When Intentions Meet Realities: Typology of Contacts across the Finnish-Russian Border

When Intentions Meet Realities: Typology of Contacts across the Finnish-Russian Border Heikki Eskelinen, University of Joensuu, Finland Dmitri Zimine, St. Petersburg Centre for Russian Studies, Russia Cross-border cooperation can be defined as conscious joint activity pursued by local and regional governments with more or less strong support from civil society, and facilitated and constrained by central governments and international organisations. Since about 1990, this phenomenon has also been witnessed across the former Iron Curtain, simultaneously with various forms of cross-border economic transactions and informal contacts. Yet in most cases, cross-border regionalisation has remained rather weak, and it has not met the early ambitious targets of creating a new borderless Europe. Given the background outlined above, the present paper attempts to clarify the interplay of official cooperation and informal cross-border contacts: whether they have developed in accordance - or at least in touch - with each other. For this purpose, a typology of cross-border contacts is created by dividing them into formal v. informal and private profit-oriented (economic) v. public benefit-oriented (political) ones. The basic assertion of the paper is that the lack of regionalisation phenomena across divisive borders may result from that these different forms of cross-border interaction develop independently from each other. The empirical analysis focusses on one border town in the Russian North-West. It attempts to clarify in detail the mechanisms through which various forms of cross-border contacts have influenced developments in it, modifying the transition process at a local level. The observed dynamics of cross?border contacts leads to a conclusion that the four types of cross-border contacts have displayed very different trends in the 1990s, and they have failed to create joint dynamics because of the obstacles imposed by the existing institutional realities on both sides of the border. On this basis, it is asked whether the strengthened informal cross?border networks may well soon begin to exert pressure upon formal public and private institutions with the aim to further develop the formal framework facilitating cross?border contacts.

The Role of Small, Comprehensive Universities in Regional Economic Development: Experiences from Two Nordic cases

In the recent past, expectations concerning universities have emphasised their active role as driving forces in industrial and regional development. Obviously, this challenge is especially demanding in the universities which have primarily focussed on traditional academic teaching and research activities, and which are located in regions suffering from structural problems. The paper investigates the experience of three Nordic universities, Aarhus in Denmark, Joensuu in Finland, and Tromsö in Norway, which are comparable in several respects. The triple helix framework is used as the theoretical point of reference. In particular, the investigation attempts to clarify the factors which condition the transformation of a university from the academic unit producing qualified labour force for the welfare state towards a policy actor in initiating new economic activities. Drawing from the comparison of the three cases, the conclusions focus on the realisation of a university?s local and regional development potential.

Distant neighbours. Economic adjustment processes at the Finnish-Russian border

For decades, the closed East/West border was an effective barrier for cross-border interaction at a local and regional level. It was reflected, among other things, in production structures and settlement patterns in the border regions. Since around 1990, economic and other forms of cross-border linkages have been possible, and they have raised the issue about adjustment processes, that is, whether regional and local economic actors are able to utilise existing complementarities and create new ones, and how this will make itself felt in the roles of the border regions in the international division of labour. The paper investigates regional adjustment processes in the case of the Finnish-Russian border, which is characterised by one of the deepest socio-economic and cultural gaps in Europe. First, the reasons for the specialisation of the neighbouring regional economies under the period of the closed border are analysed. Against this background, the repercussions of the partial opening of the border are evaluated in relation to the other driving forces of their development trends in the 1990s. It is concluded that the regions on both sides have lagged behind their respective national averages, although border-related adjustment processes have had quite diverse economic impacts. In Finland, these impacts have remained relatively marginal in most border regions. In the Russian borderlands, some local and regional economies have undergone profound changes in their market orientation due to the proximity of the border; instead of being specialised producers for the Russian market, they are now locked in the international division of labour as economic peripheries.

Counselling immigrant adults at an educational institution

The principle of promoting free mobility of citizens has been written into European educational policies. Additionally, the philosophy of educational equality has been clearly included into the educational regulation of most European countries. Furthermore, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the ideas of lifelong learning have been defined to be the goals of improving practice within the educational systems. This means that teachers all over Europe are increasingly facing students with various ethnic backgrounds of all ages and having varied educational backgrounds, life situations and work-experiences and accordingly, being in the need of diverse educational support within educational settings. The growth in demands for equal educational rights for all inevitably strengthens the demands for the development of each teacher’s and counsellor's the skills of the teaching and counselling staff for meeting the individual needs of learners emerging from diverse reasons and counselling them accordingly. However, with this new concentration on the needs of diverse students emerging on issues like immigration, age, race, gender, special educational needs or the like, there seems to be some uncertainty with regards to what the development of these skills might mean for the practices of educational settings, their teachers and other staff and, accordingly, for teacher education training professionals for educational settings. In this article we will provide the reader with a couple of examples of how these challenges have been met within educational settings. Besides offering some examples of good practice of working with immigrant adults we also focus on the challenge of training professionals and in particular to of training teachers working with immigrant adults in educational provisions institutions. With In putting the focus on teachers we would like to underline the importance of every teacher to have having the counselling attitude and skills in his/her everyday practice with immigrant adult learners besides the work done by actual counselling professionals. However, we start our article with by addressing briefly the subject of to adult learners and some grounds of working with immigrant adult learners in educational settings. This starting point provides the conceptual framework for the practical examples to be presented. The first two of these examples are dealing deal with counselling immigrant adult students. They are followed with by examples of some learning tools used in training teachers to work with multicultural adult students

