Search results for "Economy"
showing 10 items of 2131 documents
Nordic City Regions in the Creative Class Debate—Putting the Creative Class Thesis to a Test
2010
The Nordic countries have a quite different urban structure and social systems than the USA. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden may then constitute a critical test of the empirical reach of Richard Florida's much cited creative class thesis beyond its empirical basis in the USA. This paper employs comparative statistics to examine the importance of the quality of place in attracting members of the creative class to Nordic city regions, and it analyses the role of the creative class for regional economic development. Florida's original study focused only on city regions with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Our statistical analyses mainly support Florida's results with regard to these larger …
Has Multiculturalism Failed in Europe? Migration Policies, State of Emergency, and Their Impact on Migrants’ Identities in Italy
2014
This chapter analyzes migration policies in Italy within the larger frame of the debate on multiculturalism and its failure in Europe. The first part focuses on the exceptional flow of migrants that after the recent conflicts in Northern Africa was directed toward Europe across the Italian coast. The emergency raised issues for the defense of territories, social security, and preservation of identity. The author demonstrates the inefficiency of the Italian migration and emergency policies that has been adopted at the arrival of undocumented migrants from Northern Africa in 2011. The chapter uses the case of Italy to show the weakness of Europe in developing effective forms of coexistence an…
Linguistic Diversity as a Problem and a Resource – Multilingualism in European and Finnish Policy Documents
2012
Societies in Europe and across the world are under constant pressure to cope with increasing multilingualism and multiculturalism. This development has its roots in different global and local societal and economic processes. On the one hand, globalization is putting pressure on the economy in that more varied language resources are needed in society. On the other hand, immigration is constantly on the increase, giving rise to what Vertovec (2006) has termed super-diversity, a ‘condition distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified i…
Yearly quotas and country-reserved shares in Italian immigration policy
2008
Regular immigration to Italy is based on a quota system setting annual ceilings to legal entries. Reserved shares are granted to single countries or categories of countries. Reserved shares have been increased; they are used as an incentive to obtain the cooperation of countries of origin in stemming irregular migration flows. The total quota of regular immigration has gradually increased too. Still, it does not fully respond to the growing demand of foreign workers on the labour market, and quotas seem to be used as crypto-regularisations rather than as an instrument for regulating legal entries.
The Hidden Counterpoint of Spanish Federalism: Recentralization and Resymmetrization in Spain (1978–2008)
2010
The recent evolution of the Spanish ‘State of Autonomies’ has given rise to numerous political and academic criticisms, which argue that the initial federal logic of the system is giving way to a confederal logic that threatens the cohesion of the state. This article contradicts the negative diagnosis, outlining the main mechanisms that retain and in fact reinforce the powers of federalization in tandem with the fundamental political decentralization process that has taken place since 1978. This paper focuses on three critical areas: the distribution of legislative power, the fiscal system and the dynamics of the political process. In these three areas powerful mechanisms are at work reinfo…
Repeated Multiparty Elections Expand Civil Liberties
2008
Democracy and Elections in Africa. By I. Lindberg Staffan. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 248 pp., $55.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-8018-8332-3), $24.95 paper (ISBN: 0-8018-8333-0). Democracy and multiparty elections are high on the agendas of many international actors, human rights groups, and African governments. Although the possibilities for free association, monitoring the use of power, and electoral competition have increased, electoral fraud and political violence are prevalent in many African countries. As a result, democratization remains a critical area for researchers and practitioners interested in African affairs. It is, therefore, exciting to come across a book that…
How Supportive Are Romanian Consumers of the Circular Economy Concept: A Survey
2016
The aim of this paper is to investigate consumer behavior regarding the environment and the adoption of new patterns of behavior and responsible consumption in the promotion of a Circular Economy (CE) in Romania. With this goal in mind, a questionnaire survey was performed on-line on a nationwide scale to explore consumers’ behaviors and attitudes, which was distributed in all four of Romania’s macro-regions and interviewing 642 respondents. The results indicate that the consumers have a positive attitude towards the importance of the environmental protection, in general and it also measures the frequency of adopting eco-friendly behaviors by the consumers, showing that the consumption beha…
Religion and Culture of Origin. Re-Shaping Identity in the Integration Process: A Case Study in Sicily
2019
Cosa succede quando persone di differenti culture, valori, religione vivono insieme? Queste dinamiche sono stare analizzate in una ricerca sul processo di integrazione degli immigrati a Palermo.I principali risultati sono presentati in questo saggio. In questo caso studio, i dati della ricerca ipotizzano un modello teorico di integrazione in cui gli immigrati, liberi di esprimere le loro differenze religiose e culturali, tendono a ridurre la loro percezione di minoranza. What happens when people of different cultures, values, religion live together? Sociological studies on immigrative phenomenon often swing between immigration and integration policies. These policies actually reveal the dif…
How populist crisis rhetoric affects voters in Switzerland
2019
Right-wing populism has a long tradition in Switzerland. Nevertheless, only little is known about how populist messages in the media contribute to the success of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and to the acceptance of the party’s anti-immigration policies. In this study, we combine data from a large media content analysis (including newspapers and TV news shows) with data from a panel-survey in order to address this research gap. Thereby we differentiate between effects driven by the content and the form of right-wing populist communication. While right-wing populist content depicts immigrants and the political elite as a threat to the Swiss people, populist style evokes the sense of a cris…
Immigrants’ Networks, Distance, and Trade Creation Effects: An Study Employing Province-Level Data for Italy, Spain and Portugal
2014
Neoclassical trade theory assumed international flows of goods (commodities) to be substituting for people (factor) flows under certain circumstances. However, recent empirical evidence shows a complementary relationship between these two types of flows, with migration creating new trade exchanges. Immigrants tend to form networks across borders, reducing fixed trade costs. They also retain some preference for their home-produced goods. These two channels provide the rationale of the immigration trade-enhancing linkage. In this study we investigate that issue for the cases of Italy, Spain and Portugal, employing province-level data for the period 2002–2010. Results show that the first chann…