The urban household in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900–2000: Patterns of family formation in a turbulent century

Starting from census data on co-residence and household composition, the authors analyse principles of family organisation and family formation in twentieth-century urban Russia and the Soviet Union. The article uses an adapted version of the classification of households developed by Peter Laslett and Eugene Hammel to study variation in household structure for successive population censuses. Changes in this variation between cross-sections are explained with the help of additional quantitative and qualitative data and are linked to the fundamental demographic, social and economic shifts which took place in Russian society in the course of the twentieth century. The article finds a family system characterised by a tendency towards nuclear family formation, but incorporating a fairly stable element of household extension. Co-residence of three generations was both an answer to a perennial housing problem and offered important advantages in the sphere of childcare and care for the elderly. Variation and fluctuation in household structure are found to be most pronounced during the turbulent first half of the century. After a period of stability during the post-war decades of Soviet rule, post-Soviet transformations provoke new changes.     

Transitions in women's and children's work patterns and implications for the study of family income and household structure: A case study from the Catalan textile sector (1850–1925)

This article deals with the outcomes of changes in the family labor resource allocation for family incomes and household structures. During the first stage of the demographic transition, since women worked more than men due to child bearing and child rearing, and children were the main contributors to household incomes over the medium term, there was a substitution effect whereby women 's wage labor was replaced by that of the children. With the beginning of the second industrial revolution, a contrary trend can be observed whereby child labor was replaced by that of married women, even by those reported as housewives in the Municipal Census. A smaller number of children, mandatory schooling, and an improvement of women 's position within the factory with respect to men, all seem to explain this second substitution. As a result of all these transformations, household structures and family incomes do not conform to any pre-established norms and integrate what we have defined as a family economy of mutual assistance.     

Data retention in the UK: Pragmatic and proportionate,or a step too far?

On 6 April 2009 new legislation came into force, for the first time putting Internet service providers' duty to retain significant amounts of data (relating to customers' email and Internet usage) on a compulsory, as opposed to a voluntary footing. It is a topic which has provoked intense protest from the privacy lobby and fuelled months of “Big Brother” headlines in the press. For the industry it raises operational challenges – how to facilitate storage and retrieval of colossal amounts of data. In this article we consider the policy background to the regime, the detail of the UK implementation and the practical implications for communications service providers. We weigh up the privacy and human rights concerns against the business case put forward by the Government. We also examine the Government's proposals – announced at the end of April – to significantly extend and “future proof” this regime in the form of its Intercept Modernisation Programme.     

The Jewish population and family in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the 18th century

The sources that can be employed to examine demographic aspects of the Jewish population and family in 18th-century Poland–Lithuania are sparse and mostly fiscal in origin. Since this source material has been preserved only for some periods and regions, few generalizations can be made. First, the authors have referred to the most comprehensive census that was carried out in 1791 by household in Cracow province (województwo krakowskie). It does not allow for detailed family reconstitution, however. Although extended/multiple family households might have been fairly common, the two-generational conjugal family unit seems to have prevailed, and no more than four nuclear families lived in one house. In addition, the age at first marriage was influenced only to a limited extent by the traditional practice of early marriage.     

‘Alien family’: The impact of the Aliens Act 1935 and subsequent Orders on the family in Ireland, 1933–1945

This article examines the consequences of Irish ‘aliens’ policy on families fleeing Nazi Germany using case studies of Irish German-speaking families and German-speaking families to ascertain the difficulties they faced. Analysis of the applications process undergone by families in order to secure a safe-haven from the reaches of the Third Reich reveals the main concerns of the Irish establishment and how these matters affected the potential safety of some individuals above others because of how they were officially categorised. Juxtaposing those who were considered an asset to Irish society against those who were not granted refuge this study traces the process both endured. While this article outlines the Irish government policy on refugees it focuses more particularly on how civil servants and government agencies implemented such policies and the subsequent impact on refugee family units affected by the Nazi regime.1 1?My doctoral research forms part of the German-speaking exiles in Ireland Project an initiative led by Dr Gisela Holfter in the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick. The overall project is attempting to fill a previous void in international exile studies, from an Irish perspective see Holfter, Gisela (Ed.). (2006 Holfter, Gisela, ed. 2006. German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945, Amsterdam: Rodopi. New York [Google Scholar]). German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945 Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. This article attempts to reconcile internal policy, international relations and the effect these had on the lives of ordinary people both German-speaking and Irish. It will conclude by recognising the importance to the Irish authorities of the former two elements while acknowledging that despite them there were some successes for refugees although they were of least consequence in the priorities of the day.     

Gangs in the DRC and El Salvador: towards a third generation of gang violence interventions?

