Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050333

Authors: Joseph Dippong Zara Jillani Isaac Jamerson

We examine factors that allow higher status people to steal credit from lower status people. Drawing on opportunity hoarding research and status characteristics and expectation states theory, we develop the concept of status hoarding: the use of one’s status position to accumulate more status through illegitimate means. Compared to similar concepts such as the Matthew Effect, which do not offer a mechanism by which benefits disproportionately accumulate, status hoarding explains how group structures give rise to perceptions of competence and reward deservingness among group members, which facilitate higher status actors’ ability to steal credit and thus increase their status. We use two survey experiments to test our arguments on the role of expectations and referential structures in both assigning credit to higher status actors and inhibiting lower status actors from reporting theft of their ideas. In study one, we find that participants were more likely to assign credit for a valued task contribution to a higher status actor, and these effects were mediated by expectations for reward and competence. In study two, we find that people perceive higher status actors as more likely to report credit stealing to their supervisors, but these effects were not mediated by expectations in the way that we predicted. We conclude with a general discussion of the broader implications of status hoarding and directions for future research.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050332

Authors: Gibson Makamure

This study explores how youth masculinities are constructed in Eswatini’s high schools. Using hegemonic masculinity theory as an analytical lens, data were coded to identify patterns of dominance, strength, and gender hierarchy, thereby highlighting the study’s original contribution to understanding the local manifestation of hegemonic masculinity and advancing theoretical knowledge in this context. Data were collected through a qualitative case study approach involving 36 adolescents aged 16 to 18, comprising equal numbers of 18 boys and 18 girls, from six coeducational high schools. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups revealed that hegemonic masculinity shapes perceptions of gender roles, often promoting aggression in boys and marginalising girls. Sports, especially rugby, are key symbols of masculinity, emphasising strength, dominance, and competitiveness, while girls are excluded from these activities, reinforcing gender inequalities. Institutional practices like task allocation and disciplinary methods further sustain stereotypes, influencing youth identities within cultural and peer pressure contexts. The findings highlight persistent gendered power dynamics and stereotypes that perpetuate inequality. The study makes a significant contribution to the scientific literature by demonstrating how hegemonic masculinity manifests uniquely in Eswatini’s educational and cultural context, thus extending regional studies and providing insights for broader applications. It recommends gender-transformative curricula, increased girls’ participation in male-dominated sports, and gender-neutral disciplinary practices to foster more inclusive, equitable environments.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050331

Authors: Narakate Yimsook Kritsada Theerakosonphong

Despite increasing academic interest in return migration, limited understanding remains of how individual resources, workplace experiences, and perceptions of the origin country interact to shape return migration intention among migrant workers in major industrial destinations. This study investigates return migration intention among Myanmar migrant workers in Samut Sakhon Province, Thailand, using a multilevel framework that links micro-level individual and household characteristics, meso-level workplace and social experiences, and macro-level assessments of conditions in Myanmar. A quantitative research design was employed, with data collected from 506 Myanmar migrant workers using proportional stratified random sampling. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, t-tests, and binary logistic regression. The results indicate that the majority of respondents did not intend to return to Myanmar within the next 10–15 years. Workplace discrimination emerged as the strongest positive predictor of return migration intention, while higher income and annual remittance behavior also increased the likelihood of intending to return. Conversely, having family in Thailand, perceived opportunities for job change or promotion, satisfaction with wages and welfare, and perceived safety in Myanmar reduced the likelihood of return migration intention. The findings suggest that future mobility plans cannot be explained solely by economic calculation. They are also shaped by family arrangements, workplace treatment, and migrants’ assessments of the feasibility and desirability of return. The study advances return migration scholarship by demonstrating the pivotal role of workplace discrimination within a multilevel explanation of return migration intention.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050330

Authors: Haiying Xu Jinqi Qu Jing Zhao

Recent studies indicate that Chinese K-12 teachers possess insufficient knowledge regarding learning disability (LD), hindering their ability to provide effective instruction. Given the foundational role of the pre-service phase in cultivating a scientific approach to teaching, this study aimed to boost pre-service teachers’ LD knowledge and explore its subsequent impact on teaching efficacy and attitudes. Fifty-one pre-service teachers with low levels of baseline LD knowledge were randomly assigned to either a training group or a control group. Utilizing a pretest–intervention–posttest design, the study measured changes in LD knowledge, teaching efficacy, and attitudes toward students with LD. Crucially, attitudes were assessed via a vignette paradigm that differentiated between two components of cognitive evaluations (expectations of future student failure) and emotional experiences (anger arousal towards academic failure). The results showed that pre-service teachers in the training group exhibited substantial gains in LD knowledge. These knowledge gains significantly predicted enhanced teaching efficacy, but this relationship was indirect. Mediation analysis revealed that improved knowledge reduced anger arousal, which in turn boosted efficacy. These findings suggest that fostering teaching confidence requires more than mere knowledge accumulation; it also entails using LD-related knowledge to mitigate negative emotions toward struggling learners. This underscores that teacher education programs must incorporate explicit cultivation of emotional and attitudinal competencies alongside conventional cognitive training.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050329

Authors: Chereese Phillips Caroline Black

There is clear evidence that non-safety-related concerns abound in child protection hotline calls. In the United States, over half of Child Protective Services (CPS) calls are screened out because they do not meet criteria for a child welfare investigation. While reporter bias is one factor theorized to contribute to this level of screened out calls, the field has neither used methods that account for culturally specific socialization processes involved in bias nor analyzed hotline calls to determine if these biases were present. This paper describes cultural domain analysis (CDA) as an innovative method to inform the measurement and assessment of bias in reporters’ narratives about children and families during calls to a CPS hotline. We describe CDA, which involves a rapid interviewing technique (freelisting), a participatory method for coding (pile sorting) and how the resultant findings can be used to inform the development of a measurement framework (codebook and scale), which may be tested using recorded hotline calls. Together, these methods provide a useable framework that can help surface common and shared ways bias is conceptualized and defined in the context of CPS hotline calls. This proposed approach provides a socially valid and reliable way for measurement to make generalizable inferences across a jurisdiction. When applied in practice, data collected and analyzed from the proposed measurement framework can inform jurisdictional CPS hotline policy, practice, and training.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050328

