The Educational Achievement and Employment of Young Roma in Bulgaria,Hungary and Romania: Increasing Gaps and Policy Challenges

This article investigates the educational attainment, employment and living conditions of young Roma adults in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania with the aid of national generations and gender surveys and other sources of information. It shows that in spite of a small improvement in the educational attainment of young Roma in comparison to the generation of their parents, the educational achievement and employment gaps have increased considerably during the post-communist period. The article also compares living conditions of the Roma with other population groups. It concludes with a discussion of policy challenges.     

Resistance to Chronic Violence in Informal Workplaces: The Strategies of Domestic Workers in Brazil (2003–2018)

This article analyses the repertoire of individual strategies utilised by domestic workers to resist routinised workplace violence in the cities of São Paulo and Ilhéus, Brazil. Findings suggest that domestic workers favour two strategies of resistance: exit (quitting work without prior notice) and voice (negotiating workplace conditions). The latter strategy is divided into two subtypes: voice-pleading (appealing to decency) and voice-confrontation (warning and rights-claiming). Voice strategies appear more effective than exit in ameliorating patterns of chronic workplace violence, particularly when they incorporate labour rights claims and when emotional ties exist between workers and employers.     

Beliefs in a Just World as a Buffer Against Anger

Anger is the emotion typically accompanying unfairness appraisals. Belief in a just world (BJW) was expected to buffer against angry feelings because subjects high in BJW play down unfairness, justify unfairness as being self-inflicted, and avoid self-focused rumination. Three studies were run to test this hypothesis. A questionnaire study revealed that subjects who strongly endorse the belief in a personally just world are less likely to experience anger and, if they do experience such feelings, are less likely to suppress them. In two experiments, an angry, a happy, or a sad mood was induced. In the anger-evoking condition, subjects high in BJW were less angry and suffered no decrease in self-esteem compared to subjects low in BJW, who reported increased feelings of anger and decreased self-esteem. It is concluded that individuals high in BJW are better able to cope with anger-evoking situations, and that BJW can be seen as a personal resource protecting not only mental but also physical health.     

Bureaucratic Migration Politics: German Support for Common EU Policies on Labour Migration

As a macrostructure, this article uses a bureaucratic politics framework to understand the preference formation of the German federal government on liberalising economic migration policies. This allows unpacking the process of preference formation and linking it to a number of causal factors, which, by influencing the costs and benefits distribution of the relevant actors, shape the position of the government. The article argues that the misfit between the existing national regulations for economic migration and European-level policies has to be zero – otherwise the economic and political adaptation costs for the actors involved are too high. A heated national debate on immigration is negatively related to governmental support for such measures, as the political costs of support skyrocket. Conversely, if the decision-making process happens bureaucratically, this helps to attain governmental support, as the political costs of doing so are kept minimal.