Fine-grained Patterns of the Digital Divide: Differences of Broadband Access within Finland

Access to the Internet plays a central role in the development of an information society. However, because of the required telecommunications infrastructure is very expensive to build, and telecommunications services are also relatively expensive, there is no sufficient demand for a market-based provision of relevant telecommunication infrastructures in many areas. As a result, some citizens and organisations are left without an (up-to-date) access to the Internet. This gap between social groups with and without access to the Internet, which is also often linked with a lack of motivation to use it, is referred to as Digital Divide. Several governments have implemented programmes aimed at diminishing this Divide, by means of providing access to the Internet in regions where the market does not provide it, and by enhancing the citizens? ?information society? skills and motivation. There are a variety of technologies available for connecting to the Internet. The traditional narrowband means include modem and ISDN. For faster connections in terms of data transfer rate, various broadband technologies have been introduced. Actually, these broadband connections, which usually offer a fixed pricing scheme, are often seen as the embodiment of an information society. Lately, also mobile connections have become a feasible in creating an access to the Internet, as their speed has increased to the level of the traditional modem connection, and their data transfer prices have been reduced. The aim of this paper is to explore spatial patterns and differences in internet access in Finland. Availability of all possible technologies (traditional, broadband and mobile) are investigated in detail. The findings are compared with demographic characteristics of the relevant regions. Not surprisingly, the tentative results support the view that regions with higher population densities have a better access to the Internet. With regard to the debate on the Digital Divide, it is especially interesting to observe that variations in access to the Internet do not follow administrative borders, but are much more fine-grained. Clearly, this has implications for effective and righteous information society policies, and for an evaluation of the effectiveness of such policies. The paper in an outgrowth of the project ?Telecommunications Services and Networks and Territorial Cohesion? funded from the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) programme (see www.espon.lu). Key words: internet access, digital divide, telecommunications infrastructure, spatial differences, ESPON

Kokouspalvelujen kehittäminen : Radisson Blu Marina Palace

Tässä opinnäytetyössä kuvataan Radisson Blu Turun hotellin kokouspalvelujen nykyhetken tilaa asiakaskyselyn pohjalta. Työn tarkoituksena on kehittää kokouspalvelun toimintoja tulevaisuuden kiristyvässä kilpailussa. Opinnäytetyön lähtökohtana on selvittää kokouspalveluiden nykytila ja kehittää hotellin kokouspalveluja kyselyn pohjalta asiakaan toivomaan suuntaan. Tarkoituksena on pohtia kokoustoiminnoille tulevaisuuden näkymiä, jotka palvelisivat yritystä kiristyvässä kilpailussa. Kehityksen perustana ovat liiketoiminta sekä asiakaspalvelu ja niiden yhdistäminen asiakasvaatimuksiin. Kokouspalveluiden jatkuva kehittäminen on tärkeää, jotta kokouspalveluiden käyttöaste hotellis-sa säilyy hyvänä. Radisson Blu hotellille ei ole tärkeää vain uusien kokousasiakkaiden hankki-minen, vaan myös vanhojen asiakassuhteiden ylläpito ja hyödyntäinen. Yrityksen täytyy jatkuvasti kehittää asiakassuhteitaan, tuotteitaan ja palveluitaan pysyäkseen kilpailussa mukana. Tähän tarvitaan säännöllistä asiakastyytyväisyyden seurantaa. Varsinaiset tuotteet ovat monilla hotelleilla ja kokouksenjärjestäjillä hyvin samanlaisia, joten lisäarvon tuottaminen asiakkaalle pelkän varsinaisen tuotteen avulla on vaikeaa. Tuotteen käsi-tettä pitää kasvattaa laajennettuun käsitteeseen, joka sisältää varsinaisen tuotteen lisäksi yrityksen palveluympäristön, asiakkaan ja yrityksen välisen vuorovaikutuksen, asiakkaan oman osallistumisen tuotteen syntymiseen sekä saavutettavuuteen liittyvät tekijät.The present master’s thesis describes the current status of the Turku Radisson Blu hotel meeting services on the basis of a customer survey. The purpose of the study is to develop the service operations to meet the requirements of future competition. The starting point for the study is to examine the current state of meeting services and develop the meeting facilities of the hotel on the basis of the survey results. The development work is based on business operations and customer service and their integration with customer requirements. The development of the meeting services, customer relationships and products is important to maintain the high occupancy rate of the hotel. In addition to the acquisition of new customers it is vital to keep the old customers as well. This requires regular monitoring of customer satisfaction. The research methods used were quantitative, an e-mail survey to all the customers who used or reserved meeting services in January-April 2010 at Radisson Blu Hotel was conducted to gather the data. In addition, previous customer surveys and researches on the subject were used. Providing added value for the customer requires an expansion of the product concept in order to include, in addition to the actual product, the company's service environment, the interaction between the customer and the company, the customer's own participation in the creation and accessibility of the product. The customers pay more and more attention to the corporate responsibility issues and corporate responsibility has become a competitive advantage. Environmental issues are important in the production of meeting services. The meeting product is changing into a total experience requiring careful planning in the tightening competition now, and in particular, in the future

