{"title":"After Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz. Strikes and Organic Intellectuals in the German Meat Industry","authors":"Daniela Ana, Ștefan Voicu","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.5","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, migrant workers with temporary and service contract work in the German meat industry have rarely been recruited by trade unions. The Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz (“Occupational Safety and Health Inspection Act”) law implemented in 2021 aimed to grant equal employment conditions to the majority of the workers in slaughterhouses, creating new avenues for trade unions to gain more members and organize industry-level negotiations for better wages and a collective agreement. This article explores the lessons we can draw from the series of strikes that accompanied the negotiations. By relying primarily on participant observation in the meat industry strikes and employing an actor-centred perspective on industrial relations, the paper reveals the role of shop-floor organic intellectuals in mobilizing and demobilizing workers. The analysis of the strikes shows that organic intellectuals can be instrumental in articulating the resistance of subaltern groups, but they can also be co-opted by dominant groups to manufacture consent.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136300366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social Counselling as Policy Intervention: Mediating Welfare Benefit Claims of Romanians in Berlin","authors":"Cătălin Buzoianu","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.6","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the role of non-profit organizations (NPOs) in supporting welfare benefit claims by Romanian immigrants in vulnerable situations in Berlin. The study utilizes in-depth qualitative interviews with social counsellors, language mediators, and project leads to explore the function of social counselling offices in assisting these individuals. Social counselling is analysed as both an institutionalized policy intervention and a communicative practice focused on problem-solving. The paper highlights the power asymmetry between counsellor and advice-seeker stemming from the counsellor's superior knowledge of the welfare system, and German society. Social counselling acts as a means of support for individuals to navigate complex institutional arrangements and manage risks in modern society. However, the counsellor's authoritative role in shaping communication constitutes another dimension of power asymmetry. Faced with challenges such as complex legal regulations and limited resources, social counsellors emphasize the need for advice-seekers to gradually take responsibility for their own lives and interact with welfare institutions. This encouragement of self-sufficiency (orig. Ger. Selbstständigkeit) aligns with the principles of German workfare policies. Non-cooperation from advice-seekers in the context of social counselling can be therefore seen as a form of resistance against disciplinary power within the welfare state. The paper raises concerns about the long-term effectiveness and impact of social counselling, noting also the potential for burnout among social counsellors.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82896341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Avantaje și riscuri ale internetului pentru copii și adolescenți. Strategii de mediere digitală parentală și școlară. Editura Presa Universitară Clujeană, Cluj‐Napoca, 2021. Anda Rodideal","authors":"Ionuț Captari","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.11","url":null,"abstract":"The book addresses the issue of parental and school digital mediation strategies, identifying the key variables and highlighting the gaps found, developing a dynamic model and a School Digital Mediation Guide dedicated to teachers, school counselors, for a deep understanding of how the internet shapes child and adolescent development. The author remarks the distinct characteristics of technology use in digital education by creating connections between national and international studies in the field and opinions of main actors involved to guide the reader in understanding how to increase the benefits and limit the risks of using the Internet for children and adolescents. The School Digital Mediation Guide contains viable national-level solutions and proposals for implementing beneficial measures for children's and adolescents' digital education and integration into school and family activities.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"23 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83295156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"E-Governance in Times of Uncertainty: Diaspora-Built Practices on Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Antonia Jeflea","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.7","url":null,"abstract":"E-governance is essential for migrants to ease access to various administrative services in their home and destination countries. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed novel facets of inequality in the accessibility of these facilities, the lack of personnel during lockdowns being not the only impediment for foreigners. This paper aims to research the unequal access of the Romanian diaspora in Germany to digital solutions provided by authorities and the unprecedented circumstances that occurred during the medical emergency. The data analysis revealed how people built their e-governance networks on social media groups, providing alternative solutions to their issues and needs. Diaspora's relationships with governmental bodies are often priorly mediated via online communication in diasporic groups, where people ask for advice or present their approaches. Data collection has been done mainly on Facebook groups of Romanian migrants in Germany between 2020 and 2022. Methodologically wise, this research used digital field research to understand how people interact in these groups and what consequences could arise from their digital behaviour.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88880858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Violența domestică în România în contextul pandemiei. Riscuri și politici de suport. Pro Universitaria, București, 2022. Elena Zamfir, Simona Ilie, Sebastian Fitzek (coordonatori)","authors":"A. Deliu","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.9","url":null,"abstract":"This book provides a thorough discussion of domestic violence, as it is configured in nowadays Romania. The volume is made of nine chapters, each of them exploring distinct facets of the phenomenon. Emphasis is put on the factors that have the potential to lead to domestic violence, such as alcohol consumption, and on the importance of coherent and adequate policies to address the phenomenon and provide support for its victims.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80998673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cătălin Buzoianu, Christian Sperneac-Wolfer, Sebastian Țoc
