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        <title>Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia Feed</title>
        <link>https://sciendo.com/journal/SUBBS</link>
        <description>Sciendo RSS Feed for Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia</description>
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            <title>Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia Feed</title>
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            <link>https://sciendo.com/journal/SUBBS</link>
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        <copyright>All rights reserved 2026, Babeș-Bolyai University</copyright>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Degrowth and ‘Regrowth’: Subjective Perspectives of the New Peasants]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0003</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0003</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This paper investigates the emerging phenomenon of neo-rurality in post-socialist Romania through the theoretical lens of degrowth, analyzing the lived experiences of urban-to-rural migrants (“new peasants”) pursuing alternative, sustainability-oriented lifestyles. Combining ethnographic interviews and participant observation, the study reveals how these actors reconfigure notions of labor, consumption, and community while navigating tensions between their aspirational practices and the socio-cultural norms of traditional rural settings. The analysis identifies neo-rural initiatives as sites of ecological experimentation and grassroots innovation, yet critically interrogates their ambivalent role in perpetuating or subverting power hierarchies tied to cultural capital and social class. By foregrounding the dialectics of individual agency and structural constraints, this work contributes to transnational debates on sustainable transitions, emphasizing the need for context-sensitive strategies that reconcile ecological resilience with emancipatory social transformation.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Social Minima and the Guaranteed Minimum Income Program in Romania, 1995-2024]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0002</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0002</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

The present paper provides a qualitative historical analysis of the evolution of the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) program in Romania between 1995 and 2024 in relation to envisaged social minima. It argues that the transformations of GMI reflect the interplay between demand for cheap labour, regulations over precarious employment, and behavioural control for allegedly securing the “employability” of beneficiaries, with little (if any) concern for benefit adequacy. As elsewhere in Europe, labour market dualization was accompanied by the possibility to cumulate income from precarious labour with social assistance benefits. For the active-age recipients, GMI benefits did not replace market income and guarantee a social minimum, but rather they compensated for low income from casual work with some minimal social transfers and subsidies. Importantly, GMI included public health insurance, without charging beneficiaries. The decrease of GMI in real terms during the last two decades was accelerated by the effective decoupling of social assistance benefits from the national minimum wage and the long-term abandonment of a reference-budget for goods and services that could have served as a benchmark for both. When such a minimum basket was finally reintroduced in 2020 as a policy instrument for the annual indexation of the national minimum wage, social benefits were excluded from its scope. The reform of GMI, designed in 2016 but implemented only in 2024, slightly simplified the bureaucratic load and increased the threshold for social aid, but it did not substantively alter eligibility rules and mechanisms of behavioural control. To date, there has been no relation between the value of GMI and the computations of social minima.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[When Care Meets Capitalism: Organizational Wellbeing in Romania]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0006</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0006</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This paper presents a descriptive qualitative study of organizational wellbeing in Romania, asking: How is the field of workplace wellbeing organized? The analysis focuses on the actors, actions, and tensions that structure this emerging space and considers its broader implications. The theoretical framework draws on Foucault (biopolitics and subjectivation), Thévenot &amp; Boltanski (justification through translation), and Boltanski &amp; Chiapello (The New Spirit of Capitalism), framing wellbeing as a practice of governing subjectivity at the intersection of genuine care and managerial imperatives of efficiency and productivity. Empirical data comes from 12 in-depth interviews with HR professionals, wellbeing specialists, and external service providers. Findings reveal three coexisting worlds of justification: inspired, industrial, and market-based; between which actors translate ideas. Rather than opposing each other, the actors’ positions in the process mark different stages in the reform of the spirit of capitalism. Organizational wellbeing thus emerges as a space of tension and collaboration, shaping the “well” employee: high-performing, autonomous, healthy, and engaged. The paper contributes to a critical understanding of organizational wellbeing as both support for employees and a subtle mechanism of control and reproduction of capitalist norms, while mapping its specific Romanian dynamics.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Foucault and Goffman. The Shadow and the Matter of Discipline in the Universe of a Psychiatric Institution]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0005</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0005</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This paper focuses on the mechanisms of power and discipline that exist within a psychiatric institution in Transylvania, Romania. This is done through combining the theoretical perspectives of Michel Foucault and of Erving Goffman. While Foucault looks at power as the result of internalization through disciplinary mechanisms and discourses, Goffman puts emphasis on the microinteractions and spatial arrangement that shape the institution. By bringing these two lines of thought together, this study tries to construct an analytical tool that reveals how surveillance, normalization and hierarchization operate concomitantly at structural and interpersonal levels. Using qualitative methods, more precisely participant observation, formal and informal interviews, the research explores patients’ daily lives, the dynamics between individuals (be it staff or patient), the regulation of space and the interdependence of written and unwritten rules. It is suggested that institutional power is exercised not only through correction or direct surveillance but also through strategies and those strategies are built around visibility, divestment of space, documentation and collective self-monitoring. This, in turn, generates docile but truncated forms of subjectivity. The study also highlights the continuous existence of disciplinary strategies despite there being ongoing processes of deinstitutionalization, therefore showing how this psychiatric institution creates regulated, individualized and hierarchized existences.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Cycling in Cluj-Napoca: An Actor-Network Analysis of Urban Mobility and Spatial Inequality]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0004</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0004</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This study explores the dynamics of alternative urban mobility, with a focus on cycling, in the context of Cluj-Napoca. Our analysis, anchored in actornetwork theory (ANT) and critical sociological literature, examines bicycle infrastructure not only as a physical support but also as a materialization of power relations and processes of social (de)legitimization. Through semistructured interviews with users and experts, we investigate how fragmentation, spatial inequality, and compliance with existing car legislation influence the experiences of urban cyclists. We identify how certain interventions, such as green-blue corridors, can contribute to the reconfiguration of urban space and the promotion of more equitable and sustainable mobility. The article contributes to a nuanced understanding of the role of bicycle infrastructure as a terrain for negotiation between human and non-human agents, norms, daily practices, and authority, revealing the complexity of the dynamics between space, power, and identity in contemporary urban societies.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[“It’s Quickly Over and Easily Accessible”: Sociological Insights Into Non-Invasive Aesthetic Surgery Among Women in Croatia]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0001</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2025-0001</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

