The peculiar case of age discrimination: Americanising the European social model?

The Lisbon Strategy commits the EU to making labour market regulation more employment friendly with commentators anticipating some resulting convergence on the US model. Surprisingly, part of this post-Lisbon convergence has taken the form of a major extension of EU Social Policy with the expansion of anti-discrimination policies to address the case of age discrimination. We argue that unlike the US experience, it is the current preoccupation with raising European employment rates that has led to this expansion of ‘hard law’ Social Europe. We are unable to provide an efficiency rationale for this extension and assess alternative explanations. We also provide arguments suggesting that its impact is likely to differ from those experienced in the US.      

白银时代：西方文化与俄罗斯文化的融汇

白银时代是俄罗斯文化史上由近代向现代转换的大时代,也是一个创作大繁荣的时代.这种转换与繁荣的原因和动力之一,在于俄罗斯本土文化传统和西方文化的撞击、磨合与融汇,其结果则是造成了那个时代人文科学和艺术各领域精神文化创造的密集型高涨.这一文化现象是两种异质文化发生碰撞之后产生新质文化的一个生动范例.     

Doing family

This paper draws on how constructions of ‘the migrant family’ in political discourse influence migrants' and their families' lives. In specific national contexts, ‘the migrant family’ is determined according to the national and European debates and expressed by their respective rules and regulations. By ‘doing family’, migrants and their families develop strategies in order to fit these requirements of living a certain family life. Fulfilling specific norms and perceptions which are not necessarily required for the majority of society is a precondition to succeed. Who is and who is not part of the family, who holds responsibility — such aspects have to be proved and repeatedly reproduced by migrants and their families. This not only affects their position in society, but also has strong implications on their lives as a couple and family, since it requires the continuous adaptation and reconstructions of their everyday reality.     

Doing family: Responses to the constructions of ‘the migrant family’ across Europe

This paper draws on how constructions of ‘the migrant family’ in political discourse influence migrants' and their families' lives. In specific national contexts, ‘the migrant family’ is determined according to the national and European debates and expressed by their respective rules and regulations. By ‘doing family’, migrants and their families develop strategies in order to fit these requirements of living a certain family life. Fulfilling specific norms and perceptions which are not necessarily required for the majority of society is a precondition to succeed. Who is and who is not part of the family, who holds responsibility — such aspects have to be proved and repeatedly reproduced by migrants and their families. This not only affects their position in society, but also has strong implications on their lives as a couple and family, since it requires the continuous adaptation and reconstructions of their everyday reality.     

Stirred,Shaken, or Blended

Abstract

Research documents the variation in levels of offending and the official response to boys' and girls' misbehavior (see Chesney-Lind & Sheldon 2004 for a nice summary of this work). Our research questions develop from this literature. We first expect differences in girls and boys at intake to a residential program for low-to-medium risk offenders, and then we also expect differences in official responses to girls and boys during their aftercare experience. Our findings confirm the literature—girls and boys differ in seriousness of committing offenses. Additionally, girls and boys are treated differently during their time in juvenile justice programming. For example, girls are monitored more closely than boys and receive less serious penalties for similar levels of rule violations. We find no difference between boys and girls in their odds of receiving a serious sanction. While traditional theoretical attempts to explain girls' misbehavior are often described with the expression “add women and stir,” our findings suggest that both behavior of and official response to boys' and girls' activities show that girls are not simply stirred into the male mix but are responded to differently than boys and in ways that illustrate conventional gender socialization.     

骨骼CT三维重建图像性别判定和年龄推断研究

目的通过计算骨骼计算机断层扫描(Computed Tomography,CT)三维重建图像判定性别和推断年龄的准确率,评价利用骨骼CT三维重建图像判定性别和推断年龄的可行性。方法将法医人类学教材中性别判定和年龄推断的方法应用于539例骨骼CT三维重建图像样本,判定245例骨盆的性别,推断100例男性耻骨联合、100例男性胸骨和94例男性锁骨的年龄,计算准确率。结果骨盆性别判定准确率为98.4%,耻骨下角和坐骨大切迹是区分性别最好的两项指标。男性耻骨联合、胸骨、锁骨的年龄推断准确率在45%以上,其中锁骨双侧方程准确率最高为77%。结论利用骨骼CT三维重建图像判定性别和推断年龄具有可行性。使用大体标本建立的骨盆形态学性别判定方法可直接应用于骨骼CT三维重建图像。使用大体标本建立的男性耻骨联合、胸骨、锁骨形态学年龄推断指标、分级和评分标准以及方程需要修改和补充。     

GENDER,SOCIAL NETWORKS,AND RESIDENTIAL BURGLARY*

Criminological researchers have devoted substantial attention to the nature and dynamics of residential burglary, but the role played by gender in shaping this offense remains largely unexplored. Feminist ethnographers have documented the fact that streetlife is highly gendered, and that this typically serves to marginalize women's participation in criminal networks and activities. Therefore, it appears likely that residential burglary—a prototypically social offense that requires good network connections—will be strongly influenced by gender dynamics. In this study, we analyze in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with 18 female and 36 male active residential burglars to examine the ways in which gender structures access to, participation in, and potential desistance from, residential burglary. In doing so, we aim to provide an insider's view of how gender stereotypes are expressed, reinforced, and exploited within streetlife social networks, and how these networks shape the lived experience of men and women engaged in residential burglary.     

