Worker Flows in the European Union During the Great Recession

We measure the contribution of worker flows across employment, unemployment, and non-participation to the change in unemployment in eleven EU countries during the period 2006-2012, paying special attention to which socio-demographic groups in each of the countries were mostly affected by job creation and job destruction during the crisis. We find that age, to a larger extent than educational attainments, is the main determinant of flows from employment into unemployment, particularly in those countries where unemployment increased by most. Secondly, we highlight some institutional features of the labour market (employment protection legislation, unemployment insurance, and the incidence of active labor market policies) that help to explain the cross-country differences in flows between employment and unemployment and in their socio-demographic composition. Finally, we examine if the crisis has led to some employment reallocation across sectors, finding that, so far, there is no clear evidence in favor of cleansing effects

Exploding Crime? Topic Management in Central American Newspapers

Huhn S, Oettler A, Peetz P. Exploding Crime? Topic Management in Central American Newspapers. GIGA Working Papers. Vol 33. Hamburg: GIGA; 2006.It has become common to state that criminal violence has superseded political violence in Central America. This paper presents the first results of a research project which analyses the social construction of violent realities in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The authors describe the print media landscape in Central America and examine both the quality of leading newspapers and the main clusters of topics constituting the news discourse on violence. The analysis of the macro-structure of topic management in Central American newspapers allows to differentiate the “talk of crime”: it is more heterogeneous than often thought. There are signs that the problem of juvenile delinquency is emerging as the center of a cross-country discourse on “ordinary violence”. On the other hand, the talk of crime is centered around few topic clusters, with sexual violence and border-related discourse on violence being of key importance. Finally, the paper points to a heterogeneous array of discourse events that is connected to political developments and power-relations