Authors: Hélder Prior Maíra Orso Miguel Andrade

This article investigates the discursive construction of populism in the Portuguese digital public sphere, focusing on the communicative strategies of two party media outlets linked to the populist radical right party CHEGA: Folha Nacional and CHEGA TV. Drawing on Entman’s model of framing functions and the literature on populist communication and digital propaganda, the study examines how these outlets articulate simplified, moralized and emotionally charged narratives to mobilize public opinion and legitimize the party’s political agenda. The empirical corpus consists of 4915 video titles and descriptions published between 2024 and 2025 (CHEGA TV, n = 2476; Folha Nacional, n = 2439). Each unit was coded according to five macro-frames characteristic of populist discourse: (1) appeal to the people and antagonism, (2) messianism, (3) moral restitution, (4) anti-system and anti-elite rhetoric, and (5) exclusion of the other. The research combines qualitative frame analysis with quantitative frequency and co-occurrence analysis, enabling the identification of dominant discursive patterns and their temporal evolution. The study contributes by offering a systematic analysis of populist framing in Chega’s party media, an under-explored field, and by proposing a replicable methodological approach to examine the hybridization of propaganda, emotionality and digital political communication in Europe.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050327

Authors: Leco-Berrocal Sánchez-Martín Mateos-Rodríguez Rengifo-Gallego

Depopulation and structural demographic challenges affect social and territorial cohesion in Europe, a phenomenon that is particularly evident in rural municipalities in Spain, where the loss of the working-age population and the concentration of older adults threaten sustainability. This study analyzes the case of Pescueza (Cáceres, Spain) using a mixed-methods design that combines longitudinal demographic analysis (2000–2024) with a qualitative evaluation of the community project “Quédate con nosotr@s,” which focuses on comprehensive care and intergenerational participation. The results are critical regarding the demographic structure, with an aging index of 500% and dependency levels three times higher than the national average, although a slight demographic recovery linked to local initiatives is observed. This project has positive effects on social cohesion, community capital, and resilience in the face of demographic challenges, establishing itself as a replicable model for rural micro-territories. The study proposes a strategic framework based on the SWOT-CAME matrix and social sustainability indicators, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and European territorial cohesion policies. It concludes that social innovation, collaborative governance, and multilevel cooperation are key elements for addressing rural aging, and recommends public policies aimed at stable funding, inclusive digitalization, attracting young people, specialized training, and the creation of adapted infrastructure.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050326

Authors: Manuel José Mera Cedeño Gertrudis Amarilis Laínez Quinde Wilson Alexander Zambrano Vélez César Ernesto Roldán Martínez

The present study seeks to synthesize the scientific evidence from the last decade (2015–2025) regarding the transition from inequality in technological access toward social stratification mediated by automated decision-making systems. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines and the SPIDER model, a corpus of 74 high-impact records from Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, and PsycINFO was examined. The results reveal an exponential growth in scientific production since 2018, marking a shift from infrastructure-based inequality toward a systemic stratification mediated by algorithmic opacity. Three critical sectors of exclusion are categorized: the socio-health nexus, the labor market, and the educational ecosystem. Methodologically, quantitative algorithmic auditing predominates (58%), although mixed sociotechnical approaches have increased by 25% since 2021 to capture experiences of intersectional vulnerability. The study concludes that AI acts as an active agent of social reproduction, necessitating a transition toward “Algorithmic Justice” and “Human-Centric Governance.” Finally, a “Reinstating AI” framework is proposed to democratize technological development and mitigate systemic biases, offering a roadmap for researchers and policymakers in the pursuit of technological sovereignty.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050325

Authors: Robert Lekganyane Sipho Sibanda

Social workers can play a significant role in promoting environmental citizenship to benefit vulnerable groups, such as those residing in informal settlement areas. With the proliferation of informal settlements in many African countries, the role of social workers in advocating for environmental citizenship is even more crucial. Their involvement should be evidence-based and entrenched in research that promotes an understanding of the impact of environmental degradation on human lives and their roles in environmental citizenship. Such knowledge should then inform environmental citizenship policies and programmes. Despite this crucial role as imposed by their professional mandate, policies, legislations and international treaties to address the conditions of marginalised and vulnerable people, environmental degradation continues to aggravate the vulnerability of people living in informal settlements. Furthermore, the scholarly contribution of social workers to environmental citizenship is delicate, with limited knowledge around the subject matter. Following the integrative literature review method, this paper outlines the nature of environmental citizenship, the relevance of social work to environmental citizenship, and the approach that social workers can adopt to contribute towards environmental citizenship in informal settlements. Literature around environmental citizenship in informal settlements, environmental disasters and informal settlements, and social work, as well as environmental citizenship and social justice, served as a population, from which a sample meeting predetermined inclusion criteria was purposefully drawn and analysed. The study confirms that, by its nature, environmental citizenship is central to social work and that there is a need to empower social workers around the subject matter.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050324

Authors: María Ángeles Fernández-Barrero Luisa Graciela Aramburú Moncada

Background: The growing use of big data and algorithmic personalisation in political communication has intensified concerns about surveillance, privacy, and manipulation. Although previous research has examined these issues among the general public, much less is known about how journalism students—future professionals who have grown up in data-fied environments—perceive them. This study investigates the extent to which these students feel ‘spied on’ by digital platforms and online media, how such perceptions influence their trust in media, platforms and political actors, and what attitudes they hold regarding the ethical use of data in journalism. (2) Methods: Based on a survey of 222 journalism students, the research analyses perceptions of digital surveillance, awareness of political microtargeting, and attitudes toward the ethical use of audience data in journalism practice. A qualitative component, through focus groups, complements the survey by exploring ethical reflections on algorithmic tracking and journalistic responsibility. (3) Results: The findings reveal a widespread distrust of social networks and political actors and a more moderate scepticism toward the news media. Students express strong ethical concerns about data use and algorithmic personalisation, particularly in political communication and in relation to their future professional roles. (4) Conclusions: The study suggests that journalism students show critical awareness of algorithmic personalisation. Their perceptions highlight the need for academic training in transparency, consent, and accountability in data-driven practices.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050323

Authors: Andrew Harvey

This article highlights the nature and extent of challenges faced by students from refugee backgrounds in Australian higher education, and suggests potential cultural, institutional and policy reforms to meet these challenges. People from refugee backgrounds are less likely than other Australians to access higher education and face barriers across and beyond the student life cycle. These issues include highly unequal graduate outcomes, resulting from factors such as unconscious (and conscious) employer bias and limited social networks. However, while national census data confirm relatively poor access rates and graduate outcomes, most people from refugee backgrounds have historically been subsumed under a broader non-English speaking background (NESB) category within higher education statistics. This approach has served to mask inequities and create a largely invisibilized group of under-represented domestic students. Improving access and outcomes will require a greater focus on collection and publication of equity data, more targeted institutional policies across the life cycle, and effective advocacy. Cultural change is also required for universities to better identify, recognize, and reward diverse forms of capital possessed by students from refugee backgrounds. Equally, effective advocacy could include allyship with the original displaced people in Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, whose own voices are increasingly centered and central to reform of Australian higher education.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050322

