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Über kaum ein Thema werden so hitzige Debatten geführt wie über Geschlechtsidentität. Das Wissen darum, dass Gender sozial konstruiert ist, wird von Anti-Gender Aktivist*innen häufig als ‚Gender-Ideologie‘ bezeichnet und ruft heftige Gegenreaktionen hervor. Dies gilt nicht nur in Deutschland – sondern länderübergreifend. Auffällig viele der transnationalen Anti- Gender Mobilisierungen der letzten 20 Jahre finden bezogen auf Bildungseinrichtungen statt. Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der besonderen Rolle der Universität und der Wissenschaft für transnationale Anti-Gender Diskurse. Anhand verschiedener Beispiele zeige ich auf, dass das Verhältnis zwischen Anti-Gender Bewegungen und Wissenschaft geprägt ist von widersprüchlichen Dynamiken, von Abgrenzung aber auch Imitation. In ihrem Zusammenspiel wirken beide Dynamiken mobilisierend und tragen zum Erstarken regressiver Rollenbilder und antidemokratischer rechter Bewegungen in der breiteren Gesellschaft bei. Der letzte Teil des Beitrags ruft daher zu mehr Selbstreflexion der wissenschaftlichen Praxis auf Grundlage feministischer und intersektionaler Ansätze auf.
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.
Geschlechter in Un-Ordnung
(2023)
Wie blicken verschiedene Wissenschaftsdisziplinen (auch intersektional) auf trans, inter und nicht-binäre (TIN) Subjektpositionen jenseits der zweigeschlechtlichen Norm und Devianzen heterosexueller Lebensweisen? Wie werden Geschlechtervielfalt und Geschlechterrollen(-bilder) in zivilgesellschaftlichen Einrichtungen thematisiert? Die Autor*innen erörtern hochaktuelle gesellschaftliche, rechtliche und alltagspraktische Diskurse und Forderungen: Unter anderem werden die Änderung des Personenstandsgesetzes, das geplante Selbstbestimmungsrecht, geschlechtergerechte Sprache und die Idee der „TINklusiven“ Universität behandelt.
Der erste Teil der Anthologie bietet theoretische Auseinandersetzungen über Wechselwirkungen zwischen Gesellschaft und Geschlechterkonstruktionen. Der zweite Teil wendet sich den praktischen Handlungsfeldern und institutionellen Bewältigungsstrategien zu, mit in denen binär strukturierte Organisationen und Instanzen realer Geschlechtervielfalt begegnen und intentional oder unbeabsichtigt Zweigeschlechtlichkeit und Heteronormativität (re-)produzieren bzw. dekonstruieren. Auch mögliche Verstärkungen anderer Diskriminierungsformen durch Othering-Prozesse im Genderdiskurs werden thematisiert. Im dritten und letzten Teil werden hochschulpolitische Spielräume anhand verfassungsrechtlicher Prüfung und digitaler Handlungsoptionen ausgelotet.
Bilingualer Unterricht gilt als das Erfolgsmodell für den schulischen Fremdsprachenerwerb in Deutschland und die Beherrschung einer Fremdsprache in Wort und Schrift ist eine entscheidende berufsqualifizierende Kompetenz in unserer globalisierten Welt. Insbesondere die Verzahnung fachlicher und sprachlicher Inhalte im Kontext Bilingualen Unterrichts scheint gewinnbringend für den Fremdspracherwerb zu sein. Dabei ist die Diskrepanz zwischen den zumeist noch geringen fremdsprachlichen Fähigkeiten der Lernenden und den fachlichen Ansprüchen des Geographieunterrichts eine große Herausforderung für fachliches Lernen im bilingualen Sachfachunterricht. Es stellt sich die Frage, wie der Bilinguale Unterricht gestaltet sein muss, um einerseits geographische Themen fachlich komplex behandeln zu können und andererseits die Lernenden fremdsprachlich nicht zu überfordern.
Im Rahmen einer Design-Based-Research-Studie im bilingualen Geographieunterricht wurde untersucht, wie fachliches Lernen im bilingualen Geographieunterricht durch den Einsatz beider beteiligter Sprachen (Englisch/Deutsch) gefördert werden kann.
Auf Grundlage eines theoretisch fundierten Kenntnisstands zum Bilingualen Unterricht und zum Lernen mit Fachkonzepten im Geographieunterricht wurde eine Lernumgebung konzipiert, im Unterricht erprobt und weiterentwickelt, in der Strategien des Sprachwechsels zum Einsatz kommen.
Die Ergebnisse der Studie sind kontextbezogene Theorien einer zweisprachigen Didaktik für den bilingualen Geographieunterricht und Erkenntnisse zum Lernen mit Fachkonzepten im Geographieunterricht am Beispiel des geographischen Konzepts Wandel. Produkt der Studie ist eine unterrichtstaugliche Lernumgebung zum Thema Wandlungsprozesse an ausgewählten Orten für den bilingualen Geographieunterricht mit didaktischem Konzept, Unterrichtsmaterialien und -medien.
Studies from several countries suggest that COVID-19 vaccination rates are lower among migrants compared to the general population. Urgent calls have been made to improve vaccine outreach to migrants, however, there is limited evidence on effective approaches, especially using social media. We assessed a targeted, low-cost, Facebook campaign disseminating COVID-19 vaccine information among Arabic, Turkish and Russian speakers in Germany (N = 888,994). As part of the campaign, we conducted two randomized, online experiments to assess the impact of the advertisement (1) language and (2) depicted messenger (government authority, religious leader, doctor or family). Key outcomes included reach, click-through rates, conversion rates and cost-effectiveness. Within 29 days, the campaign reached 890 thousand Facebook users. On average, 2.3 individuals accessed the advertised COVID-19 vaccination appointment tool for every euro spent on the campaign. Migrants were 2.4 (Arabic), 1.8 (Russian) and 1.2 (Turkish) times more likely to click on advertisements translated to their native language compared to German-language advertisements. Furthermore, findings showed that government representatives can be more successful in engaging migrants online compared to other messengers, despite common claims of lower trust in government institutions among migrants. This study highlights the potential of tailored, and translated, vaccination campaigns on social media for reaching migrants who may be left out by traditional media campaigns.
