Immigration and language education in Catalonia: between national and social agendas

Most analyses of the sociolinguistic aspects of immigration focus on contexts where a single language is official and widely used. In bilingual Catalonia, newly arriving immigrants find themselves in a situation where the administration seeks to treat Catalan as a fully functional public language while large sectors of the local population still treat it as a minority language not adequate to be spoken to strangers. Popular language practices and discourses often seem to suggest that Catalan serves to assert identity while Spanish serves for practical communicative purposes, thus contradicting the official narratives over language and integration. Thus, what we find is that immigrants are required to adjust to different, competing, often blatantly contradictory linguistic ideologies and practices. In this article, I will seek to describe these contradictions and historical changes together with their implications for the local political economy of intergroup relations. I begin with a brief theoretical grounding of the concepts uses. To this follows a historical account of educational language policies addressed to immigrants since the mid-1980s. A change in official discourses from language as national symbol to language as a means for social cohesion is documented. Language policies are contrasted with ethnographic data on linguistic practices in everyday life in various settings. To conclude, I reflect on the significance of these phenomena for a general understanding of the role of languages in the construction of social difference in contemporary societies

"State, Difference, and Diversity: Toward a Path of Expanded Democracy and Gender Equality"

The centrality of the state in promoting gender equality is generally acknowledged, but a perplexing and complex issue confronts us: should the state treat men and women in identical ways, or should it legislate and enforce policies that are aware of gender differences? In other words, should the state be gender-blind or gender-sensitive? Gender, ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, ideological, economic, political, and cultural dimensions represent diversity among citizens. This paper argues that if the goal of the state is to promote democratic participation for all, a distinction must be drawn between socioeconomic characteristics that signify difference and those that manifest inequalities. The former require a politics of acceptance and recognition and policies to match, leading to equal treatment for all despite differences, while the latter necessitate interventions that remedy or remove structural elements that result in inequalities. The authors suggest that such a framework is useful in that it lends itself to a better understanding of gender-based asymmetries.

Linguistic 'mudes' and the de-ethnicization of language choice in Catalonia

Catalan speakers have traditionally constructed the Catalan language as the main emblem of their identity even as migration filled the country with substantial numbers of speakers of Castilian. Although Catalan speakers have been bilingual in Catalan and Castilian for generations, sociolinguistic research has shown how speakers' bilingual practices have always been sensitive to keeping a clear sense of the boundaries between the languages and between their communities of speakers. The norms of language choice in everyday life have reflected this as Catalans have tended to use Catalan basically between those considered to 'be' Catalan. This paper shows that this situation is gradually changing due to new conditions of mobility and access to language, that is, because most native speakers of Castilian are now bilingual and speak Catalan often in everyday life. On the basis of a corpus of 25 interviews and 15 group discussions conducted in Catalonia with a sample of young people of different profiles, we show that young people in Catalonia increasingly rely on prima facie linguistic behavior rather than ethnolinguistic classification to decide which language to speak in specific contexts, so that language use loses its earlier function of ethnolinguistic boundary maintenance

Linguistic commodification in tourism

Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2002 and 2012 in Switzerland, Catalunya and different zones of francophone Canada in sites related to heritage and cultural tourism, we argue that tourism, especially i n multilingual peripheries, is a key site for a sociolinguistic exploration of the political economy of globalization. We link shifts in the role of language in tourism to shifts in phases of capitalism, focusing on the shift from industrial to late capitalism, and in particular on the effects of the commodification of authenticity. We examine the tensions this shift generates in ideologies and practices of language, concerned especially with defining the nature of the tourism product, the public and the management of the tourism process. This results in an as yet unresolved destabilization of hitherto hegemonic discourses linking languages to cultures, identities, nations and States

The importance of being mature: the effect of demographic maturation on global per-capita GDP

Given that savings behaviour and worker productivity have strong life-cycle components and given that demographic profiles vary across countries, population age structure should be linked to differences in levels of economic development. In this paper we measure the economic importance of age structure variation for the global economy. We find that even after adjusting for country-specific effects, demographic maturation has been associated with nearly half of the evolution of global per-capita GDP since 1960. We also find that age structure differences can account for just over half of the variation in worldwide per capita GDP (i.e. the lack of sigma convergence) observed since 1960. Taken as a whole, these results complement recent theoretical and empirical work on the importance of population size and economic development and reinforce empirical work linking mature demographic age structures with faster cross-country economic growth rates. JEL Classification: J13, J22, J24, O11, O40age structure, cross-country growth, life cycle savings model

Melatonin affects the dynamic steady-state equilibrium of estrogen sulfates in human umbilical vein endothelial cells by regulating the balance between estrogen sulfatase and sulfotransferase