{"title":"Editors’ Note","authors":"Cătălin Buzoianu, Christian Sperneac-Wolfer, Sebastian Țoc","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"After the collapse of the state socialist regime in 1989, the de-industrialization and privatisation of the economy was accompanied by processes of impoverishment across significant segments of the working-class population (Chivu et al., 2017), as well as large-scale emigration of Romanian workers to Western European countries and North America (Sandu, 2006). During the following three decades, Romania experienced growing social inequalities (UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur, 2016), unequal access to social protection (Adăscăliţei, Raţ, & Spătari, 2020), and struggles over labour rights (Guga, 2014; Varga, & Freyberg-Inan, 2015). Today, the country has the fifth largest and the fastest growing diaspora in the world relative to its population, with approximately 3.6 million people living outside the country (OECD, 2019, 13).","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136300371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is No Employment Better Than Self-Employment? The Story of How Romania Managed To Create a Class of ‘Invisible’ and Forgotten Workers","authors":"Luana Miruna Pop","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.2","url":null,"abstract":"Romania has been, for the past decade, not only the country with the highest in-work poverty among the European member states, but - unlike most European member states - also a country with a steadily growing welfare polarization of the working force. The paper aims to explain why, after more than a decade of fine-tuning of labor market, fiscal and social policies, Romania still finds itself in this situation. Despite constant improvements over the past 12 years in the welfare indicators of the overall employed population, the gap between employees and self-employed widened. The paper documents the increasing differences in exposure to poverty and social exclusion between the two segments of the employed population and points out to the mix of factors responsible for this development. Unlike most of the European countries, where a certain gap between employees and non-employees is the result of the flexibilization of the labour market, thus of the increase in atypical and non-standard employment forms, in Romania this appears to be rather the result of a mix between a unique inherited structure of employment and an inadequate package of social and fiscal measures, which kept and further pushed self-employed into informality. Thus, contrary to other European countries, which face the problem of how to better protect workers in new forms of employment, Romania is still searching for a policy solution that would allow for both the existing self-employed to become ‘visible’ in a formal economy and the diversification of employment forms. Finally, the paper explores the possibilities to reverse the current trend.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136300373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Identity here and there. Migration as resource for identity construction. Pro Universitaria, Bucharest, 2019. Alexandra Deliu","authors":"M. Manoilă","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.13","url":null,"abstract":"“Identity here and there. Migration as resource for identity construction”, by Alexandra Deliu, discusses identity building in the context of Romanian international migration, using narrative analysis as its main analytical approach. The author describes a comprehensive picture of how migration experience is employed in conjunction with other discursive resources to account for the identity of the self and of others.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72679972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Digital Transnational Social Spaces of Romanians and Moldovans in Berlin","authors":"Mihaela-Violeta Vochin","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.8","url":null,"abstract":"This study focuses on the online community of Romanian speaking mobility migrants who live or regularly return to Berlin. Engaging with theories on transnationalism and social media, this article addressed the question of how digital transnational social spaces contribute to international migration, focusing on the integration into the host society. It is argued that social media groups of Romanian speaking migrants are community spaces which strengthen ties between members, thus facilitating international migration. Quantitative data was collected using open-sourced tools and analyzed employing descriptive statistics. Moreover, qualitative data was included stemming from the interactions with users of the observed Facebook groups. Data was gathered between 2020-2021, during Covid-19 pandemic and social distancing. It is concluded that digital transnational social spaces carry meaning to the migrant community, state institutions, social networks, and the state of research. For migrants, the existence of Facebook groups lowers the threshold of integration and allows the strengthening of social ties. Engaged institutions could rethink their communication strategy by considering a more active presence on social media, while the platforms could use digital communities as targeted audiences. Finally, the research has been enriched with a deeper perspective of not only if, but how social media impacts international migration.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90929340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Marvel Superheroes, Their Mythology and Symbols. De ce ne plac supereroii? Mitologia și simbolistica filmelor Marvel/ Why Do We Like Superheroes? Mythology and Symbolism of Marvel Movies. Polirom, Iași, 2022. Nicu Gavriluță","authors":"Ana-Magdalena Petraru","doi":"10.33788/sr.21.1.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.10","url":null,"abstract":"The current review invites on reflection on Marvel superheroes, their mythology and symbols, through the lenses of a reputed sociologist from Romanian academia.","PeriodicalId":34074,"journal":{"name":"Sociologie Romaneasca","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84407877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}