Socio-economic Integration Research Articles

«‘Invisible schools’. The public image of rural schools in Southern Italy in photographic inquiries and photo-reportages (1925-55)

La difusión de una determinada imagen pública de las escuelas rurales —desde siempre las escuelas más pobres y desfavorecidas— ha sido utilizada frecuentemente por las clases dirigentes y/o los partidos políticos de la oposición para documentar la tasa de modernización y/o de atraso del sistema educativo nacional, de acuerdo con las respectivas necesidades propagandísticas. El artículo ―moviéndose entre las primeras encuestas fotográficas realizadas en las regiones del Sur de Italia por asociaciones meridionalistas en los años 20 y los reportajes fotoperiodísticos publicados en algunas revistas en los años 50, pasando por la cesura fascista― pretende estudiar las alteraciones de la imagen pública de este tipo particular de escuelas comprobables en Italia en el período de tiempo indicado a través del análisis de fotografías escolares publicadas en periódicos diarios y revistas, centrándose en el uso propagandístico que de las mismas se hizo a lo largo de treinta años.

Affordable Housing and the Socioeconomic Integration of Elementary Schools

Children from poor families achieve more academically if they are enrolled in schools that are socioeconomically integrated, but low-income students are increasingly attending schools characterized by high concentrations of poverty. Providing more housing opportunities for low-income families within the attendance zones of middle- and high-income schools has the potential to reverse this trend, but the link between the housing stock and the socioeconomic segregation of public schools has not been addressed in the existing literature. Using a panel of elementary schools in Florida, we show that increasing the stock of rental and affordable housing units in middle- and high-income neighborhoods has an important effect on the number of poor children attending these schools. Our results also reveal the types of housing units that have the largest impacts on socioeconomic segregation.

Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals as an opportunity for greater socio-economic integration within the European Union

Aim: The aim of this article is to discuss the global and European concepts of sustainable development and how they can enhance European integration.Design / Research methods: The analysis of statistical data will show positive and negative trends in Europe. In addition, barriers to the implementation of the sustainable development strategy will be indicated, as well as areas in which the EU should put more effort into achieving its ambitious goals.Conclusions / findings: European Union countries stand out in the international arena for their high standard of living, made possible by a high level of economic development and extensive social welfare systems. However, at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries it became clear that maintaining these high standards in the face of fundamental changes – both externally and internally – would require a significant reorientation of the current development policy. Euroscepticism, European integration, globalization and the increasing competitiveness of the rapidly growing Indian and Chinese economies, the IT revolution, the rise of the importance of knowledge and innovation, the prospect of depleting non-renewable natural resources crucial for modern development (combined with the associated risk in prices) are all becoming increasingly prominent in the list of challenges which Europe faces.Originality / value of the article: The article discusses the current statistical data of the whole concept of sustainable development rooted in the Europe 2020 program in contrast to other, studies, which in the majority focus on one issue of European programs.Implications of the research: This analysis complements the discourse regarding the Europe 2020 strategy.Key words: Sustainable Development, European Union, European initiatives, integration, GDP.JEL: Q01, F15

The impact of foreign-owned enterprises in low-income economies

ABSTRACTAn economic impact snapshot of foreign and domestic enterprises from the functional economic areas of Guinea-Bissau showed that not all micro and small enterprises (MSEs) are local, and not all outside investment is large scale. We find that South–South entrepreneurship has prospects to improve livelihoods as drivers of economic growth and development in a low-income economy. While political instability and a lack of resources remain as barriers to solvency for both domestic and foreign investors in the global periphery, as opportunities and effective business strategies are fostered, improved socio-economic integration and development results.

The Development of International Economic and Monetary Cooperation in Europe

Abstract Since the end of the World War II, Europe has gone a long way on the path of a new era of socio-economic integration, continually battling and overcoming the political and economic fragmentation of earlier eras and less developed economies. The various difficulties and interruptions of the process involved, the European integration, since the 1952 European Coal and Steel Community, ranged from an initial small group to a large community comprising most European countries, the gradual removal of market barriers leading to the introduction of a customs union to the single market. Furthermore, the creation of Economic and Monetary Union and the adoption of the common currency have become the culmination of the whole process of economic integration, since the euro is used daily by 338.6 million Europeans in 19 EU member states. The aim of our research article is to closely analyze the development of the economic and monetary integration of Europe, since we believe that the single currency project represents a great success for the European Union as the result of long-term efforts on currency and economy stability, progress and economic growth.