Authors: Ernesto F. L. Amaral

International migration research is entering a phase in which digitalization reshapes how migration processes are measured, modeled, and governed. At the same time, recent scholarship emphasizes the need to further develop migration theory so that it reflects contemporary migration dynamics and evolving data environments. This article proposes a global framework for “digital migration systems” that integrates classic migration theories with digital-demography infrastructures and digital trace data. The framework conceptualizes migration as a multi-scalar system in which origin and destination contexts, policy regimes, and network dynamics interact with measurement technologies and data architectures. Building on digital-era demographic scholarship, the article outlines how traditional population sources such as censuses and household surveys can be combined with administrative records and digital trace data while maintaining attention to representativeness, coverage, and bias. The article then presents a modeling pathway connecting spatial interaction models and Bayesian approaches to common migration data constraints. Finally, it develops policy applications illustrating how a digital migration systems perspective can support scenario-based policy evaluation, rapid shock assessment, and local capacity planning. The article contributes a conceptual bridge integrating migration theory, digital measurement infrastructures, and policy analysis. It also clarifies scope conditions for applying the framework across diverse national contexts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050321

Authors: Adrianna N. Taylor Rebecca Lisenbee Colleen Slentz

Despite the focus on social justice, social work education is still heavily rooted in hierarchy and harmful educational practices. This conceptual and practice-informed article aims to highlight the deconstruction of educational hierarchy within the classroom through a justice lens, with equitable intention, and storytelling as meaningful discourse in social work education. These authors intend to deconstruct power dynamics, dismantle harmful assumptions, and encourage the unlearning of systemic and oppressive methods with the integration of clinical social work experience, useful decolonized classroom practices, and narrative pedagogy. The practice of storytelling can be healing, aid in building community, and also offer a collective learning experience that is actively working in social work education. The unlearning of harmful grading practices, classroom power structures, and models that reinforce individualism are essential for propelling social work education toward a more collective, justice-oriented approach. This article draws on transformational pedagogy and clinical social work practice to explore the ways in which change can occur with intention, attunement, and humility on behalf of instructors and lends to the ongoing conversation around decolonizing social work education. The authors posit that transformative education lies in the space between social work education and clinical practice. The methodology for this article is a culmination of a narrative literature review and the authors’ collective clinical social work practice and pedagogical experience, and this article brings what already occurs in that space into the scholarly literature.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050320

Authors: Alaa AL-Taii Marzouqah Alazmi Hamza Allam Muna Alhammadi Kayaty Ashour

Despite legislative advancements, social and reputational norms continue to govern domestic conflict’s institutional visibility. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design in the United Arab Emirates, covering the period 2019–2025, this study analyzes how the transition across two successive domestic violence statutes is associated with women’s institutional trajectories. Quantitatively, 412 first-instance case files were analyzed using non-parametric tests and a CHAID decision tree. Qualitatively, interviews with women (n = 28) and institutional actors (n = 23) explain how “status flipping” occurs through counter-complaints and moral character narratives. Findings indicate that norms-based moral regulation and structural constraints (e.g., financial dependency and custody leverage) are strong correlates of escalation from case closure to formal prosecution. The CHAID model identifies structural constraints as the principal splitter in trajectory separation. Post-2024 patterns suggest an institutional lag, where implementation routines evolve more slowly than formal law. The paper contributes a model of reputation-mediated escalation and proposes procedural safeguarding to curb retaliatory cross-filing and make patterned coercive control legally legible. By situating women’s legal interactions within an interactional pathway of norms, constraints, and institutional translation, the study clarifies why “protection” can paradoxically morph into complex procedural outcomes in legally transitioning contexts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050319

Authors: Victoria Cooper Stephanie Jane Bennett

Children of prisoners (CoP) and their families experience stigmatisation simply because a family member is imprisoned. The stigma of familial imprisonment compels CoP to keep their family circumstances hidden, which intensifies isolation and restricts access to essential support. Furthermore, the impact of language used to represent CoP, along with media reporting of familial crimes, perpetuates stigmatising narratives and subsequent marginalisation. Despite long-standing recommendations, efforts to enhance provision for CoP in schools across England and Wales have been only partially implemented, resulting in inconsistent and inadequate support. As CoP remain unrecognised as a priority group, policy inaction and stigmatisation risk perpetuating cycles of exclusion. Drawing upon empirical data, this article provides a unique contribution to the academic field using a symbolic interactionist, labelling theory and critical realist framework to examine how targeted strength-based support for CoP can help them to reconstruct stigmatising narratives and mitigate negative outcomes by moving from a position of silence to a position of strength.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050318

Authors: Adam Ballout Marian S. Harris

Legal advocacy for parents involved in the public child welfare system in the United States is typically initiated only after a child has been removed and a dependency petition has been filed. For infants, removal at or shortly after birth constitutes a profound disruption of the parent–child attachment relationship and is increasingly recognized as an adverse childhood experience. This paper focuses on a summative program evaluation of the Family Intervention Response to Stop Trauma (FIRST) Legal Clinic in Washington State, a prevention-oriented model providing free, confidential legal advocacy and peer support to pregnant and postpartum parents prior to Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation or court involvement. Administrative data from 2019 to 2025 for 1232 eligible families were utilized to examine eligibility and referral patterns, reasons for ineligibility, and case outcomes. Findings demonstrated that eligible families with known outcomes avoided dependency court involvement entirely or experienced case closure without child removal, while a smaller proportion proceeded to dependency court filings. These findings highlight the need to reduce unnecessary child welfare system entry and mitigate traumatic disruption of the parent–child attachment relationship at birth by providing legal advocacy before investigation and court involvement.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050317

Authors: Robin W. Spencer Samuel M. Otterstrom

Many studies of human migration focus on modern issues such as economics, politics, urbanization, and commuting. Here, we seek foundational patterns by using very large genealogies to measure migration centuries before modern technologies or census data became available. In Europe and North America from 1400 to 1950 we find two distinct patterns of internal lifetime migration: in most locations and eras we find “steady-state” migration with a power–law distribution of migration distance. A very different “frontier” distribution appears suddenly in North America after 1740; it is not a simple power law and has much longer average distances. All datasets (both patterns) are well fit by a three-parameter model; the temporal and geographic patterns of the fitted parameters give new insight to American internal expansion 1620–1950. In addition, we find that frontier migration is highly directional and asymmetric; gravity models do not apply. The American frontier pattern arises from the colonial-era steady-state within two generations, plateaus, and then returns to a more mobile steady-state. This frontier pattern is enabled by large-scale technological or numeric imbalance and geographic opportunity; when these forces abate, a new steady-state begins.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050316