Aesthetic surgery is a global phenomenon, with millions of users worldwide. This study explores the sociological dimensions of non-invasive aesthetic procedures, based on semi-structured interviews with 18 women in Croatia who have undergone such treatments, primarily dermal fillers and Botox, most commonly applied to the face area. The analysis identified a range of motivations, including dissatisfaction with body image, the desire to reduce visible signs of ageing, enhance appearance, and improve quality of life. For some, exposure to social media, particularly Instagram, and global celebrity culture served as inspiration. However, most participants framed their decisions in terms of personal aspirations for self-enhancement rather than conformity to dominant beauty ideals. Body image prior to the procedures ranged from negative to positive. Most participants reported increased satisfaction following treatment, and many noted that their appearance became a frequent subject of social commentary, revealing the potential for stigma directed at those who engage in aesthetic modification. Nearly all expressed interest in further procedures, whether to maintain current results or pursue new goals. These findings suggest that aesthetic surgery is a complex phenomenon in which the body becomes a site of transformation and potential, shaped by late modernity’s emphasis on self-actualisation and the body as an ongoing identity project.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Book Review: The Handbook for the Future of Work by MacLeavy, Julie, and Frederick Harry Pitts (eds). Taylor and Francis. 2024, 424 p.]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0011</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0011</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Regulation Theory and European Integration. Regime(s) of Accumulation and Modes of Regulation in the European Union]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0009</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0009</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