International Conference on Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency (REEE’2017)

PrefaceInternational Conference on Renewable Energies and Energy EfficiencyREEE’2017OverviewThe REEE (the International Conference on Renewable Energies and Energy) organized for the first time in Morocco between 8-9 November 2017 on the campus of Faculty of Sciences and Technology Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University of Fez, the imperial city of Morocco.The REEE event was an opened exchange discussion forum, scientific debate and interchange ideas and knowledge between the Maghreb communities and their national and international colleagues. The conference focused on Renewable Energies and energy efficiency, from Resource assessment, prototypes development, to industrial use and exploitation, through sustainable energy systems design. It has been a good opportunity for researchers to establish cooperation relationship, find innovative and adequate solutions for energy saving and production in developing countries, enhance mutual exchanges, and promote industrial research and development, which guarantee widest socio-economic integration of the university and strengthening its role as a nucleus of development and pioneer through research and innovation.List of Partners are available in this Pdf.

Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall Alliance

How an academic research became a public school reformer, applying sociological insights as he works toward meaningful racial and socioeconomic integration and the revitalization of urban schools.

Identifying the Later-Generation Descendants of U.S. Immigrants: Issues Arising from Selective Ethnic Attrition

Evaluating the long-term socioeconomic integration of immigrants in the United States requires analyses of differences between foreign-born and U.S.-born residents, as well as analyses across generations of the U.S.-born. Regrettably, though, standard data sources used to study these populations provide very limited information pertaining to generation. As a result, research on the U.S.-born descendants of immigrants often relies on the use of subjective measures of racial/ethnic identification. Because ethnic attachments tend to fade across generations, these subjective measures might miss a significant portion of the later-generation descendants of immigrants. Moreover, if such “ethnic attrition” is selective on socioeconomic attainment, it can distort assessments of integration and generational progress. We discuss evidence that suggests that ethnic attrition is sizable and selective for the second- and third-generation populations of key Hispanic and Asian national-origin groups, and that correcting for the resulting biases is likely to raise the socioeconomic standing of the U.S.-born descendants of most Hispanic immigrants relative to their Asian counterparts.

Oralmans in Kazakhstan and their Socio-Cultural Adaptation

The article named «The Orientation for the Future: Spiritual Renewal» written by the presidentof Kazakhstan has identified a clear plan and purpose for the bright future of Kazakhstan. After Kazakhstan gainedits sovereignty, many measures were taken in order to become one of the developed countries. The comprehensiveresearches on Kazakh language, the status of the language, as well as the linguistic situation of Kazakhs in the People’sRepublic of China are increased. Studies of domestic and foreign science attracted the attention of researchers onissues of socio-economic integration and cultural adaptation of oralmans in Kazakhstan. In this article, the authorsconducted a sociological study on the level of adaptation, ethnic, national and cultural identity of returnees throughinterviews and oral interviews among oralmans in Kazakhstan.However, the lack of a deliberated state strategy in the field of immigration policy in our republic has anegative impact on many sides of the practice in the organization and management of these processes, which have notyet been adequately reflected in research materials. Thus, the relevance of the research topic is determined by the needfor a comprehensive institutional research framework for the integration of oralmans in the developing Kazakhstanisociety.

Religious justification, elitist outcome: are religious schools being used to avoid integration?

Despite ongoing efforts to promote ethnic, racial and socio-economic integration, segregation continues to challenge education administrators and legal scholars. Privileged parents seeking to avoid integration employ various strategies such as attending private schools or buying houses in neighbourhoods with good school. This paper offers a combined empirical and legal research of another such strategy: the resort to religious schools. The research is conducted within one specific context, that of Israeli Religious State Schools. The empirical study examines whether “Torani” religious state schools (a category of religious schools that offer enhanced Jewish studies and a strict religious environment) induce socio-economic segregation. The findings indicate that “Torani” schools are indeed socio-economically segregated and serve children from higher socioeconomic class than regular religious state schools. It also shows that “Torani” schools are less reflective of their surroundings than regular religious state schools, and are more likely to be established by privileged parents in poor areas, where they are dissatisfied with the local state schools. The legal research offers an explanation of how legal regulation can determine whether religious schools will become a means for avoiding integration. Specifically, it points to three areas in which “Torani” schools are regulated differently than regular religious state schools – the rules regarding the establishment of new schools; the rules concerning school funding; and the rules concerning student enrolment – and argues that special treatment meant to protect religious interests is responsible for making “Torani” schools socially segregated.

Integrating the edges: University of Pretoria's neighbourhood anchor strategy

ABSTRACTThe traditionally inward focus of many higher education institutions in both the United States (US) and South Africa has often failed to address important urban issues beyond the university gates, confining most student and academic activity to the campus. Universities can create social change not just through their primary teaching and research functions, but also through the promotion of integration on and around their campuses. In addition, place-based activities that improve neighbourhoods can help to attract students and staff, as well as new businesses and services. In particular, they can foster the influx of young professionals and families seeking to help build open, safe, vibrant and diverse communities, which may represent a new model for South African socio-economic integration beyond the ‘gated’ framework. Accordingly, the University of Pretoria (UP) has sought to lead an urban renewal and social transformation project around its Hatfield campus.