西欧中世纪法制发展特点论析

西欧中世纪法制由日耳曼法、罗马法与教会法构成。日耳曼法在西欧中世纪早期占据统治地位,带有原始民主性;罗马法是古代调整简单商品经济关系的完善法,在中世纪得以复兴;教会法是天主教会制定和颁布的法规总称,对中世纪西欧社会影响巨大。三支性质不同的法律体系适应统治需要相互渗透与融合,成为西欧中世纪法发展的独具特点,也形成世俗法与宗教法独立并存的法律二元化格局     

A three-year comparative longitudinal study of a school-based social work family service to reduce truancy,delinquency and school exclusions

New Labour is keen to use legislation to encourage what are seen as desirable family practices, and to discourage other, less-favoured, forms. What this means in policy terms has now been codified in its 1998 Green Paper, Supporting Families . In this paper, we examine the validity of this enterprise in terms of its underlying assumptions about social behaviour and economic decision making. We argue that the government implicitly assumes a universal model of 'rational economic man' and his close relative the 'rational legal subject', whereby people take individualistic, cost-benefit type decisions about how to maximize their own personal gain. Change the financial structure of costs and benefits, and the legal structure of rights and duties, in the appropriate way and people will modify their social behaviour in the desired direction. However, recent research suggests that people do not act like rational economic man in making decisions about their moral economy. Legislation based on this assumption might then be ineffectual and the proposals in Supporting Families seem to be one example. This is what we have labelled the 'rationality mistake'. In Part I of this work, we focus on the financial proposals in the Green Paper and on the New Deal for Lone Parents in particular. We then go on to counterpose this with the results of recent empirical work on how and why people actually do make family decisions. In Part II, to be published in the next issue, we focus on chapter four of Supporting Families , on strengthening marriage, and again compare New Labour's proposals with recent empirical work.     

Gender, Threat/Control-Override Delusions and Violence

This study brings together the threat/control-override perspective and the literature on gender and stress coping to argue that gender moderates the association between threat delusions and violence. We suggest that men are more likely than women to respond to stressors such as threat delusions with violence. We test these ideas using data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, a multi-wave study of post-discharge psychiatric patients. Within-person results from two-level hierarchical models support the idea that men and women cope with threat delusions differently. Specifically, we find that men are significantly more likely to engage in violence during periods when they experience threat delusions, compared with periods when they do not experience threat delusions. In contrast, women are significantly less likely to engage in violence during times when they experience threat delusions, compared with periods when they do not. We discuss these findings in light of the literature on gender and stress coping.     

Why weren't (many) European women ‘missing’?

In a 1990 article, Amartya Sen observed “More than 100million Women … Missing” from the populations of parts of south and east Asia. Direct observation and census data suggested that gender ratios deviated sufficiently from what is known to be normal in modern human populations to suggest that the phenomenon was not random. Researchers have explored major proximate causes of “missing” girls and women such as female-selective abortion, routine neglect of young girls in their families including differential access to modern medical care, and even infanticide. This article uses Sen's work and the research of others on Asia to compare with evidence of the disadvantaging or even “mortal neglect” of girls and women in Western European society in the early modern and modern periods — roughly from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It argues that the current state of the evidence suggests little support for similar gender-specific forms of mortal neglect in Western Europe. It explores why this may have been so, using evidence from economic, social, demographic and religious life.     

Dating Violence Victimization,Relationship Satisfaction,Mental Health Problems,and Acceptability of Violence: A Comparison of Men and Women

Two of the most common reported consequences of dating violence are its impact on the victim’s satisfaction with their romantic relationship and its impact on the victim’s mental health. Recent research suggests that the strength of these relationships may be moderated by the degree to which the dating violence is acceptable to the victim. However, studies of these relationships have been limited to samples of women. The purpose of the present research was to examine the relationships among dating violence victimization, relationship satisfaction, mental health problems, and acceptability of violence for a sample that includes not only female victims, but also male victims. Using a sample of 155 male and 417 female college students, hierarchical regression analyses found that dating violence victimization is associated with relationship satisfaction and mental health problems for both men and women. For men, acceptability of violence moderated the relationship between dating violence victimization and the mental health problems of depression, anxiety, and somatization. For women, acceptability of violence moderated the relationship between dating violence victimization and relationship satisfaction only.

