How precarious are European workers? An expert-system approach with evidence from the European Social Survey

The paper is concerned with a better understanding of the job insecurity and labour market uncertainty youngsters confront on the labour market in Europe shortly before and during the Great Recession. The main thrust of the paper is to explore youth insecurity and uncertainty in notably the Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) compared to Western European countries with a particular focus for the role played by young people’s skills, the level of trust in society, and for the ways of governance as indicated by the social models the countries represent. We use the European Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and the European Social Survey (ESS). We ran discrete choice logistic and probit regression models on the three variables of interest: objective and subjective job and employment insecurity. At the individual level the findings substantiate the existence of strong correlates between people’s skills, their level of social and institutional trust and objective and subjective job and employment insecurity. At the country level we show that the observed insecurity gaps between insiders and outsiders are strongly skill-based notably in the Nordic countries as well as strongly age-based notably in the Southern regimes. The patterns of insecurity and uncertainty in the CEE countries are skill-based and age-based at the same time, and mirror their relative low levels of trust and their high levels of job insecurity in some countries and employment insecurity in others.

Why Europe Has to Offer a Better Deal Towards its Muslim Communities: A Quantitative Analysis of Open International Data

A good layout design is important for a cellular manufacturing system (CMS) to operate efficiently. Traditional algorithms for layout design are confining and have limitations with regard to decision factors and knowledge representation. Knowledge–based expert systems have opened up a new way for modelling and evaluation of the ill–structured CMS layout problem. In addition to the advantages of integrating the vast amount of available knowledge and making it accessible to ordinary users, the knowledge–based approach is also useful for dealing with ambiguous, qualitative information and empirical knowledge that are often part of the CMS layout design process. The objective of this research is to develop a prototype for CMS Layout Design Expert System (CLADES) by using the expert system shell KEE (Knowledge Engineering Environment). This expert system would provide a powerful and eficient decision support tool for users in CMS layout design. CLADES solves the CMS layout problem in two stages. In the first stage, the machine cell layout is determined. In the second stage, the machine layout within each cell is determined. To obtain a reasonable layout design for a CMS, several factors which affect the decision are used as criteria in the CMS layout design problem. They are production quantity of the system, variation of part process routing, material handling system, unit load of an item, and dimensions of the floor plan. The design options considered by CLADES include three types of layout for machine cells, four types of layout for machines within a cell, and five types of material handling systems. In its current form, CLADES contains 58 rules, three models and three algorithms, and one algorithm is directly coded in CLADES in the LISP language. CLADES uses a tandem architecture, which connects the knowledge base to the model and algorithm base. This structure takes advantage of not only the expert system approach, but also the optimization approach. CLADES is coded using KEE/LISP in an object–oriented programming (OOP) fashion. It also has a user–friendly interface which makes the system easy to use. The object–oriented programming approach allows new rules, models and algorithms to be easily added to CLADES without changing the developed system structure. This built–in flexibility and convenience is very important for the modification and expansion of the system. This research has proved the feasibility of applying the knowledge–based approach to solve the CMS layout design problem. And the framework of CLADES shows it is a promising expert system to be developed into an industrial application.

This chapter presents the twofold goals of the explorations—tracing the relevance of social capital and of politicization to explain cross-national differences in political involvement at various levels—the analyses proceed in several steps. First it presents the several aspects and measures of political involvement in European countries and determines the degree of cross-national variation. Then, it considers whether micro-level models including a number of individual antecedents can explain political involvement. Next, indicators of social capital are included in these models separately in order to trace their impact. In the final step of the analyses, a multi-level model is designed with the relevant micro-level determinants at the individual-level as well as indicators for both the politicization of society and the degree of social capital at the macro-level. The analyses are based on the first wave of the European Social Survey (ESS; 2002-2003). This wave includes information collected in 22 countries.Keywords:cross-national variation; European countries; European Social Survey (ESS); political involvement; social capital

Self-perceived job insecurity is characterised by a considerable variation across European countries; this is mostly attributed to different labour market conditions and welfare-state institutions. In addition to the previous, often static examination of these determinants, this study asks how labour market dynamics and changes in welfare-state interventions are linked to individuals’ perceptions of job insecurity. It is argued that the changing context represents a set of shared experiences that serves as a frame of reference for the perception of job insecurity. Hence, time series of context indicators provided by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and data from the European Social Survey are used to conduct multilevel analyses. The results reveal that job insecurity is dynamic, as it increases in countries facing an economic crisis, such as Greece, but decreases in countries with prosperous development like Poland. Furthermore, the results reveal that the past development of the labour market and changes in welfare-state interventions contribute to the explanation of individuals’ perceptions of job insecurity. The response to these changes differs, however, depending on the dimension of job insecurity and the socio-economic characteristics of the workers.