The Impact of Xenophobic Violence on the Integration of Immigrants

Integration of immigrants is a two-way process involving immigrants and the host country society. An underexplored question is how events of xenophobic violence in the host country affect the integration of immigrants. For this purpose, I exploit a unique series of anti-immigrant attacks in the early 1990s in West Germany. Using a difference-in-differences matching strategy, I find that macro exposure to xenophobic violence has an impact on several dimensions of socio-economic integration of immigrants. In particular, it reduces subjective well-being and increases return intentions, while it reduces investment in German language skills among those staying in Germany. From a policy perspective, this paper shows that anti-immigrant violence can have indirect costs by impairing the integration of those immigrants who belong to the target group of xenophobic attacks.

The Impact of Language on Socioeconomic Integration of Immigrants

This study examines the causal effects of Dutch language proficiency of immigrants from four main source countries on their labour market and social integration outcomes. Language proficiency appears ranked according to linguistic distance to The Netherlands, a ranking that even holds for the gender gap in proficiency. We assess the effect of language proficiency on two objective indicators of integration (employment and income) and two subjective measures (feeling Dutch and feeling integrated). The analysis shows that endogeneity of language skills masks a substantial part of language effects. Once accounted for endogeneity, effects of Dutch language proficiency on social and economic integration of immigrants are more than double the estimates ignoring endogeneity.

Socioeconomic integration of early professional Hong Kongers in Taipei, Taiwan

This study applies the thesis of privileged migration to early Hong Kongers coming to Taiwan since the early 1960s as a case study in ‘North–South’ migration that takes place between regions that are in different stages of economic development. Its focus is on these immigrants’ economic achievements and their social and cultural integration in the host society. Qualitative methods were used to conduct face-to-face interviews with 40 Hong Kongers ranging in age from 39 to 77, most of whom were living in Taipei. They came as overseas Chinese students, employees, and marriage and family migrants. As most had received university educations or higher, their skills and working experiences met the demands of the Taiwan job market at the time, and they had all become successfully established in a variety of white-collar professional jobs. Despite cultural differences, they had developed careers, contributed to Taiwan’s economy, and integrated well, and most were not thinking of returning to Hong Kong.

Asymmetric Use of Punishment in Socioeconomic Segregated Societies Leads to an Unequal Distribution of Wealth

Investigating hierarchical class segregation and the use of punishment applied downward in a hierarchy acts as a key aspect to ascertain how dominant and subordinate partners cooperate to achieve mutual profit. In countries with an uneven wealth distribution, this mutual profit may be reduced, especially for the lower socioeconomic classes. In this experiment, we implemented an Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game in one such country with a starkly high Gini index, China. We split relatively richer and poorer subjects into separate classes and gave only one the authority to punish the other. When rich subjects could unidirectionally punish poor subjects (as in a segregated society), rich subjects decreased their cooperation effort while punishing poor subjects. When rich and poor subjects, instead, could punish each other in random combinations (as in an integrated society) they de- creased defections so they could punish more. In the segregated society model, the punishing classes earned twice as much as the non-punishers. Conversely, in the integrated society model, weak differences in earnings were found, leading to a decrease in inequality. An Agent Based simulation confirmed these results when the interacting agents became thousands rather than the over three hundred human participants. From our research, we conclude that, especially in developing economies, stimulating the wealthier and poorer individuals towards a socioeconomic integration of their cooperative exchanges may ultimately lead to a redistribution of wealth.

Evolution of Institutes and Mechanisms of Spatial Development of the Economy

This article summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on issues of evolution of institutes and mechanisms of spatial development of the economy as the main factor in ensuring the competitiveness of the territory in the conditions of the newest trends of networking, intellectualization and digitalization of social and economic processes. The relevance of solving this scientific problem is that due to an ineffective spatial organization Ukraine loses 2-3 % of GDP annually; the World Bank Report declares to take into account the spatial factor in economic development; territorial socio-economic integration and spatial development are chosen as one of the key goals of the State Strategy for Regional Development for the period up to 2020. The systematization of literary sources and approaches on the subject of research has shown that each country includes a variety of regions, each of which has a specific ecosystem of science and innovation, a unique economic context and industrial infrastructure. Under such conditions, a key tool in ensuring balanced spatial development, in particular to determine the territory of the localization of the growth poles, is smart specialization strategy. The research examines the issues of changing the paradigm of implementing regional policy on the basis of specialization from the period of the operation of the council of national economy to the creation of clusters at the current stage of development of the Ukrainian economy. As the globalization of productions, communities and knowledge networks, increasing the number of network communications leads to the fact that a high level of cooperation becomes one of the key conditions of the country’s competitiveness, the research examines the evolution of cooperative models for key stakeholders (from single helix to quintuple helix) and spatial development institutes. Prospects for further research in this area are the development of recommendations on the coordination of the interests of key stakeholders of the cooperative models in order to ensure the harmonious economic development of Ukrainian territories.

