The purpose of this article is to examine whether and by what means traditional unions and other labour-oriented organisations engage in solidarity activities in favour of precarious workers and the ...unemployed. Our findings derive from qualitative data analysed from 10 in-depth interviews per country conducted as part of a large collaborative project with participants sampled from trade unions and other labour-oriented solidarity organisations based in three European national contexts: Greece, Poland, and the UK. Our aim here is to discern common features and differences in the strategies and answers given, within the three national contexts. To this end, we examine the actors engaged in labour solidarity; the value frames upon which these actions draw; the beneficiaries of their solidarity actions; the type of activities adopted mainly in favour of precarious workers and the unemployed; and their engagement in transnational labour solidarity activities.
Over the last decade, the unprecedented influx of refugees and migrants into the European Union has posed a significant challenge to Europe, with solidarity being contested at two fronts: first, the ...question of solidarity with refugees in terms of meeting adequate measures of protection and satisfying their elementary needs; and second, the question of solidarity within the European Union in terms of sharing the costs and burden of hosting these refugees among the member states. One driving factor of these contestations is that the solidarity challenge in facing the ‘refugee crisis’ is taken up differently in transit countries in the South of Europe and destination countries in the North. Wishing to shed light on how national contexts impact transnational solidarity organising, we draw on a fresh set of cross-national evidence from a random sample of 277 transnational solidarity organisations (TSOs) in Greece, Germany, and Denmark. The aim is to illustrate the effects of political opportunities and threats during the 2007–2016 crises period on migration-related solidarity activities organised by TSOs. We will do so through tri-national comparisons tracing migration-related TSO patterns across time. The data used is produced in the context of the TRANSSOL project by a new methodological approach (action organisation analysis) based on hubs-retrieved organisational websites and their subsequent content analysis.
Collective reactions to the Greek debt crisis and the austerity measures imposed by consecutive Greek governments in accordance with the Troika of lenders (European Central Bank, European Commission, ...IMF) have been widely reported by the media; however, the study of contentious events and episodes has only recently started on a systematic basis. Since the beginning of the debt crisis, an impressive series of large protests and general strikes occurred in Greece against austerity policies. In this paper, we will focus on the main organizations/groups that called and coordinated 31 large protest events from February 2010 until November 2012. Our sample includes trade unions, political parties of the left, anarchist groups, students, justice oriented groups, professional organizations, and Indignados, while their repertoires of contention are combinations of demonstrative, confrontational and violent protests, direct-democratic action, threats, symbolic violence or/and destruction of property. Viewing collective action as an operation of inter-organizational networks that also comprise different and competing modes of coordination, our aim here is to examine how these very different groups managed to work together or, to what extent they did so. Were the differences in the ideological patterns of each challenging group an obstacle to inter-organizational alliances? How did threat and the changing political opportunity structure shape the Greek anti-austerity campaign?
Protest and social movements are drivers for the Europeanization of national public spheres. This is suggested by the literature on the emergence of Europeanized public spheres and the ...Europeanization of social movements as well as the discussion about the politicization of the European polity. The article tests this assumption in a standardized content analysis for newspaper reporting on the Eurozone crisis in Greece and Germany. Focusing on the public attribution of responsibility, the analysis looks for horizontal Europeanization (senders/addressees from other EU countries), vertical Europeanization (senders/addressees from the EU level), and discursive Europeanization (similar topics discussed at the same time). The findings do not identify protest as a strong driving force towards vertical or horizontal Europeanization of the public spheres in Greece and Germany. There is a weak tendency towards discussing similar topics at the same time in German and Greek media reports on protest. Consequences for European democracy and crisis politics are discussed.
New Rage, New Perspectives? Roose, Jochen; Sommer, Moritz; Kanellopoulos, Kostas ...
Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie,
10/2018, Letnik:
70, Številka:
Suppl 1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The Eurozone crisis has led to a long and remarkable protest wave. Civil society raised its voice against the ever-harsher austerity measures implemented to deal with the crisis. The article focuses ...on the role of civil society and its potential to contribute new perspectives to the debate. Such a contribution would depend on two preconditions: 1. Civil society actors need to mobilize successfully to make their voices heard. 2. Civil society actors contribute a perspective that differs to the perspectives of actors from institutionalized politics. Both preconditions are analyzed empirically for two countries that are in very different situations in the crisis scenario: Greece and Germany. Greece has been hit most severely by the crisis; Germany is the most prominent country defining the crisis management, and it provides the largest share of credit guarantees for “crisis countries.” Social movement theory is used to explain the differing evolution of protests in the two countries. In the early phase of the crisis, the established landscape of political parties in both countries offered few opportunities for their citizens to vote in opposition to the crisis management, which is conducive to extra-parliamentary protest. Differences in deprivation, discursive opportunities and the resource basis of mobilization structures can explain differences in protest frequency but also to some extent the evolution of protest over time. Taking up Habermas’ argument regarding the specific perspective of civil society actors in the public debate, we then analyze to which extent the arguments of civil society actors deviate from those of more institutionalized actors. A discursive actor attribution analysis unveils that civil society actors are more sensitive to social problems and grand systemic questions. Moreover, civil society actors are less hesitant to blame actors on the EU level and other EU Member States, even though their overall contribution to the crisis debate is rather marginal.
