Theory and Practice? A Comparative Analysis of Migration and Development Policies in Eleven European Countries and the European Commission

This article analyses international policy discussions on migration and development (M&D) and contrasts these with the actual M&D policies and practices of 11 European countries who were among the main proponents of this international discourse. Desk research of public documents and accompanying information sought from these 11 governments as well as in the European Commission (EC) provide the basis for a comparative analysis of their overall M&D policies and strategies, and institutional settings for formulating and implementing these. The comparison shows that M&D policy and practice remains in a tentative and experimental phase, and that countries experience difficulties reflecting their international positions in their own policies, as well as in learning from their own efforts and those of others. While stressing the developmental potential of migration in international discussions, most of the countries’ policies still reflect an understanding of migration as a problem and a preoccupation with short‐term domestic interests.     

Self-Reported Personal Well-Being of Youth Accessing Intensive Mental Health Treatment

Normative samples have been shown to rate their personal wellbeing (PWB) as positively high and high PWB is associated with many enduring benefits. Cummins (J Happiness Stud 10(6):1–17, 2009) has suggested that PWB has an equilibrium that is set at a rather high positive state and maintained through psychological mechanisms he termed homeostatic protected mood (HPM). Investigators who have explored PWB and mental health disorders have often focused on schizophrenia in adult populations, with varied results, and scant attention has been paid to clinical samples of youth with emotional and/or behavioral disorders. The purpose for this report was to explore the level of PWB reported by a subsample of youth who accessed residential treatment (n = 30) and intensive home based treatment (n = 33) at 12–18 months post-discharge, and explore whether clinical variables could predict PWB. Many youth reported high PWB despite experiencing continued challenges in symptoms and psychosocial functioning. Demographic and clinical characteristics did not predict participants’ PWB scores, lending support for the HPM theory with this sample of youth with emotional and behavioral disorder.     

Family support: A review of the literature on families of adolescents with disabilities

ABSTRACT

For all youth, adolescence is a time of great change, marked by multiple transitions. For those with disabilities, these transitions can be especially challenging for the youth and their families. Although families of adolescents with disabilities often require support, it is unclear what types of assistance are most helpful. To understand the responsibilities of and, correspondingly, supports needed for parents and siblings, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature review. Specifically, the authors examined the literature to identify the supports that families provide to their adolescent relatives with disabilities, the impacts of caring for an adolescent relative with a disability, and the assistance that families receive. The authors conclude by discussing implications for future research about family support.     

The Association of Alternative Financial Services Usage and Financial Access: Evidence from the National Financial Capability Study

This study examined the association of financial access and alternative financial services (AFS) using a nationally representative sample from the 2012 National Financial Capability Study (N = 25,509). Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationship between financial access and AFS usage. Ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the relationship between banked status and the overall AFS usage as a latent variable while controlling for sociodemographic variables, financial education, financial knowledge, and home ownership. Results suggested that being unbanked was positively associated with AFS usage after controlling for other covariates. Financial education and knowledge, age, gender, marital status, education, household income, and homeownership were significantly associated with AFS usage. These findings have implications for public policy and programs that work with the unbanked.     

Are plant communities mainly determined by anthropogenic land cover along urban riparian corridors?

Often used as a mitigation tool to landscape fragmentation, urban riparian corridors also suffered from the effects of the urban expansion. This study explored the relationships between plant riparian communities and two major environmental variables (land cover, soil characteristics) and analyzed the floristic change along an urbanization gradient. Fifteen sites were surveyed on both riverbanks of two riparian corridors characterized by contrasting water regimes in Strasbourg, North Eastern France. Data of spontaneous species abundance was collected from 180 quadrats using (i) all plant species, (ii) herbaceous stratum and (iii) ligneous stratum (bush and tree). The diversity and compositional patterns of riparian plant species were analyzed within each corridor according to three levels of urbanization (urban, suburban, peri-urban). Relationships between riparian communities, land cover and soil chemical properties (pH, nitrogen and carbon content, moisture) were established by between-class co-inertia analyses. Land cover emerged as the main factor explaining changes in riparian communities along the rural–urban gradient while soil chemical properties discriminate water stress and fluvial dynamics of the two corridors. Similar compositional patterns were found within the most urbanized sites with the establishment of ubiquitous species. The herbaceous stratum is best linked to the level of urbanization, whereas the tree stratum is primarily correlated with corridor attributes (hydrological regime, soil properties). Although riparian species and communities are mainly determined by land cover, urban riparian corridors maintain native biodiversity up to the urban center.     