Authors: Gabriella Hideg-Fehér Zsuzsanna Pótó

The aim of the present study was to explore differences in fair play attitudes among university students in Hungary and Kenya using the Fair Play Attitude Scale (EAF). The questionnaire was culturally adapted for the Kenyan context and administered in both countries. A total of 2090 university students participated in the survey (1278 from Kenya and 812 from Hungary). The scale measures three dimensions of fair play attitudes: gamesmanship and the importance of winning, acceptance of rough play and cheating, and fair play and enjoyment of the game. Principal component analysis confirmed the three-factor structure of the instrument, and reliability indices indicated satisfactory internal consistency in both samples. Due to the non-normal distribution of the variables, non-parametric statistical procedures were applied to examine differences between groups. The results revealed significant cross-cultural differences in fair play attitudes. Kenyan students, particularly men, showed higher acceptance of competition-oriented behaviour and gamesmanship, whereas Hungarian students placed greater emphasis on enjoyment and adherence to fair play principles. The findings highlight the role of cultural and social contexts in shaping ethical attitudes in sport and underline the importance of fair play education in sport pedagogy and educational practice.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050315

Authors: Renata Avancini Tonini Mariana Borges Nunes Vieira Francisco Antonio Coelho Maria Caroline Goulart Iaria Guerra Aretha Salomão Pedro Marques-Quinteiro

The inclusion of refugees in the formal labor markets of host countries has been recognized as a sustainable solution to forced migration. In Brazil, due to the growing number of refugees, it is urgent to look at the difficulties faced by this population and develop strategies for their socio-economic inclusion. This study proposes a reflection on the meaning of decent work for refugees, considering their own perspectives, with the aim of offering a broader understanding of their desires and needs in the labor sphere. A survey was applied to 78 Venezuelan refugees in the northern region of Brazil. The data were analyzed using Jamovi software (Version 2.3.28), including descriptive and inferential statistics. Among the findings were the expectation of opportunities that value the skills of refugees. Difficulties due to cultural adaptation in organizations and a lack of professional recognition were pointed out. Job crafting proved to be a promising strategy for positively shaping work.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050313

Authors: Nicolette V. Roman Chanté Johannes Shenaaz Wareley

Abusive relationships are too often explained solely in terms of individual behaviour, as if a woman’s decision to stay were simply a matter of psychology or poor judgement. In South African communities, however, the reality is considerably more complex. The reasons women remain are situated within what can be described as a distorted process of care: a network of relational, material, and structural forces that alter the very meaning of care itself. This study aimed to explore these interconnections. Guided by an ethics of care framework, we employed multimodal qualitative methods to engage participants from four South African communities between August 2024 and July 2025. Participants (n = 262) were recruited through snowball, purposive, and convenience sampling. Data were coded using ATLAS.ti V8 and analysed thematically. Five interconnected themes shaped the framework. Distorted care described how caregiving could become coercive, shaped by fear, rigid gender roles, intergenerational abuse, and substance misuse. Care under constraint highlighted the material limitations, financial dependency, daily survival challenges, and self-sacrificing caregiving, that left women depleted. The silence of care captured emotional withdrawal, isolation, and the disabling effect of shame on help-seeking. Reclaiming care traced the tentative routes towards healing through ethical self-care, faith, forgiveness, and a conscious effort to disrupt harmful patterns. Woven throughout was structural failure, including absent family networks, the moral decline of communities, and institutional systems that consistently failed women. Remaining in an abusive relationship is not a sign of weakness. It is a negotiation, profoundly constrained, within systems of care that have been fundamentally distorted. Effective intervention should move beyond framing gender-based violence as an individual problem and address it as a collective one, restoring care as a shared social and political responsibility.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050314

Authors: Tim Lomas Dennis Snower James O. Pawelski Brendan W. Case Matthew T. Lee Jonathan D. Teubner Tyler J. VanderWeele

Can qualities of wellbeing and flourishing be meaningfully applied at the level of the social group, not merely as an aggregation of the wellbeing or flourishing of its members, but on its own terms as an emergent entity? This paper proposes that this is indeed the case, over three sections. First, we introduce the notions of wellbeing and flourishing, and note that these are usually applied to individual humans, not to groups (other than as the sum of the wellbeing/flourishing of their individual members). Second, to explore whether wellbeing/flourishing can apply at the group level, we elucidate the idea of a complex adaptive system (CAS), exploring work which argues that both individuals and groups constitute CASs, albeit different kinds. Finally, we consider some qualities by which a group itself could be deemed as flourishing.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050312

Authors: Mi-Young An

University dropout remains a critical challenge in South Korean higher education, with over 100,000 students leaving annually. This study investigates the structural and institutional factors influencing dropout rates across 211 four-year universities in South Korea, using publicly available data from the Korean University Information Disclosure System. Three research hypotheses were tested through independent samples t-tests, Pearson correlation analysis, one-way ANOVA, and multiple regression analysis. The results indicate that private universities exhibit significantly higher voluntary withdrawal rates than public institutions (t=−3.86, p<0.001), and non-metropolitan universities show significantly higher overall dropout rates than their metropolitan counterparts (t=−4.52, p<0.001). Furthermore, a significant negative correlation was found between student enrollment rates and dropout rates at the regional level (r=−0.561, p=0.019), with this relationship being particularly pronounced in non-metropolitan areas (r=−0.592, p=0.026). Multiple regression analysis revealed that institutional type (public vs. private) and regional enrollment rate are significant predictors of dropout rates, explaining 19.8% of the variance (F=17.01, p<0.001). These findings suggest that policy interventions should target private and non-metropolitan institutions, where structural vulnerabilities amplify dropout risks.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050311

Authors: Erhan Hancığaz

This study examines how Syrian migrants in Turkey—who generally have temporary protection status—adapt to their new environment, focusing on their sense of belonging, social acceptance, and social interaction. In this research, acculturation is considered not only as a one-way adaptation process but also as a multidimensional and mutually evaluated process that emerges through various variables such as the relationships migrants establish with the host society, their intercultural communication experiences, and their daily life practices. The study, conducted using a qualitative research design, is based on data obtained from in-depth interviews with semi-structured questions conducted with 20 Syrian migrants who have resided in various cities in Turkey for at least 5 years. The data emerging from the interviews were analyzed using descriptive-thematic analysis. The findings reveal that positive social contact and interaction within the social structure reinforce the sense of belonging; conversely, discrimination, exposure to exclusion, and legal uncertainty negatively affect acculturation processes. The study contributes to the literature by providing a context-sensitive analysis of acculturation, emphasizing the role of social interaction, belonging, and social acceptance in shaping migrants’ experiences.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050310