High-throughput proteomics approaches have resulted in large-scale protein–protein interaction (PPI) networks that have been employed for the prediction of protein complexes. However, PPI networks contain false-positive as well as false-negative PPIs that affect the protein complex prediction algorithms. To address this issue, here we propose an algorithm called CUBCO+ that: (1) employs GO semantic similarity to retain only biologically relevant interactions with a high similarity score, (2) based on link prediction approaches, scores the false-negative edges, and (3) incorporates the resulting scores to predict protein complexes. Through comprehensive analyses with PPIs from Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Homo sapiens, we show that CUBCO+ performs as well as the approaches that predict protein complexes based on recently introduced graph partitions into biclique spanned subgraphs and outperforms the other state-of-the-art approaches. Moreover, we illustrate that in combination with GO semantic similarity, CUBCO+ enables us to predict more accurate protein complexes in 36% of the cases in comparison to CUBCO as its predecessor.
Efficiency is central to understanding the communicative and cognitive underpinnings of language. However, efficiency management is a complex mechanism in which different efficiency effects-such as articulatory, processing and planning ease, mental accessibility, and informativity, online and offline efficiency effects-conspire to yield the coding of linguistic signs. While we do not yet exactly understand the interactional mechanism of these different effects, we argue that universal attractors are an important component of any dynamic theory of efficiency that would be aimed at predicting efficiency effects across languages. Attractors are defined as universal states around which language evolution revolves. Methodologically, we approach efficiency from a cross-linguistic perspective on the basis of a world-wide sample of 383 languages from 53 families, balancing all six macro-areas (Eurasia, North and South America, Australia, Africa, and Oceania). We explore the grammatical domain of verbal person-number subject indexes. We claim that there is an attractor state in this domain to which languages tend to develop and tend not to leave if they happen to comply with the attractor in their earlier stages of evolution. The attractor is characterized by different lengths for each person and number combination, structured along Zipf's predictions. Moreover, the attractor strongly prefers non-compositional, cumulative coding of person and number. On the basis of these and other properties of the attractor, we conclude that there are two domains in which efficiency pressures are most powerful: strive towards less processing and articulatory effort. The latter, however, is overridden by constant information flow. Strive towards lower lexicon complexity and memory costs are weaker efficiency pressures for this grammatical category due to its order of frequency.
For life-long learning, an effective learning strategy repertoire is particularly important during acquisition of knowledge in lower secondary school—an educational level characterized with transition into more autonomous learning environments with increased complex academic demands. Using latent profile analysis, we explored the occurrence of different secondary school learner profiles depending on their various combinations of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategy use, as well as their differences in perceived autonomy support, intrinsic motivation, and gender. Data were collected from 576 ninth grade students in Uganda using self-report questionnaires. Four learner profiles were identified: competent strategy user, struggling user, surface-level learner, and deep-level learner profiles. Gender differences were noted in students’ use of elaboration and organization strategies to learn Physics, in favor of girls. In terms of profile memberships, significant differences in gender, intrinsic motivation and perceived autonomy support were also noted. Girls were 2.4–2.7 times more likely than boys to be members of the competent strategy user and surface-level learner profiles. Additionally, higher levels of intrinsic motivation predicted an increased likelihood membership into the deep-level learner profile, while higher levels of perceived teacher autonomy predicted an increased likelihood membership into the competent strategy user profile as compared to other profiles. Further, implications of the findings were discussed.
Das kolonisierte Heiligtum
(2023)
Während der Zeit des historischen Kolonialismus wurden in Völkerkundemuseen komplexe Formen rassistischer und religiöser Diskriminierung institutionalisiert, z.B. in den dort gültigen Ästhetik- und Kunstbegriffen. Viele der heutigen Museumsangestellten erklären sich deswegen zu Reformen bereit. Doch können sie sich tatsächlich vom Kolonialismus trennen? Ist eine Dekolonisation ethnologischer Museen mit kolonialer Beute je abschließend möglich? Am Beispiel umstrittener Heiligtümer lebender Kulturen untersucht Christoph Balzar das Verfahren der Musealisierung durch die Linse der Diskriminierungskritik. Im Fokus stehen dabei die Sammlungen der »Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin«.