What can become visible once you turn the European integration in a political economy phenomena problem? Employing Regulation theory we aim to show an alternative heterodox version of understanding European integration and its shortcomings. Turning towards the European integration from the standpoint of Regulation Theory and its model of critical political economy, European integration cannot be separated from the production and reproduction of the prevailing capitalist regime of accumulation. Regulation theory operates with multi-scalar theoretical models coated in a mezzo-level abstractionist approach. Its analytical force it’s doubled by a disruption-oriented approach that offers a reformist critique to the capitalist order as it is reproduced within the confines of the EU. Consequently, the process of integration is structurally constrained by the (supra)national ‘institutional fix’ achieved by the dynamic historical and material configuration of the hegemonic mode of regulation. Assessing the limits and the contributions Regulation theory makes to the debate around the political economy of socio-political presuppositions and conflicts entailed by the integration process in the EU represents the main aim of this article.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Career Anchors Reimagined: Expertise, Stability and Recognition in Structured Organizational Fields]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0006</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0006</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This article explores how professionals in a multinational IT company construct career identities that intertwine ambition, recognition, and stability—challenging dominant models that equate ambition with autonomy and instability. Drawing on a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design—48 qualitative interviews and a survey of 764 employees—it identifies “expertise” as a distinct career anchor defined not merely by technical skill, but by internal recognition, symbolic legitimacy, and trusted authority. Quantitative validation through factor analysis confirmed a revised nine-anchor model, with widespread hybrid identities (e.g., expertise + lifestyle, expertise + security) emerging as normative, not transitional. The article reframes security not as passivity but as an entitlement earned through excellence. Interpreted through a career field and habitus lens, these findings reposition career anchors as relational identity positions shaped by organizational recognition regimes, symbolic capital, and contextual fit. The study contributes a grounded critique of protean and boundaryless career models, proposing an alternative understanding of stability, ambition, and growth in contemporary structured work environments.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[The Social Anchors and Social Capital Perspectives of Explaining Albanian Immigrant’s Problems of Social Integration in Germany]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0008</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0008</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This paper explores the process of social integration of Albanian immigrants in Germany using a quality approach, based on literature review and in-depth interviews. Drawing on sociological concepts of social anchor and social capital, the study analyzes the challenges and opportunities migrants face during this process. Through the cross-thematic analysis it is found that the migrant interviewed resulted to experience difficulties in getting ties with German natives or even to keep strong networks with Albanians. Regarding literature review, this means they have built weak social capital and social anchors, that produces difficulties in their economic, socio-cultural and legal integration process. Among the strongest challenges of integration were language barriers, the process of equipping curricula, cultural gap between Albania and Germany, high level of bureaucracy in institutions and non-participation of migrants in organized Albanian or German groups. While opportunities that facilitate integration resulted in support from Albanian employment networks, social ties with other communities for economic and social growth, high levels of trust in German institutions and meritocracy, German pro-migrant state policy and opportunities for inclusion in the education system or vocational training and lack of perceived discrimination regarding their ethnic origin. They mainly experienced discrimination due to the perception of Albanian immigrants as poor non-European immigrants, hot-blooded Balkans or Eastern Muslims. The findings show that social connections, community support and integration policy play an essential role in the success of integration.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Industrial Relations In Romania. Outcomes Of Two Strikes In A Wood Manufacture Furniture Factory From Cluj County (2017)]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0007</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0007</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

In the case of Romanian state, the dependent developments under neoliberalism shapes local dynamics of labour. On a local level, having a main investor a foreign firm will shape the standards, quotas, competitiveness between workers. I will focus on two strikes inside a manufactory firm and what their components illustrate about industrial relations. One outcome shows that dynamics between union, workers and employers regarding financial disagreements can have a positive result and the other shows how organizational dynamics that questions specifically the status quo relation between workers and supervisors/ management can have a negative result. Because of organisational environment and macroeconomic context of a post socialist state involved in accommodating foreign investment firms while under developing collective bargaining trough labour legislation, workers have diverse interpretations of these two specific labour movements inside their factory.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Book Review: Ce urmează după neoliberalism? Pentru un imaginar politic alternativ [What Follows after Neoliberalism? For an alternative political imaginary], Sorin Gog, Victoria Stoiciu (coord.), Editura Presa Universitară Clujeană, Cluj-Napoca 2024]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0010</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0010</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Paid Parental Leave in Serbia: The Gender Perspective]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0004</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0004</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

