Inward FDI and regional performance in Europe after the Great Recession

This paper looks at inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and regional labour productivity in the aftermath of the Great Recession, exploring two FDI-induced effects. The first effect is linked with a capacity of FDI per se to trigger short-term productivity gains in response to a global shock. The second effect is associated with the degree of industrial diversification of these investment flows. The results suggest that it is not the amount of foreign investment received per se that matters for productivity recovery but its composition. A low degree of FDI diversification helped regions to gain productivity after the shock. The effect is stronger in regions with an industrial profile concentrated in a limited number of sectors, particularly in services. FDI can support regional recovery, but in the short run, it does so by matching and reinforcing existing regional specialisation profiles and to the benefit of services-oriented regions

The psychological threat of being declared nonessential during the COVID‐19 pandemic: effects on professional identification

This research applies a social identity lens to show that, during the COVID‐19 pandemic, the classification of occupations and labor market sectors as essential versus nonessential negatively affected the professional identity of those categorized as nonessential workers. We hypothesized that nonessential workers would report lower professional identification (PI) during the pandemic relative to essential workers; explored whether this was partially due to mandatory shifts to working from home and working fewer hours; whether gender differences would emerge in the impact of (non)essential categorization on PI; and if lower PI would negatively relate to work productivity and performance during the pandemic. Empirical evidence based on three datasets sampled among the Dutch working population during two peak waves of COVID‐19 infections and national lockdowns (May/June 2020; Study 1: N = 371; November/December 2020, Study 2: N = 467; Study 3 = 735) confirmed nonessential workers' lower PI relative to essential workers. During the first peak wave (Study 1), nonessential workers' lower PI was partially explained by being home‐bound by reduced work hours. As the pandemic continued (second peak wave; Studies 2 and 3), gender differences emerged, with more negative consequences of being classified as nonessential for women than men. Nonessential workers' lower PI levels were associated with lower work productivity and performance. These findings underscore the importance of understanding social identity processes during the pandemic. We discuss the sociopsychological ramifications of government regulations to control health crises, given how these may inadvertently undermine the professional identity of over half a working population in society

Generalized disruption: society, work, and property rights in the age of AI

Disruptive innovations are understood as those that threaten incumbent firms. When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI), however, its broad applicability means that disruption will not just stop at product markets; the technology has the potential for generalized disruption across multiple domains. This chapter begins by exploring two domains that have received some attention already. First, the socio-political sphere, with implications for civil rights and privacy. Second, labor markets, with implications for adjustment policies and workplace regulation. We then identify a new domain that has heretofore been overlooked: the disruption of property rights over contestable inputs. The resources that many AI applications rely on—online content for generative AI or urban space for autonomous vehicles — are becoming valuable and contested inputs, as property rights are often ill established. Conflict over these resources is expected going forward; clearer property rights and usage frameworks will thus have to be established via litigation and regulation. These multiple domains of disruption can interact with one another, generating both opportunities and challenges for academics and policymakers

Transitioning from European citizenship towards immigration identities after Brexit (the case of Greek diaspora in the UK)

One of Brexit’s aftermaths, has affected those UK residents who had been identified as ‘EU citizens’ prior Brexit, and re-identified as ‘immigrants’ after Brexit. Based on the case of 30 in-depth interviews with Greeks (European citizens), residing in UK between 5 and 20 years, this study explores identity transition as participants negotiate their citizenship and immigration identities. The main findings of this phenomenological study depict four aspects of identity negotiations (primarily involving ethnic, citizenship and immigration identities): a) erroneous resemblance between civic and cultural European identity, b) tendencies of prejudice towards non-European identities, c) coherent albeit unproblematic lack of belonging towards the host culture and d) underlying conflicting identity perceptions and experiences signalling ongoing identity(ies) in transition

The safety of strangers: the realities and politics of protecting civilians in times of war

Recent wars have brutally shown that civilians are not safe. This is despite high‐level global commitments and multi‐billion‐dollar humanitarian spending to keep civilian strangers protected. The high civilian death tolls in recent armed conflicts are prompting new questions about how and if we can protect civilians in times of war, and what the real politics of such protection is. In this special section and its introduction, we argue that it is essential to pay attention to civilians' actual experiences of protection and their own strategies for staying safe. Normative schemes, including those that seek to offer safety to strangers, are always contested and negotiated and are always bound up in claims for legitimacy, power and public authority. We argue that it is in civilians' quotidian experiences of staying safe that we can best see and understand the local, national and international politics of civilian protection, as well as the forms of safety that are prioritised by civilians themselves. To do this, the special section draws together qualitative, ethnographic and ethnomusicological research in Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda to shed light on how the international community can keep civilians safe

Turkish cultural diplomacy toward China’s Turkic communities (1933–1949)

