Mentoring,educational services,and incentives to learn: What do we know about them?

This paper reviews recent studies on the effectiveness of services and incentives offered to disadvantaged youths both in the US and abroad. We focus our analysis on three types of interventions: mentoring, educational services, and financial rewards. The objective of this article is threefold. First, we explain alternative theoretical points of view in favor (or against-when applicable) each of these interventions. We then discuss how recent empirical work has affected that view and summarize the latest findings. We conclude by considering which questions remain to be examined. Our hope is that this article will serve as a resource for those seeking to understand which educational interventions work and for whom, and to be used as a starting point for the debate on where to go next.     

Migration and Citizenship Law in Spain: Path‐dependency and Policy Change in a Recent Country of Immigration

This article analyzes the links between migratory processes and the evolution of nationality legislation in Spain. We argue that this case challenges the theoretical models that link immigration to liberalizing reforms in citizenship law. Despite large‐scale immigration experienced over the last two decades, Spanish nationality law has remained strongly focused on keeping ties with Spanish communities abroad. To account for the high degree of stability of Spanish citizenship law we structure our analysis along three basic lines: the historical conceptions derived from Spain's past as a colonial power, as well as its tradition as a country of emigration; the lack of incentives for political actors to introduce the reform of citizenship law in the political agenda; and the strategies adopted by those political actors in relation to the politicization of immigration.     

Using Quality of Life Criteria to Define Urban Areas in Catalonia

The purpose of this paper is to develop the concept and definition of multidimensional urban areas, thereby providing insights into our understanding of the sub-regional structures of household spatial systems. Hence, we propose a framework for strategic planning that considers several areas of household needs. In order to achieve this goal, we develop a multicriteria methodology to define the territorialisation of the region of Catalonia (Spain). We first analyse the different methodologies used to define territorial areas based on economic criteria, for example, those used to construct travel-to-work areas (TTWA), among other methods. Thus, in practice several criteria and techniques are used to organize a territory, including administrative areas, commuting-based algorithms, and gravitational techniques. Finally, these points help us build a system of multicriteria urban areas that is consistent with the overall use of time by individuals.

Winning a Race: Narratives of Healing and Psychotherapy in Children and Adolescents Who Have Been Sexually Abused

This article explores the process of recovering from sexual abuse according to children and adolescents who have been sexually abused and have successfully completed psychotherapy. In this qualitative study, interviews were conducted with 20 participants from 8 to 18 years of age and then subject to narrative analysis. Results show that participants’ narratives of recovery involve an improvement of psychological well-being. Moreover, they feel better equipped to overcome future challenges, feeling empowered and able to retake control of their lives. Factors that support and inhibit recovery are examined, as are developmental differences. Discussion underlines the valuable role of psychotherapy in helping children and adolescents in their healing process, changing the meaning of the abusive experience, and developing new capacities.     

Culturally sensitive social work: promoting cultural competence

In current times of great conflict and clashes between different cultures and worldviews, cultural competencies should be a well embedded feature of social work education. This is a fundamental and cross-cutting issue; however, we question whether it is an obvious concern in social work education in European countries, specifically in Portugal, and if the curriculum of social work courses covers this topic. This article is based on research that seeks to find out if there are mandatory curricular units of the disciplinary field of social work that explicitly address culturally sensitive social work and cultural competencies. Thus, this article presents a study that focuses on educational institutions that provide social work courses in Portugal, and has the potential to be extended to other countries. An online survey and a document analysis of the curriculum programmes of all Portuguese courses in social work were conducted. The study results revealed the lack of curricular units with clear terms relating to the topic of culturally sensitive social work. The implications for practice and educational policy are also discussed, which lead to a reflection and analysis of the evaluation and accreditation process of social work education in Portugal, with a conclusion that it is incomplete and faces major challenges in curriculum development and course accreditation. Challenges and opportunities in developing social work curricula, as well the debate around a generic or specialist social work education are also discussed. Finally, the authors suggest an opportunity to develop cultural competencies through continuing and lifelong learning for social workers.     

Housing markets performing class: middle‐class cultures and market professionals in Chile

This article takes a cultural economy approach to the analysis of housing markets as spaces in which class cultures are performed. The design and marketing of real estate projects are understood as the outcome of the interplay of different narratives, practices and materials involving cultural and economic calculations. I explore one particular type of cultural knowledge used during the production and sale of houses: the meanings of class and social mobility. I argue that housing markets and housing production involve the interrelation of several cultural calculations on class and social mobility. In other words, meanings of class and social mobility are instrumentally produced and used in the design, production and marketing of real estate. I describe how cultural calculations about class are inscribed into house location, house design and real estate advertising and marketing devices. Indeed, it is argued that in designing ‘real estate’ projects, agents and executives work as ‘sociologists at large’: they create and perform new meanings of class and social mobility.     

Distorted Lorenz curves: models and comparisons

The economic literature contains many parametric models for the Lorenz curve. A number of these models can be obtained by distorting an original Lorenz curve $L$ by a function $h$ , giving rise to a distorted Lorenz curve ${\widetilde{L}}=h\circ L$ . In this paper, we study, in a unified framework, this family of curves. First, we explore the role of these curves in the context of the axiomatic structure of Aaberge (2001) for orderings on the set of Lorenz curves. Then, we describe some particular models and investigate how changes in the parameters in the baseline Lorenz curve $L$ affect the transformed curve ${\widetilde{L}}$ . Our results are stated in terms of preservation of some stochastic orders between two Lorenz curves when both are distorted by a common function.     

Economic Incorporation,Civil Inclusion,and Social Ties: Plans to Return Home Among Central Asian Migrant Women in Moscow,Russia

This study uses data from a survey of female labor migrants from three Central Asian countries – Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – in Moscow, Russia, to examine factors that influence these women's plans to return to their home countries. The conceptual framework considers three types of factors of migrants' attachment to the host society – economic incorporation, civil inclusion, and social connectedness – while also accounting for migrants' ties to their homelands. The results of multivariate analyses point to the importance of sector and type of employment, income, legal status, experience of ethnically motivated harassment, and social ties to adults relatives and friends in the host society in shaping return plans. In contrast, connections in the home country do not appear to influence the likelihood of having plans to return. These findings are contextualized within the political, socioeconomic, and ethnocultural reality of the post‐Soviet world and related to the cross‐national scholarship on return migration.     

RISK TAKING FOR ONESELF AND OTHERS: A STRUCTURAL MODEL APPROACH

Economic theory makes no predictions about social factors affecting decisions under risk. We examine situations in which a decision maker decides for herself and another person under conditions of payoff equality, and compare them to individual decisions. By estimating a structural model, we find that responsibility leaves utility curvature unaffected, but accentuates the subjective distortion of very small and very large probabilities for both gains and losses. We also find that responsibility reduces loss aversion, but that these results only obtain under some specific definitions of the latter. These results serve to generalize and reconcile some of the still largely contradictory findings in the literature. They also have implications for financial agency, which we discuss.     

Essentialist beliefs about sexuality-related categories / Creencias esencialistas sobre diferentes categorías relacionadas con la sexualidad

People form essentialist beliefs about social categories as a strategy to organize their world and to make sense of the similarities and differences between different categories. This research examines four dimensions of essentialist thinking (biological basis, immutability, clarity of discreteness and informativeness) across different sexuality-related categories. Specifically, the categories of gays, lesbians, transsexuals, paedophiles, rapists and prostitutes were studied. Results show that essentialist beliefs of the six categories vary across dimensions and that essentialist dimensions function independently. Therefore, we discuss the relative usefulness of taking a global measurement as opposed to analysing the dimensions of essentialism separately.