of their home. The outcome of child protection seems to be relatively poor. One of the problems in the present child protection systems is related to questionable service provision within the system. Other problems are about the normative foundation for the system, for example, family orientation and the least intrusive principle. Such principles are closely related to the logic of universal services, and may as such ignore the diversity of needs, rights, risks and ages of children needing protection and related services. Consequently, many principles of the present child protection systems are – and will remain – challenged by a child-centric orientation, in which valuing children's needs, rights and voice in situ are central.     

Teachers’ silences about racist attitudes and students’ desires to address these attitudes

In this article, we use ethnographic data to explore school-based perceptions of racism. We draw on the findings of a one-year study conducted in two upper secondary classes in a Swedish school. The starting point of the analysis was student discussions of racism in the school and the surrounding neighbourhood, which prompted an examination of teacher and student responses to racist and nationalist ideas. We concluded that the school seldom acted in line with recommended approaches for promoting non-racist and intercultural education. We suggest that the response is related to educational ideals that emphasise learning ‘objective’ facts (as opposed to values) and a de-contextualised view of teaching.     

Alcohol consumption and risky sexual behavior among young adults: evidence from minimum legal drinking age laws

This paper exploits the discrete jump in alcohol consumption at the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) in the USA and uses a regression discontinuity design to investigate the relationship between drinking and risky sexual behaviors among young adults. Using confidential data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997 Cohort), we document that young adults tend to drink up to 2.1 days more once they are granted legal access to alcohol at age 21. Although the discrete jump in alcohol consumption at the MLDA is associated with an increase in the probability of having sex by up to 7.8 percentage points, it does not have a significant impact on the probability of engaging in risky sexual behaviors among young adults. We also document that the effect of the MLDA on the probability of using several different birth control methods is not significant for those who had sex in the past 4 weeks. These results are robust under alternative specifications and imply that although the MLDA law is quite effective in reducing alcohol consumption among young adults, spillover effects of this law on risky sexual behaviors are relatively limited.     

Adoptive Mothers' and Fathers' Psychological Distress: Parenting Teens Adopted from Birth

Abstract

This study tests pathways to adoptive parents' psychological distress over time and then examines gender differences in psychological distress. Participants included 190 adoptive mothers and 190 adoptive fathers from the longitudinal Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project, a study of U.S. domestic infant adoptions. The majority of adoptive parents reported low psychological distress 10 to 20?years post-adoption. Some struggled throughout their adopted youth’s childhood and adolescence. This study utilizes data allowing an examination of parenting during middle childhood and adolescence. For adoptive mothers and fathers, outside stressors significantly predicted psychological distress. For adoptive fathers, perceived parent–child incompatibility was also predictive.     

Focused information criteria for copulas

In this paper, we extend the focused information criterion (FIC) to copula models. Copulas are often used for applications where the joint tail behavior of the variables is of particular interest, and selecting a copula that captures this well is then essential. Traditional model selection methods such as the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) aim at finding the overall best‐fitting model, which is not necessarily the one best suited for the application at hand. The FIC, on the other hand, evaluates and ranks candidate models based on the precision of their point estimates of a context‐given focus parameter. This could be any quantity of particular interest, for example, the mean, a correlation, conditional probabilities, or measures of tail dependence. We derive FIC formulae for the maximum likelihood estimator, the two‐stage maximum likelihood estimator, and the so‐called pseudo‐maximum‐likelihood (PML) estimator combined with parametric margins. Furthermore, we confirm the validity of the AIC formula for the PML estimator combined with parametric margins. To study the numerical behavior of FIC, we have carried out a simulation study, and we have also analyzed a multivariate data set pertaining to abalones. The results from the study show that the FIC successfully ranks candidate models in terms of their performance, defined as how well they estimate the focus parameter. In terms of estimation precision, FIC clearly outperforms AIC, especially when the focus parameter relates to only a specific part of the model, such as the conditional upper‐tail probability.