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Although mothers and fathers in almost all rich democracies are entitled to some form of paid parenting leave, fathers in particular do not take all the leave available to them. As employers play an important role in the implementation of parenting leave policies, this chapter investigates which workplace characteristics influence mothers' and fathers' uptake of their statutory leave entitlements. In Part 1, we estimate the size of the gap between statutory leave entitlement and leave uptake across genders and countries by combining data from the OECD and the European Labor Force Survey. In Parts 2 and 3, we review the literature on structural, cultural, and normative explanations for the gap in parenting leave uptake. We conclude the chapter with suggestions for further research, including the need for reliable data on the size of the implementation gap and research on non-European countries.
Who suffered most?
(2022)
Objective:
This study examines gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parental psychological wellbeing (parenting stress and psychological distress) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.
Background:
The dramatic shift of childcare and schooling responsibility from formal institutions to private households during the pandemic has put families under enormous stress and raised concerns about caregivers' health and wellbeing. Despite the overwhelming media attention to families’ wellbeing, to date limited research has examined parenting stress and parental psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Germany.
Method:
We analyzed four waves of panel data (N= 1,771) from an opt-in online survey, which was conducted between March 2020 and April 2021. Multivariable OLS regressions were used to estimate variations in the pandemic's effects on parenting stress and psychological distress by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
Results:
Overall, levels of parenting stress and psychological distress increased during the pandemic. During the first and third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, mothers, parents with children younger than 11 years, parents with two or more children, parents working from home as well as parents with financial insecurity experienced higher parenting stress than other sociodemographic groups. Moreover, women, respondents with lower incomes, single parents, and parents with younger children experienced higher levels of psychological distress than other groups.
Conclusion:
Gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parents' psychological wellbeing increased among the study participants during the pandemic.
Phone surveys have increasingly become important data collection tools in developing countries, particularly in the context of sudden contact restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, there is limited evidence regarding the potential of the messenger service WhatsApp for remote data collection despite its large global coverage and expanding membership. WhatsApp may offer advantages in terms of reducing panel attrition and cutting survey costs. WhatsApp may offer additional benefits to migration scholars interested in cross-border migration behavior which is notoriously difficult to measure using conventional face-to-face surveys. In this field experiment, we compared the response rates between WhatsApp and interactive voice response (IVR) modes using a sample of 8446 contacts in Senegal and Guinea. At 12%, WhatsApp survey response rates were nearly eight percentage points lower than IVR survey response rates. However, WhatsApp offers higher survey completion rates, substantially lower costs and does not introduce more sample selection bias compared to IVR. We discuss the potential of WhatsApp surveys in low-income contexts and provide practical recommendations for field implementation.
How can labour market institutions make workers confident about their economic future? While quantitative studies have repeatedly shown that countries’ labour market regulations and policies are related to variations in workers’ perceived job security, these studies did not explain how these institutions affect workers’ perceptions and expectations. This study seeks to close this gap by analysing qualitative interview data collected on employees in Germany and the U.S. during the great financial crisis (2009–2010). The study's main finding is that policies vary in their effectiveness at making workers feel secure about their jobs. While unemployment assistance can reduce workers’ worries about job loss, dismissal protection does not seem to effectively increase workers’ confidence that their jobs are secure. Overall, employees know relatively little about the policies and regulations that are meant to protect them and have limited trust in their effectiveness. Individual and organisational characteristics seem to be more relevant for employees’ feelings of job security than national-level policies. In particular, comparisons with others who have lower levels of protection increase workers’ perceived security. These insights are particularly important in light of the ongoing changes in the world of work that are making workers’ lives more uncertain and insecure.