The process design of injection moulding involves the selection of the injection moulding machine, mould design, production scheduling, cost estimation, and determination of injection moulding parameters. Expert system approaches have been attempted to derive the process solution for injection moulding in the past few years. However, this approach has been found to be incapable of determining the injection moulding parameters owing to the difficulty in setting the moulding parameters. In addition, the existing expert systems for process design lack the proper architecture for organising a heterogeneous knowledge source. In this paper, the combination of a blackboard-based expert system and case-based reasoning approach is introduced to make up the deficiencies of the existing expert-system approach to the process design, from which a computational system for process design of injection moulding, named CSPD, was developed and described. CSPD first derives the process solution including the selection of injection moulding machine and mould base, tooling cost, and processing cost estimation, and production scheduling based on the blackboard-based expert-system approach. It is then followed by the determination of the injection moulding parameters based on the case-based reasoning approach and the previously derived partial solution.

Following its establishment in 2001, the academically led European Social Survey (ESS) has become one of the most important and informative resources concerning a broad variety of European populations’ moral, religious, social, economic and political attitudes and behaviours. In addition to its primary goal of tracking changes and stability in European citizens’ attitudes and behaviours, the ESS project also devotes itself to the development and dissemination of advanced standards in survey research. In particular, this applies to questionnaire design, cross-national equivalence of the instruments used and the sampling procedures applied (Jowell et al., 2007; Kohler, 2007; 2008). Designed as a biennial survey in its original blueprint, the ESS has by now been conducted in more than 30 European countries and currently offers data from the first six waves of the survey (2002–2012), including information and answers of approximately 300,000 respondents in total (at the time of writing, fieldwork for the seventh wave of the ESS has just been completed). Its integration of a variety of socially relevant topics, broad coverage of European countries and a growing number of time points make the ESS an increasingly suitable data source for single-country as well as cross-national analyses with time-series analysis now starting to become feasible. For policy makers and scholars from various disciplines and fields of interest alike, the ESS therefore provides a unique and innovative resource on the (changing) social, political and economic conditions in Europe at the outset of the 21 century.

