New Challenges for Bilingual Education in the Basque Country

In this paper, we focus on bilingual education in the Basque Country. The main achievements of the Basque educational system are to be found in the progressive expansion of more intensive linguistic models, the social acceptance of teaching through and in Basque, and the positive academic results of pupils. The main problems associated with bilingual education are: (1) the difficult situation of Basque in Navarre and the French Basque Country; (2) the contradictions involved in what we refer to as linguistic model A (Castilian) of the education system, as well as the need to completely reassess it; (3) the uncertain future of Basque language use at the secondary and tertiary school levels, especially in vocational training and at the Universities; (4) the large gap between schooling and competence in the Basque language (on the one hand) and its use in everyday life (on the other); (5) the existence of two comprehensive plans for the revitalisation of Basque, and the introduction of a plurilingual programme (Basque-Spanish-English), and the extent to which generalisation is suitable; and finally (6) the need to review all existing bilingual educational systems to transform them into genuine intercultural programmes.     

Orientierungsprozesse im Vertrauensdilemma. Beziehungskonstruktionen in Beratungen zur privaten Altersvorsorge

Financial advice given by consultants is crucial for retirement saving decisions. We argue that those willing to save are facing a dilemma since there is a widespread mistrust towards the financial industry while financial advice is indispensable for coping with complexity in the decision process. Exploring the case of the state-subsidized Riester-pension in Germany, we show that savers construct personal relationships with the advisor to deal with this complex dilemma in terms of theories on trust. Using a mixed-method design embracing both quantitative techniques—cross-sectional as well as longitudinal (fixed-effects) approaches—and qualitative evidence, we shed new light on old age saving decisions. In detail, the exploitation of longitudinal surveys (of GSOEP and the German SAVE Panel 2004–2010) and of 18 problem-centred interviews provides the following findings: (1) Retirement saving decisions often rely on pre-existing relationships to financial advisors. (2) The less alternative resources available, the more savers rely on these relationships. (3) Financial advisors use their existing relationships to sell pensions. (4) The qualitative material unveils different patterns concerning the decision-making process which are trusteeship, strategic alliance, and acceptable ad-hoc collaboration. Altogether, the widespread idea of private retirement saving resulting from an atomistic and rational planning of the future is an illusion.     

Child sexual abuse: community concerns in urban Tanzania

The aim of this study was to explore community perceptions about child sexual abuse in Tanzania. Thirteen focus group discussions were conducted with adult community members. The core category, children's rights challenged by lack of agency, was supported by eight categories. Aware but distressed portrayed feelings of hopelessness, lack of trust in the healthcare and legal systems reflected perceived malpractice, decreased respect for children's rights referred to poor parental care and substance abuse, myths justifying CSA illustrated cultural beliefs to rationalize child sexual abuse, disclosure threatened by fear of stigma and discrimination aligned the manifestations that prevent disclosure, actions driven by economic circumstances described the economical dependence of victims, urging a change in procedures reflected informants' wish to ally with local governance and pressure groups, and willingness to act indicated the community's role in supporting victims. The study showed how lack of agency calls for efforts to increase children's human rights at all levels.     

Telling a modest story: accounts of men's upward mobility from the National Child Development Study

While the pattern of social mobility in postwar Britain has been extensively studied, revealing considerable upward mobility, much less is known about the subjective dimension to mobility. In this article, we employ a new sample of in-depth interviews with 50-year old men from the National Child Development Study to examine in detail the link between objective mobility patterns and the way the upwardly mobile narrate their life trajectories. In contrast to the mobility ideology suggested by the Oxford mobility survey of the early 1970s, in which the upwardly mobile recognized and internalized their success as a project of the self, we report how members of this later generation of men with highly successful careers prefer instead to articulate 'modest' life stories. By treating the career as a narrative device, we are able to show how the disavowal of the dominant, linear hierarchical career model by these men allows them to tell particular and distinctive stories which establish their individuality and personhood, while, paradoxically, recognizing the cultural power of the dominant model. In particular, we highlight the use of 'linear contingent' narratives by these men, in which specific events, especially those connected with occupational and geographical transitions, are deployed as contingent thresholds to mark out key shifts and passages in their lives. We then compare their accounts with those of immobile and downwardly men, who instead deploy 'ghostly' stories, preoccupied by the past, or defensive accounts, displaying unease with their failure to live up to the expectations of the linear career model. Having shown that men's accounts of mobility are suffused with an awareness of their need to establish their own individuality through repudiating the social trope of the instrumental careerist, we conclude that the links between career identities and objective mobility patterns are not straightforward and need careful unravelling.     

Wives and ex-wives: A new test for homogamy bias in the widowhood effect

Increased mortality following the death of a spouse (the “widowhood effect”) may be due to (1) causation, (2) bias from spousal similarity (homogamy), or (3) bias from shared environmental exposures. This article proposes new tests for bias in the widowhood effect by examining husbands, wives, and ex-wives in a longitudinal sample of over 1 million elderly Americans. If the death of an ex-wife has no causal effect on the mortality of her husband, then an observed association between the mortality of an ex-wife and her husband may indicate bias, while the absence of an effect of an ex-wife’s death on her husband’s mortality would discount the possibility of homogamy bias (and also of one type of shared-exposure bias). Results from three empirical tests provide strong evidence for an effect of a current wife’s death on her husband’s mortality yet no statistically signifi cant evidence for an effect of an ex-wife’s death on her husband’s mortality. These results strengthen the causal interpretation of the widowhood effect by suggesting that the widowhood effect is not due to homogamy bias to any substantial degree.     