A growing number of studies have recently postulated a so-called local turn in the study of immigrant and refugee integration policy. A fundamental, yet untested, assumption of this body of research is that local (sub-national) policies and administrations shape how migrants and refugees integrate into society. We develop and apply an analytical model using multilevel modeling techniques based on large-N, longitudinal survey data (N > 9000) with refugees (2012–2018) in a highly decentralized country (Germany) to estimate the scope for local policy effects net of individual-level and state- and district-level characteristics. We show that region and district-level variation in integration outcomes across multiple dimensions (employment, education, language, housing, social) is limited (∼5%) within 4–8 years after immigration. We find modest variation in policy indicators (∼10%), which do not appear to directly translate into outcomes. We discuss implications for the study of local policies and the potential for greater convergence between administrative and political science, interested in governance structures and policy variation, and sociology and economics, interested primarily in integration outcomes.
In a comparison of three human service organisations in which the human body plays a key role, we examine how organisations regulate religious body practices. We concentrate on Muslim norms of dressing and undressing as a potential focal point of cultural and religious diversity. Inspired by Ray’s (2019) idea of racialized organizations, we assume that state-run organizations in Germany are characterized by a strong commitment to religious tolerance and non-discrimination but also marked by anti- Muslim sentiment prevalent among the German population. Our study looks for mechanism that explain how Human Service Organizations accommodate Muslim body practices. It draws on qualitative empirical data collected in state-run hospitals, schools and swimming pools in Germany. Our analyses show that the organizations draw on formal and informal rules at the organizational level to accommodate Islam. We identify five general organizational mechanisms that may hinder Muslim accommodation in human service organizations. In particular, we see a risk of decoupling between the expectation of religious tolerance and processes that lead to informal discrimination, driven mainly by the difficulty of controlling group dynamics among users.
Risky journeys
(2022)
In response to well-documented harms inflicted on irregular migrants attempting to travel from West Africa to Europe, various actors have scaled up information interventions to counter misinformation by smuggling networks and facilitate safe migration decisions. Many interventions include information on the potential dangers involved in migration. However, there is a striking lack of empirical evidence assessing a key assumption of campaign effectiveness, that is the relationship between risk perceptions and the decision to migrate irregularly. This study contributes an empirical account based on two independently collected surveys in Senegal and Guinea. Consistent with rational choice theories on migration decisions under uncertainty, the results suggest that higher risk perceptions are consistently and strongly associated with reduced intentions to migrate irregularly. Yet, the explanatory power of risk perceptions depends on context and is generally less important than structural and socio-economic factors.
The digitization process has triggered a profound transformation of modern societies. It encompasses a broad spectrum of technical, social, political, cultural and economic developments related to the mass use of computer- and internet-based technologies. It is now becoming increasingly clear that digitization is also changing existing structures of social inequality and that new structures of digital inequality are emerging. This is shown by a growing number of recent individual studies. In this paper, we set ourselves the task of systematizing this new research within the framework of an empirically supported literature review. To do so, we use the PRISMA model for literature reviews and focus on three central dimensions of inequality - ethnicity, gender, and age - and their relevance within the discourse on digitization and inequality. The empirical basis consists of journal articles published between 2000 and 2020 and listed on the Web of Science, as well as an additional Google Scholar search, through which we attempt to include important monographs and contributions to edited volumes in our analyses. Our text corpus thus comprises a total of 281 articles. Empirically, our literature review shows that unequal access to digital resources largely reproduces existing structures of inequality; in some cases, studies report a reduction in social inequalities as a result of the digitization process.
This essay takes an Anglophone Cultural Studies approach to reflect on the interdependence among as well as the individual (implicit) impact of the elements constituting our (embodied) power structures. These are, e.g., bodily experience/s such as shame and fear, everyday and institutional discourses and practices, but also manifestations of differences and particularities that we transform into phenomena such as “norms”, “binary systems” and “binary organisations”. The analysis of seemingly cyclic “Othering processes” and patterns of violence shows how people who identify as trans*, inter*, or non-binary have to live through and embody epistemological, emotional, and/or physical violence. At the same time, the descriptions illustrate numberless potential forms of resistance and change.