This paper aims to attempt to understand attitudes towards immigrants and immigration as a perception of the impact of immigrants and immigration on Croatian society and their changes. It is based on the dynamic version of group conflict theory, which suggests that short-term but intense social changes have a greater effect on shifts in attitudes towards immigrants and immigration than long-term competition over resources (Meuleman, Davidov and Billiet, 2009). Therefore, following a theoretical introduction and a selective review of previous research findings within the European context, as well as an overview of social circumstances related to migration in Croatia, the paper analyses data obtained from the European Social Survey (ESS). These data pertain to attitudes towards immigrants and immigration in Croatia and within a broader European context, before and after the 2015–2016 “migration crisis”, as well as before and after the significant increase in the number of immigrants (foreign workers) in Croatia. Due to the sudden and significant increase in the number of immigrants, it was expected that the increased influx during the “migration crisis”, accompanied by media and political encouragement of moral panic, would lead to a shift in attitudes towards immigrants and immigration. While the “migration crisis” did result in a more negative perception of the role of immigrants in society across European countries, it did not lead to a long-term decline in support for immigration. Relatively soon, attitudes towards immigration generally returned to pre-crisis levels or even became somewhat more positive. However, this level varies across different countries and regions of Europe. Research has shown that attitudes towards immigration and immigrants tend to be more positive in countries with a long immigration tradition than in those that have not historically been immigration destinations or are only just becoming so. Additionally, attitudes are more positive in Western and especially Northern Europe compared to Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as in Western democracies compared to post-socialist countries. It is considered that these and similar findings cannot be fully explained solely by group conflict theory or contact theory. Moreover, the prominence of immigration as a social issue is increasingly linked to the rise of populism and the politicisation of migration in public discourse. All of this suggests that attitudes towards immigration and immigrants can only be interpreted by linking contextual and individual factors. Therefore, the expressed attitudes of Croatian citizens towards immigrants and immigration are connected to the characteristics of the socio-historical context within which the analysed research was conducted. With its accession to the European Union in 2013, Croatia was expected to increase its potential to transition from a traditionally emigrant country to an immigrant one. Facilitated mobility and improved employment opportunities abroad, as seen in other Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European countries after joining the EU, have accelerated the emigration of Croatian citizens to EU countries. At the same time, the demand for foreign workers in Croatia has gradually increased. During the “migration crisis” and the intense migratory pressure on its borders, Croatia, positioned on the external side of the Schengen borders, primarily served as a transit country for most migrants, who neither wished nor intended to stay. A notable increase in the number of immigrants has occurred due to the growing demand for foreign workers, particularly after the reopening of borders following the COVID-19 pandemic. To analyse the differences in attitudes towards immigrants and immigration in Croatia before and after the “migration crisis” within a broader European context, assess whether these attitudes are shifting with the rising number of foreign workers in Croatia, and identify key individual predictors of these attitudes, this study utilizes data from the European Social Survey, specifically its 5th (2010/2011), 9th (2018/2019), 10th (2020/2021), and 11th (2023/2024) rounds. An analysis of attitudes towards immigrants and immigration before (ESS5- 2010/2011) and after (ESS9-2018/2019) the 2015–2016 “migration crisis” shows that, as seen in most European countries, attitudes in Croatia became more positive after the “crisis”, indicating relative stability in these views. It was found that, on average, Croatian citizens held more positive attitudes towards immigrants and immigration after the “migration crisis” compared to citizens of most post-socialist EU member states, although these attitudes were still less positive than those in most Western, and especially Northern European countries, including traditionally immigrationreceiving countries. According to the measurement of perceived immigration threat on a scale from 0 (negative) to 10 (positive), Croatian respondents exhibited a statistically significant improvement in their attitudes after the “migration crisis” (MESS5 = 4.71; MESS9 = 4.93 /t = -2.660; df = 3345.197; p = 0.008/). However, despite this improvement, their attitudes remained more negative than the European average (MESS5 = 4.70; MESS9 = 5.13). The dynamics of expressed attitudes towards immigrants and immigration in Croatia, within the context of the “migration crisis”, mirror those observed in most other European countries, including those that faced a significant increase in the number of immigrants. However, unlike these countries, Croatia was only marginally impacted by the “crisis”, and no surge in negative attitudes towards immigrants and immigration followed. However, a shift in these attitudes, specifically, a rise in more negative views towards immigrants and immigration, occurs with the arrival of a growing number of foreign workers and their increased visibility in Croatian society. An analysis of attitudes towards immigrants and immigration in Croatia, surveyed before (ESS10-2020/2021) and after (ESS11-2023/2024) the significant increase in the number of immigrants (foreign workers), reveals a statistically significant shift towards more negative attitudes following the rise in the immigrant population, according to the measurement of perceived immigration threat (MESS10 = 5.09; MESS11 = 4.82 /t = 3.112; df = 3085.646; p = 0.002/). It is important to note that the overall shift occurred largely due to respondents perceiving immigrants as a cultural threat to a statistically significantly greater extent after the notable increase in their numbers (t = 5.436; df = 3041.246; p < 0.001), while the perception of an economic threat did not change statistically significantly. Additionally, regarding opposition to immigration based on the origin of immigrants, the analysis shows that, after the significant increase in the number of immigrants, there was a somewhat statistically significant shift towards more negative attitudes, specifically towards the immigration of people “of a different race or ethnic origin” compared to the majority of the Croatian population (t = -2.218; df = 3080; p = 0.027). The results of this analysis confirm the assumptions of the dynamic version of group conflict theory, which posits that attitudes towards immigration and immigrants change in response to short-term, or perhaps more accurately within the Croatian context, unusual but significant shifts in the presence and visibility of immigrants in society, with their numbers being an important factor. Following the increased influx of immigrants without Croatian citizenship, who come from various European countries, other continents, and increasingly from certain Asian countries, respondents demonstrate a statistically significant higher perception of immigrants as a cultural threat. Additionally, there is a somewhat statistically significant shift towards a more negative view of the immigration of people “of a different race and ethnic origin,” suggesting a rise in xenophobic attitudes. Based on data from the 11th round of the ESS, regression analysis identified some key predictors of attitudes towards immigrants and immigration in Croatia. The findings concluded that respondents who are older, less educated, from rural areas, selfidentify as more religious, of lower socio-economic status, politically right-leaning and more inclined towards nationalism are more likely to express negative attitudes towards immigrants and immigration. Since political orientation is highlighted as a predictor of both the perception of immigration threat and opposition to immigration in the applied regression model, it can be said that this variable contributes most to explaining attitudes towards immigrants and immigration. Such a perception of the impact of immigration on society, along with the view of immigration as a societal problem and the negative perception of immigrants, suggests a rise in rightwing populism and the politicisation of migration within public discourse. These findings, along with the results of previous studies, highlight a certain structural xenophobia within Croatian society and indicate the need for a carefully designed immigration policy. In addition to laying the foundation for the integration of immigrants into Croatian society, such a policy could, as research shows, encourage more positive attitudes towards immigrants. Its implementation is not only a challenge related to the necessary condition of securing essential workers but also to retaining them in the country. This, in turn, presents the challenge of immigrant integration, which must be understood as a two-way process between immigrants and the native population.