The phenomenon of gangs in El Salvador and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has already been researched, but a comparative study of gangs and gang policies is lacking. In this paper we discuss several gang violence prevention initiatives regarding the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 in El Salvador, and the kuluna and bashege in Kinshasa, DRC. In order to analyze the different gang interventions, we implement the typology of first and second gang violence prevention initiatives (Rodgers et al. 2009), and propose the evolution towards a third generation of gang violence prevention interventions. While first generation initiatives are security and law-enforcement driven, and second generation initiatives socio-preventive driven, third generation initiatives are more politically driven. The latter indicates a shift towards a vision of dialogue and negotiations to deal with gang violence. However, the different generations are not predefined within time and third generation initiatives can also be followed up by first generation initiatives, which was for example the case in the gang truce in El Salvador. Also, comparative gang research includes challenges, especially when the gang phenomenon in one country is better researched and documented than in other countries. As such, we were unable to identify politically-driven initiatives in the DRC to compare with the ones in El Salvador. Further research is thus required. With this paper we not only aim to contribute to the literature on gang violence prevention and reduction initiatives, we also want to push researchers, practitioners and policymakers to look beyond the borders when setting up gang (violence) prevention and rehabilitation projects, and to learn from other regions where similar initiatives have been implemented to deal with comparable issues of gang violence.     

Arbitration in financial dispute resolution: the final step to reconstructing the default(s) and exception(s)?

In this article, I argue for caution in embracing family arbitration as a new form of private ordering for resolving parties' financial disputes. I explain that family arbitration may be more successful than other forms of private ordering and final court hearings in enabling certain types of parties to resolve certain types of disputes. I consider why family arbitration may not become numerically significant despite its potential benefits, but may be much more important in normative terms. Lawyer-led negotiations remain the most common form of out-of-court resolution and constitute the de facto default form of bargaining in the shadow of the normative regime framed by ss 23–25 Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. Together with the transformation in approach to nuptial agreements, family arbitration may mark a normative shift towards autonomy and private ordering. I question whether this is a desirable step for family law, at least before we have resolved the underlying policy debate.     

Reinforcing the family: The role of gender,morality and sexuality in Irish welfare policy, 1922–1944

Irish legislators had to negotiate rigidly defined gender roles, strict moral codes and contradictory sexual behaviour when implementing welfare policy in the early decades of the twentieth-century. Despite traditional and unforgiving attitudes to male and female sexuality, the debates surrounding welfare policy in Ireland reveal a more complex sexual landscape and an overriding concern regarding child protection and family welfare. Faced with real fears regarding the viability of the Irish family and the degree of child poverty, Irish legislators opted to use welfare policy to direct limited state resources towards the children of vulnerable and/or large families resulting in an apparently inconsistent approach to gender ideals.     

Child-related leave and women’s labour market outcomes: towards a new paradigm in the European Union?

The current European Union (EU) legislative framework on child-related leave is facilitating an imbalance in the take-up of leave by women over men. There is a consolidated EU right to maternity leave for mothers but there is no parallel EU right to paternity leave for fathers. The EU right to parental leave is for both working mothers and fathers, but its design does not encourage an equal take-up by women and men. The aim of this article is to gain insight into the effects of child-related leave on women’s labour market outcomes. On the one hand, it reviews and analyses economic literature which points to the adverse consequences of leave on women’s earnings, and even on women’s labour market participation when the absences from work are very prolonged. On the other hand, it underlines the new direction followed by the European Commission towards greater equality between men and women at home and at work.     

State aid control in the modernisation era: Moving towards a differentiated administrative integration?

Despite contentions that state aid control is an instance of direct execution, the State Aid Modernisation (SAM) package has largely dispersed responsibility for giving effect to the common legal framework across national administrations. In this setup, the effectiveness of state aid law is confronted with asymmetric capacities, diffuse application of complex rules and difficulty in keeping dispersed powers under control. This article combines selected evidence on the operation of state aid control with a multidisciplinary analysis of the functioning of integration mechanisms in the European administrative space. The aim is to examine the potential effects of SAM. It contends that, while the reform has strengthened the Commission's dominance, the instruments of administrative integration might fail to secure adequate capacities and implementation performances at national level, due to constitutional constraints and opposing forces. This effect, it is argued, could be divisive, and risks undermining the integrity of the internal market.     

Stay or leave? Individual choice and family logic: the destinations of children born in the Valserine Valley (French Jura) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

"To study inheritance, it is necessary in the first place to know the number of heirs in each family, how property was divided between them, and whether their inheritance was sufficient to enable them to maintain and support several children in the parish. This study examines the process by which the populations of the parishes of Valserine Valley in France reproduce themselves from one generation to the next, by means of examining the ?effective' progeny of couples to determine how many of them produce children (heirs) who continue to live in the Valley. The ultimate goal of these researches is to establish the characteristics of those who leave the Valley, and how these differ from those who choose to stay. The article examines whether it is possible to discern a family strategy in the way these decisions are made, and whether behavior of the persons in question is determined by individual choice."     

A death in the family: Household structure and mortality in rural liaoning: Life-event and time-series analysis, 1792–1867

In China before the twentieth century, the household was a locus of social and economic organization in which resources and responsibilities were allocated. This study shows that the structure of the relationships between coresident kin conditioned the allocation process. Through a discrete-time life-event analysis of triennial household register data from a northeast Chinese village, Daoyi, between 1774 and 1873, we find that an individual's probability of dying, which we treat as an indicator of access to resources and the nature of household roles, was affected by the composition of their coresident kin. As is the case in contemporary societies, widows and widowers had higher mortality than the currently married. Orphans had higher mortality than children with at least one parent present. Reflecting the dependence of a wife's status on whether she had produced an heir for her husband, married women in young adulthood and middle age who had at least one son had substantially lower mortality than those without. Reflecting the strength of the claim that elderly males could make on household resources, children with coresident grandfathers had higher mortality than those without. Even though sons were supposed to be a form of old-age security, however, the death rate of the elderly was not reduced by the presence of sons and grandsons.     