Die Arbeit gibt einen Einblick in die Verständigungspraxen bei Stadtführungen mit (ehemaligen) Obdachlosen, die in ihrem Selbstverständnis auf die Herstellung von Verständnis, Toleranz und Anerkennung für von Obdachlosigkeit betroffene Personen zielen. Zunächst wird in den Diskurs des Slumtourismus eingeführt und, angesichts der Vielfalt der damit verbundenen Erscheinungsformen, Slumming als organisierte Begegnung mit sozialer Ungleichheit definiert. Die zentralen Diskurslinien und die darin eingewobenen moralischen Positionen werden nachvollzogen und im Rahmen der eigenommenen wissenssoziologischen Perspektive als Ausdruck einer per se polykontexturalen Praxis re-interpretiert. Slumming erscheint dann als eine organisierte Begegnung von Lebensformen, die sich in einer Weise fremd sind, als dass ein unmittelbares Verstehen unwahrscheinlich erscheint und genau aus diesem Grund auf der Basis von gängigen Interpretationen des Common Sense ausgehandelt werden muss. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht die vorliegende Arbeit, wie sich Teilnehmer und Stadtführer über die Erfahrung der Obdachlosigkeit praktisch verständigen und welcher Art das hierüber erzeugte Verständnis für die im öffentlichen Diskurs mit vielfältigen stigmatisierenden Zuschreibungen versehenen Obdachlosen ist. Dabei interessiert besonders, in Bezug auf welche Aspekte der Erfahrung von Obdachlosigkeit ein gemeinsames Verständnis möglich wird und an welchen Stellen dieses an Grenzen gerät. Dazu wurden die Gesprächsverläufe auf neun Stadtführungen mit (ehemaligen) obdachlosen Stadtführern unterschiedlicher Anbieter im deutschsprachigen Raum verschriftlicht und mit dem Verfahren der Dokumentarischen Methode ausgewertet. Die vergleichende Betrachtung der Verständigungspraxen eröffnet nicht zuletzt eine differenzierte Perspektive auf die in den Prozessen der Verständigung immer schon eingewobenen Anerkennungspraktiken. Mit Blick auf die moralische Debatte um organisierte Begegnungen mit sozialer Ungleichheit wird dadurch eine ethische Perspektive angeregt, in deren Zentrum Fragen zur Vermittlungsarbeit stehen.
Nation, migration, narration
(2022)
En France et en Allemagne, l’immigration est devenue dans les dernières décennies une problématique centrale. C’est dans ce contexte qu’est apparu le rap. Celui-ci connaît une popularité énorme chez les populations issues de l’immigration. Pour autant, les rappeurs ne s’en confrontent pas moins à leur identité française ou allemande.
Le but de ce travail est d’expliquer cette apparente contradiction : comment des personnes issues de l’immigration, exprimant un mal-être face à un racisme qu’ils considèrent omniprésent, peuvent-elles se sentir pleinement françaises / allemandes ?
On a divisé le travail entre les chapitres suivants : Contexte de l'étude, méthodologie et théories (I) ; Analyse des différentes formes d’identité nationale au prisme du corpus (II) ; Analyse en trois étapes chronologiques du rapport à la société dans les textes des rappeurs (III-V) ; étude de cas de Kery James en France et Samy Deluxe en Allemagne (VI).
Is There a Rural Penalty in Language Acquisition? Evidence From Germany's Refugee Allocation Policy
(2022)
Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts for integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany's policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the “null effect” is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers.
Developmental Gains in Physical Fitness Components of Keyage and Older-than-Keyage Third-Graders
(2022)
Children who were enrolled according to legal enrollment dates (i.e., keyage third-graders aged eight to nine years) exhibit a positive linear physical fitness development (Fühner et al., 2021). However, children who were enrolled with a delay of one year or who repeated a grade (i.e., older-than-keyage children [OTK] aged nine to ten years in third grade) appear to exhibit a poorer physical fitness relative to what could be expected given their chronological age (Fühner et al., 2022). However, because Fühner et al. (2022) compared the performance of OTK children to predicted test scores that were extrapolated based on the data of keyage children, the observed physical fitness of these children could either indicate a delayed physical-fitness development or some physiological or psychological changes occurring during the tenth year of life. We investigate four hypotheses about this effect. (H1) OTK children are biologically younger than keyage children. A formula transforming OTK’s chronological age into a proxy for their biological age brings some of the observed cross-sectional age-related development in line with the predicted age-related development based on the data of keyage children, but large negative group differences remain. Hypotheses 2 to 4 were tested with a longitudinal assessment. (H2) Physiological changes due to biological maturation or psychological factors cause a stagnation of physical fitness development in the tenth year of life. H2 predicts a decline of performance from third to fourth grade also for keyage children. (H3) OTK children exhibit an age-related (temporary) developmental delay in the tenth year of life, but later catch up to the performance of age-matched keyage children. H3 predicts a larger developmental gain for OTK than for keyage children from third to fourth grade. (H4) OTK children exhibit a sustained physical fitness deficit and do not catch up over time. H4 predicts a positive development for keyage and OTK children, with no greater development for OTK compared to keyage children. The longitudinal study was based on a subset of children from the EMOTIKON project (www.uni-potsdam.de/emotikon). The physical fitness (cardiorespiratory endurance [6-minute-run test], coordination [star-run test], speed [20-m sprint test], lower [standing long jump test] and upper [ball push test] limbs muscle power, and balance [one-legged stance test]) of 1,274 children (1,030 keyage and 244 OTK children) from 32 different schools was tested in third grade and retested one year later in fourth grade. Results: (a) Both keyage and OTK children exhibit a positive longitudinal development from third to fourth grade in all six physical fitness components. (b) There is no evidence for a different longitudinal development of keyage and OTK children. (c) Keyage children (approximately 9.5 years in fourth grade) outperform age-matched OTK children (approximately 9.5 years in third grade) in all six physical fitness components. The results show that the physical fitness of OTK children is indeed impaired and are in support of a sustained difference in physical fitness between the groups of keyage and OTK children (H4).