What does wellbeing do? An approach to defamiliarize keywords in youth studies

Wellbeing has become a keyword in youth and social policy, a construct deployed as a measure of a good life. Often associated with physical and mental health, wellbeing encompasses numerous indicators, from subjective experiences of happiness and satisfaction to markers of economic prosperity and basic human needs of security. This article examines wellbeing as an organizing concept in discourses on young people and argues for defamiliarizing its truth claims and cultural authority by investigating what wellbeing does. We begin by examining the rise of wellbeing, drawing attention to its conceptual muddiness and ambiguity. Framed by the Foucauldian notion of problematization, the analysis proceeds along two routes: first, through an historical consideration of wellbeing as a relational concept with antecedents, focusing on ‘self-esteem’; and second, through a reading of wellbeing in contemporary educational policy. Informed by Somers' historical sociology of concept formation and Bacchi's critical policy analysis, we illuminate the mixed dimensions of wellbeing's reach, placing it within longer traditions of youth studies and psy-knowledges and showing its transformative promise as well as its individualizing effects. In doing so, we elaborate a methodological approach that can be adapted to examine other keywords in youth studies and social policy discourse.     

The Development of Selective Attention Orienting is an Agent of Change in Learning and Memory Efficacy

This study examined whether the developmental transition from facilitation‐based orienting mechanisms available very early in life to selective attention orienting (e.g., inhibition of return, IOR) promotes better learning and memory in infancy. We tested a single age group (4‐month‐olds) undergoing rapid development of attention orienting mechanisms. Infants completed a spatial cueing task designed to elicit IOR, in which cat or dog category exemplars consistently appeared in either the cued or noncued locations. Infants were subsequently tested on a visual paired comparison of exemplars from these cued and noncued animal categories. As expected, infants showed either facilitation‐based orienting or the more mature IOR‐based orienting during spatial cueing/encoding. Infants who demonstrated IOR‐based orienting showed memory for both specific exemplars and broader category learning, whereas those who showed facilitation‐based orienting showed weaker evidence of learning. Attention orienting also interacted with previous pet experience, such that the number of pets at home influenced learning only when infants engaged facilitation‐based orienting during encoding. Learning in the context of IOR‐based orienting was stable regardless of pet experience, suggesting that selective attention serves as an online learning mechanism during visual exploration that is less sensitive to prior experience.     

Influence of competition level on referees’ decision-making in handball

The influence of competition level on referees’ decision-making was investigated. Referees’ decisions in 90 handball games (30 games X 3 competition levels) were observed in different situations related to the advantage rule, and 100 referees from two different levels of expertise were subsequently asked to offer explanations for the competition-level effects from the first part of the study. Results revealed that at the highest level of competition referees intervened less frequently with sporting sanctions, but more frequently with disciplinary sanctions. These effects were apparent mainly in immediate intervention situations and unsuccessful advantage situations, but not in successful situations. Referees explained these effects of competition level in terms of a player competence stereotype, in addition to referees’ different expertise across competition level. The implications of the findings for understanding how status-related stereotypes impact on intervention behavior are discussed.     

Maintaining Sexual Desire in Long-Term Relationships: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Model

The most universally experienced sexual response is sexual desire. Though research on this topic has increased in recent years, low and high desire are still problematized in clinical settings and the broader culture. However, despite knowledge that sexual desire ebbs and flows both within and between individuals, and that problems with sexual desire are strongly linked to problems with relationships, there is a critical gap in understanding the factors that contribute to maintaining sexual desire in the context of relationships. This article offers a systematic review of the literature to provide researchers, educators, clinicians, and the broader public with an overview and a conceptual model of nonclinical sexual desire in long-term relationships. First, we systematically identified peer-reviewed, English-language articles that focused on the maintenance of sexual desire in the context of nonclinical romantic relationships. Second, we reviewed a total of 64 articles that met inclusion criteria and synthesized them into factors using a socioecological framework categorized as individual, interpersonal, and societal in nature. These findings are used to build a conceptual model of maintaining sexual desire in long-term relationships. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the existing research and suggest clear directions for future research.     

Subset sum problems with digraph constraints

We introduce and study optimization problems which are related to the well-known Subset Sum problem. In each new problem, a node-weighted digraph is given and one has to select a subset of vertices whose total weight does not exceed a given budget. Some additional constraints called digraph constraints and maximality need to be satisfied. The digraph constraint imposes that a node must belong to the solution if at least one of its predecessors is in the solution. An alternative of this constraint says that a node must belong to the solution if all its predecessors are in the solution. The maximality constraint ensures that no superset of a feasible solution is also feasible. The combination of these constraints provides four problems. We study their complexity and present some approximation results according to the type of input digraph, such as directed acyclic graphs and oriented trees.