After the Velvet Revolutions: Altered Life-Chances, Fragile Legitimacy, and Split-Consciousness in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

This article deals with (i) changes in the objective and subjective life-chances of people in Eastern Europe as affected by the transformation of their economic and political systems, and (ii) the emergence of a new dominant meritocratic ideology of distributive justice and the survival of a now old subordinate egalitarian one. We investigate whether, and if so, how and to what degree, changes in people's (perceived) life-chances influence their (de)legitimation of the market economy and the pluralistic system of democracy as well as their (de/re)legitimation of the ancien regime. Especially, the question of whether, and if so, how and under which conditions, a phenomenon that has been called split-consciousness will occur with respect to people's choices between those opposing systems is answered. Several hypotheses are presented that deal with the above mentioned topics. The hypotheses are tested empirically by using cross-national data stemming from the International Social Justice Project.     

论社会哲学视野中的人、社会共同体与宪法——兼评《欧盟宪法》

宪法是人为了自己的生存与发展有意识地组织社会共同体的规则,以及由该规则所构建的社会秩序。因此,宪法、人的生存与发展即人权、社会共同体三个范畴及其相互的关系是宪法社会学的基本问题:宪法的终极关怀是人的生存和发展,其首要功能在于组织自足与互助的社会共同体,这种观念不仅把宪法的历史与逻辑统一起来了,而且能够很好地解释《欧盟宪法》的历史必然性。     

‘Two children to make ends meet’: the ideal family size,parental responsibilities and costs of children on two sides of the Iron Curtain during the post-war fertility decline

One of the major corollaries of the post-war fertility boom and decline is that two-child families became common across Europe after the 1970s. Despite the general agreement on the convergence of fertility trends, there is still little understanding of how this change took place in a comparative perspective of Western and Eastern Europe, which at that time were characterised by Cold War tensions of different ideological regimes. This study addresses this aspect by focusing on individual decisions around childbearing, child-rearing and family size. Based on 104 oral histories from Switzerland and Ukraine, this study illuminates that the urban setting provided parents with a similar set of constraints and opportunities, which eventually resulted in strikingly similar perceptions of the costs of childrearing on two sides of the Iron Curtain. Individuals’ motives to postpone first birth in Switzerland and second birth in Ukraine rested on a similar aspiration to invest in the well-being of children by ensuring material security for the family. This aim was increasingly achieved through female labour-force participation and adoption of modern contraception – the pill in Switzerland and abortion in Ukraine. While the timing of returning to the labour market and the share of women working after entering parenthood might have varied across the two contexts, a good mother became increasingly defined in both contexts in terms of providing emotionally and financially for her children. Although the introduction of modern birth control methods allowed couples to plan family size more carefully, it also made Swiss and Ukrainian women increasingly carry the major costs and actual burden of birth control. Altogether, this study challenges the common assumption around the persistence of strikingly different demographic realities in post-war Western and Eastern Europe by uncovering the mechanisms behind the stabilisation of family size around the two-child family ideal.     

‘Were women present at the demographic transition?’ A question revisited

In this contribution I argue that the future of historical demography has much to gain from the incorporation of women and gender into research on the (first) fertility decline in the Western world. Gender, as an explanatory concept, can help construct more complex models for fertility decline in which economic, social and cultural explanations can be connected and which are more sensitive to diversity, to historical context, and to contingency. By perceiving men and women as gendered identities who may have different interests in reproductive outcomes, we will not only restore the necessary agency to historical actors, but we will also see more clearly how many important questions on the fertility decline still remain unanswered.     

Household formation, institutions, and economic development: Evidence from imperial Russia

Household formation patterns have been adduced in recent years by historians and other social scientists to account for the economic development of western Europe. The so-called European Marriage Pattern, which prevailed throughout northwest Europe, is viewed as having been particularly conducive to early industrialisation and economic growth. But to what extent were household formation systems exogenous to the broader economic and social context in which they were located? Evidence from nineteenth-century Russia indicates that family systems were influenced by the same variables that determined the shape of the local economy; they were part of a complex web of institutions and thus cannot be viewed as independent determinants of economic development.     

International Migration and the European Union, Trends and Consequences

Member States of the European Union (EU) have undoubtedly changed into de facto countries of immigration. Since the upswing in migration in the late 1980s, net migration for the 15 EU Member States together has not been below 500,000. This article first focuses on trends in international migration (such as migration from former colonies, recruitment of temporary workers, and East-West migration) and special groups of immigrants (such as ethnic Germans, asylum seekers, and clandestine migrants). The second part of the article pays attention to immigrant settlement and migration policies, especially focusing on the European Union (trafficking and smuggling of humans, and the integration of migrants on the labour market). Detailed comparison of international migration flows is seriously hindered by a complexity of different national registration systems, and different countries display differences with regard to type and history of migration, country of origin, size of migration flows and immigrant populations.