Kotoutumista Laukaassa ja Jyväskylässä : Yksin Suomeen tulleiden oleskeluluvan saaneiden alaikäisten turvapaikanhakijoiden kotoutuminen perheryhmäkoti Kuhankoskella ja Huipun tukiasumisyksikössä

Tilaajana opinnäytetyöllä on Ryhmäkodit Arjessa Oy, joka toimii Seinäjoen ja Jyväskylän seuduilla tarjoten erilaisia laitospalveluita, jälkihuollon palveluita ja tukipalveluita turvapaikanhakijoille ja oleskeluluvan saaneille. Ryhmäkodit Arjessa Oy:lla on Jyväskylän seudulla 26 vakituisessa työsuhteessa olevaa työntekijää, joihin kuuluu myös useita yhteisöpedagogeja. Ryhmäkodit Arjessa Oy. on yksi valtakunnallisen Arjessa Oy:n yhtiöistä. Tutkimusmenetelminä opinnäytetyössä ovat nuorista tehdyt teemahaastattelut sekä heistä työn ohella tehty havainnointi. Opinnäytetyö on kvalitatiivinen tutkimus jossa pyrin selvittämään Kuhankosken perheryhmäkodin ja Huippu-tukiasumisyksikön nuorten tämänhetkistä kotoutumisen edistymistä, tarvetta kotoutumisen jatkotutkimuksille ja kotoutumispalveluiden tarjoamiselle sekä kehittämiselle tulevaisuudessa. Opinnäytetyötä voivat hyödyntää kaikki alaikäisten yksin maahantulleiden turvapaikanhakijoiden kanssa työskentelevät tai siitä kiinnostuneet toimijat koko Suomessa. Yhteisöpedagogeille opinnäytetyöstä on hyötyä maahanmuuttajanuorten kanssa työskentelystä kiinnostuneille ja maahanmuuttajanuorten kanssa jo työskenteleville. Opinnäytetyöstä saa kuvaa muun muassa turvapaikanhakijoiden perheryhmäkodin ja tukiasumisyksikön arjesta ja siellä tehtävästä työstä. Ammattialalle opinnäytetyö on merkityksellinen esimerkiksi vasta tulleen Valviran lausunnon myötä, jonka kautta perheryhmäkodit ovat yhteisöpedagogeille tulevaisuudessa entistä suurempi työkenttä. Maahanmuuttajataustaisten kanssa työskenteleminen on myös ollut Humakin painopisteitä koulutuksessa ja yhteisöpedagogeilla on paljon annettavaa alalle monikulttuurisen työn ammattilaisina.The subscriber for my work is Ryhmäkodit Arjessa Oy, which offers institutional services, aftercare services and support services for asylum seekers and for those with residence permits. Ryhmäkodit Arjessa Oy has 26 permanent employees, several of which are community educators. Ryhmäkodit Arjessa Oy is a company owned by the nationwide operator Arjessa Oy. Thesis is qualitative research of underaged asylum seekers with a residence permit who came to Fin-land without family and who now live in a family group home at Kuhankoski or supported housing at Jyväskylä. The research methods of the current thesis were themed interviews and observation made of the youth. In the research my aim is to study the current situation and development of their integra-tion to Finnish society, the need for integration services in the future and the need for more research and development about integration in the future. This thesis helps community educators who work or are interested in working with immigrant youth to better understand the daily life of the asylum seekers in family group homes and supported housing and about the work done there. For the profession thesis is remarkable since scope of work is quite large with immigrants. Work done with the immigrants has also been a priority in Humak education and community educators have a lot to give for the multicultural sector