Authors: Kimberly B. Rogers Nina Bouche Jaein Chung Ellison Huang Alexa Kalish

Mental health issues among U.S. college students are reaching critical levels. Sociological theories explain how self and identity processes shape mental health, but few studies assess theoretically grounded interventions designed to improve it. Drawing on the affect control theory of self (ACT-Self), we examine whether students’ sustained investment in a positive, powerful, active identity across an academic term is associated with positive changes in their self-sentiments and mental health. Twenty-nine students invested in such an identity as part of a term-length project in a sociology course. We gathered three waves of survey data to track students’ self-sentiments and mental health immediately before (Wave 1) and after (Wave 2) the project and one month later (Wave 3). Students’ self-sentiments drew significantly closer to their goal at Wave 2 and remained closer at Wave 3. Depression, anxiety, and stress decreased across waves but were not significantly lower than baseline until Wave 3. Thriving and flourishing were significantly higher at Wave 2 but did not significantly differ from baseline at Wave 3. Students with self-sentiments closer to their goal reported lower depression and anxiety at Wave 2 and lower depression at Wave 3. Our findings provide preliminary evidence that identity-based interventions may be associated with improvements in some dimensions of college student mental health, depression in particular.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050309

Authors: Alex R. Piquero

Developmental and life-course criminology (DLC) has been the epicenter of criminology for over 35 years. The onset of DLC began with theoretical models that sought to better understand the development of antisocial and criminal activity. Then, with the ‘aging’ of longitudinal studies and the development of advanced quantitative methods, researchers began to empirically test DLC-related hypotheses and propositions. While the extant research base has been extensive, less work has considered how findings from DLC research can inform justice policy. By reviewing key insights from the extant research, this essay focuses on how DLC-related research has made policy gains and, more importantly, how it can lead to more informed decision making surrounding youthful offenders.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050308

Authors: Regina C. Serpa Tony Manzi

As housing and migration are increasingly emerging as key global concerns in the 21st century, this article offers an in-depth evaluation and synthesis of existing research at the intersection between housing and migration. Through a detailed critical review of discipline-specific approaches in sociological, political and economic traditions, the article assesses the strengths, weaknesses and gaps in extant literature to challenge and define underlying assumptions and approaches to analysis. The article argues that the debates surrounding migration have been under-theorised in the housing literature and that, despite some exceptions, the general literature in migration studies has tended to underplay the importance of housing. Moreover, studies which have been undertaken within housing research can be criticised on grounds of being aspatial, ahistorical and/or apolitical. This critical review identifies cross-cutting themes of causality, cohesion and citizenship as areas for further development and argues that future housing and migration research studies should have a more solid theoretical foundation, which can offer opportunities for more effective, engaged scholarship.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050307

Authors: Enikő Kovács-Szépvölgyi Polett Koncsekné Reményi Roland Kelemen

In recent years, several states have introduced restrictive measures regarding children’s use of digital devices in schools, shifting policy focus from digital literacy development towards prohibition and regulation. This study employs a comparative policy analysis to examine the regulation of ICT device use across EU member states, followed by a Hungarian case study focusing on a ministerial decree that restricted students’ access to digital devices. The social and educational implications are explored through an empirical survey-based study conducted among parents of children aged 6–18. The findings indicate that the regulation’s legitimacy is based on a general normative conviction rather than direct experience. The study reveals that a top-down policy, lacking broad social consensus and student participation, tends to function as a lex imperfecta (imperfect law) in practice, which in turn fosters a “hidden curriculum” of rule circumvention among students. We argue that such policies, by undermining the perceived legitimacy of rules, may unintentionally damage students’ long-term legal socialization and respect for norms. This suggests that effective regulation requires participatory approaches to build legitimacy, rather than relying solely on prohibition.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050306

Authors: Ehsan Jozaghi Pouria Jozaghi

Debates about the relevance of constitutional monarchies have intensified in recent years, with critics questioning their democratic legitimacy, symbolic role, and public cost. This study moves beyond normative debates by evaluating the monarchy through a measurable economic framework grounded in the artificial intelligence (AI) driven influencer economy via mass and social media. Specifically, it analyzes the Royal Family’s presence on YouTube, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter), alongside traditional media coverage indexed in the Newsstream database, to estimate tangible benefits relative to institutional costs using mathematical modelling and sensitivity analysis. The findings highlight that the combined annual value of social and mass media influence is approximately US$26,672 billion, with an estimated benefit–cost ratio of 40.0 million to 1. Even under conservative assumptions, the scale of media reach and engagement substantially exceeds the per capita cost of maintaining the institution. By reframing monarchy as a large-scale soft-power actor embedded within contemporary digital AI driven media ecosystems, this study contributes to research on constitutional governance, nation branding, and influencer economics. The results suggest that, in an era of globalized media and algorithmic amplification, monarchies may function not only as ceremonial institutions but also as influential and economically significant actors within modern evolving communication networks.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050305

Authors: Abel Yeboah-Ofori Awo Aidam Amenyah

Background: Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse is a longstanding global issue, increasingly amplified by digital technologies, mobile devices, and internet access. This shift has intensified Child Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (COSEA). WeProtect 2020, a Global Alliance Intelligence brief report, indicated a 200% rise in online abuse forums. Existing studies focus on child protection, grooming, and survey-based analyses and draw inferences regarding grooming tactics and thematic analysis. Social issues such as underreporting, limited threat intelligence sharing, and low cyber awareness persist, leading to vulnerabilities and various exploitations. Further, a lack of social engagement and support persists, posing serious challenges for victims and law enforcement. Multiple studies have used the term Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OCSEA) that focus on a technology-centric approach. However, the paper considers Child Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (COSEA) child-centric approach as we explore challenges of a child accessing the internet and engaging in online activities. Methods: This study analyses COSEA using the MITRE tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) framework to examine perpetrator behavior, motives, and potential attribution, considering the evolving threat landscape. Results: TTP-based analysis enables the identification of adversary intent, methods, and opportunities. The study contributions are threefold: (1) we explore COSEA and its manifestations; (2) we apply the MITRE TTP framework with subjective expert judgment to analyze perpetrator behavior and the victim; for instance, what leads victims to become complicit in wrong acts; and (3) propose mitigation strategies and stakeholder roles. Conclusion: By integrating technical, social, and behavioral perspectives, it highlights the roles of economic, societal, and deterrence factors and recommends policy, education, and collaborative threat-intelligence sharing to enhance child online safety.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050304

