Suchergebnisse

"The aim of this paper is to investigate the hypothesis of a causal effect of individual labour-market-security and -integration on fertility by looking at the timing of first birth decisions after leaving the educational system. The analysis focuses on two major research questions: First, how is the timing of first parenthood related to previous labour market performance? Second, can we identify differences in first birth risks depending on individual labour market performance? In other words, to what extent do successfully integrated individuals differ with respect to their fertility decisions from those who are poorly integrated (as indicated by discontinuous or precarious employment patterns)? Integral to the analysis is a cross-national comparison of the relevance of institutional settings and their impact on family formation. In this context the editor focuses on the continental conservative German system and the liberal welfare state of the UK. He conceptualizes the initial transition to parenthood as the result of a rational as well as biographical planning process. The empirical investigation of the length of time up to first birth is based on an event history analysis, applying a piecewise constant exponential model to data from the SOEP and the BHPS. Results show the well known patterns of a still widely traditional division of labour between men and women on one hand side and extensive antagonisms of occupational and familial role. The cross-national comparison underlines the picture that this situation is especially virulent in Germany. In the case of German men with weak labour market integration he finds clear evidence of reduced probabilities of first birth - which is most likely due to limited breadwinner qualities. A reduced first birth risk also comes to the fore for women in Germany and the UK who show levels of extensive labour market integration (as indicated by a high amount of doing overtime work, e.g.). Yet an incomplete labour market integration of German women (as indicated by part time employment) also goes hand in hand with a reduced first birth risk. Among British women the editor cannot identify any clear fertility effects, related to initial labour market integration. This may be due to the fact that instable patterns of labour market entry are much more common in the UK and thus do not invoke any unsettling effect on fertility decisions." (author's abstract)

Die Diskussion über Ursachen und Tendenzen nationaler Entwicklungsgefälle scheint gegenwärtig zu stagnieren. Um die Vagheit der Thesen und Ergebnisse zu überwinden, versucht der Verfasser wichtige Aspekte der Gesamtproblematik mit Hilfe einer Mikrostudie zu erhellen. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung stehen die unselbständigen Textilarbeiter in zwei unterschiedlich strukturierten Industriegemeinden Württembergs. Die Einzelanalysen erstrecken sich dabei auf die Jahre 1810 bis 1914. Um das Wohlstandsgefälle zu messen, verwendet der Beitrag den Indikator Besitz. Zwischen den beiden Industrieorten zeigen sich signifikante Unterschiede hinsichtlich des Durchschnittsbesitzes der Arbeiterfamilien. In bezug auf mögliche Erklärungen des Wohlstandsgefälles werden vier Thesen formuliert und im einzelnen erörtert. Wichtige Erklärungsgrößen für die regionalen Unterschiede sind: Agglomerationsvorteile (Bedeutung des städtischen Arbeitskräftepotentials), Einstellungen zur Industrie, frühe Industrialisierung als Bedingung für die spätere Ansiedlung von Wachstumsindustrien, Binnenwanderung. Der dem Beitrag beigefügte Kommentar (Gerd Hohorst) setzt sich kritisch mit dem verwandten Forschungsansatz auseinander, betont aber die Bedeutung der versuchten Verbindung von qualitativer und quantitativer Argumentation. (JL)

In Belgium, lone parent families represent almost one fourth of the households with children, aside from the existence of regional differences in the phenomenon's prevalence. Zooming in on Flanders, the poverty risk for this type of family is significantly higher compared to couple-with-children households and the general population; thus, labour market participation represents a crucial resource for individuals heading such households to cope with the economic needs of the family and to avoid long-lasting poverty or to rely extensively on social assistance. We use data from the Crossroads Bank of Social Security (CBSS Datawarehouse) to study Flemish lone mothers' patterns of labour market participation and test the association between employment trajectories after lone parenthood and both individual and household characteristics. Flanders represents an interesting case because of (i) the relatively high diffusion of lone motherhood, (ii) the presence of welfare measures supporting a number of different types of recipients (even to different extents and not necessarily so generous to keep them out of poverty), and (iii) the availability of longitudinal data to observe lone mothers' employment trajectories over time. We find that differences exist among lone mothers, who thus experience different risk of social exclusion driven by family and labour market arrangements set up to resolve the potentially contradictory trade-off between the needs for care and for income. The age at which mothers have children is crucial in understanding their future exclusion from the labour market: selection into early lone motherhood is associated with lower employment opportunities. Furthermore, it is the number of children below 17 in the household rather than the presence of very small children that defines a lower probability of having a strong labour market attachment through full-time jobs, and that increases the likelihood of being unemployed/inactive and receiving welfare benefits.