Throughout the years 2020 and 2021, schools were temporarily closed to slow the spread of SarsCoV-2. For some periods, children were locked out of sports in schools (physical education lessons, school sports working groups) and organized sports in sports clubs which often resulted in physical inactivity. Did these restrictions affect children’s physical fitness? The EMOTIKON project (www.uni-potsdam.de/emotikon) annually assesses the physical fitness (cardiorespiratory endurance [6-minute-run test], coordination [star-run test], speed [20-m sprint test], lower [standing long jump test] and upper [ball push test] limbs muscle power, and balance [one-legged stance test]) of all third graders in the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany. Participation is mandatory for all public primary schools. In the falls from 2016 to 2021, 83,476 keyage children (i.e., school enrollment according to the legal key date, between eight and nine years in third grade) from 512 schools were assessed with the EMOTIKON test battery. We tested the Covid pandemic effect on a composite score of the four highly correlated physical fitness tests assessing cardiorespiratory endurance, coordination, speed and powerLOW and on another composite score of the three running tests (cardiorespiratory endurance, coordination, speed), as well as separately on all six physical fitness components. Secular trends for each of the physical fitness components and differences between schools and children were taken into account in linear mixed models. We found a negative Covid pandemic effect on the two composite physical fitness scores, as well as on cardiorespiratory endurance, coordination, and speed. We found a positive Covid pandemic effect on powerLOW. Coordination was associated with the largest negative Covid pandemic effect, also passing the threshold of smallest meaningful change (SMC, i.e., 0.2 Cohen’s d) when accumulated across two years. Given the educational context, Covid pandemic effects were also compared relative to the expected age-related development of the physical fitness components between eight and nine years. The Covid pandemic-related developmental costs/gains ranged from three to seven months relative to a longitudinal age effect, and from five to 17 months relative to a cross-sectional age effect. We propose that a longitudinal assessment yields a more reliable estimate of the developmental (age-related) gain than a cross-sectional one. Therefore, we consider the smaller Covid pandemic-related developmental costs/gains to be more credible. Interestingly, on the school level, „fitter” schools (relatively higher Grand Mean) exhibited larger negative Covid pandemic effects than schools with a lower physical fitness score. Negative Covid pandemic effects for the three run tasks were also found by Bähr et al. (2022), who tested the physical fitness of 16,496 Thuringian third-graders from 292 schools with the same six physical fitness tests used in EMOTIKON. Our results may be used to prioritize health-related interventions.
What are the consequences of unemployment and precarious employment for individuals' health in Europe? What are the moderating factors that may offset (or increase) the health consequences of labor-market risks? How do the effects of these risks vary across different contexts, which differ in their institutional and cultural settings? Does gender, regarded as a social structure, play a role, and how? To answer these questions is the aim of my cumulative thesis. This study aims to advance our knowledge about the health consequences that unemployment and precariousness cause over the life course. In particular, I investigate how several moderating factors, such as gender, the family, and the broader cultural and institutional context, may offset or increase the impact of employment instability and insecurity on individual health.
In my first paper, 'The buffering role of the family in the relationship between job loss and self-perceived health: Longitudinal results from Europe, 2004-2011', I and my co-authors measure the causal effect of job loss on health and the role of the family and welfare states (regimes) as moderating factors. Using EU-SILC longitudinal data (2004-2011), we estimate the probability of experiencing 'bad health' following a transition to unemployment by applying linear probability models and undertake separate analyses for men and women. Firstly, we measure whether changes in the independent variable 'job loss' lead to changes in the dependent variable 'self-rated health' for men and women separately. Then, by adding into the model different interaction terms, we measure the moderating effect of the family, both in terms of emotional and economic support, and how much it varies across different welfare regimes. As an identification strategy, we first implement static fixed-effect panel models, which control for time-varying observables and indirect health selection—i.e., constant unobserved heterogeneity. Secondly, to control for reverse causality and path dependency, we implement dynamic fixed-effect panel models, adding a lagged dependent variable to the model.
We explore the role of the family by focusing on close ties within households: we consider the presence of a stable partner and his/her working status as a source of social and economic support. According to previous literature, having a partner should reduce the stress from adverse events, thanks to the symbolic and emotional dimensions that such a relationship entails, regardless of any economic benefits. Our results, however, suggest that benefits linked to the presence of a (female) partner also come from the financial stability that (s)he can provide in terms of a second income. Furthermore, we find partners' employment to be at least as important as the mere presence of the partner in reducing the negative effect of job loss on the individual's health by maintaining the household's standard of living and decreasing economic strain on the family. Our results are in line with previous research, which has highlighted that some people cope better than others with adverse life circumstances, and the support provided by the family is a crucial resource in that regard.
We also reported an important interaction between the family and the welfare state in moderating the health consequences of unemployment, showing how the compensation effect of the family varies across welfare regimes. The family plays a decisive role in cushioning the adverse consequences of labor market risks in Southern and Eastern welfare states, characterized by less developed social protection systems and –especially the Southern – high level of familialism.
The first paper also found important gender differences concerning job loss, family and welfare effects. Of particular interest is the evidence suggesting that health selection works differently for men and women, playing a more prominent role for women than for men in explaining the relationship between job loss and self-perceived health. The second paper, 'Gender roles and selection mechanisms across contexts: A comparative analysis of the relationship between unemployment, self-perceived health, and gender.' investigates more in-depth the gender differential in health driven by unemployment.
Being a highly contested issue in literature, we aim to study whether men are more penalized than women or the other way around and the mechanisms that may explain the gender difference. To do that, we rely on two theoretical arguments: the availability of alternative roles and social selection. The first argument builds on the idea that men and women may compensate for the detrimental health consequences of unemployment through the commitment to 'alternative roles,' which can provide for the resources needed to fulfill people's socially constructed needs. Notably, the availability of alternative options depends on the different positions that men and women have in society.