Cross-national variation in the relationship between welfare generosity and single mother employment
(2022)
Reform of the U.S. welfare system in 1996 spurred claims that cuts to welfare programs effectively incentivized single mothers to find employment. It is difficult to assess the veracity of those claims, however, absent evidence of how the relationship between welfare benefits and single mother employment generalizes across countries. This study combines data from the European Union Labour Force Survey and the U.S. Current Population Survey (1992-2015) into one of the largest samples of single mothers ever, testing the relationships between welfare generosity and single mothers’ employment and work hours. We find no consistent evidence of a negative relationship between welfare generosity and single mother employment outcomes. Rather, we find tremendous cross-national heterogeneity, which does not clearly correspond to well-known institutional variations. Our findings demonstrate the limitations of single country studies and the pervasive, salient interactions between institutional contexts and social policies.
In response to mounting evidence of harm inflicted on irregular migrants along their journeys from West Africa to Europe, international organizations, civil society organizations, and governments have scaled up campaigns as a tool for raising awareness about the risks of irregular migration. Campaigns aim to counter misinformation by smugglers and facilitate safe migration decisions. Despite the growing number of interventions, there is limited empirical evidence on the impact and effectiveness of such campaigns. Based on a difference-in-difference design, this study investigates the effect of a mobile cinema and community discussion intervention on the perceptions, knowledge, and intentions of potential irregular migrants in Northern Guinea in 2019. The results show that potential migrants who participated in events were significantly more likely to show awareness gains and less likely to report high intentions to migrate irregularly. While the relative importance of risk perceptions and their impact on migration flows remain unclear, the findings provide evidence supporting the assumption that risk awareness can be a relevant factor in the decision-making process of potential irregular migrants. While campaigns may be an effective tool in certain contexts, effect sizes highlight the need for policymakers to keep realistic expectations.
Web scraping, a technique for extracting data from web pages, has been in use for decades, yet its utilization in the field of migration, mobility, and migrant integration studies has been limited. The field faces notorious limitations regarding data access and availability, particularly in low-income settings. Web scraping has the potential to provide new datasets for further qualitative and quantitative analysis. Web scraping requires no financial resources, is agnostic to epistemic divides in the field, reduces researcher bias, and increases transparency and replicability of data collection. As large providers of digital data such as Facebook or Twitter increasingly restrict access to their data for researchers, web scraping will become more important in the future and deserves its place in the toolbox of migration and mobility scholars. This short and nontechnical methods note introduces the fundamental concepts of web scraping, provides guidance on how to learn the technique, showcases practical applications of web scraping in the study of migrant populations, and discusses potential future use cases.
Background:
Like most countries, Germany is currently recruiting international nurses due to staff shortages. While these are mostly academic, the academisation of nursing in Germany has only just begun. This allows for a broader look at the participation of migrant nurses: How do care teams deal with the fact that immigrant colleagues are theoretically more highly qualified than long-established colleagues?
Methods:
Case studies were conducted in four inpatient care teams of two hospitals in 2022. Qualitative data include 26 observation protocols, 4 group discussions and 17 guided interviews. These were analysed using the documentary method and validated intersubjectively.
Results:
Due to current academisation efforts in Germany and the immigration of academised nursing staff from abroad, the areas of activity and responsibility of nursing in Germany are under negotiating pressure. This concerns basic care for example, which in Germany is provided by skilled workers, but in other countries is mostly provided by assistants or relatives. The question of who should provide basic care, whether all nurses or only nursing assistants, documents the struggle between an established and a new understanding of care. In this context, the knowledge and skills of migrant and academicised care workers become a crucial aspect in the struggle for a new professional identity for care in Germany.
Conclusions:
The specific situation in Germany makes it possible to show the potential for change that international care migration can constitute for destination countries. The far-reaching process of change of German nursing is given a further dimension not only by its academization, but by the immigration of international and academically trained nursing staff, where inclusive or exclusive effects can already be observed.
