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The conflict in Ukraine is the subject of contradictory narratives in the communication war, but also reflects the rival historical and geopolitical representations between the different actors of this conflict. According to the geopolitical angle, the main issue of the crisis in Ukraine is the rivalry between the great powers for world power and the distribution of geopolitical spaces. The geopolitical angle thus makes it possible to take into account the numerous stakes linked to this crisis on different scales, which go well beyond the purely geostrategic and military aspects. The main hypothesis of this article is to determine to what extent Russia, with its special military operation in Ukraine, is pushing for the emergence of a new geopolitical configuration on a European and global scale. Indeed, Moscow is provoking a redefinition of alliances at the regional and global levels. At the Eurasian level, NATO will probably no longer be able to pursue a policy of expansion in the Russian near abroad (countries of the former USSR), the enlargement of NATO to Ukraine being a casus belli, as the Russian intervention has shown. On a global scale, Russia’s membership in the UN Security Council now prevents any unilateral interpretation of international law by the collective West. Moreover, economic sanctions by EU and NATO member states are not being followed by other states in Eurasia, South America and Africa, challenging the unipolar project of the West under the leadership of the United States. The European Union is increasingly aligned with the geopolitical priorities of NATO and the United States, with little room for manoeuvre. Russia’s special operation in Ukraine is definitely moving the world towards a multicentric and multipolar geopolitical configuration, with no possibility of returning to the pre-conflict situation. In this analysis, geopolitical cartography will be used to illustrate the problematics but also to emphasize the spatial angle as an analytical tool.
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Risk-taking plays an important role for the psychological prediction of decision-making processes in a situation of uncertainty. The objective of this paper is to examine in-depth the association between risk-taking propensity as a personality tendency and emigration decision-making of young people. Although the correlation between risk-taking propensity and migration potential has been studied in some countries, it has not been examined to date in Bulgaria – an economy in transition. Furthermore, it was scrutinized neither in view of different risk domains (social, financial, health, ethical) nor in terms of desire, plan and preparation to move abroad as key aspects of the emigration decision-making process. The methods of in-depth calendar interviewing and qualitative data analysis were employed. Semi-structured calendar interviews (N=45) were carried out in June - November 2020 among young Bulgarian men (N=21) and women (N=24) aged 18-35 years from large, middle and small towns/villages in Bulgaria. The findings showed a positive association of risk-taking propensity and (e)migration decision-making. Respondents, identified as risk-seekers, were more likely to emigrate, compared to risk-avoiders. Social and financial domains of risk-taking turned out most closely associated with emigration decision-making. Young people, who were more willing to move away from their family, social surrounding and cultural environment, to improve their social-economic standing (education, income, career), were more positive about emigration and more likely to plan and prepare for relocation. The findings have some important interdisciplinary implications both for psychological theory and for demographic policy.
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Identification processes in host countries are influenced by many and varied factors. They help or hinder the successful integration of migrants. Among them, the geographical remoteness of the host country plays a key role. In fact, the role of proximity or remoteness to the country to which a person migrates is of paramount importance in the study of migration processes. In this regard, the aim of the present study is to investigate and analyze the influence of host country remoteness on identification processes. It focuses on the countries of Germany and the USA – a choice based entirely on the geographical distance of the countries from Bulgaria. The methodological toolkit includes quantitative and qualitative analysis from a questionnaire survey and interviews using the narrative-biographical method. The sample of the quantitative study included 491 Bulgarian migrants (306 respondents from Germany and 185 respondents from the USA). The results obtained from three identification profiles (high, low and intermediate) composed of Bulgarian migrants in Germany and the USA. It was observed that the USA is mostly dominated by migrants with high and some with intermediate levels of identity. The average identification and low profile is characteristic of persons who prevail in Germany. Persons with high levels of identity in the USA identify themselves as Bulgarians and maintain contact with Bulgarians. They lack the possibility of frequent visits to their homeland, feel homesick and vote in elections. Distances are a serious barrier for them. Persons with low levels of identity in Germany define themselves as Europeans and do not maintain contact with Bulgarians. They have the possibility of frequent visits, and more communication. They do not vote, and factors such as nostalgia and sadness are not important to them. Persons with intermediate identification levels in Germany and the USA are characterized by the fact that they maintain less frequent contact with other Bulgarians. They also communicate a lot more with locals. Some wish to vote but do not have the necessary conditions. Others have conditions, but do not wish to vote and consider that as emigrants they have no right to participate in the political life of Bulgaria. They self-identify as both European/American and “other”. The results give reason to claim that migrants who have easier access to Bulgaria have weaker to medium identification. While those who live in the geographically more distant country have a more pronounced identity. The report presents the possible interpretations of the obtained result.