For the last two decades, Serbian family policies have gone through several changes in accordance with contemporary trends and changes in family life and also influenced by EU regulations and recommendations. Current legislation is in line with the gender equality principle, enabling both parents to exercise their rights and to pursue a work-life balance. However, when it comes to paid parental leave, the Serbian legal framework is considered inflexible in terms of choosing the combination of length of leave and the remuneration amount. In this paper, we argue that Serbian parental leave policies must be analysed in relation to the specific context of a (unfinished) post-socialist transition at the semi-periphery of Europe, population decline and strong familism. The burden of parenthood is still predominantly on women’s shoulders, even though ideas about a “new fatherhood”, more involved in child rearing, have become more widespread. Whether they are employed or not, women/mothers remain the primary caregivers, while the typical Serbian family can be described as a male breadwinner model.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Our Everyday Food and Consumer Behaviour]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0005</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0005</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This study explores the relationship between food labelling and consumer behaviour, with the primary aim of identifying the factors influencing food choices and evaluating the impact of education level and gender on the consultation of labels. The methodology involved data collection through a questionnaire distributed on Facebook, ensuring a varied geographic and demographic coverage. The results revealed significant differences in food choice behaviour influenced by area of residence and gender, with important criteria such as price and packaging appearance. A significant association was found between education level and the criteria for selecting products, and no notable differences were identified in label consultation between men and women. Contrary to the formulated hypothesis, there was no evidence that the level of education leads to significant difficulties in understanding label information. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the factors influencing consumer behaviour in the food sector, although limitations related to the online data collection method and sample size may affect the generalisability of the results. Future research could benefit from a larger sample and additional methods to gain more comprehensive and precise insights.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[The Path from Romania to the Italian Domestic Care Sector: The First Stage of the Decisionmaking Process on Labour Migration]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0003</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0003</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This paper aims to propose a multi-stage model for the decisionmaking process on labour migration that takes into account both individual agency and structural dimensions along political-institutional, economic, and social factors. While it is focused on the case of Romanian women’s migration to the Italian domestic care sector, it can be applied for the analysis of other types of labour migration too. From a historical perspective, Romania underwent major political, economic, cultural, and social transformations after 1989 and throughout the years of EU integration and membership, that influenced transnational labour migration. With the help of relevant population statistics and qualitative interviews with Romanian women working in Italy, I illustrate how the three structural dimensions contribute to the start of the individuals’ decision-making process on migration. The political-institutional dimension both enables a culture of labour migration and conditions or disinhibits the possibility of migrating abroad for work. Through a series of disruptions, the economic dimension creates distress, which brings certain individuals in a state of needing alternative solutions to ensure their livelihood. As they search for solutions, these people will be exposed to the option of labour migration. This exposure, however, takes place in the social dimension, which represents the aggregate of individuals’ social relationships. Finally, by assuming the roles of mentors and/or migration facilitators, social actors influence individuals to become aspiring migrants and to follow a migratory destination. Considering working abroad as an option (available, needed and possible) represents the first stage of a decision-making process that the individuals go through. At the end of it, the actors will become from aspiring migrants- novice labour migrants.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Do Perceptions About the Causes of Poverty and Wealth Shape Attitudes Towards Progressive Taxation? An Exploratory Analysis for 2021 Romania]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0002</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0002</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

Lying at the backbone of European welfare states, taxation is both an enabler of redistribution and a predilect means of fiscal welfare. Among Central and Eastern European countries, Romania was an early adopter of flat rate taxation two decades ago, in 2004. As Kovács (2022) convincingly argues, in terms of net wages this shift led to less revolutionary outcomes than expected; however, it clearly diminished the tax burden for middle and higher wages, while those on lower wages paid gradually bigger taxes, as deductions eroded. By 2021, opinion polls indicate that three quarters of Romanians show support for progressive income taxes (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2021: 20). Which socio-economic and demographic factors shape this attitude? The present paper offers an exploratory analysis of the relation between perceptions about the causes of poverty and wealth and being in favour of progressive income taxes in one of the most unequal and impoverished countries of contemporary Europe.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Legitimation Crisis of Capitalism in Romania: Social Dynamics and Ideologized Knowledge Production]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0001</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2024-0001</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This paper aims to investigate the discrepancy between the disaffected public perception of capitalism in Romania, as it emerges from past and current sociological survey data, and the construction of Romanian society as a social totality within mass media, the political sphere, and the social sciences. My argument is that these three spaces of knowledge production function according to ideologized criteria meant to stabilize capitalism in Romania and generate a distorted framework of understanding past and current social dynamics2.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Airplane Parts and Covid Masks: Labour Commuters of North-Western Romania Between Central and Eastern European “Re-Industrialisation” and the Global Market]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0010</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0010</guid>
            <pubDate>Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