Child Sexual Abuse: Community Concerns in Urban Tanzania

The aim of this study was to explore community perceptions about child sexual abuse in Tanzania. Thirteen focus group discussions were conducted with adult community members. The core category, children's rights challenged by lack of agency, was supported by eight categories. Aware but distressed portrayed feelings of hopelessness, lack of trust in the healthcare and legal systems reflected perceived malpractice, decreased respect for children's rights referred to poor parental care and substance abuse, myths justifying CSA illustrated cultural beliefs to rationalize child sexual abuse, disclosure threatened by fear of stigma and discriminationaligned the manifestations that prevent disclosure, actions driven by economic circumstances described the economical dependence of victims, urging a change in procedures reflected informants' wish to ally with local governance and pressure groups, and willingness to act indicated the community's role in supporting victims. The study showed how lack of agency calls for efforts to increase children's human rights at all levels.     

National Identity Formation in the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire: The Skerst Family in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The modern history of the Baltic provinces of the former Russian Empire has essentially been written from an ethnic/national perspective. It is basically the story of the formation of the Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian and German 'communities', of their 'specific' national identities and eventually of nation states. With those who acquired a German identity, the focus has essentially been upon the landed nobility, the so-called 'Baltic Barons', the traditional elite that formed a minority even of the ethnically German population. The existence of other German groups has been recognised, such as the 'literary estate' (Literatenstand), which in the nineteenth century 'brought into Baltic higher culture, rationalist viewpoints and represented a potential threat to noble control of local politics.' However, such groups have received comparatively little attention from historians, especially among those publishing in English. Even then there is limited acknowledgement of their possessing distinctive cultural and other forms of self-identification. A recent study by a Canadian scholar of the Germans of Riga before 1914 tends to impose the values of the landed elite upon them. In works published in post-1945 (West) Germany by emigres from the region, there is an inclination to present a distinctive 'Baltic German' identity that is largely derived from the experience of the landed elite.     

Contribution of forest provisioning ecosystem services to rural livelihoods in the Miombo woodlands of Zambia

This paper examines the contribution of forest provisioning ecosystem services (FPES) to rural households and assesses the contributions of forests to the annual incomes of households in Africa’s Miombo woodlands. The study employed focus group meetings, in-depth interviews, and interviews of households, as stratified by wealth class and head of household gender in Copperbelt, Zambia. The results show that FPES are vitally important in providing food, medicine, fodder, and construction materials to rural livelihoods. FPES provided 43.9 % of the average household’s income and contributed a 10 % income equalisation effect among households, as revealed by the Gini-coefficient analysis. Poorer households received a lower mean annual income from forests than did their intermediate and wealthy counterparts, but in relative terms, forest income made the greatest contribution to the total household incomes of poor households. When stratified by gender, forests contributed 44.4 and 41.8 % of the income of male- and female-headed households, respectively. The study indicates that wealth, rather than gender, was the key determinant of a household’s engagement in the sale of FPES. The inter- and intra-community differentiation in the use and sale of FPES, as revealed in this study, enables more effective targeting of forest management interventions and informs efforts to reconcile the goals of poverty reduction and forest conservation.     

Capacity rationing in rental systems with two customer classes and batch arrivals

Service differentiation is an emerging method to improve profit and to better serve high-priority customers. Such an approach has recently been introduced by one of Europe's leading rail cargo companies. Under this approach, customers can choose between classic and premium services. Premium service is priced above classic service and premium customers receive a service guarantee which classic customers do not receive. The company has to decide under which conditions it should ration its fleet capacity to classic customers in order to increase service of premium customers. We model such a situation as a batch-arrival queuing loss system. We describe the model, solve it optimally, and derive quantities of interest such as service probabilities. We further analyze it by performing numerical experiments based on the data from the company that motivated our research. We show that the potential of capacity rationing can be substantial in situations like the one we analyzed. We also derive conditions under which rationing is especially beneficial, such as under high unit fleet holding costs or in the presence of batch arrivals compared to single arrivals.     

DID TARP DISTORT COMPETITION AMONG SOUND UNSUPPORTED BANKS?

This study investigates if the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) distorted price competition in U.S. banking. Political indicators reveal bailout expectations after 2009, manifested as beliefs about the predicted probability of receiving equity support relative to failing during the TARP disbursement period. In addition, the TARP affected the competitive conduct of unsupported banks after the program stopped in the fourth quarter of 2009. Loan rates were higher, and the risk premium required by depositors was lower for banks with higher bailout expectations. The interest margins of unsupported banks increased in the immediate aftermath of the TARP disbursement but not after 2010. No effects emerged for loan or deposit growth, which suggests that protected banks did not increase their market shares at the expense of less protected banks. (JEL G21, G28, L51)