Further, we merge the availability of the 'alternative roles' argument with the health selection argument. We assume that health selection could be contingent on people's social position as defined by gender and, thus, explain the gender differential in the relationship between unemployment and health. Ill people might be less reluctant to fall or remain (i.e., self-select) in unemployment if they have alternative roles. In Western societies, women generally have more alternative roles than men and thus more discretion in their labor market attachment. Therefore, health selection should be stronger for them, explaining why unemployment is less menace for women than for their male counterparts.
Finally, relying on the idea of different gender regimes, we extended these arguments to comparison across contexts. For example, in contexts where being a caregiver is assumed to be women's traditional and primary roles and the primary breadwinner role is reserved to men, unemployment is less stigmatized, and taking up alternative roles is more socially accepted for women than for men (Hp.1). Accordingly, social (self)selection should be stronger for women than for men in traditional contexts, where, in the case of ill-health, the separation from work is eased by the availability of alternative roles (Hp.2).
By focusing on contexts that are representative of different gender regimes, we implement a multiple-step comparative approach. Firstly, by using EU-SILC longitudinal data (2004-2015), our analysis tests gender roles and selection mechanisms for Sweden and Italy, representing radically different gender regimes, thus providing institutional and cultural variation. Then, we limit institutional heterogeneity by focusing on Germany and comparing East- and West-Germany and older and younger cohorts—for West-Germany (SOEP data 1995-2017). Next, to assess the differential impact of unemployment for men and women, we compared (unemployed and employed) men with (unemployed and employed) women. To do so, we calculate predicted probabilities and average marginal effect from two distinct random-effects probit models. Our first step is estimating random-effects models that assess the association between unemployment and self-perceived health, controlling for observable characteristics. In the second step, our fully adjusted model controls for both direct and indirect selection. We do this using dynamic correlated random-effects (CRE) models. Further, based on the fully adjusted model, we test our hypotheses on alternative roles (Hp.1) by comparing several contexts – models are estimated separately for each context. For this hypothesis, we pool men and women and include an interaction term between unemployment and gender, which has the advantage to allow for directly testing whether gender differences in the effect of unemployment exist and are statistically significant. Finally, we test the role of selection mechanisms (Hp.2), using the KHB method to compare coefficients across nested nonlinear models. Specifically, we test the role of selection for the relationship between unemployment and health by comparing the partially-adjusted and fully-adjusted models. To allow selection mechanisms to operate differently between genders, we estimate separate models for men and women.
We found support to our first hypotheses—the context where people are embedded structures the relationship between unemployment, health, and gender. We found no gendered effect of unemployment on health in the egalitarian context of Sweden. Conversely, in the traditional context of Italy, we observed substantive and statistically significant gender differences in the effect of unemployment on bad health, with women suffering less than men. We found the same pattern for comparing East and West Germany and younger and older cohorts in West Germany.
On the contrary, our results did not support our theoretical argument on social selection. We found that in Sweden, women are more selected out of employment than men. In contrast, in Italy, health selection does not seem to be the primary mechanism behind the gender differential—Italian men and women seem to be selected out of employment to the same extent. Namely, we do not find any evidence that health selection is stronger for women in more traditional countries (Hp2), despite the fact that the institutional and the cultural context would offer them a more comprehensive range of 'alternative roles' relative to men. Moreover, our second hypothesis is also rejected in the second and third comparisons, where the cross-country heterogeneity is reduced to maximize cultural differences within the same institutional context. Further research that addresses selection into inactivity is needed to evaluate the interplay between selection and social roles across gender regimes.
While the health consequences of unemployment have been on the research agenda for a pretty long time, the interest in precarious employment—defined as the linking of the vulnerable worker to work that is characterized by uncertainty and insecurity concerning pay, the stability of the work arrangement, limited access to social benefits, and statutory protections—has emerged only later. Since the 80s, scholars from different disciplines have raised concerns about the social consequences of de-standardization of employment relationships. However, while work has become undoubtedly more precarious, very little is known about its causal effect on individual health and the role of gender as a moderator. These questions are at the core of my third paper : 'Bad job, bad health? A longitudinal analysis of the interaction between precariousness, gender and self-perceived health in Germany'. Herein, I investigate the multidimensional nature of precarious employment and its causal effect on health, particularly focusing on gender differences.
With this paper, I aim at overcoming three major shortcomings of earlier studies: The first one regards the cross-sectional nature of data that prevents the authors from ruling out unobserved heterogeneity as a mechanism for the association between precarious employment and health. Indeed, several unmeasured individual characteristics—such as cognitive abilities—may confound the relationship between precarious work and health, leading to biased results. Secondly, only a few studies have directly addressed the role of gender in shaping the relationship. Moreover, available results on the gender differential are mixed and inconsistent: some found precarious employment being more detrimental for women's health, while others found no gender differences or stronger negative association for men. Finally, previous attempts to an empirical translation of the employment precariousness (EP) concept have not always been coherent with their theoretical framework. EP is usually assumed to be a multidimensional and continuous phenomenon; it is characterized by different dimensions of insecurity that may overlap in the same job and lead to different "degrees of precariousness." However, researchers have predominantly focused on one-dimensional indicators—e.g., temporary employment, subjective job insecurity—to measure EP and study the association with health. Besides the fact that this approach partially grasps the phenomenon's complexity, the major problem is the inconsistency of evidence that it has produced. Indeed, this line of inquiry generally reveals an ambiguous picture, with some studies finding substantial adverse effects of temporary over permanent employment, while others report only minor differences.