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The aim of this paper is to determine the effects of the transition on the standard of living and social inequality in Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Russia. In order to establish a market economy, these countries started economic and systemic reforms at the end of the 1980s. The goal of the transition was the establishment of a market economy and macroeconomic stability, and to ensure a higher standard of living because (with the exception of Slovenia) the GDP per capita in these countries was significantly lower than the average of the EU countries. Although they applied different approaches in the implementation of the transition, it is characteristic for all countries that in the first phase of the transition (until the mid-1990s), they had the problem of recession and hyperinflation, which, together with the inadequate privatization process, was reflected in the decline of the standard of living (in Slovenia and Russia) and the growth of inequality. Only after establishing institutional reforms and attracting FDI, in the second transition phase (until the end of the 1990s), macroeconomic stability was established, which contributed to the growth of living standards (except for Russia) and the reduction of inequality (except in Poland).
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Organised childcare dates back to the first half of the 19th century. Kindergartens appeared first, with nurseries appearing approximately 20 years later. The aim of this article is to present the development of nursery work in some countries in Europe, USA and in Bulgaria in a historical perspective. Material and methods: Foreign and Bulgarian literary sources have been studied. The method applied is documentary analysis. Results and conclusions: Day nurseries appeared for the first time in Germany with the main function - reducing infant and child mortality. Later, such childcare facilities began to function in different forms across many countries in Eu- rope – Hungary, Russia, France, Bulgaria. They were based on Froebel’s ideas regarding pre-school education which left the borders of the European continent and reached the United States, where a network of nurseries developed. In Bulgaria, the nursery work began at the start of the 20th century in Sofia, and the first nursery in Varna opened in 1940. Throughout the years the objectives of nurseries are constantly changing as per the economic conditions in different countries
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The paper deals with the issue of developmental difficulties in children in the context of mainstream education in kindergarten. It is based on the WHO definition of developmental difficulties. These are conditions that put a child at risk of suboptimal development, which may be social, medical or other disadvantages. From this perspective, it is a diverse range of issues in children that educators may encounter in kindergarten. Such children are often a challenge for educators. This paper presents qualitative research in which six case studies of children with diverse developmental difficulties in kindergarten were processed. It outlines the various challenges these children face. As well as need to focus on the child with developmental difficulties in kindergarten from different aspects: biological, developmental, psychological, pedagogical and social (family, school, community), which requires a non-categorical, multi-disciplinary and coordinated approach.
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One of the most common types of aggressive behavior among school-aged children is bullying which is no longer just a matter of the army, prison, or the lives of people in borderline life situations. It is not infrequently encountered by pupils and teachers in our schools as well. Nowadays, this phenomenon is moving from the age of adolescence and puberty to increasingly younger age groups - even to the younger school age or pre-school age. This paper deals with the issue of bullying among pupils of younger school age. The aim of the presented contribution is to present the experiences of primary school teachers with bullying among pupils and to map what forms of prevention they use in their practice.
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This article is devoted to the functioning of Russian winged words in the Polish Internet discourse. The analysis of the material collected from a variety of websites, blogs, comments, and demotivators showed that Russian winged words are present in the statements of Internet users. In newspaper articles and news programmes, the author or the source of the winged word appears more often, while the authors of blogs and demotivators use Russian units which have lost the link with the source and are easily modifiable. Most often, in the statements of young people there are those that do not require linguistic and cultural competences; they constitute unnamed, permanent expressions for the broadcasters. It can therefore be assumed that the younger generation (including the authors of demotivators) use Russian winged words without being aware of their origin, and their lexicon includes those that are universal in their meaning and do not carry additional contexts.
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The paper focuses on the ignoring of selected punctuation standards in texts prepared by pedagogy students at the University of Silesia. The analysis includes the description of some punctuation experiences, such as not using essential commas for separation, among others, of subordinate sentences (and/or participial sentence equivalents), interconnected with the superior sentence; separation of the subject group and the predicate group with a comma (as a consequence of following a prosody in the distribution of commas); irregular normative policy (as a consequence, among others, of ignorance of punctuation enumeration). The conclusion highlights didactic and normative recommendations in terms of modern Polish punctuation. It includes the necessity to record, register and analyse new punctuation tendencies in texts written in Polish, such as the ignorance of selected punctuation standards, and the turn towards secondary orality, following the impact of English punctuation.
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This article is an attempt to outline the anti-queer discourse in the contemporary Russian cultural space. The analysis focuses mainly on the film Firebird (Жар-птица), which is a very rare example of queer cinema aimed at a wide Russian audience. In order to indicate the features of the homophobic policy of the authorities towards cultural representations of queer issues, the author references research conducted in the field of social sciences and certain press materials devoted to the premiere of the film. The analysis proves that, despite the intensely promoted (both in political and cultural spheres) anti-homosexual policy, the mass consciousness of the Russian audience was more liberal than it was perceived (at least to a certain extent), and the actions taken by the authorities and politicians did not bring expected results.
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The main objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between TFR, delayed births and indicators of the average age of mother at childbirth in the conditions of postponement parenthood transition throughout the analysed period. An attempt was made to assess the immediate impact of changes, specifically at the end of the period considered, on cross-sectional fertility rates. Based on the relevant indicators, similarities and differences in the dynamics of the observed processes in the European countries were studied. According to the established similarities in the trends of the considered indicators, groups of countries were formed in which the transition started at the same time and in a relatively close socio-economic context. In this study, more detailed attention was paid to the very pronounced recent postponement of births observed in 2020, when the global Covid-19 pandemic unfolded in Europe at the beginning of the year.