Key messages: The increasing proportion of migrant nurses accelerates the current discussion on nursing in Germany. Conflict areas show up in everyday work of care teams and must be addressed there.
Risk perceptions of individuals living in single-parent households during the COVID-19 crisis
(2023)
The COVID-19 crisis had severe social and economic impact on the life of most citizens around the globe. Individuals living in single-parent households were particularly at risk, revealing detrimental labour market outcomes and assessments of future perspectives marked by worries. As it has not been investigated yet, in this paper we study, how their perception about the future and their outlook on how the pandemic will affect them is related to their objective economic resources. Against this background, we examine the subjective risk perception of worsening living standards of individuals living in single-parent households compared to other household types, their objective economic situation based on the logarithmised equivalised disposable household incomes and analyse the relationship between those indicators. Using the German SOEP, including the SOEP-CoV survey from 2020, our findings based on regression modelling reveal that individuals living in single-parent households have been worse off during the pandemic, facing high economic insecurity. Path and interaction models support our assumption that the association between those indicators may not be that straightforward, as there are underlying mechanisms–such as mediation and moderation–of income affecting its direction and strength. With respect to our central hypotheses, our empirical findings point toward (1) a mediation effect, by demonstrating that the subjective risk perception of single-parent households can be partly explained by economic conditions. (2) The moderating effect suggests that the concrete position at the income distribution of households matters as well. While at the lower end of the income distribution, single-parent households reveal particularly worse risk perceptions during the pandemic, at the high end of the income spectrum, risk perceptions are similar for all household types. Thus, individuals living in single-parent households do not perceive higher risks of worsening living standards due to their household situation per se, but rather because they are worse off in terms of their economic situation compared to individuals living in other household types.
Social institutions
(2024)
Social institutions are a system of behavioral and relationship patterns that are densely interwoven and enduring and function across an entire society. They order and structure the behavior of individuals in core areas of society and thus have a strong impact on the quality of life of individuals. Institutions regulate the following: (a) family and relationship networks carry out social reproduction and socialization; (b) institutions in the realm of education and training ensure the transmission and cultivation of knowledge, abilities, and specialized skills; (c) institutions in the labor market and economy provide for the production and distribution of goods and services; (d) institutions in the realm of law, governance, and politics provide for the maintenance of the social order; (e) while cultural, media, and religious institutions further the development of contexts of meaning, value orientations, and symbolic codes.
Nowadays, innovative and entrepreneurial activities and their actors are embedded in interdependent systems to drive joint value creation. Innovation ecosystems and entrepreneurial ecosystems have become established system-level concepts in management research to explain how value transpires between different actors and institutions in distinct contexts. Despite the popularity of the concepts, researchers have critiqued their theoretical depth, conceptual distinctiveness, as well as operationalization and measurement (Autio & Thomas, 2022; Klimas & Czakon, 2022). Furthermore, in light of current-day challenges, research has yet to address how context impacts innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems and their actors and elements (Wurth et al., 2022).
The aim of this cumulative thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of the conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement of innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems and investigate how contextual factors can influence the overall ecosystem and its key actors. To this end, bibliometric and empirical-qualitative methods, as well as narrative and systematic literature reviews, are employed. After introducing the research scope and key concepts in Chapter 1, a systematic literature review to operationalize and measure the concept of innovation ecosystems is conducted, and an integrative framework of its composition is introduced in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, the innovation journal network is outlined by means of science mapping to determine current and emerging research areas characterizing innovation studies. In Chapters 4 and 5, the interplay between the temporal context of the Covid-19 pandemic and the spatial context of entrepreneurial ecosystems is assessed by focusing on the role of organizational resilience and affordances. The findings shed new light on the dynamics and boundaries of entrepreneurial ecosystems as they move between the spatial and digital realm. Building on this, an integrative framework of digital entrepreneurial ecosystems is presented in Chapter 6. The concluding Chapter 7 summarizes my thesis’s conceptual, theoretical, and empirical insights, highlighting implications, limitations, and promising future research avenues.
