Transit migration, comprising mixed flows of refugees and labour, is widely considered a concern and even security threat. However, the concept is as vague and blurred as it is politicised. This volume offers evidence-based, comprehensive coverage of the entire belt of countries in the neighbourhood of the EU, ranging from Russia to Morocco. Transit migration is critically analyzed from the per…
An approach that encompasses the human and natural dimensions of ecosystems is one that the Wider Caribbean Region knows it must adopt and implement, in order to ensure the sustainable use of the region's shared marine resources. This volume contributes towards that vision, bringing together the collective knowledge and experience of scholars and practitioners within the Wider Caribbean to begi…
While studies of mobile wireless communication devices usually focus on their social implications, De Vries proposes to venture into a more historical and comparative direction to shed light on our preoccupation with them in the first place. He constructs an archaeological view of the development of communication technologies over the past 200 years, providing a comprehensive account of how per…
What are the special problems involved in surveying immigrant populations and ethnic minorities? How can we ensure adequate representation of these growing groups in general population surveys? This book is the first to address these challenges in a systematic way. Experiences from eight Western countries, involving more than a dozen surveys, are used to explore difficulties in designing these …
This analytic study surveys the transformations of elderly care policies and practices since the early 1990s, by comparing the trajectories of two extremely different care systems: Italy, a familialistic model with no relevant changes in social policies; and the Netherlands, a formal care model under restructuring. The author demonstrates that, in spite of strong policy pressures, the Dutch sys…
Gifts, from objects to hospitality and from poems to support, are a means of establishing and maintaining social ties. This study focuses on the nature of seventeenth- century Dutch social relations through the exchange of gifts by a wide range of individuals, from schoolmaster and artisan to poet and regent. Their gift-exchange behaviour is compared to contemporary gift exchange to show that b…
This book examines, both theoretically and empirically, the impact of globalization and individualization on social solidarity. It focuses both on informal solidarity, such as volunteering, charitable giving, and informal care, and on formal solidarity, such as social benefits and development aid. It challenges the common belief that social solidarity is endangered by the increasing competition…
In the last decade, there has been a distinct trend towards a worldwide harmonisation of migration statistics, chiefly pushed by international bodies and organisations that need comparative data. Statistics and Reality shows that these attempts have as yet not been very successful. It provides an accessible account of the history of migration measurement in Europe and analyses the current conce…
Star Wars has reached more than three generations of casual and hardcore fans alike, and as a result many of the producers of franchised Star Wars texts (films, television, comics, novels, games, and more) over the past four decades have been fans-turned-creators. Yet despite its dominant cultural and industrial positions, Star Wars has rarely been the topic of sustained critical work. Star War…
Unraveled in this book are the real dynamics at stake in the Madame/housemaid relationship. While cases of extreme physical abuse by the Lebanese women who hire housemaids - Madames - are an exception, what has become normalised are more insidious patterns of domination used to control each and every aspect of their employees' lives. For their part, Sri Lankan housemaids are not merely passive …