Melatonin is known to reduce the growth of endocrine-responsive breast cancers by interacting with estrogen signaling pathways. Estrogens play an important role in breast cancer, but also in various types of tissues, including vascular tissue. Estrogen sulfatase (STS) converts inactive estrogen sulfates into active estrogens, whereas estrogen sulfotransferase (EST) sulfonates estrogens to estrogen sulfates. Therefore, STS and EST are considered to be involved in the regulation of local estrogen levels in hormone‑dependent tumors and in non-pathologic tissues, such as those of the vascular system. Estrogens have a major impact on the vasculature, influencing vascular function, the expression of adhesion proteins, angiogenesis and the inflammatory state. In this study, we investigated the status of STS and EST in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and the modulatory effects of melatonin. Both STS and EST were highly expressed in the HUVECs. The enzymatic activity correlated with the expression levels in these cells. Our findings also demonstrated that melatonin, at physiological concentrations, modulated the synthesis and transformation of biologically active estrogens in HUVECs through the inhibition of STS activity and expression, and the stimulation of EST activity and expression. Since melatonin decreased the STS levels and increased the EST levels, it modified the dynamic steady‑state equilibrium of estrogen sulfates by increasing the inactive estrogen levels and decreasing the active estrogen levels. Therefore, melatonin may modulate the known different biological actions of estrogens in endothelial cells, as well as in estrogen‑dependent tumors and non-pathologic tissues

On the sustainability of the Spanish public budget performance

In this paper, we address the issue of whether the current fiscal policy in Spain is sustainable. For this purpose we apply traditional empirical tests of fiscal sustainability proposed in the literature and, in addition, we introduce a deeper univariate analysis of the series involved. Our results show that a structural break seems to have taken place gradually in the Spanish budget performance, allowing to verifying the intertemporal borrowing constraint in a «strong sense», which means that no problems in marketing public debt are expected to arise if fiscal variables follow the pattern of the past in the future. Classification-JEL : E60, F41,: Sustainability, cointegration, structural breaks, intertemporal borrowing constraint.

Modelos de análisis para la prevención de lesiones en el deporte. Estudio epidemiológico de lesiones: el modelo Union of European Football Associations en el fútbol

El mundo del deporte, y el de la alta competición especialmente, comporta un considerable riesgo de sufrir lesiones por su nivel de exigencia física y psíquica. El origen multifactorial de las lesiones complica la identificación de los factores de riesgo y la búsqueda de estrategias para su prevención. Desde la publicación en 1992 del «modelo secuencial para la prevención de lesiones» de Van Mechelen, diferentes grupos han aportado nuevos criterios de análisis con el objetivo de determinar, desde una perspectiva científica, la eficacia y la eficiencia de dichos modelos. El primer paso ha sido siempre definir cuál es la magnitud real del problema. El modelo de estudio epidemiológico más referenciado y seguido es el propuesto por el equipo médico de expertos de la Union of European Football Associations (Hägglund, Walden y Ekstrand, 2005). El siguiente artículo resume y traduce en lengua castellana el contenido de estos artículos ya publicados como originales en distintas revistas, y que están siendo referentes en la búsqueda de diseños de protocolos de prevención de las lesiones deportivas («Es mejor prevenir que curar», Erasmus [1466–1536])

The short-term impact of government budgets on prices Evidence from macroeconometric models

This paper reviews the existing empirical evidence on the short-term impact on prices of fiscal variables and assesses it against new results from harmonised simulations, conducted with six well-established econometric models used by the ECB and five national central banks (NCBs) of the Eurosystem. The outcome is also compared with results from the European Commission and the OECD models. Overall, a broad consensus appears on the impact on prices of changes in individual government budget items in the euro area. In all cases, changes in government demand and in direct taxes paid by households have a limited impact on prices in the first year while, in contrast, changes in indirect taxes and employers’ social security contributions have a relatively large impact. The second year results show that the effects on prices usually take some time to materialise fully; in particular, they often become large for the public consumption shock.euro area, model simulations, fiscal policy, prices

The short-term impact of government budgets on prices; evidence from macroeconometric models

This paper reviews the existing empirical evidence on the short-term impact on prices of fiscal variables and assesses it against new results from harmonised simulations, conducted with six well-established econometric models used by the ECB and five national central banks (NCBs) of the Eurosystem. The outcome is also compared with results from the European Commission and the OECD models. Overall, a broad consensus appears on the impact on prices of changes in individual government budget items in the euro area. In all cases, changes in government demand and in direct taxes paid by households have a limited impact on prices in the first year while, in contrast, changes in indirect taxes and employersÂ’ social security contributions have a relatively large impact. The second year results show that the effects on prices usually take some time to materialise fully; in particular, they often become large for the public consumption shock.Euro area, model simulations, fiscal policy, prices