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The article presents the results of a statistical analysis of the dependence of the birth rate in Bulgaria on the standard of living in an up-to-date aspect. Fertility was presented using the gross birth rate and the total fertility rate. In order to assess the standard of living, a complex set of criteria for administrative areas was calculated, taking into account the state of 12 specially selected indicators at the same time. The information used was: the information officially published by the National Statistical Institute, Eurostat and data from the publication “Regional Profiles – Development Indicators” by the Institute for Market Economy. The algorithm of the used methodology was detailed, including the user options and arguments for choice. An international comparison was also made involving the EU Member States. The lack of a significant relationship between the birth rate and the standard of living according to complex criteria in Bulgaria and a moderate negative relationship between the total fertility rate and the standard of living in our country was revealed. When the analysis is based only on the GDP per capita as criteria for the achieved standard of living, the relationship between material well-being and the birth rate turns out to be moderately positive, both for Bulgaria and for the entire set of EU Member States (EU 27). Recommendations were made for selective material stimulation of the population in reproductive age and special attention to support married couples with reproductive problems and vulnerable social communities.
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Assessing the impact of the ongoing demographic processes on Bulgaria’s economy and social system requires a complex approach, since the in-depth analysis of the situation and the causes that lead to such demographic processes are a reliable basis on which to develop a concept for an active demographic policy. The purpose of this article is to reveal and measure the changes in the age structure of the population, to model the trends in the change of the age dependency ratio, and to evaluate the economic and social effects of population aging, by usingstatistical methods of analysis. Statistical methods are used in the study to analyse dynamic series, to analyse structural changes and differences and to reveal relationships and dependencies. The results of evaluating the intensity of the changes in the age structure provide grounds for the conclusion that the changes in the age structure based on the three age groups – 0–14, 15–64 and 65+ compared to the base structure, are manifested more slowly in comparison with the changes in the structure of the population on the basis of consecutive cohorts formed by five-year age intervals. When compared with the structure of the previous year, the value of the ratios would turn out to be lower and would indicate weaker structural changes, since the age structure in the considered age intervals does not imply sharp changes within a year-long period. The developed trend models would make it possible to develop short-term forecasts of the expected values of the age dependency ratios by years with the corresponding confidence intervals of the forecast, evaluation of potential changes in the case of changes in the factors affecting the main demographic processes. The significant changes in the age structure of the population of Bulgaria and the deepening of the population ageing processes bring to the fore some important issues relatedto economic development, stability of the national economy, stability of the pension system and fiscal stability, due to the increased pension-related expenditures, expenditures on health care, social assistance, etc.
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The present study represents an attempt to identify basic effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the long-term trends observed in the labour force reproduction in Bulgaria. The period of time of the study selected (2006-2021) starts with the year before the Bulgaria’s accession into the EU. To receive a more objective assessment of the changes studied, an international comparison of the trends was made with four European countries: Greece, Hungary, the Chech Republic and Sweden. Statistical information published by the National Statistical Institute and Eurostat (vital statistics and annual data of Labour Force Survey) over the period analysed was used in the study. The study includes two aspects of analysis. The first aspect covers the examination of long-term trends of evolution of basic demographic parameters in the selected countries (labour force dimension and speed of the demographic ageing). The second aspect is focussed on the trends of evolution of economic activity levels by three demographic and social attributes (age, sex and level of education). The results obtained provide a basis to consider the negative changes in the long-term trends observed during the period 2020–2021 as an indication for the presence of COVID-19 pandemic’s different sized effects on the labour supply.
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This paper aims to discuss the role of intrapreneurship for supporting sustainable development in organisations and achieving environmental, social and business sustainability. The results of a survey conducted in Bulgaria among employees and employers are presented and an analysis of the effect their intrapreneurial skills and attitudes have on the existing practices, targeted towards achieving sustainable development in organisations, was made. The results of the study confirm the thesis defended in the paper, related to the understanding that building capacity within existing organisations to identify innovative ideas and further develop them in intrapreneurial endeavours for the modification of products, services and organisational processes has a significant potential for positive impact on sustainability.
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The paper deals with a barrier-free environment in terms of its purposes, creation, and importance. It justifies the question of why the free-barriers issue deserves to be a topic of immediate interest within everyday life and mass-media content. To take into consideration the participation of medical, research, and education specialists, the paper explains and justifies the key role of mass media that have developed methods and strategies for presenting the current situation and issue to responsible agents in public administration as well as executive, law-making bodies. The emphasis is given to legal coverage and support to implement international standards in this field. Mass media can find out responsible and decision-making persons that can improve the situation and mood of physically disabled people and significantly improve their lives. The paper explains media strategies and presents authentic examples from the online world of mass media.
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The study describes covert aggressive behaviour that occurs as early as pre-school age. It is specific in that at preschool age the aggressor acts without hiding yet. Uniform findings are related to preschool age, supplemented by research findings from Slovak kindergartens. The authors describe on a specific situation of hidden aggressive behaviour, which was identified during the monitoring of aggressive behaviour in kindergartens.
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