A bibliometric analysis of cultural heritage research in the humanities: The Web of Science as a tool of knowledge management

AbstractSubstantial research on the topic of cultural heritage has been conducted over the past two decades. At the same time, the overall output volume of journals and citation metrics have become important parameters in assessing and ranking researchers’ performance. Even though the scholarly interest in cultural heritage has recently increased world-wide, a comprehensive analysis of the publication output volume and its correlation to the shift in the cultural heritage regime starting in 2003 is still lacking. The article aims to understand the role of Web of Science (WOS) as a tool of knowledge management in academia by drawing on the scholarly output volume, the patterns displayed by t…

Flexi(nse)curity in adult webcamming: Romanian women’s experiences selling digital sex services under platform capitalism

The global sex industry has undergone a tremendous transformation, and many different forms of commercial sex have emerged with the growth of digital media. The advent of ‘platform work’ in diverse...

High-skilled immigrants in times of crisis. A cross-European analysis

Abstract In times of economic turmoil, do high-skilled immigrants (HSIMs) tremble, or are they better suited than non-immigrants or low-skill immigrants to cope with such instability? This paper sheds some light on HSIMs’ social integration during crisis by considering their life satisfaction, ability to get paid work, and civic participation. European Social Survey (ESS) data are used in multilevel models aiming to disentangle the effect of recession in the host economy from that of living through times of crisis. The existing literature does not point in a clear direction, but the use of acculturation perspective, along with the self-selection hypothesis, help to derive clearer expectatio…

Support for Prostitution Legalization in Romania: Individual, Household, and Socio-cultural Determinants.

Romania is a major source country of labor migration to other EU countries, being commonly perceived as a source country for sex workers operating in more prosperous economies. However, very little is known about population attitudes in relation to prostitution in Romania. Based on nationally representative data from the Romanian Gender Barometer (2018) survey, we analyzed data on 860 individuals to examine the predictors of policy preferences for legalizing prostitution. We considered individual-level socio-demographics and household-level indicators such as the presence of children and migrants, as well as socio-cultural beliefs and behaviors related to social liberalism and religiosity. …

Nesting self-employment in education, work and family trajectories of Romanian migrant returnees

Challenging a biased view towards self-employed returnees as neoliberal selves, as the normalized approach of the migration–development nexus tends to depict them, this article builds an alternative conceptual framework to unpack the variegated experiences of migrant returnees’ self-employment trajectories in post-socialist Romania. The authors argue that the overemphasis on the benefits of return migration for origin countries through the skewed focus on the migrants’ accrual of human and financial capital and their ostensible entrepreneurial orientation has resulted in disregarding more influential biographical and cultural aspects. Life story interviews with middle-aged participants reve…

Intergenerational support as a reaction to socio-economic crisis: alteration of solidarity within precarious Romanian households

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the tensions arising from the intersection of norms and practices of support in situations in which intergenerational support is the main household strategy for coping with precariousness in Romania. This paper describes competing meanings of solidarity and reveals gendered experiences of ambiguity with respect to the sustainability of help exchanges within the context of economic vulnerability. Romania displays high public acceptance of intergenerational support, while the country’s deficient social welfare system prompts families to intensify their help exchanges. Findings based on in-depth interviews suggest that private arrangements are compounded by unbalan…

Sofia Nădejde. Of woman's brain and other demons. Anthology of Sofia Nădejde's published writings (eds Maria Cernat and Adina Mocanu). 2019 Ed Paralela 45, Pitești

This book review aims to highlight the significance of retreiving the long ignored contributions of Sofia Nadejde’s to the progress of understanding gender inequalities that are deeply rooted in our culture. Through the careful work of reshaping the original texts published between 1881-1885 in Contemporanul. Revista Științifica și Literara, Maria Cernat and Adina Mocanu bring new insights into the genesis and the evolution of local feminist thought by critically situating it within the global feminist movement.

