The hub continent. Immigrant networks, emigrant diasporas and FDI

This paper studies the relations between bilateral FDIs and immigrant networks of France, Germany, UK, Italy and Spain, and the emigrant diasporas of Italy and Spain. It focuses on skilled and unskilled immigrants and on ties with developing and developed countries. Results evidence two different network models: FDIs of UK, Germany and France are prompted by the ties of skilled immigrants, while those of Italy and Spain are only influenced by their respective diasporas. The disparity may stem from history. Differently from the findings of previous literature, the effects of networks with developing countries are similar to those with rich economies.     

Beyond IPAT and Kuznets Curves: Globalization as a Vital Factor in Analysing the Environmental Impact of Socio-Economic Metabolism

We bring the rapidly developing tools for analyzing society's metabolism to the attention of a scientific audience concerned with matters of population and, in a complementary fashion, we draw the attention of material and energy flow analysts to the role of population and population dynamics within their own paradigm. As an analytic framework, we use the classic IPAT-model that relates environmental impact (I), population (P), affluence (A), and technology (T). We relate the IPAT model to the tool commonly used in MFA, so-called environmental Kuznets curves, and re-analyze empirical data from various sources, for both affluent industrial and for developing countries, within these frameworks. We conclude that population and technology seem to dominate over affluence as far as environmental impact is concerned, but that both the IPAT and Kuznets models fail to take into account the intricate interdependencies among different socio-economic systems and the increases in their the economic, material and population exchanges. In effect, both models tend to underestimate the environmental impact and create too optimistic an image of dematerialization in affluent industrial countries.     

Reliability of translated measures assessing dating violence among Mexican adolescents

Research on the prevalence and correlates of dating violence in Mexican teens is challenged by the lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate assessment tools. This study modified, translated, and back-translated the Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationships Inventory (CADRI; Wolfe et al., 2001) and the Attitudes Towards Dating Violence Scales (Price, Byers, & the Dating Violence Research Team, 1999) for Mexican adolescents. Analyses on 307 adolescents (15-18 years old) from Monterrey and Mexicali, Mexico, revealed that most of the translated CADRI subscales and Attitudes Towards Dating Violence Scales had acceptable internal consistency and test-retest reliability coefficients. The study offers some evidence that the measures may be useful in assessing dating violence in Mexican teens.     

Play and learn: Children's agency through the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique

Social distancing, one of the measures adopted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, profoundly impacted on the lives of children. The consequences were, however, not homogenous. By focusing on the daily practices of 41 Mozambican children aged 3–10, we consider how differences in socioeconomic backgrounds led children to respond to the social restrictions in ways that made sense to them. Inspired by Abebe (2019), we identify how the interruptions of daily routines enabled specific instances of agency on children's part. These, we argue, produce new forms of continuity.     

Seeing a talking face matters: Infants' segmentation of continuous auditory-visual speech

Visual speech cues from a speaker's talking face aid speech segmentation in adults, but despite the importance of speech segmentation in language acquisition, little is known about the possible influence of visual speech on infants' speech segmentation. Here, to investigate whether there is facilitation of speech segmentation by visual information, two groups of English-learning 7-month-old infants were presented with continuous speech passages, one group with auditory-only (AO) speech and the other with auditory-visual (AV) speech. Additionally, the possible relation between infants' relative attention to the speaker's mouth versus eye regions and their segmentation performance was examined. Both the AO and the AV groups of infants successfully segmented words from the continuous speech stream, but segmentation performance persisted for longer for infants in the AV group. Interestingly, while AV group infants showed no significant relation between the relative amount of time spent fixating the speaker's mouth versus eyes and word segmentation, their attention to the mouth was greater than that of AO group infants, especially early in test trials. The results are discussed in relation to the possible pathways through which visual speech cues aid speech perception.     

COVID-19: Impact on children living in out-of-home care and their carers

Children enter out-of-home care (OOHC) having experienced significant childhood adversities and trauma. Little is known about the short-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on this vulnerable group. To gain some insights, we analysed the early impacts on the well-being and experiences of children in OOHC and their carers using the Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study data prior to and post the first lockdown restrictions. A total of 862 children, young people and their carers were interviewed either pre-COVID-19 restrictions (n = 567) (April 2019–March 2020) or post-COVID-19 restrictions (n = 295) (June–December 2020). While the two groups showed no significant differences in socio-emotional well-being, both the pre- and the post-COVID-19 restriction groups of children in OOHC had slight reductions in socio-emotional well-being. The interviews with the post-COVID-19 group showed that the pandemic restrictions affected children's well-being and behaviour, education, social and physical activities, as well as time spent with their birth family. Likewise, interviews with carers post-COVID-19 found a negative effect on carers' well-being, their ability to manage financially and their capacity to care and access services and support. The article contributes new evidence to inform OOHC policy and practice to support service systems facing unique challenges arising from a pandemic.     

Urbanites’ perception of vegetation in landscape-based stormwater management elements (LSM)

Urban Ecosystems - The popularity and use of green infrastructure measures such as green roofs, green walls, and curb extensions is growing, especially in dense urban areas. At the same time, from...