This study explores public attitudes toward immigrants across European countries over the past decade. The analysis is based on data from three waves of the European Social Survey (ESS). Its theoretical framework draws on ethnic competition theory, which suggests that perceptions of economic and cultural competition shape attitudes toward immigrants. Building on these theoretical assumptions, as well as on previous research ? including earlier ESS findings ? it is expected that respondents generally maintain negative attitudes toward immigrants, particularly regarding their perceived impact on the economy and cultural life. Moreover, it is assumed that individuals tend to hold stronger anti-immigrant attitudes toward those from different ethnic backgrounds, and that these attitudes are shaped by a variety of contextual and individual factors. The research results indicate that anti-immigrant sentiments remain widespread across European countries, though their intensity varies according to both national economic development and individual respondent characteristics.

After seven years of preparation, the European Social Survey (ESS) went into the field in 21 European countries and in Israel, for the first time in 2002. Given the fact that the ESS covers only European countries, which share many properties of history and culture, one can deduce that the micro-macro analyses of this survey follow the logic of the most similar systems design. As information on publications originating from the ESS is slowly coming in, it is already visible that it will have an important impact on the state of the art of comparative survey research. The ESS is a multidimensional project indeed, with a lot of emphasis on the substantive data collected, and also on methodological innovations in the field. The options for multilevel analyses are exploited well, and there is surely more to come in the future, as theorizing, especially regarding micro-macro level interactions, will further develop.Keywords:comparative survey research; European Social Survey (ESS); multilevel analyses

The main aim of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of people in severe social isolation as a proxy for high risk of hikikomori using data from 29 European countries. The relationship between the presence/absence of severe social isolation and demographic and psychosocial variables was also investigated. Publicly available data from the European Social Survey (ESS) round 9 collected between August 2018 and January 2020 were used. Data from the ESS round 1 (September 2002 -December 2003) and round 10 (September 2020 -May 2022) were also examined to investigate changes in the prevalence of severe social isolation over time. Analyses were restricted to the working-age population (15-64 years). A complex sampling design to obtain weighted prevalence and results was used. The study protocol was preregistered online on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/6a7br/). The weighted prevalence of severe social isolation was 2.01% for the sample from the ESS 1, 1.77% for the sample from the ESS 9, and 1.71% for the sample from the ESS 10, indicating a decrease over time, mainly in males. Logistic regression models showed that different sociodemographic factors (e.g., being retired, being permanently sick or disabled, doing housework, living in Central and Eastern Europe, living uncomfortably on household income, having no income) were associated with severe social isolation. Further, feeling unsafe when walking alone in the neighbourhood after dark, low social trust, and support, decreased happiness and lack of future planning correlated with severe social isolation after adjustment for the effect of sociodemographic factors was made. In this study, the prevalence of severe social isolation as a proxy for hikikomori in European countries is in line with that found by previous representative studies conducted in Asian countries. The novelty of the findings as well as implications for hikikomori research are discussed according to recent scientific literature.