The scepticism regarding long-term cycles/waves/oscülations and thrusts in economic development has not prevented a fresh discussion about Kondratiev in the Federal Republic of Germany. Demographic factors as possible causes have hitherto been given httle attention in theories of long-term growth cycies, although it should be obvious that, at least formaUy
observed, two generations correspond approximately to one Kondratiev cycle. Cyclical oscülations in population size, labour force and the consumer-labour ratio may be caused by unique occurrances and special influences. The concept of demographic structure cycles appears to be a suitable contributing factor in explaining long-term waves. If one operates with theories of long-term waves at all, one must surely do so with reference to demographic factors! Demographic structure cycies ought to be taken into consideration in future empirical research of long-term waves in the gross national product and in unemployment.

"This paper is concerned with the projection of migration flows from Eastern European countries. In the first step, two versions of a stock-adjustment model are estimated explaining the migration history for five Mediterranean countries. The first version uses a simple pooling approach, the second a fixed-effects estimator. Main determinants for the stock of migrants are income differentials, the output gap and dummy variables for EU membership and free labour mobility. In a second step, the estimated parameters are used for a prediction of the level of migration from Eastern European countries to Germany assuming two different convergence hypotheses." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

The Jews of Romania were a particular ethnic group which, during history, had to bear a lot of discriminations. In modern epoch they could attend schools only by paying substantial fees, very few of them had the Romanian citizenship until 1918 and they could not be active in all professions. The interwar period meant for the Jews the time when they had the most rights in Romania, while, during the war, the anti-Jewish laws, forced labour, deportations in Transnistria were established, and the Jews from North-West Transylvania were sent by Hungarian authorities in German concentration camps. Romanians often displayed feelings of hostility towards the Jews, mostly in periods when the situation of their country was precarious. This paper will also present a few negative features used by Romanians in order to define the Jews. Last, but not least, the author wanted to show how the Holocaust was regarded by historians and politicians. And here, I noticed that in communist times, when the political elites had the intention to assimilate the Jews, it was considered that during the Holocaust several democratic groups were persecuted or, later, the responsability for Holocaust was put only on Germans. During post-1989 period, integral or partial negation of Holocaust, or its trivialization by comparison, continued to exist.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse approaches to the sharing economy from the perspective of public policy science. In the first part of the text, attention is paid to perceiving the development of the emerging sharing economy not only as phenomenon with positive economic effects but also as a set of public problems (e.g., on the labour market and for existing economic structures) that require intervention at the level of national governments as well as at international level. Subsequent sections identify possible actions for regulating the development of the sharing economy. The role of soft law, stakeholders' networks, self-regulation and standardisation are discussed in the chapter. The summary includes potential directions for further research.

Since the Industrial Revolution, Germany has been confronted with the periodical appearance of unemployment. One of the main working-time-related policy objectives of unions is the employment motive, the aim of which is to reduce unemployment. The article is concerned with the history of the employment motive in working time policy and relates it to other motives of working time policy (humanisation motive, emancipation motive). Discussed in the historical context are: working time policy in the early industrial society, the high-industrial stage of working time policy, and the renaissance of the employment motive in the 'crisis of the working society'. Since the mid-1970s, the call for working time reduction has been part of the employment-related political motives of unions. Between employees and employers it is disputed how many jobs the period of working time reduction has saved during the 'crisis of the working society'. It is for certain, however, that another instrument for overcoming crises has been developed in the employment-politically motivated reduction of working time since 1980. In the author's opinion, all forms of employment-politically motivated reductions of working time have one basic 'solidarity' feature in common: The decreasing amount of labour is to be redistributed to avoid layoffs and to create new jobs. (IAB)