Authors: Colleen Thouez Raphaela Schweiger

Municipal leadership has become increasingly central to addressing global challenges such as war-related displacement, migration governance, and climate change, reflecting a broader shift toward polycentric and networked forms of multilateralism. This study examines how cities have expanded their international roles over the past decade, responding to governance gaps with pragmatic, people-centred action. Using a qualitative, theory-informed comparative case study design, it draws on three original case studies grounded in direct practitioner experience: European municipal cooperation supporting Ukraine during war; city engagement in shaping the Global Compact for Migration; and municipal leadership in advancing climate action and the emerging climate mobility agenda. Across these cases, the analysis identifies consistent patterns of multi-scalar municipal agency, including decentralized humanitarian action, norm-setting in international negotiations, and innovations in multilevel climate governance. Cities leverage transnational networks—such as the Mayors Migration Council and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group—to amplify political influence, exchange solutions, and secure resources, even as fiscal pressures and political polarization increasingly constrain local capacity. It concludes that cities are becoming important actors in shaping global governance, yet their effectiveness depends on institutionalized representation, enhanced fiscal autonomy, and stronger protections for local leaders. Embedding municipalities more fully within evolving multilateral architectures can better align global commitments with local implementation and improve the resilience and legitimacy of international policy coordination.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050303

Authors: Matthew Wilson Daniel Sage Jennifer Robinson Sean Farmelo

In this mostly conceptual article, we address calls to promote heterodox thinking within business schools to develop alternative approaches to management, alternative economies and organizations that can better address societal-level ‘grand challenges’ from social justice to ecological sustainability. We illustrate our thinking by discussing the ideas behind a project: Re-Organise. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, we consider the performative dimensions of introducing critical ideas in business and management schools; we argue that students will often have an affective form of resistance to new and challenging ideas, not because of their content per se, but because they are unknown and therefore experienced as challenging. To counter this resistance, we suggest there is value in introducing heterodox ideas in low-level but widespread ways in order to acclimatize students to them. We explain how within Re-Organise we have started developing this approach in three universities in the UK, by asking lecturers and professional services staff to introduce references to heterodox ideas such as cooperatives—into their work. Put simply, we want to expose students to these ideas as frequently as possible, even if this often means only superficial engagement. Whilst this approach is not intended to replace the more far-reaching change in business school pedagogy which we believe is necessary, we think that working towards what we call subtle ubiquity can help slowly produce more positive affective responses.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050302

Authors: Francis D. Boateng Michael K. Dzordzormenyoh Godwin Egbe Nabi Youla Doumbia

The present study attempts to understand factors that influence bystanders’ decisions to intervene in risky sexual situations in the Ivory Coast. The study aimed to examine the influence of personality traits, history of sexual violence victimization, sense of community, and rape myths on bystander intervention among college students. Two hundred college students from one of the major cities in the Ivory Coast were invited to participate in the study using a convenience sampling approach. Using an OLS framework, our analysis revealed that extroversion is associated with a willingness to intervene, whereas prior sexual assault experience undermines the desire to intervene. Moreover, we found that students’ demographic characteristics influence their willingness to intervene. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050301

Authors: Yao Wang Scott D. Ryan Damone Wisdom Hui Huang Catherine A. LaBrenz

The child welfare system is designed to promote child safety, well-being, and permanency, but the high stress and intensity of cases require a specialized workforce. Using a qualitative case study design, this study explored the perspectives of current and former Title IV-E stipend recipients on their preparation and readiness to actively participate in the child welfare workforce. The research team conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 individuals who had participated in a large Title IV-E stipend program in a southern state during a five-year period (2020–2025). Using applied thematic analysis, four main themes emerged: (1) bridging the classroom-practice gap; (2) professional preparation and development; and (3) experiences and future directions for Title IV-E Programs. We explored implications for Title IV-E policies and programs on specific strategies to best prepare the child welfare workforce so that they can best ensure child safety, permanency, and well-being.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050300

Authors: Rudy S. Younes Chantale D. Ibrahim Clara Moukarzel Mirna Abboud Mzawak

Lebanon has experienced a prolonged series of crises marked by economic collapse, political instability, institutional failure, and repeated collective trauma. While families are often assumed to serve as key sources of support in such contexts, little is known about how they sustain resilience under conditions of chronic uncertainty. This qualitative study explores how Lebanese families experience hardship, adapt, and strive to remain resilient during the severe cumulative crisis in Lebanon. The study draws on four expert group discussions involving professionals in psychology, social work, community intervention, and social policy (N = 44). Using a systematic thematic analysis, the study developed a conceptual and context-specific model of family resilience shaped by macro-level factors, processes of adaptation and coping, and available support systems. The findings suggest that family resilience in this context is less about recovery and more about endurance and continuous adjustment. Strategies such as migration emerged as central yet emotionally and relationally challenging. Participants also highlighted significant limitations in institutional and policy responses to family needs, particularly the fragmentation of existing initiatives. Preserving the family and its resilience in Lebanon requires targeted and collaborative interventions, especially on the macro level, that extend beyond short-term emergency responses.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050299

Authors: Ande Nesmith

Biological family contact is critical to child wellbeing in non-relative substitute care. Drawing on the Capability Approach, this study sought to learn how and in what ways policy supporting family contact is carried out in practice and the impact on children. This qualitative study was conducted in the Czech Republic which has been transitioning from child institutional care to a foster care system. Sixty-six Czech stakeholders were interviewed across a spectrum of positions and perspectives, including care leavers, and child welfare professionals in NGO’s, children’s institutions, and government officials. Despite policies mandating parental involvement, care leavers often navigated family connections alone or were deliberately kept apart. Professionals often found it challenging and frustrating to engage parents, doubting it was in the best interests of the child. Some NGOs focused on effective parent engagement and saw success in reconnecting young people with their families. Practice recommendations include a shift toward prevention and family preservation, education of professionals about the importance of family connections, and empathy training to understand parent behaviors, needs, and motivations. The Capability Approach highlights the importance of child participation in decisions that affect their lives, including their right to know their own families.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050298