This article aims to uncover two main features of ‘re-industrialisation’ in Central and Eastern Europe: the reconfiguration of the economic geography in Northwest Romania and the multiple ways in which the Romanian working class is being integrated into the new economy. Post-socialist shifts towards a low-skilled, flexible, and generally insecure economy have underlined the need for cheap, easily disposable labour, and the emergence of the new economic geography has changed the accumulation of capital in the region and the patterns of labour mobility. Despite massive migration, many have continued to work in the region or have combined migration periods with work close to home. This study explores the different mobilities individuals engage in and seeks to understand why some workers choose to stay and live in the region and how the available opportunities for workers aiming to stay in the region influence their prospects. This study traces the patterns of labour commuting and how this is structured by individuals’ strategies and motivations, as well as the social relationships that support this work. The article analyses labour commuting to two major industrial hubs in the region: one which manufactures aerospace components, and one that produces medical textiles. Both companies are foreign-owned and concentrate a significant proportion of the region’s workforce. The micro-dynamics revealed will contribute to understanding the patterns of work in the specific form of re-industrialisation in contemporary Romania.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Racialized Housing and Proletarization Policies as Internal Socialist Contradictions: Roma Relocations Between 1975-1989 in Baia Mare, Romania]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0012</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0012</guid>
            <pubDate>Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

The emergence of the ghetto as an urban social formation is regularly conveyed as a specific neoliberal capitalist product. Based on interviews with inhabitants and policymakers and archival data covering more than two decades, this article brings another dimension to the debates on ghetto formation. It traces the urban spatial politics of managing and containing Roma communities in the Romanian NW city of Baia Mare from the late 1970s until 1989. To this aim, it uncovers the debates and decisions regarding the last stages of socialist urban systematization focused on Hatvan, a Roma neighbourhood, and the subsequent relocation projects. Initially, the socialist administration aimed to assimilate the Roma population into the working class. However, a peculiar segregationist policy followed the failed experiment of expropriation and rehousing into low-quality apartments. In the early 1980s, authorities relocated most Roma in the newly built Vasile Alecsandri district to four new specifically designed apartment buildings nearby. The four blocks on Arieșului Street lacked central heating to prevent the accumulation of arrears – a materialization of the decade-long austerity policies. Other urban Roma were funnelled there as well, thus revealing the racialization policies assembled at the local level. . Just before 1990, Arieșului was abandoned, and many people decided to relocate in what became Craica, a ghetto that is still in existence today.
]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Labour Force Composition and Labour Shortage in North-Western Romania: A Cross-County  Comparison1]]></title>
            <link>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0007</link>
            <guid>https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0007</guid>
            <pubDate>Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[

The paper analyses the labour force composition of two adjacent counties in north-west Romania: Maramureș and Sălaj. Regionally, employers stress the lack of available labour force and resort to commuter networks from nearby rural areas and immigrant labour. Why labour shortage? It is argued that Romania’s FDI-reliant export-led growth model factors in. Namely, the growth model’s reliance on low-cost labour that reduces employment incentives to a minimum (often minimum wage) and employment in repetitive labour-intensive activities make the prospect less attractive. If technological upgrading – requiring skilled employees – is absent, regional labour availability tends to be an issue. Alternative subsistence methods are favoured: seasonal transnational migration, household agricultural subsistence and remittances from relatives. Tying livelihood to families and households, these methods pool resources to replace (even if in part) wage labour under global market-dependency conditions.
]]></description>
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