Comparing pre-war and forced Ukrainian migrants in Poland: Challenges for the labour market and prospects for integration

Before full-scale war broke out in 2022, over 1 million Ukrainians resided legally in Poland. Within weeks of Russia's aggression, around 1.5 million new Ukrainian forced migrants had arrived, many of whom remain in Poland. As of September 2023, 970,000 Ukrainian refugees were still in Poland, where they enjoyed temporary protection status. This paper analyses data from a 2022 survey of both forcibly displaced and pre-war Ukrainian migrants with the aim of establishing what measures are needed to facilitate the economic integration of the former group. The two cohorts differ in terms of gender, age, family status, ways of seeking employment, employment situation and aspirations. Although 66 per cent of respondents had completed tertiary education, only 30 per cent of the forcibly displaced group had Polish-language skills. The paper recommends strategies for the provision of language education along with solutions to enable the labour market participation of this group and otherwise support their integration.     

Mapping the Field of Donation-Based Crowdfunding for Charitable Causes: Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This study compiles the main findings in the field of academic research on pure donation-based crowdfunding (DCF)...     

Moderators of Stress in Salvadoran Refugees: The Role of Social and Personal Resources1

Refugee research has tended to focus exclusively on the mental health consequences of migration with little attention being devoted to factors that facilitate adjustment. Recently, several cross‐cultural researchers have suggested that the growing literature on moderators of stress may elucidate why some migrants experience adverse effects whereas others remain relatively unscathed. This study examines the moderating effects of social and personal resources on the relationship between stress and subjective well‐being in 60 recently‐arrived and 60 established Salvadoran refugees in Canada. The participants completed a questionnaire that included scales pertaining to stress (life events, hassles, migration‐related events), resources (social support, locus of control, self‐esteem) and well‐being (quality of life, life satisfaction). Varying results were found for both groups. For Recent Refugees, personal resources were found to moderate migration stress. In particular, locus of control buffered the relationships between migration stress and quality of life and life satisfaction, whereas self‐esteem buffered the migration stress‐quality of life relation. For Established Refugees, social support and self‐esteem moderated the relationship between life events and life satisfaction. In addition, social support buffered the effects of hassles on quality of life. The findings underscore the relevance of integrating more firmly the study of refugee adjustment with current developments in stress research.     

Applicability of a Neuroprobabilistic Integral Risk Index for the Environmental Management of Polluted Areas: A Case Study

Recently, we developed a GIS-Integrated Integral Risk Index (IRI) to assess human health risks in areas with presence of environmental pollutants. Contaminants were previously ranked by applying a self-organizing map (SOM) to their characteristics of persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity in order to obtain the Hazard Index (HI). In the present study, the original IRI was substantially improved by allowing the entrance of probabilistic data. A neuroprobabilistic HI was developed by combining SOM and Monte Carlo analysis. In general terms, the deterministic and probabilistic HIs followed a similar pattern: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and light polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were the pollutants showing the highest and lowest values of HI, respectively. However, the bioaccumulation value of heavy metals notably increased after considering a probability density function to explain the bioaccumulation factor. To check its applicability, a case study was investigated. The probabilistic integral risk was calculated in the chemical/petrochemical industrial area of Tarragona (Catalonia, Spain), where an environmental program has been carried out since 2002. The risk change between 2002 and 2005 was evaluated on the basis of probabilistic data of the levels of various pollutants in soils. The results indicated that the risk of the chemicals under study did not follow a homogeneous tendency. However, the current levels of pollution do not mean a relevant source of health risks for the local population. Moreover, the neuroprobabilistic HI seems to be an adequate tool to be taken into account in risk assessment processes.     

Robust estimation for linear regression with asymmetric errors

The authors propose a new class of robust estimators for the parameters of a regression model in which the distribution of the error terms belongs to a class of exponential families including the log‐gamma distribution. These estimates, which are a natural extension of the MM‐estimates for ordinary regression, may combine simultaneously high asymptotic efficiency and a high breakdown point. The authors prove the consistency and derive the asymptotic normal distribution of these estimates. A Monte Carlo study allows them to assess the efficiency and robustness of these estimates for finite samples.