The findings of this cumulative thesis contribute to the theoretical and conceptual advancement of ecosystems in innovation and entrepreneurship by providing insights into the measurement and operationalization of its elements. Furthermore, the results show that contextual factors, such as crisis events or institutional circumstances, influence innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems and their actors, calling for a more nuanced consideration of ecosystem configurations and dynamics. By drawing from the theory of affordances, the elements that actually afford value to the actors and how they shift between the physical and digital realm are portrayed. Based on these findings, this thesis introduces novel frameworks and conceptual advancements of the configurations and boundaries of innovation and (digital) entrepreneurial ecosystems, laying the foundation for a renewed understanding of how to design, orchestrate, and evaluate ecosystems today and in the future.
This article examines how contact with perceived foreigners affects natives' attitudes towards immigration. Using six waves of individual level panel data from Germany (2007-2017), we find that natives' reported mutual visits with foreigners reduce worries about immigration. However, the results do not imply an increase in this effect in the course of repeated contact. Our analyses also consider the possibility that the effect of out-group contact on attitudes is heterogeneous across social groups. Our results show that contact effects are not restricted to younger age groups but also hold for older age groups. Surprisingly, there are stronger reductions in worries among right-leaning compared to left-leaning individuals.
SNS Democracy Council 2023
(2023)
Transboundary problems such as climate change, military conflicts, trade barriers, and refugee flows require increased collaboration across borders. This is to a large extent possible using existing international organizations. In such a case, however, they need to be considerably strengthened – while current trends take us in the opposite direction, according to the researchers in the SNS Democracy Council 2023.
International organizations (IOs) experience significant variation in their decision-making performance, or the extent to which they produce policy output. While some IOs are efficient decision-making machineries, others are plagued by deadlock. How can such variation be explained? Examining this question, the article makes three central contributions. First, we approach performance by looking at IO decision-making in terms of policy output and introduce an original measure of decision-making performance that captures annual growth rates in IO output. Second, we offer a novel theoretical explanation for decision-making performance. This account highlights the role of institutional design, pointing to how majoritarian decision rules, delegation of authority to supranational institutions, and access for transnational actors (TNAs) interact to affect decision-making. Third, we offer the first comparative assessment of the decision-making performance of IOs. While previous literature addresses single IOs, we explore decision-making across a broad spectrum of 30 IOs from 1980 to 2011. Our analysis indicates that IO decision-making performance varies across and within IOs. We find broad support for our theoretical account, showing the combined effect of institutional design features in shaping decision-making performance. Notably, TNA access has a positive effect on decision-making performance when pooling is greater, and delegation has a positive effect when TNA access is higher. We also find that pooling has an independent, positive effect on decision-making performance. All-in-all, these findings suggest that the institutional design of IOs matters for their decision-making performance, primarily in more complex ways than expected in earlier research.
Immigrant integration has become a primary political concern for leaders in Germany and the United States. The information systems (IS) community has begun to research how information and communications technologies can assist immigrants and refugees, such as by examining how countries can facilitate social-inclusion processes. Migrants face the challenge of joining closed communities that cannot integrate or fear doing so. We conducted a panel discussion at the 2019 Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) in Cancun, Mexico, to introduce multiple viewpoints on immigration. In particular, the panel discussed how technology can both support and prevent immigrants from succeeding in their quest. We conducted the panel to stimulate a thoughtful and dynamic discussion on best practices and recommendations to enhance the discipline's impact on alleviating the challenges that occur for immigrants in their host countries. In this panel report, we introduce the topic of using ICT to help immigrants integrate and identify differences between North/Central America and Europe. We also discuss how immigrants (particularly refugees) use ICT to connect with others, feel that they belong, and maintain their identity. We also uncover the dark and bright sides of how governments use ICT to deter illegal immigration. Finally, we present recommendations for researchers and practitioners on how to best use ICT to assist with immigration.