Despite the availability of a modest body of research on Ottoman policies towards the Uyghurs and Türkiye’s post-1950 stance, the 1933–1949 interim period has been mostly overlooked. This study examines Türkiye’s cultural diplomacy towards China and the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim minority in northwest China, with a special focus on the 1933–1949 period, which corresponds to the crystallisation of Uyghur national identity through the Turkic Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET, 1933–1934) and the Second East Turkestan Republic (SETR, 1944–1949). This era saw Türkiye’s increased cultural involvement, driven by revolutionary changes under Atatürk and China’s political instability. In this article, we conduct a qualitative content analysis of declassified diplomatic archives, made available under Presidential Decree No. 11 (2018) to explore the evolution of Turkish cultural diplomacy. Before the conclusion of World War II, Turkish diplomacy primarily focused on understanding local cultural contexts, implementing educational reforms, facilitating student exchanges, promoting the Kemalist Revolution, and disseminating the new Turkish alphabet and cultural materials, which were positively received by Chinese authorities. Interestingly, China’s initiatives were crucial in sparking diplomatic relations. In the changing geopolitical environment of the post-war period, Turkish cultural diplomacy gradually shifted from emphasising the new Turkish alphabet and Kemalist ideals to incorporating Arabic and English materials, which was accompanied by a more cautious approach aimed at avoiding tensions with major international powers

Mapping socioeconomic factors driving antimicrobial resistance in humans: an umbrella review

Introduction: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the biggest public health challenges of our time. National Action Plans have failed so far to effectively address socioeconomic drivers of AMR, including the animal and environmental health dimensions of One Health. Objective: To map what socioeconomic drivers of AMR exist in the literature with quantitative evidence. Methods: An umbrella review was undertaken across Medline, Embase, Global Health, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, supplemented by a grey literature search on Google Scholar. Review articles demonstrating a methodological search strategy for socioeconomic drivers of AMR were included. Two authors extracted drivers from each review article which were supported by quantitative evidence. Drivers were grouped thematically and summarised narratively across the following three layers of society: People & Public, System & Environment, and Institutions & Policies. Results: The search yielded 6300 articles after deduplication, with 23 review articles included. 27 individual thematic groups of drivers were identified. The People & Public dimensions contained the following themes: age, sex, ethnicity, migrant status, marginalisation, sexual behaviours, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, household composition, maternity, personal hygiene, lifestyle behaviours. System & Environment yielded the following themes: household transmission, healthcare occupation, urbanicity, day-care attendance, environmental hygiene, regional poverty, tourism, animal husbandry, food supply chain, water contamination, and climate. Institutions & Policies encompassed poor antibiotic quality, healthcare financing, healthcare governance, and national income. Many of these contained bidirectional quantitative evidence, hinting at conflicting pathways by which socioeconomic factors drive AMR. Conclusion: This umbrella review maps socioeconomic drivers of AMR with quantitative evidence, providing a macroscopic view of the complex pathways driving AMR. This will help direct future research and action on socioeconomic drivers of AMR

Why might animals remember? A functional framework for episodic memory research in comparative psychology

One of Clayton’s major contributions to our understanding of animal minds has been her work on episodic-like memory. A central reason for the success of this work was its focus on ecological validity: rather than looking for episodic memory for arbitrary stimuli in artificial contexts, focussing on contexts in which episodic memory would serve a biological function such as food caching. This review aims to deepen this insight by surveying the numerous functions that have been proposed for episodic memory, articulating a philosophically grounded framework for understanding what exactly functions are, and drawing on these to make suggestions for future directions in the comparative cognitive psychology of episodic memory. Our review suggests four key insights. First, episodic memory may have more than one function and may have different functions in different species. Second, cross-disciplinary work is key to developing a functional account of episodic memory. Third, there is scope for further theoretical elaboration of proposals relating episodic memory to food caching and, in particular, future-oriented cognition. Finally, learning-related functions suggested by AI (artificial intelligence)-based models are a fruitful avenue for future behavioural research

Inequality of opportunity and intergenerational persistence in Latin America

How strong is the transmission of socio-economic status across generations in Latin America? To answer this question, we first review the empirical literature on intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity for the region, summarizing results for both income and educational outcomes. We find that, whereas the income mobility literature is hampered by a paucity of representative datasets containing linked information on parents and children, the inequality of opportunity approach – which relies on other inherited and pre-determined circumstance variables – has suffered from arbitrariness in model selection. Two new data-driven approaches – one aligned with the ex-ante and the other with the ex-post conception of inequality of opportunity – are introduced to address this shortcoming. They yield a set of new inequality of opportunity estimates for 27 surveys covering 9 Latin American countries over various years between 2000 and 2015. In most cases, more than half of the current generation’s inequality is inherited from the past – with a range between 44 and 63%. We argue that on balance, given the parsimony of the population partitions, these are still likely to be underestimates