The role of regulatory and temporal context in the construction of diversity discourses: The case of the UK, France and Germany, European Journal of Industrial Relations

Despite growing interest in how the concept of diversity management is reinterpreted as it crosses national boundaries, there has been little study of this process in Europe. To bridge this knowledge gap, this article explores the construction of diversity discourses in the context of the UK, France and Germany. We use the discursive politics approach to investigate the ways in which the meaning of diversity is shrunk, bent and stretched. We demonstrate that the concept of diversity has no universal fixed meaning but is contextual, contested and temporal. Temporarily fixed definitions and frames of diversity are path-dependent and shaped by the regulatory context. Thus unique national histories and the context of regulation are key determinants of the ways in which the concept is redefined as it crosses national and regional borders

A 'recipe for depopulation'? School closures and local population decline in Saxony

A popular notion asserts that closing the last primary school marks a community's demographic death. No young parents will remain, much less new ones move in. This notion is frequently voiced but rarely verified. Are school closuresa cause or consequence of local decline? This study reviews existing research on school locations and peripheral population decline to show that expectations of a dramatic impact of school closures on out-migration are theoretically ill-founded. I proceed to discus specific methodological challenges in the empirical analysis of this relationship, and conduct a statistical analysis for the province of Saxony in East Germany for the period 1994-2007. In contrast to the prevailing discourse, there is little evidence of an appreciable effect of primary school closures on local population decline. This negative finding is discussed in light of local contextual factors and general insights from population geography