Authors: Avhatakali Amon Nephalama Bekithemba Dube

This study investigates how monitoring and support practices are enacted and strengthened to improve matric (National Senior Certificate) performance in the Vhembe East District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Persistent underperformance in rural schools reflects structural challenges related to instructional leadership, limited resources, and weak institutional support systems. While alternative frameworks such as instructional leadership and school effectiveness emphasise formal structures and standardised practices, this study adopts bricolage theory to better capture the adaptive, improvised, and context-responsive ways in which school leaders operate under resource constraints. Bricolage is particularly appropriate in this context as it foregrounds how actors mobilise available resources, relationships, and local knowledge to address immediate challenges where formal systems are insufficient. A qualitative case study design, informed by participatory and reflective principles, was employed and data were generated through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis, and analysed using a hybrid inductive–deductive thematic approach. Findings reveal that monitoring and support practices—such as teacher supervision, learner support programmes, and parental engagement—are unevenly enacted due to limited resources, weak monitoring capacity, and inconsistent implementation. Based on the participants’ reflections, the study proposes that strengthening monitoring and support in resource-constrained contexts requires integrating locally adaptive practices with structured capacity-building and institutional support. It contributes to a contextually grounded understanding of educational improvement and demonstrates the analytical value of bricolage theory in explaining how school leaders navigate constraints through adaptive practice.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050297

Authors: María Fátima Sosa Barrios Ignasi Navarro-Soria Beatriz Saorín Marín Megan Rosales-Gómez Andrea Plasencia Pimentel

Introduction: This systematic review identified studies published between 2015 and 2024 that examined the relationship between attachment styles and emotional dependence in relation to intimate partner violence (IPV). Method: Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, four databases (Web of Science [WoS], Scopus, ProQuest, and PubMed) were searched using a combination of descriptors and Boolean operators. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 30 studies were selected. Results: A significant and predominant association was found between anxious attachment and emotional dependence, both identified as risk factors for the perpetration and victimization of IPV. An elevated prevalence of bidirectional IPV was also observed. Discussion: The findings highlight the interaction between attachment styles, emotional dependence, and other psychological risk factors that may influence both victimization and perpetration of violent behavior in intimate partner relationships. Furthermore, the bidirectional nature of IPV in heterosexual relationships is emphasized, given its association with the increasing prevalence of this phenomenon and the challenge it poses to the prevailing social model that conceptualizes men as aggressors and women as victims. Conclusion: These findings underscore the need for more clearly differentiated and methodologically robust research, as well as for the expansion of comprehensive psychosocial interventions that account for the bidirectional nature of violence and promote secure attachment bonds from a developmental and contextual perspective.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050296

Authors: Huw Berry-Downs

This article examines how LGBTQ+ allyship is made, felt, and negotiated within a secondary school workshop using creative, participatory methods. Drawing on affect theory (see Sara Ahmed) and feminist new materialist scholarship (see Barad, Renold, among others), the paper analyses a collaborative collage activity centered on Pride flags and symbolic materials. Rather than treating allyship as a fixed identity or a knowledge-based achievement, the study explores how it emerges relationally through encounters with materials, symbols, bodies, and digital technologies. Through close analysis of moments of uncertainty, affective attachment, cutting and shattering of symbols, and the collective naming of the final artwork, the article traces how not-knowing, pleasure, confusion, and togetherness function as generative forces for allyship. The workshop is framed as a propositional research-creation space in which phones, Google searches, bunting, scissors, and book references intra-act with young peoples’ lived experiences, redistributing epistemic authority and unsettling school-based expectations of correct knowledge. The findings contribute to existing research on LGBTQ+ inclusion and allyship in schools by shifting focus from identity labels and institutional frameworks toward the affective, material, and speculative processes through which allyship is assembled in the moment. In doing so, the paper offers an alternative conceptualisation of allyship as relational practice rather than static position, with implications for creative pedagogy and inclusive educational research.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050295

Authors: Paolo Spada Marco Meloni Matt Ryan Richard Gomer Vanyssa Wanick

Hybrid role-playing games are increasingly used to support democratic learning, yet there is limited empirical evidence on how such hybrid designs function across contexts. This study analyses the pedagogical and deliberative effects of Empaville, a hybrid role-playing game designed to simulate a green participatory budgeting process by embedding deliberation, competition, and voting within a fictional urban setting. We analyse six implementations conducted between 2023 and 2025 in the United Kingdom and Morocco (N = 118), combining participant observation with post-game survey data. The analysis examines role activation, phase-level enjoyment, and participants’ reported learning and deliberative experiences, using descriptive statistics, non-parametric tests, effect size measures, and qualitative thematic analysis. Across contexts, participants report that the game supports perspective-taking, intellectual humility, and constructive engagement with disagreement, while perceived learning and participation intensity vary more substantially across individuals and sessions. Cross-national comparisons reveal some statistically detectable differences in how specific phases are experienced, particularly voting, but effect sizes are generally small or trivial, indicating limited substantive divergence overall. These findings suggest that hybrid role-playing games can foster deliberative learning outcomes in short educational interventions, while highlighting the importance of distinguishing between enjoyment, engagement, and perceived pedagogical value. The study contributes an exploratory but systematic mixed-methods evaluation suitable for small-N pedagogical interventions without causal claims.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050294

Authors: Cal Wu Tingyu Li Yixuan Wang Zequan Pan

Objective: This study examines whether access to basic services is associated with health-related social participation among people with disabilities, with a particular focus on participation in cultural and sports activities. Methods: Using data from the 2022 census of people with disabilities in X Province, China, we estimated Probit models to assess the association between access to three types of basic services—rehabilitation, social welfare, and social assistance—and participation in cultural and sports activities. Results: Greater access to basic services was associated with a significantly higher likelihood of participation in cultural and sports activities. Among the three service categories, rehabilitation services showed the strongest positive association. The positive association was stronger among individuals with lower disability severity. Conclusions: Access to disability-related basic services, especially rehabilitation services, may promote health-related social participation and social integration among people with disabilities. These findings highlight the importance of service access and rehabilitation support for disability healthcare, community inclusion, and quality of life.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050293

Authors: Maria Monica Chachi Espinoza Adrián García Chachi

Contemporary political crises have exposed the limitations of traditional political marketing instruments for building and sustaining legitimacy, particularly in contexts of widespread citizen rejection and low emotional identification with political leaders. Within platform-mediated communication environments—especially digitally mediated ecosystems such as TikTok—this article argues that a new mechanism has emerged: affective transfer as a form of mediated affective circulation. This mechanism operates when positive affect is not generated by political leaders themselves but by external, non-institutional mediators, and subsequently circulated and reinforced through platform logics of visibility, virality, and engagement. Adopting a qualitative and interpretive case study approach, the article examines how the circulation of a non-institutional humorous performance on TikTok may have contributed to processes of public acceptance for a sitting president in a context of acute institutional crisis. The findings suggest that the repeated circulation of such content stabilises recognizable affective codes and enables their symbolic association with presidential leadership, potentially facilitating indirect forms of legitimation without direct affective production by the leader. The article contributes by (1) conceptualizing affective transfer as a distinct interpretive mechanism within platformed communication environments; (2) differentiating it from charisma, populism, and traditional persuasion; and (3) demonstrating its implications for rethinking political legitimacy as a process that may be shaped by distributed affect within digitally mediated environments.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050292

