States and Refugee Integration: a Comparative Analysis of France, Germany, and Switzerland

The Syrian civil war led to mass migration and Europe becoming a potential site of refuge. How have Syrians experienced refuge in Europe? Drawing on 58 interviews with Syrian refugees in Germany, France, and Switzerland, we find that refugees continue to experience exclusion in all integration domains including those found as markers and means, social connections, facilitators, and foundations of integration . While our cases demonstrate that Syrian refugees in Europe experience discrimination across all domains, not all conditions are equal. Using narrative analysis, differences were observed within three integration domains. Accessing language programs was more challenging in France, finding housing was more challenging in Germany, and F type residence permits limited refugees’ rights in Switzerland more than in other countries. Discrimination across domains is deepening the socio-cultural-economic divide between autochthonous communities and Syrian refugees, but not all domains are equally divisive across countries. The findings outline that where these states outsourced refugee services, refugees experienced increased barriers to integration.

An analysis of the Gender and Social Determinants of Health in Urban Poor Areas of the Most Populated Cities of Pakistan

Background: Recent surveys, studies and reviews have highlighted the impacts of social inequities on access of women and children to health services for women and children in Pakistan. Utilising mixed methods for urban slum profiles, and facility and coverage surveys in 4431 urban poor areas of the top 10 highly populated cities of Pakistan, this paper describes and analyses the complex interactions between economic, social and gender determinants of health care access and considers health policy and program options for addressing them. Results: Findings are classified into six analytic categories of (1) access to health services, (2) female workforce participation, (3) gender friendly health services, (4) access to schools and literacy, (5) social connections, and (6) autonomy of decision making. Out of a national sample of 14,531 children in urban poor areas of 10 cities, the studies found that just over half of the children are fully immunised (54%) and 14% of children had received zero doses of vaccine. There are large shortages of health facilities and female health workforce in the slums, with significant gaps in the quality of health infrastructure, which all serve to limit both demand for, and supply of, health services for women and children. Results demonstrate low availability of schools, low levels of female literacy and autonomy over decision making, limited knowledge of the benefits of vaccination, and few social connections outside the home. All these factors interact and reinforce existing gender norms and low levels of health literacy and service access. Conclusion: The Urban Slum profiles and coverage studies provide an opportunity to introduce gender transformative strategies that include expansion of a female health workforce, development of costed urban health action plans, and an enabling policy environment to support community organisation and more equitable health service delivery access.

Egocentric Projection is a Rational Strategy for Accurate Emotion Prediction

People need to accurately understand and predict others’ emotions in order to build and maintain meaningful social connections. However, when they encounter new social partners, people often do not have enough information about them to make accurate inferences. Rather, they often resort to an egocentric heuristic, and make predictions about a target by using their own self-knowledge as a proxy. Is this egocentric heuristic a form of cognitive bias, or is it a rational strategy for real-world social prediction? If egocentrism provides a rational and effective solution to the challenging task of social prediction in naturalistic contexts, we should expect that a) egocentric predictions tend to be more accurate, and b) people rely on self-knowledge to a greater extent when it’s more likely to be a good proxy. Using an emotion prediction task and personality measures, we assessed similarity and predictive accuracy between first year college students and their new acquaintance roommate. Results demonstrated that, when people need to make predict an unfamiliar target’s emotions, self-knowledge can often effectively approximate knowledge about others, and thus support accurate predictions. Moreover, participants that were typical of the sample, whose self-knowledge can better approximate information about the target, relied more on self-knowledge in their predictions, and thus achieved higher accuracy. These findings suggest that people rationally tune their use of egocentrism based on whether it is likely to pay off. Overall, these findings demonstrate a rational side to a cognitive phenomenon usually framed as a cognitive pitfall, namely egocentric projection, when its natural decision context is taken into consideration.

Social Capital and Entrepreneurship

This chapter presents a social capital point of view of entrepreneurship and how the assets and value embedded in entrepreneur social relations could support the success of the enterprise, especially small ones. Social connections are unique in nature, are personal and stable in the long run. These features make them very unique and difficult to imitate. Therefore, if used properly, based on the position of the entrepreneur in the social hierarchy, it can generate or at least behave as a very unique and inimitable source of competitive advantage. Capitalizing on such resources could be of help to entrepreneurs especially in times of high competitive rivalry.