New Rage, New Perspectives? Roose, Jochen; Sommer, Moritz; Kanellopoulos, Kostas ...
Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie,
10/2018, Letnik:
70, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The Eurozone crisis has led to a long and remarkable protest wave. Civil society raised its voice against the ever-harsher austerity measures implemented to deal with the crisis. The article focuses ...on the role of civil society and its potential to contribute new perspectives to the debate. Such a contribution would depend on two preconditions: 1. Civil society actors need to mobilize successfully to make their voices heard. 2. Civil society actors contribute a perspective that differs to the perspectives of actors from institutionalized politics. Both preconditions are analyzed empirically for two countries that are in very different situations in the crisis scenario: Greece and Germany. Greece has been hit most severely by the crisis; Germany is the most prominent country defining the crisis management, and it provides the largest share of credit guarantees for “crisis countries.” Social movement theory is used to explain the differing evolution of protests in the two countries. In the early phase of the crisis, the established landscape of political parties in both countries offered few opportunities for their citizens to vote in opposition to the crisis management, which is conducive to extra-parliamentary protest. Differences in deprivation, discursive opportunities and the resource basis of mobilization structures can explain differences in protest frequency but also to some extent the evolution of protest over time. Taking up Habermas’ argument regarding the specific perspective of civil society actors in the public debate, we then analyze to which extent the arguments of civil society actors deviate from those of more institutionalized actors. A discursive actor attribution analysis unveils that civil society actors are more sensitive to social problems and grand systemic questions. Moreover, civil society actors are less hesitant to blame actors on the EU level and other EU Member States, even though their overall contribution to the crisis debate is rather marginal.
One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers the aftermaths of the capitalist crisis reached the eurozone countries. In the winter of 2009–10 Greece, a founding member of the eurozone, faced ...bankruptcy. The cost of lending money in the international capital markets was on the rise and Greece, due to its big budget de fi cit and its enormous public debt, could no longer borrow money to re finance its debt. Greek bonds were soon characterized by the international rating agencies as junk, and the Greek government, due to the country’s membership in the eurozone, was without the monetary
This paper examines the effect of innovation efficiency on firm performance using the Greek version of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012–2014 and employs a dataset of 1,274 innovative ...manufacturing firms. Introducing a data envelopment analysis (DEA)‐type benchmarking strategy with non‐continuous knowledge inputs, the main findings suggest that innovation efficiency, although does not exert a direct impact on firm performance, moderates the relationship between the internally generated knowledge and firm performance. On the other hand, such a moderation relationship is not confirmed for the relationship between external knowledge and innovation spillovers on firm's performance. Although the impact of the embodied to innovation inputs spillovers, on firm performance, is always positive and significant, empirical results indicate that absorptive capacity exhibits diminishing returns with respect to performance.
Abstract Background Gait analysis represents one of the newest methodologies employed in the clinical evaluation of CM patients. Objective To describe the role of gait analysis in the clinical ...evaluation of CM patients, as well as its potential role in the evaluation of the functional outcome of any surgical intervention. Method ology: A literature review was performed in the PubMed, OVID and Google Scholar medical databases, from January of 1995 to August of 2016, using the terms “analysis”, “anterior”, “cervical myelopathy”, “gait”, “posterior”, “surgery”. Clinical series comparing the gait patterns of CM patients to healthy controls, as well as series evaluating gait and walk changes before and after surgical decompression were reviewed. Case studies were excluded. Results There were found nine prospective, and three retrospective studies. The vast majority of the retrieved studies demonstrated the presence of characteristic, abnormal gait patterns among patients with CM, consisting of decreased gait speed, cadence, step length, stride length, and single limb support time. Additionally, CM patients routinely present increased step and stride time, double limb support time, and step width, while they have altered knee and ankle joint range of motion, compared to healthy controls. Moreover, gait and walk analysis may provide accurate functional assessment of the functional outcome of CM patients undergoing surgical decompression. Conclusions Gait analysis may well be a valuable and objective tool among with other parameters in the evaluation of functionality in CM patients, as well as in the assessment of the outcome of any surgical intervention in these patients.
Serum ferritin (SF) is frequently elevated in classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). We report on its prognostic significance in an unselected series of 529 cHL patients treated with state-of-the-art ...therapy. Higher baseline levels correlated with markers of advanced/aggressive disease. SF levels were significantly higher in male and older patients, those with high body mass index and mixed cellularity histology. The strongest correlation was recorded between SF and complement reactive protein (CRP) levels. Gender-specific SF cutoffs which provided the best discrimination in terms of freedom from progression (FFP) were identified. In multivariate analysis elevated SF levels, advanced stage and high lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) were independent prognostic factors of inferior FFP. SF also appears to retain independent prognostic significance for progression-free survival (PFS) but not for overall survival (OS). In conclusion, SF levels in cHL reflect disease activity and are associated with adverse patient outcomes.
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