"Der Bereich von 'care', der Fürsorge für andere, der in der Nachkriegszeit zunächst im wesentlichen in der Familie angesiedelt war, war in den letzten Jahrzehnten des ausgehenden letzten Jahrhunderts durch Prozesse der Auslagerung aus der Familie und einer zunehmenden Formalisierung und Professionalisierung gekennzeichnet. Seit den 1990er Jahren ist das Feld der öffentlich organisierten sozialen Dienstleistungen selbst erheblichen Veränderungen unterworfen, insbesondere auch aufgrund von Bestrebungen, sozialpolitische mit wirtschaftspolitischen Zielen zu verbinden. Das betrifft auch das Feld der Altenpflege, das einen zentralen Teilbereich der sozialen Dienstleistungen darstellt. Auf der Grundlage neuer Werte und Ziele wie denen der Effizienzsteigerung und der Konsumentenrolle der Nutzer wurde eine Ökonomisierung der Pflegedienstleistungen betrieben. Ein Mittel zur Durchsetzung solcher Zielsetzungen war die Einrichtung von Quasi-Märkten, auf denen öffentliche und private Anbieter um ökonomische Ressourcen konkurrieren. Die neuen Ziele und Werte treten dabei teilweise in einen Widerspruch zu kulturellen Werten wie denen der Qualitätssteigerung, des Empowerment der Nutzer und der außerfamilialen Zuständigkeit für 'care' - Aufgaben, die im Zuge allgemeiner Prozesse sozialen Wandels ebenfalls an Gewicht gewonnen haben. Ziel des vorgeschlagenen Beitrags ist es, auf der Basis von Forschungsarbeiten im Rahmen der COST A13 Action 'Change of Labour Markets, Welfare States and Citizenship' der EU/ European Science Foundation und im DFG-Projekt 'Die lokale Restrukturierung der Altenpflege - Kulturelle Grundlagen, Akteure und Handlungsbedingungen' die Widersprüchlichkeit in der Entwicklung des gesellschaftlichen Arrangements der Altenpflege herauszuarbeiten." (Autorenreferat)

The concept of Hungary as a Volksnation was reaffirmed by the Treaty of Trianon (1920) which left Hungary with the urgent need to redefine the concept of citizenship. To redefine the role of women in the new Hungary the conservative political elite revived the concept of 'cottage industry' as a possible solution for both the pressing economic needs of women to seek for employment and as a response to the concept of the independent, wage-earning 'New Woman'. The metaphor of Hungary as a sick mutilated body after 1920 opened up space for possible alternative definitions of women's role as healers for the first generations of university graduates. The example of women doctors shows the impossibility of harmonizing the rhetoric of employment with women's duties in the family. However, due to the Great Depression the concept of 'bread-winning woman' started to shed its ennobled connotation as wider social strata of women had to start some wage-earning activity. Those female professionals who were not satisfied with the neo-conservative vision of women's employment in cottage industry - employment till marriage if it did not threaten the male-bread-winner model - nor with the alternative version offered by the social democratic and the communist party, found empowerment in the rhetoric of exceptionalism: e.g., exceptional times not only allow but require a select stratum of women to enter the labour force. The rhetoric of women doctors about their profession proves that healing and caring was the self-image appropriated by the first generation of female professionals and that it necessarily pushed them to the extreme right. Analysis of the female membership of the Hungarian Nazi Party, the Arrow Cross Party, shows an over-representation of intellectual women among its members. In this chapter I aim to map varying trends that went to form the 'rhetoric of work' in the special context of the 'Trianon trauma', pointing out the factors which shifted the definition of women's work towards radically racialized body politics.

The chapter "First trip abroad: expectations, experiences and stories of transnational Romanians" analyses transnational Romanians' stories about their first trip abroad using the EUMEAN dataset. The concept of physical mobility is seen as a broader framework for understanding transnational and cosmopolitan behaviours as well as international migration. In order to distinguish between different types of travelling for the first trip abroad, the chapter is constructed keeping in mind the structural changes and constraints regarding physical mobility for Romanian citizens. During the transition from a communist country to a EU member state, Romanian citizens' stories about travelling abroad for the first time fundamentally changed. Labour migrants, asylum seekers, business travellers, students or tourists left the country with different expectations and faced different problems at destination. Their attitudes toward origin and destination framed their images about the first trip abroad. Using a qualitative approach and samples of Romanians who live in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom, the analysis emphasizes certain differences between different types of travelling for the first time abroad and reconstructs how Romanians started their transnational careers.