Changing Typology of Organised Crime in a Post-Socialist Lithuania (the Late 1980s–Early 2000s)

This paper analyzes the dynamics of organised crime in post-socialist Lithuania. Three overlapping periods in evolution of organised crime are discerned. During the mid 1980s organised crime emerged with the attempts to liberalise the state socialism by legalizing cooperative and individual property as a basis for economic activities. By the early 1990s organised crime in Lithuania began to metamorphose from illegal manufacturing to opportunistic criminality associated with the privatisation of state property. Since the mid 1990s organised crime has again undergone change. It has entered what could be termed a maturation phase. This maturation was influenced by a number of factors including; the end of the privatization process, resumed growth of the economy, development of the legal and fiscal infrastructure to regulate a market economy, and increasing effectiveness and successes of policing in Lithuania [1] [1] Johnstone, Peter 2005. ‘Commissar-General Vytautas Grigaravièius, Lithuania national police’. Police Practice and Research, 5(4–5), September–December, pp. 357–370. . In this article the political, socio-economic, organisational and cultural factors that influenced the dynamics of change in organised crime are analyzed.     

Restrictions on legal aid in family law cases in England and Wales: creating a necessary barrier to public funding or simply increasing the burden on the family courts?

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) resulted in significant cuts to the availability and scope of legal aid in family law proceedings. Some four years after the cuts were implemented, there has been a great deal of research about their devastating impact on vulnerable groups and individuals. This paper considers the other victim of the cuts, the family court itself. It is currently bulging under pressure from both an increase in applicants who have been forced to represent themselves in family proceedings and also from a rise in applications for injunctions linked to domestic violence. This paper will draw on case law to demonstrate that the reforms implemented through LASPO have seemingly only succeeded in passing the burden from one publicly funded agency, the Legal Aid Agency, to another, HM Courts and Tribunals Service. The family court system is currently at breaking point and further government review is urgently needed if people are going to be able to continue to use the system effectively.     

Marriage and household in the Belgrade elite at the beginning of the 20th century: The Novaković family

Building on Ahmad ibn Yusuf b. al-Qadi al-Timbuktawi's treatise entitled Hatk al-Sitr Amma Alayhi Sudani Tunis min al-Kufr (Piercing the Veil: Being an Account of the Infidel Religions of the Blacks of Tunis) this paper examines the implications of the Hausa non-Muslim Bori cult practice in Ottoman Tunis on enslaved West Africans' retentions of religious and family values from their original homelands. Specifically, the paper traces and analyses the evolution of Bori cult practice in the Tunisian milieu and places it in its proper historical and diasporic contexts. To this end, the paper goes beyond questions that are not central to al-Timbuktawi's condemnation of the enslaved West African community of Tunis, but which nonetheless attracts the attention of scholars interested in the diasporic and historical significance of Bori cult practice in the Maghreb.     

Forename,family, and society in southwest france (Eighteenth–nineteenth centuries)

In the southwestern part of France—the land of the `familles souches' (stem families)—naming practices fulfilled many different roles. According to the classical naming practice, the first name given to the child expressed the idea that it was a member of a social group and part of a genealogical chain. The name was given by the godparents, who themselves were chosen by the biological parents according to a set of strict social norms. The spiritual parents had a privileged relation with their godchild. Important changes, however, occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now the increased frequency of multiple forenames and the influence of fashion signified that the first name had come to have the new function of underscoring a person's individuality rather than integrating him or her into kinship groups.     

Evolving issues in police and immigrants’ relation in Finland: is it towards a structural interpretation?

The relation between police and immigrants has become a topic of scholarly fields of research as immigration has increased the number of new residents and people from a variety of countries and cultures into Finland. This new phenomenon has slowly changed the country to a multicultural society, thus requiring government agencies to adapt and adjust in the ways they provide services to the citizenry. Moreover, empirical research studies on minorities’ and immigrants’ perceptions of the police posit that certain factors are responsible for minorities’ lack of trust in the police. Little attention has been given to this issue in Finland. The aim of this study is to analyse and explore as well as add to the growing scholarly research on the perception and cooperation between immigrants and the police in Finland in order to address the factors that could possibly be responsible for immigrants’ lack of trust in the police. To address these issues, the study uses the experiences of 23 out of the 65 Africans whose ages range from 28 to 50+ who have resided in the country for five or more years. The findings indicate a depth of troublesome cross-cultural understanding between the participants and the police owing to differences in the policing styles in Finland and the respondents’ countries of origin. The concept of over-policing is analysed with a view to ensure the effective protection of the human rights of the participating immigrants within the country’s criminal justice system.