Romanians’ current perception of threat from immigrants in a context of co-ethnic migration: assessing the role of intergroup conflict and active/passive contact

AbstractThis paper investigates the predictors of natives’ perception of the immigrant threat in Romania, an interesting site given immigrants’ marginal presence in the total population and the sizeable proportion of co-ethnic immigrants. Yet the interplay between nationalism and religion shapes an ideological frame that favours unwelcoming attitudes towards immigrants that challenge the Romanian identity forged along ethnic and religious ties. The authors used regression to analyse immigrant threat according to several dimensions: cosmopolitanism, group conflict and intergroup contact. In order to reflect specificities of this particular context, the latter dimension is conceptualized so a…

Narrating well-being in the context of precarious prosperity: An account of agency framed by culturally embedded happiness and gender beliefs

This article sets out to critically examine the accounts of well-being produced by a middle-aged Swiss woman living in precarious prosperity. By taking on a feminist reading of the narrative on well-being, the article challenges the taken for granted assumption of the powerful agent in thriving societies. Insights from literature on happiness in nations and gender beliefs enabled addressing the woman’s capability to exert agency, while acknowledging the influence of the context in which narratives are embedded. In addition, the presence of a non-national interviewer appears to be an incentive for the interviewee’s compliance with cultural meta-narratives. The approach of well-being as ‘age…

The impact of the coronavirus crisis on European societies. What have we learnt and where do we go from here? – Introduction to the COVID volume

The coronavirus pandemic, which first impacted European societies in early 2020, has created a twofold crisis by combining a health threat with economic turmoil. While the crisis has affected all European societies very significantly, its impact varies across countries, social groups, and societal domains. In an effort to provide a first overview of the effect of the coronavirus crisis, in this editorial we discuss contributions of 58 papers published as part of this special issue. These early research papers illustrate the varied impact of the pandemic on various areas of social life. The first group of studies in this special issue analyzes the effect of the pandemic on social inequalitie…

Introduction: Uncertain Biographies? A Focus on Migrants’ Life Courses

This book focuses on the uncertainties revealed by migrants’ biographies whose shapes are less conventional or patterned, while their family, work, and educational careers are simultaneously more fragmented and intermingled. As Gardner (Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002) contends, there is a more pressing need to address the meaning and shape of life course in migrants’ case. The chapters ask therefore: What challenges migrants and returnees face when trying to make sense of their life courses after years of experience in other countries with different age norms and cultural values? How can they reconc…

Gendered Life-Course Patterns in Post-Socialist Romania: An Illustration from Households Situated in Precarious Prosperity

AbstractThis paper documents the gendered aspects of changes affecting the life course of Romanians post-socialism, and the meanings men and women—with ages spanning across various age cohorts—employ to make sense of their experiences. Based on qualitative data collected during research on precarious prosperity among Romanian households conducted in 2013, the findings show that major shifts occurred in the timing of life events. Romanians’ life courses and their work trajectories have been unevenly affected depending on their intersectional belonging to gender, area of residence and life stage at the moment of the political transition. The analysis of work trajectories unravels increasing g…

Men’s Migration, Adulthood, and the Performance of Masculinities

This chapter examines the ways migration shapes men migrants’ adulthood transitions, their performance of masculinities during migration and upon their return, and their narratives of adult male identity. The chapter documents the socially constructed nature of adulthood and provides evidence on the ambivalences and ambiguities that men migrants experience regarding adulthood and manhood as a result of their long-term migration. Tensions involving the duration of stays abroad after migration—12 years, on average—on the one hand, and the difficulties in settling down and establishing unequivocal benchmarks of manly adulthood while living in different cultural and structural contexts, on the …

Conclusion: Setting Up an Agenda for Life-Course Perspective in International Migration

Each chapter in this book documents ways in which migration is intertwined with life pathways, and tells the story on how migration shapes and is shaped by work, family, and educational pathways. Examples come from a variety of migration flows (Poles in Ireland; Romanians and Moroccans in Italy; Spanish, Portuguese, and Italians in Switzerland), destinations (Spain, Italy, Ireland, Germany), countries of origin (Romania, Morocco, Poland, Spain, etc.), and sources for return migration and/or remigration (Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland).

Stepwise migration: What drives the relocation of migrants upon return?

Romanian Households Dealing with Precariousness: A life-course approach

This paper addresses the main pathways through which households avoid slipping into poverty in Romania by employing a life-course approach. Recent researches on social stratification found that in every country we can delineate a particular social layer composed of households living just above the poverty threshold, whose members struggle to reach a more secure prosperity while facing constant threats of downward mobility. Drawing on recent precarious prosperity research, and based on in-depth interviews carried out in 2013 with 25 households situated in between poverty and prosperity from a Romanian city (Cluj-Napoca), we use a life-course approach in order to account for the main routes i…