Implications of COVID-19 Mitigation Policies for National Well-Being: A Systems Perspective

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis and measures aimed at curbing the pandemic have a widespread impact on various aspects of well-being, such as housing, social connections, and others. Moreover, COVID-19 does not affect all population groups equally. This study analyzes the impact of major COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on a set of national well-being indicators from the most recent version of the OECD Well-Being Framework. Using causal loop diagrams (systems maps), we consider direct and indirect effects of these policies on various components of the national well-being system. Our results show that business closures directly and/or indirectly impact more national well-being components than any other policy. The most affected national well-being components by all policies are life satisfaction, perceived health, and prevalence of depressive symptoms. In addition, we specify how the impact of the anti-pandemic measures differs for various population strata, using the degree of income and employment loss as key stratifying variables. Our insights can be helpful to identify and promote measures that can alleviate the adverse effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the national well-being.

When life happens: the impact of life events on turnout

Habit is among the most influential explanations for why people vote. Scholars have addressed the impact of individual disruptions to habitual voting, but analyses including several life events are rare. We combine two panel surveys, conducted in the UK during 1991-2017, to examine the impact of unemployment, retirement, changes in partnership status, moving and disability on voting. We distinguish between habitual voters, occasional voters and habitual non-voters. For all voter groups, turnout declines with divorce. For other life events, the impacts diverge across the voter groups. Overall, the findings suggest that social connections are the strongest underlying mechanisms explaining the changes. Although the results support the voting habit thesis, they also suggest that previous research has overstated the persistence of voting habits. The results revise some of the canonical findings by demonstrating that the impact of life events differs across people with different voting habits and across different life events.

Victimological Characteristics and Prevention of Crimes Committed by Women (Regional Aspect)

The authors discuss the victimization characteristics of crimes committed by women in Irkutsk and Transbaikal Regions, the characteristics of the personality of the victim of these infringements, the behavioral patterns of the criminal and the victim in the process of victimization, their relationships and social connections. The research, based on the statistical analysis and study of 250 criminal cases, allowed the authors to come to a number of conclusions, including the following ones. Victimization trends in the regions under consideration are unfavorable, the victimization level is growing, and the growth rate is higher in Irkutsk Region than in Transbaikal Region. The structure of regional victimization is dominated by crimes against property, while other types in this structure are crimes against life and health, family and minors, as well as against health of the population and public morals. Characteristic features of victims of regional female crimes are age victimity, as every second victim in Transbaikal Region and every third in Irkutsk Region has it, and a considerable victimogenic personality deformation of most middle-aged victims. Such victims show guilty (unlawful, amoral or light-minded) behavior, which is the manifestation of their personal victimity. Using the obtained results, the authors worked out a system of victimological prevention measures aimed at stopping and neutralizing the identified victimogenic factors. They suggest legal, organizational, information, educational measures, as well as measures of rehabilitation and procedural nature. Taking into account the regional specifics of victimization, the personality of crime victims, their victim-like behavior can make the practice of victimological prevention more effective.

THE ADAPTATION OF ISLAMIC PRINCIPLES IN SARAWAK TRADITIONAL MALAY HOUSE

Historically, in the event of Islam's arrival in the Malay Archipelago, the ways of Islam were adapted to the lifestyle of the Malay community. It's part of modernizing traditional Malay thoughts (akliah) which is influenced by Islamic values and teachings. One of the manifestations of Islamic influence in the traditional Malay lifestyle can be identified from the design and characteristics of Traditional Malay houses, developed with underlying principles of Islam. This paper discusses the application of Islamic principles in Sarawak traditional Malay houses. The research was conducted on three traditional Malay houses chosen from Sarawak and located in Kuching, Sarawak. The methods of observation and case study were employed, focusing on the interior space of the house and certain other design components. In addition, interviews were performed with the owners of the three houses that comprised the samples and focus group discussions with 12 Malay people over 65. The findings indicate that three concepts may be related to Islam's characteristics in Sarawak: the concept of occupant social connections, residential space, and construction and design.