Content beyond Vocational Skills

The goals of this paper are to reveal the process of institutional effects in higher education and to identify those components that can be classified as being beyond vocational skills. The topicality of this analysis is embedded in the transformation of universities, which can create a new framework for students’ socialization process. Two different methods were used during our research: a questionnaire with students (N = 1502) on a nationwide sample in Hungary and 31 interviews with lecturers. According to our empirical findings, the effects of higher education are very complex, and vocational elements are not the only content that is transmitted. Students can perceive the components of moral effects ata high level, and general knowledge has acquired great importance, too. With the help of the lecturers’ interviews, we can identify the most important aims of the teaching process, which extend beyond the vocational elements, and at the same time, the barriers to and possibilities offered by this transmission.

Institutional Effects on Early Palliative Care among Mexican-Heritage Elders

This paper addresses Mexican-heritage older people’s experiences with early palliative care (EPC). EPC is the early provision of medical, social and spiritual reports to relieve suffering. Empirically, Mexican-heritage older people are known to have less access to EPC and, when they access it, to receive care of lower quality. However, little work has explored how Mexican-heritage older people think about and access such care. The paper addresses this gap. Methods are longitudinal: 36 Mexican-heritage people ranging in age from 55 to 90 years completed longitudinal semi-structured qualitative interviews, for a total of 69 interviews. Results explore how respondents’ participation in social institutions may mediate the effects of larger social structural constraints on their health and access to care.

Feminist theory and the problem of misogyny

Feminist theory, broadly construed, lacks a comprehensive theory of misogyny. While there has been a great deal of feminist work dedicated to analysing the social, cultural, political, and institutional effects of misogyny, the ancillary theories of misogyny these analyses produce are only ever partial, fragmented, vague or conceptually inconsistent. This article engages and critiques these theories by focusing on three separate but related issues within existing feminist scholarship on misogyny: the conflation of misogyny with sexism, the elision of misogyny's affective elements and the supplanting of misogyny with gendered violence. Through my identification and critique of these issues, I argue that misogyny should be understood as a profoundly complicated and emotional social dynamic. Moreover, I argue that to attempt to cleanse misogyny of its affective/emotional complexity or conflate misogyny with sexism and/or violence is to rob theorists of possible loci of apprehension and intervention. My hope is that this article will stimulate feminist theorists to work collectively towards a more comprehensive feminist understanding of misogyny – one that grapples with the interpersonal and affective complexities of how misogyny emerges, circulates and self-perpetuates.

Debt Burden of the Subjects of the Russian Federation

The growth of regional debts produces risks both at the regional level and in the sphere of intergovernmental relations. The article shows that with a low debt burden at a long-term level, the subjects of the Russian Federation are highly differentiated by the level of debt, and even with a decrease in overall debt, a variation of debt load is growing. On the basis of cluster analysis, four groups of the subjects of the Russian Federation were allocated, depending on the variation of the debt burden and the share of social spending in total regional expenditures. It is concluded that the level of debt burden and its dynamics are explained both by the socio-economic factors for the regional development and the quality of budget management in any subject of the Russian Federation. Accordingly, the procedure for the distribution of intergovernmental transfers and budgetary rules should be agreed with the accounting of objective relationships and institutional effects.

Trade Unions, Bargaining Coverage and Low Pay: A Multilevel Test of Institutional Effects on Low-Pay Risk in Germany

Employment relations scholars argue that industrial relations institutions reduce low pay among the workforce, while the insider-outsider literature claims that unions contribute to increase the low-pay risk among non-union members. This article tests these expectations by distinguishing, respectively, between the individual effect of being a union member or covered by collective agreements and the sectoral effect of strong trade unions or encompassing collective agreements. Findings from multilevel logistic regression analyses of the German Socio-Economic Panel reveal that unions and bargaining coverage have distinct effects at individual and sectoral level. The analysis of their cross-level interactions provides partial support to both the insider-outsider approach, since non-union members are more exposed to the risk of low pay in highly unionized sectors, and to the power resource perspectives, since the probability of being in low pay in sectors with encompassing collective agreements decreases also for those workers who are not covered by them.