To measure the (causal) effect of precarious work on self-rated health and its variation by gender, I focus on Germany and use four waves from SOEP data (2003, 2007, 2011, and 2015). Germany is a suitable context for my study. Indeed, since the 1980s, the labor market and welfare system have been restructured in many ways to increase the German economy's competitiveness in the global market. As a result, the (standard) employment relationship has been de-standardized: non-standard and atypical employment arrangements—i.e., part-time work, fixed-term contracts, mini-jobs, and work agencies—have increased over time while wages have lowered, even among workers with standard work. In addition, the power of unions has also fallen over the last three decades, leaving a large share of workers without collective protection. Because of this process of de-standardization, the link between wage employment and strong social rights has eroded, making workers more powerless and more vulnerable to labor market risks than in the past. EP refers to this uneven distribution of power in the employment relationship, which can be detrimental to workers' health. Indeed, by affecting individuals' access to power and other resources, EP puts precarious workers at risk of experiencing health shocks and influences their ability to gain and accumulate health advantages (Hp.1).
Further, the focus on Germany allows me to investigate my second research question on the gender differential. Germany is usually regarded as a traditionalist gender regime: a context characterized by a configuration of roles. Here, being a caregiver is assumed to be women's primary role, whereas the primary breadwinner role is reserved for men. Although many signs of progress have been made over the last decades towards a greater equalization of opportunities and more egalitarianism, the breadwinner model has barely changed towards a modified version. Thus, women usually take on the double role of workers (the so-called secondary earner) and caregivers, and men still devote most of their time to paid work activities. Moreover, the overall upward trend towards more egalitarian gender ideologies has leveled off over the last decades, moving notably towards more traditional gender ideologies.
In this setting, two alternative hypotheses are possible. Firstly, I assume that the negative relationship between EP and health is stronger for women than for men. This is because women are systematically more disadvantaged than men in the public and private spheres of life, having less access to formal and informal sources of power. These gender-related power asymmetries may interact with EP-related power asymmetries resulting in a stronger effect of EP on women's health than on men's health (Hp.2).
An alternative way of looking at the gender differential is to consider the interaction that precariousness might have with men's and women's gender identities. According to this view, the negative relationship between EP and health is weaker for women than for men (Hp.2a). In a society with a gendered division of labor and a strong link between masculine identities and stable and well-rewarded job—i.e., a job that confers the role of primary family provider—a male worker with precarious employment might violate the traditional male gender role. Men in precarious jobs may perceive themselves (and by others) as possessing a socially undesirable characteristic, which conflicts with the stereotypical idea of themselves as the male breadwinner. Engaging in behaviors that contradict stereotypical gender identity may decrease self-esteem and foster feelings of inferiority, helplessness, and jealousy, leading to poor health.
I develop a new indicator of EP that empirically translates a definition of EP as a multidimensional and continuous phenomenon. I assume that EP is a latent construct composed of seven dimensions of insecurity chosen according to the theory and previous empirical research: Income insecurity, social insecurity, legal insecurity, employment insecurity, working-time insecurity, representation insecurity, worker's vulnerability. The seven dimensions are proxied by eight indicators available in the four waves of the SOEP dataset. The EP composite indicator is obtained by performing a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) on the eight indicators. This approach aims to construct a summary scale in which all dimensions contribute jointly to the measured experience of precariousness and its health impact.
Further, the relationship between EP and 'general self-perceived health' is estimated by applying ordered probit random-effects estimators and calculating average marginal effect (further AME). Then, to control for unobserved heterogeneity, I implement correlated random-effects models that add to the model the within-individual means of the time-varying independent variables. To test the significance of the gender differential, I add an interaction term between EP and gender in the fully adjusted model in the pooled sample.
My correlated random-effects models showed EP's negative and substantial 'effect' on self-perceived health for both men and women. Although nonsignificant, the evidence seems in line with previous cross-sectional literature. It supports the hypothesis that employment precariousness could be detrimental to workers' health. Further, my results showed the crucial role of unobserved heterogeneity in shaping the health consequences of precarious employment. This is particularly important as evidence accumulates, yet it is still mostly descriptive.
Moreover, my results revealed a substantial difference among men and women in the relationship between EP and health: when EP increases, the risk of experiencing poor health increases much more for men than for women. This evidence falsifies previous theory according to whom the gender differential is contingent on the structurally disadvantaged position of women in western societies. In contrast, they seem to confirm the idea that men in precarious work could experience role conflict to a larger extent than women, as their self-standard is supposed to be the stereotypical breadwinner worker with a good and well-rewarded job. Finally, results from the multiple correspondence analysis contribute to the methodological debate on precariousness, showing that a multidimensional and continuous indicator can express a latent variable of EP.
All in all, complementarities are revealed in the results of unemployment and employment precariousness, which have two implications: Policy-makers need to be aware that the total costs of unemployment and precariousness go far beyond the economic and material realm penetrating other fundamental life domains such as individual health. Moreover, they need to balance the trade-off between protecting adequately unemployed people and fostering high-quality employment in reaction to the highlighted market pressures. In this sense, the further development of a (universalistic) welfare state certainly helps mitigate the adverse health effects of unemployment and, therefore, the future costs of both individuals' health and welfare spending. In addition, the presence of a working partner is crucial for reducing the health consequences of employment instability. Therefore, policies aiming to increase female labor market participation should be promoted, especially in those contexts where the welfare state is less developed.
