How important is homeland education for refugees’ economic position in The Netherlands?

We use data on refugees admitted to The Netherlands that include registration of education in their homeland by immigration officers. Such data are seldom available. We investigate the quality and reliability of the registrations and then use them to assess effects on refugees’ economic position during the first 5 years after arrival. The most remarkable finding is the absence of returns to higher education.

Ethnic Differences in Leaving Home: Timing and Pathways

The dynamics of leaving home for youth from migrant families in the Netherlands are examined using individual administrative data on the 1977 and 1983 birth cohorts for the period 1999–2004. A competing-risks approach is applied to distinguish leaving home for union formation, to live independently, and to share with others. Migrant youth, and particularly Turkish and Moroccan youth, leave home at a significantly younger age than Dutch youth, given the relevant background variables. This is remarkable, given the older ages at which young people in the origin countries leave the parental home. The result may be seen as evidence of how the potential effects of cultural norms are counter-affected by other factors, such as the facilities of the welfare state and the awkward position of migrant youth between two cultures. Considering the pathways out of home, the analysis largely confirms the expected pattern: Turkish and Moroccan youth leave home more often for union formation and particularly marriage, while this pathway is of minor importance for Dutch youth at early ages.     

Devout Muslims or tough highlanders? Exploring attitudes toward ethnic nationalism and racism in Europe’s ethnic-Chechen Salafi communities

This is the first article that systematically deconstructs the idealised, widely shared view and formal self-representation of Salafis as a de-culturalised group of Muslim believers who are solely devoted to the idea of a uniform Muslim identity and are indifferent to the notions of ethnic nationalism and racism. Drawing on unique interviews with EU-based ethnic-Chechen émigré Salafis, the article illuminates the ways they draw boundaries and consequently construe their ethnic and racial identities as superior and opposed to Muslims stemming from the Middle East and Central Asia. Below the surface of coherent ideologically shaped self-representations, the diaspora Salafis’ identities reflect the idea of Chechnya’s mountainous topography being conducive to a superior ‘national mentality’, racial purity, and cultural uniqueness. Intriguingly, the diaspora-Chechen Salafis’ attitudes toward Middle Easterners and Central Asians employ a rhetoric which entails similarities with the notion of imagined geographies and to some extent resembles Western Orientalist discourse. In stark contrast to leading Salafi scholars’ statements emphasising a united Muslim identity, which are routinely echoed by outsiders, this article points out the maintenance of strong ethnic-nationalist and racist resentments amongst individual members of this religious community.     

Conceptualising Euro-Islam: managing the societal demand for religious reform

Political, public and academic debates about the need for a ‘Euro-Islam’ as a necessary condition for the full integration of Muslim are widespread and strong. For Muslims and Muslim organisations in particular, Euro-Islam can be understood as subverting the very nature of their religious identity, making change or reform impossible. This raises the question as to how Muslim organisations reject the idea of the need for a Euro-Islam by construing the core of their faith as not being contradictory with Western values, norms and beliefs. The current study examines this question amongst two major Turkish Muslim organisations (Milli Görü? and Fethullah Gülen) in the Netherlands and Germany. The analysis shows that in managing the demand for reform a distinction was made between Islam as a belief system and Muslims as a group of people, between religion and culture as two types of belief systems and between politics and the true nature of the West.     

A new painting process for vessel radiators of transformer: wet-on-wet

The painting process of corrugated wall radiators of a distribution transformer is performed by a flow-down painting technique in the industrial field. This study has been prepared in accordance with ISO 12944-5. Correspondingly, this work is motivated by Epoxy 2-pack paints (4.3.4.2) to obtain minimum requirements for C3 atmospheric corrosivity categories (5.1.1). This standard requires from the vertical surface of the vessel of the transformer to be painted with epoxy paints that contain anti-corrosive pigments with a minimum of 100?µm dry film thickness. In the present study, a new production methodology called wet-on-wet (WOW) painting is developed which has never been used in industry. In addition, a modified response surface methodology (RSM) is proposed for designing, modeling, and optimizing the proposed process under unsteady environmental effects. The results indicate that the WOW painting can be applied to real industrial systems successfully by the aid of the proposed new RSM algorithm and provide remarkable time and cost savings.     