The main aim of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of people in severe social isolation as a proxy for high risk of hikikomori using data from 29 European countries. The relationship between the presence/absence of severe social isolation and demographic and psychosocial variables was also investigated. Publicly available data from the European Social Survey (ESS) round 9 collected between August 2018 and January 2020 were used. Data from the ESS round 1 (September 2002 –December 2003) and round 10 (September 2020 –May 2022) were also examined to investigate changes in the prevalence of severe social isolation over time. Analyses were restricted to the working-age population (15–64 years). A complex sampling design to obtain weighted prevalence and results was used. The study protocol was preregistered online on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/6a7br/). The weighted prevalence of severe social isolation was 2.01% for the sample from the ESS 1, 1.77% for the sample from the ESS 9, and 1.71% for the sample from the ESS 10, indicating a decrease over time, mainly in males. Logistic regression models showed that different sociodemographic factors (e.g., being retired, being permanently sick or disabled, doing housework, living in Central and Eastern Europe, living uncomfortably on household income, having no income) were associated with severe social isolation. Further, feeling unsafe when walking alone in the neighbourhood after dark, low social trust, and support, decreased happiness and lack of future planning correlated with severe social isolation after adjustment for the effect of sociodemographic factors was made. In this study, the prevalence of severe social isolation as a proxy for hikikomori in European countries is in line with that found by previous representative studies conducted in Asian countries. The novelty of the findings as well as implications for hikikomori research are discussed according to recent scientific literature.

In recent decades, social scientists have devoted increased attention to job insecurity, a highly prominent stressor for workers today. Although social movements literature has examined other economic threats as mobilizing agents, the potential for job insecurity to stoke protest participation remains unknown. To investigate this issue, I analyze survey data gathered by the European Social Survey ( n = 35,891) via face-to-face interviews. Hierarchical logistic regressions reveal job insecurity is significantly associated with participation in protests and is more important for protest than any other individual economic indicator, such as poor income, unemployment, and negative perceptions of the wider economy. Its effect is modest compared with biographical and political factors, such as education and antigovernment beliefs. The mobilizing effect of job insecurity is more pronounced when combined with contextual factors that exacerbate insecurity, namely, working in unstable service and private sector jobs, or living in countries with poor social safety nets.

This paper examines the care for nature in Croatia based on the European Social Survey (ESS) data from Round 4 (2008) and Round 9 (2018) over time and cross-nationally, in comparison with five other Central European (CE) countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia). We correlate the item about the care for nature with Schwartz’s Human Values Scale (HVS), as adapted for the ESS, to investigate whether values as defined by Schwartz serve as good predictors of the care for nature in selected CE countries. We also look at the correlation with respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics. Our analysis reveals that, while there are similarities regarding environmental attitudes and values among CE countries, there are also some individual differences. Croatia shows the strongest increase in the support for the care for nature over the 10-year period, and both Croatia and Slovenia score the highest on the care for nature in 2018. Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic show an overall stagnation in the results, while Hungary exhibits a significant decrease between 2008 and 2018. Our research in CE countries confirms that Schwartz’s HVS can be predictive of pro-environmentalism. However, while the findings for the higher-order value of Self-transcendence are in line with existing literature, the result suggesting that Conservatism is also a moderately good predictor of the care for nature is somewhat surprising. We posit that the reason could lie in the difference between collectivist vs. individualist value types, which provides a new dimension for the interpretation of environmental attitudes in these countries.

ObjectiveIn this article, utilizing the European Social Survey (ESS), we empirically analyze the effect of individualism on working hours at the micro level.MethodWe use the European Social Survey (ESS), which is a biennial survey conducted in European countries. The ESS provides us five different proxies to measure individualism. In our empirical analyses, we first use proxies separately as our measure of individualism in the regressions. Second, we create a composite indicator for individualism by using the principal component analysis (PCA). We use two different methods for polychoric PCA.ResultsIn four of our individualism proxies, we find that individualism is positively and significantly associated with working hours. Our PCA results also show that survey participants with higher individualistic attitudes tend to work longer hours.ConclusionWe find robust empirical evidence that people who place greater emphasis on individualistic values have a tendency to work longer. The results show that individuals who give more importance to money, expensive things, success, recognition of achievements, showing abilities and being admired, and freedom on his/her decisions are inclined to work longer hours.