Socio-economic integration of the informal recycling sector through an NGO intervention at the Andralanitra dumpsite in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

The social status improvement and the degree of integration of the informal recycling sector, by using InteRa, made by the AKAMASOA association interventions at the Andralanitra dumpsite (Antananarivo, Madagascar) was assessed. 20% of the workers from the three activities at the site were interviewed: 325 scavengers, 12 compost producers and three soap manufacturers. It was found that the incomes of Andralanitra workers are relatively low compared to that of people working in the same field in other countries (30-60 USD/month). However, with the social support from AKAMASOA, their living conditions were greatly improved, allowing them to own their house, have access to water and sanitation facilities and send their children to school or subscribe to health insurance and bank savings. Though they do not experience the common socio-economic issues faced by informal workers at dumpsites and their works are highly appreciated by the solid waste management (SWM) stakeholders, there is no official planned intervention to formalise their situation. Thus, InteRa has shown low scores in SWM and organisational interfaces and high scores in materials/value chain and social interfaces. AKAMASOA actions are good examples of successful NGO interventions to improve the dumpsites' informal recycling social status. The findings suggest that full integration into the SWM system should be supported by municipalities through the setting of policy and regulations on the access to dumpsites and the exploitation of the wastes.

Trade Integration in a Layered System of International Law

Central to the attainment of West Africa's regional integration objectives is the free movement of Community citizens across national boundaries. This was an implicit acknowledgement by the founding fathers of ECOWAS of the fact that when people move from one member state to another, they carry along with them, not just their skills or requisite know-how, but also physical articles of trade. In other words, free movement of persons within the region would necessarily precipitate a like movement of goods and services across the region, thereby enhancing opportunities for market integration and efficiency. Accordingly, efforts were made through legal instrumentation to create an enabling environment which would facilitate the free movement of persons within the region. Notwithstanding, the multilayered system of laws in the region has operated to undermine the application and enforceability of such regional legal instruments at member-state level. Regional integration in West Africa continues to suffer several setbacks largely as a result of member states’ failure to comply with their treaty obligations. This article takes the view that defining a proper relationship between ECOWAS law and the national law of member states is central to the attainment of the region's aspirations of socio-economic and political integration. This would require a system that obliges member states to effectively cede part of their sovereignty to a regional body on such common issues like trade and thus recognise related regional laws as taking precedence over domestic laws as far as such issues are concerned.

Constructing and Deconstructing the ‘State’: the Case of the Low Countries

The birth of the Low Countries is a thorny issue since the rise of history as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century, and the problem is likely to haunt historians for some time to come. From the eleventh century onwards, the patchwork of principalities that had emerged between France and the German Empire acquired a distinct cachet as most of these principalities became exceptionally urbanized. As Flanders, Brabant, Guelders, Holland, and so on were all fiercely independent, scholars all agree that the increasingly structural socio-economic integration of these urbanised regions did not automatically lead to political integration, even if the ruling dynasties of these principalities were prone to intermarry. Yet, this political integration did take shape in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries when a series of contingent factors – ranging from bankrupt princes to accidental deaths – allowed a collateral branch of the royal house of Valois to inherit, to purchase, or to conquer a lengthy string of principalities that eventually stretched from Frisia to the Franche-Comté. This article is part of the discussion forum 'Constructing and Deconstructing the ‘State’: the Case of the Low Countries'.

Hometown associations, urban-to-rural collective remittances and rural development in Turkey

Aiming to understand the role of rural-to-urban collective remittances on rural development in Turkey, this study presents the findings of a fieldwork in a hometown association (HTA) in Istanbul. Deep-interviews and semi-structural interviews are conducted with the members of the HTA and then analyzed mainly to clarify the remitting behaviour of immigrants and figure out the ways their remittances are used in the rural area they feel somehow attached to, the village of Boyali in the province of Sivas. As a result, it is found that collective remittances are spent not to improve agricultural productivity and rural employment but mainly to build non-productive infrastructure in the village and also contribute to the socio-economic integration of immigrants in Istanbul. Age, marital status, economic well-being, degree of attachment to the village, future plans of eventual return to the village are found to be significantly associated with the remitting behaviour. In this specific case, it appears that remittances are not used to provide long-run economic development in rural areas but rather to fill in governments’ shoes in a neoliberal economic setting.