Market‐Implied Spread for Earthquake CAT Bonds: Financial Implications of Engineering Decisions

In the event of natural and man‐made disasters, owners of large‐scale infrastructure facilities (assets) need contingency plans to effectively restore the operations within the acceptable timescales. Traditionally, the insurance sector provides the coverage against potential losses. However, there are many problems associated with this traditional approach to risk transfer including counterparty risk and litigation. Recently, a number of innovative risk mitigation methods, termed alternative risk transfer (ART) methods, have been introduced to address these problems. One of the most important ART methods is catastrophe (CAT) bonds. The objective of this article is to develop an integrative model that links engineering design parameters with financial indicators including spread and bond rating. The developed framework is based on a four‐step structural loss model and transformed survival model to determine expected excess returns. We illustrate the framework for a seismically designed bridge using two unique CAT bond contracts. The results show a nonlinear relationship between engineering design parameters and market‐implied spread.     

Leaving Home and Destination of Early Nest Leavers: Ethnicity,Spaces and Prices

This study examines ethnic differences in leaving the parental home and the choice of destination (both location and quality of housing) in the Netherlands. Using unique individual administrative panel data, we study the mobility of the entire birth cohort 1983. In contrast to previous studies, this paper includes the geographical location and the quality of destination living arrangements in the analysis, in an attempt to explain ethnic differences in leaving the parental home. We show that ethnic minority youth, in particular those from Turkish and Moroccan origin, improve their housing quality when leaving the parental home. This results in earlier home-leaving than among young people of native Dutch origin. Our results on the early home-leaving behaviour of ethnic minority youth are robust with regard to the geographical distance of nest leavers.     

Attitudes toward Asylum Seekers in Small Local Communities

The admission and geographic distribution of asylum seekers has a central place in public discourse in Western countries, amid mounting asylum applications and dire humanitarian crises. Receiving countries usually distribute the newly arriving asylum seekers across the entire country, in particular for small remote communities. Incidental opposition actions by local residents against the siting of Asylum Seeker Centres (ASC) has created the perception of strong and widespread resistance in the public sphere. This article aims to assess this alleged backlash by examining attitudes toward asylum seekers in small local communities. Using data from three representative surveys conducted among residents in the vicinity of four ASCs in the Netherlands, the regression analysis shows a strikingly high willingness to host an ASC, in opposition to popularly assumed public opinion.     

The Relationship Between Military Spending and Black Market Premium in Greece: An ARDL Approach

Recently, there are a few empirical studies relating to the military spending and other macro variables such as real exchange rate, unemployment rates, investment rates, budget, and inflation rates. We examine the relationship between military spending and black market premium, in the Greece using the autoregressive distributed lag approach for the time period 1954?C1998. Our results implied that higher military spending leads to higher black market premium and we concluded that while military spending does not Granger cause black market premium in the short run, black market premium does Granger cause military spending in the short run. When we examine the long-run results, ELC model implies that almost 30?% of the disequilibrium of the previous year??s shocks adjusts back to the long run equilibrium.     

The effect of immigration on wages in three european countries

We analyse the impact of immigrants on natives wages from reduced form wage equations for The Netherlands, United Kingdom and Norway. We find very small effects on natives wages and no dominant robust patterns of substitution and complementarity. Effects on earlier immigrants own wages are larger but less reliable. Further work should focus on these own effectsData on the Netherlands have been made available by CEREM, Statistics Netherlands(LSO 1997) and SEO (GPD). The British QLFS have been made available by the Office for National Statistics through the Data Archive, University of Essex. Norwegian KIRUT data have been made available by NSD, Bergen. We are grateful to these organisations. None of these organisations bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations of data sets used in this paper.Two anonymous referees and the editor-in-chief, Klaus Zimmermann, provided very valuable inputs for a substantial revision of an earlier draft. Responsible editor: Klaus F. Zimmermann.