Moreover, my results support the significance of taking account of a gender perspective in health research. The findings of the three articles show that job loss, unemployment, and precarious employment, in general, have adverse effects on men's health but less or absent consequences for women's health. Indeed, this suggests the importance of labor and health policies that consider and further distinguish the specific needs of the male and female labor force in Europe. Nevertheless, a further implication emerges: the health consequences of employment instability and de-standardization need to be investigated in light of the gender arrangements and the transforming gender relationships in specific cultural and institutional contexts. My results indeed seem to suggest that women's health advantage may be a transitory phenomenon, contingent on the predominant gendered institutional and cultural context. As the structural difference between men's and women's position in society is eroded, egalitarianism becomes the dominant normative status, so will probably be the gender difference in the health consequences of job loss and precariousness. Therefore, while gender equality in opportunities and roles is a desirable aspect for contemporary societies and a political goal that cannot be postponed further, this thesis raises a further and maybe more crucial question: What kind of equality should be pursued to provide men and women with both good life quality and equal chances in the public and private spheres? In this sense, I believe that social and labor policies aiming to reduce gender inequality in society should focus on improving women's integration into the labor market, implementing policies targeting men, and facilitating their involvement in the private sphere of life. Equal redistribution of social roles could activate a crucial transformation of gender roles and the cultural models that sustain and still legitimate gender inequality in Western societies.
Measuring migration 2.0
(2021)
The interest in human migration is at its all-time high, yet data to measure migration is notoriously limited. “Big data” or “digital trace data” have emerged as new sources of migration measurement complementing ‘traditional’ census, administrative and survey data. This paper reviews the strengths and weaknesses of eight novel, digital data sources along five domains: reliability, validity, scope, access and ethics. The review highlights the opportunities for migration scholars but also stresses the ethical and empirical challenges. This review intends to be of service to researchers and policy analysts alike and help them navigate this new and increasingly complex field.
The demand for learning Design Thinking (DT) as a path towards acquiring 21st-century skills has increased globally in the last decade. Because DT education originated in the Silicon Valley context of the d.school at Stanford, it is important to evaluate how the teaching of the methodology adapts to different cultural contexts.The thesis explores the impact of the socio-cultural context on DT education.
DT institutes in Cape Town, South Africa and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were visited to observe their programs and conduct 22 semistructured interviews with local educators regarding their adaption strategies. Grounded theory methodology was used to develop a model of Socio-Cultural Adaptation of Design Thinking Education that maps these strategies onto five dimensions: Planning, Process, People, Place, and Presentation. Based on this model, a list of recommendations is provided to help DT educators and practitioners in designing and delivering culturally inclusive DT education.
Kenya and Uganda are amongst the countries that, for different historical, political, and economic reasons, have embarked on law reform processes as regards to citizenship. In 2009, Uganda made provisions in its laws to allow citizens to have dual citizenship while Kenya’s 2010 constitution similarly introduced it, and at the same time, a general prohibition on dual citizenship was lifted, that is, a ban on state officers, including the President and Deputy President, being dual nationals (Manby, 2018).
Against this background, I analysed the reasons for which these countries that previously held stringent laws and policies against dual citizenship, made a shift in a close time proximity. Given their geo-political roles, location, regional, continental, and international obligations, I conducted a comparative study on the processes, actors, impact, and effect. A specific period of 2000 to 2010 was researched, that is, from when the debates for law reforms emerged, to the processes being implemented, the actors, and the implications.
According to Rubenstein (2000, p. 520), citizenship is observed in terms of “political institutions” that are free to act according to the will of, in the interests of, or with authority over, their citizenry. Institutions are emergent national or international, higher-order factors above the individual spectrum, having the interests and political involvement of their actors without requiring recurring collective mobilisation or imposing intervention to realise these regularities. Transnational institutions are organisations with authority beyond single governments. Given their International obligations, I analysed the role of the UN, AU, and EAC in influencing the citizenship debates and reforms in Kenya and Uganda. Further, non-state actors, such as civil society, were considered.
Veblen, (1899) describes institutions as a set of settled habits of thought common to the generality of men. Institutions function only because the rules involved are rooted in shared habits of thought and behaviour although there is some ambiguity in the definition of the term “habit”. Whereas abstracts and definitions depend on different analytical procedures, institutions restrain some forms of action and facilitate others. Transnational institutions both restrict and aid behaviour. The famous “invisible hand” is nothing else but transnational institutions. Transnational theories, as applied to politics, posit two distinct forms that are of influence over policy and political action (Veblen, 1899). This influence and durability of institutions is “a function of the degree to which they are instilled in political actors at the individual or organisational level, and the extent to which they thereby “tie up” material resources and networks. Against this background, transitional networks with connection to Kenya and Uganda were considered alongside the diaspora from these two countries and their role in the debate and reforms on Dual citizenship.
Sterian (2013, p. 310) notes that Nation states may be vulnerable to institutional influence and this vulnerability can pose a threat to a nation’s autonomy, political legitimacy, and to the democratic public law. Transnational institutions sometimes “collide with the sovereignty of the state when they create new structures for regulating cross-border relationships”. However, Griffin (2003) disagrees that transnational institutional behaviour is premised on the principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Transnational institutions have become the main target of the lobby groups and civil society, consequently leading to excessive politicisation. Kenya and Uganda are member states not only of the broader African union but also of the E.A.C which has adopted elements of socio-economic uniformity. Therefore, in the comparative analysis, I examine the role of the East African Community and its partners in the dual citizenship debate on the two countries.
I argue in the analysis that it is not only important to be a citizen within Kenya or Uganda but also important to discover how the issue of dual citizenship is legally interpreted within the borders of each individual nation-state. In light of this discussion, I agree with Mamdani’s definition of the nation-state as a unique form of power introduced in Africa by colonial powers between 1880 and 1940 whose outcomes can be viewed as “debris of a modernist postcolonial project, an attempt to create a centralised modern state as the bearer of Westphalia sovereignty against the background of indirect rule” (Mamdani, 1996, p. xxii). I argue that this project has impacted the citizenship debate through the adopted legal framework of post colonialism, built partly on a class system, ethnic definitions, and political affiliation. I, however, insist that the nation-state should still be a vital custodian of the citizenship debate, not in any way denying the individual the rights to identity and belonging. The question then that arises is which type of nation-state? Mamdani (1996, p. 298) asserts that the core agenda that African states faced at independence was threefold: deracialising civil society; detribalising the native authority; and developing the economy in the context of unequal international relations. Post-independence governments grappled with overcoming the citizen and subject dichotomy through either preserving the customary in the name of “defending tradition against alien encroachment or abolishing it in the name of overcoming backwardness and embracing triumphant modernism”. Kenya and Uganda are among countries that have reformed their citizenship laws attesting to Mamdani’s latter assertion.
Mamdani’s (1996) assertions on how African states continue to deal with the issue of citizenship through either the defence of tradition against subjects or abolishing it in the name of overcoming backwardness and acceptance of triumphant modernism are based on the colonial legal theory and the citizen-subject dichotomy within Africa communities. To further create a wider perspective on legal theory, I argue that those assertions above, point to the historical divergence between the republican model of citizenship, which places emphasis on political agency as envisioned in Rousseau´s social contract, as opposed to the liberal model of citizenship, which stresses the legal status and protection (Pocock, 1995).
I, therefore, compare the contexts of both Kenya and Uganda, the actors, the implications of transnationalism and post-nationalism, on the citizens, the nation-state and the region. I conclude by highlighting the shortcomings in the law reforms that allowed for dual citizenship, further demonstrating an urgent need to address issues, such as child statelessness, gender nationality laws, and the rights of dual citizens. Ethnicity, a weak nation state, and inconsistent citizenship legal reforms are closely linked to the historical factors of both countries. I further indicate the economic and political incentives that influenced the reform.
Keywords: Citizenship, dual citizenship, nation state, republicanism, liberalism, transnationalism, post-nationalism
Ausgangspunkt der Dissertation ist die Fragestellung, warum es relativ wenige weibliche Wirtschaftsprüfer/innen in Deutschland gibt. Laut Mitgliederstatistik der Wirtschaftsprüferkammer vom 1. Januar 2020 liegt der Frauenanteil im Berufs-stand bei rund 17 %. Einschlägige Literatur zeigt, dass auf Ebene der Berufseinstei-ger/innen im Segment der zehn größten Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften das Ge-schlechterverhältnis recht ausgewogen ist. Jedoch liegt der Frauenanteil auf der Hierarchieebene „Manager“, für die üblicherweise ein bestandenes Berufsexamen Voraussetzung ist, bereits deutlich niedriger und sinkt mit jeder weiteren Hierar-chiestufe. Die Zielstellung der Dissertation wurde somit dahingehend spezifiziert, diejenigen Faktoren zu analysieren, die dazu beitragen können, dass die relative Repräsentation von Frauen im Segment der zehn größten Wirtschaftsprüfungsge-sellschaften Deutschlands ab der Manager-Ebene (d. h. üblicherweise ab der Schwelle der examinierten Wirtschaftsprüfer/innen) sinkt. Der Fokus der Analyse liegt daher auf Ebene der erfahrenen Prüfungsassistenten und Prüfungsassistentin-nen (Senior), um diese Schwelle unmittelbar vor der Manager-Ebene detailliert zu beleuchten.
Neben der Auswertung von Erkenntnissen aus der internationalen Prüfungsfor-schung wurde eine empirische Studie unter den Senior von sechs der zehn größten Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften in Deutschland durchgeführt. Die empirischen Ergebnisse wurden mittels deskriptiver Datenanalyse ausgewertet und dahinge-hend analysiert, für welche der zuvor definierten Aspekte signifikante geschlechts-spezifische Unterschiede zu beobachten sind. Für ausgewählte Aspekte wurde zu-dem analysiert, ob es Unterschiede zwischen weiblichen/männlichen Senior mit Kind/ern und ohne Kind/er gibt. Insgesamt wurden für zahlreiche Aspekte ge-schlechtsspezifische Unterschiede und Unterschiede zwischen Senior mit Kind/ern und ohne Kind/er gefunden. Es zeigt sich außerdem, dass neben der beruflichen Situation auch die individuellen Eigenschaften und das private Umfeld von Bedeu-tung sind. Im Rahmen der beruflichen Situation spielen sowohl die Wahrnehmung der aktuellen beruflichen Situation eine Rolle als auch u. a. die Erwartungen der Senior an die mögliche künftige Manager-Position, an das Wirtschaftsprüfungsexa-men und an weitere berufliche Perspektiven.
Institutional entrepreneurship comprises the activities of agents who disrupt existing social institutions or create new ones, often to enable diffusion, especially of radical innovations, in a market. The increased interest in institutional entrepreneurship has produced a large number of scholarly publications, especially in the last five years. As a consequence, the literature landscape is somewhat complex and scattered. We aim to compile a quantitative overview of the field within business and management research by conducting bibliometric performance analyses and science mappings. We identified the most productive and influential journals, authors, and articles with the highest impact. We found that institutional entrepreneurship has stronger ties to organization studies than to entrepreneurship research. Additionally, a large body of literature at the intersection of institutions and entrepreneurship does not refer to institutional entrepreneurship theory. The science mappings revealed a distinction between theoretical and conceptual research on one hand and applied and empirical research on the other hand. Research clusters reflect the structure–agency problem by focusing on the change agent’s goals and interests, strategies, and specific implementation mechanisms, as well as the relevance of public agents for existing institutions, and a more abstract process rather than agency view.