Authors: Olawale Yinusa Olonade Nthabiseng Motsemme Trevor Ngwane

Aim: Environmental sustainability has become a major global trend, drawing the attention of the global community due to the severe threats posed by climate change and environmental degradation. All forms of life are being affected. The planet itself seems to be falling apart. Hence, the call is to pay closer attention to environmental governance in order to conserve ecosystems and promote environmental sustainability. Botswana and Rwanda have received accolades and international recognition in Africa for their response to climate change and environmental challenges. Methods: This study examines good governance and environmental sustainability by assessing and comparing the governance framework used by these countries to respond to environmental challenges and the weaknesses experienced in implementing their policies. Key findings: A comparative analysis of the literature revealed that the quality of governance has a significant impact on environmental sustainability. The assessment also shows that similar governance approaches adopted by Botswana and Rwanda through the government elements of institutional framework, structures, and processes contributed to their success in environmental sustainability. Implications: In the same sense, both countries are also confronted with similar challenges, among which the lack of funding, infrastructural capacity, and variation of climate change impacts are the leading factors.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050291

Authors: E. Diane Stapleton Jamie D. Agapoff

Risk and loss aversion are key forms of behavioral decision-making describing how people weigh potential gains and losses. Although most of the literature on risk and loss aversion comes from the field of behavioral economics, these concepts are applicable to complex medical decision making, especially when those decisions are shaped by sociopolitical factors as in gender transitions. For clinicians providing gender-affirming care, discussions of risk and loss aversion can support the informed consent process by reducing “noise” that may obscure gender identity and embodiment goals and delay critical decisions. Using this framework and understanding the impact of oppositional sexism and the gender binary can help clinicians understand why their clients might be hesitant to transition and how they can help affirm their client’s gender identity while supporting their transition goals. This approach is especially helpful when working with individuals who undergo transition in later life who may be struggling to overcome tacit assumptions about sex and gender identity that stand in the way of pursuing gender-affirming care.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050290

Authors: David H. Thorpe

This paper is based on a Government of Tasmania report which deals with an evaluation of the first year of a new measure that was introduced as part of a government programme concerned with the ‘redesign’ of the child and family welfare service. This redesign represented the culmination of almost two decades of unsuccessful attempts at resolving the difficulties associated with the ‘Wicked Problem’ posed by the Anglosphere ‘child protection’ services. The new measure consisted of the implementation of new conversational procedures in a reorganised ‘Front Door’ as a more efficient and effective means of diverting families away from family audit/inspection/regulation procedures into Family Support programmes. The conversational methodology was originally developed from observational and video ethnographic research in Western Australia, Europe and Scandinavia by the author of this paper. This evaluation of the new measure compares selected aspects of Departmental performance during the year before and the year after its implementation. It omits any reference to Indigenous people since the data supplied by the Tasmanian Government for this evaluation did not include any items on Indigenous status.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050289

Authors: Nuno da Silva Jorge

This study examines how political public relations strategists perceive and manage the structural tension between the embodied ritual of in-person militancy and the demands of media spectacle in a digitized campaign environment. Although frequently dismissed as obsolete in the era of digital mediatization, the electoral rally embodies a productive paradox: its physical rituality generates precisely the emotional content demanded by television and algorithmic platforms. Guided by the COREQ reporting criteria, a qualitative interpretivist study was conducted based on 19 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Portuguese political consultants and campaign directors, analysed through NVivo-assisted thematic analysis. Three analytical axes were identified: (1) the Paradox of Fabricated Authenticity, whereby media scenography instrumentalizes physical co-presence to generate platform-ready emotion; (2) the Catharsis of the Tribe, whereby the rally functions as a secular liturgy reinforcing militant identity and cohesion; and (3) the Leader as Media Sorcerer, operating a rhetorical duplicity that fuses epideictic communion with deliberative soundbite logic. The findings reveal a broad spectrum of professional perceptions, demonstrating that contemporary PR strategists do not uniformly abandon physical rituals. Instead, they act as “paradox managers”, constantly navigating the structural tension between traditionalist demands for organic militant communion and pragmatic requirements for fabricated digital spectacle.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050288

Authors: Fabio de Nardis

Contemporary social theory has extensively examined how structural arrangements shape social life, yet the mediating processes through which structural conditions are translated into lived experience remain insufficiently conceptualised. This article addresses this gap by developing an analytical framework that reconceptualises social position as a mediating configuration through which social reality becomes experientially organised. Rather than treating position as a fixed location within social hierarchies or as a subjective standpoint, the article conceptualises it as a historically sedimented relational formation that structures perception, normativity, affect, and practical orientation. On this basis, the article advances an analytical model in which inequality is understood not only as a structural distribution of resources and power, but also as an experiential organisation of social relations, shaping how constraints, opportunities, and recognition are encountered in everyday life. Subjectivity and agency are analysed as emerging within positionally structured relations of power and mediation, rather than as pre-social or purely individual capacities. By articulating social position as a constitutive form of mediation, the article contributes to sociological analysis by clarifying how structure, history, and subjectivity are internally articulated within lived social experience, offering a conceptual framework that moves beyond dualist accounts of structure and agency.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050287

Authors: Rita Alcaire

This article examines how mental health discourse functions as a credibility technology in Portuguese news reporting on sexual violence between 2014 and 2023. Using Critical Thematic Analysis and grounded in feminist media studies and critical mental health scholarship, the article analyses a qualitative corpus of reporting-oriented news items published in Público and Observador. The dataset consists of systematically selected articles in which mental health discourse functions as a substantive explanatory frame for sexual violence. Psychiatric, psychological, therapeutic, and metaphorical registers grant, withhold, or condition believability, allocating responsibility and organising care through norms of stability, risk, and expert verification. The analysis identified eight recurring discursive clusters through which mental health language stabilises truth claims: it can legitimise institutional authority, regulate survivors’ credibility, and explain perpetration through pathologising tropes, while often displacing structural accounts of gendered violence and reproducing ableist stigma. By specifying the credibility work performed by mental health discourse, the article contributes to debates on trauma-informed, survivor-centred, and anti-ableist reporting and proposes a transferable framework for analysing the sexual violence–mental health nexus in journalism.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050285

Authors: Dang Thi Thu Huyen Nguyen Duy Dzung

Although Vietnam is committed to complying with international frameworks on gender equality such as CEDAW, the Beijing Platform, and the 2030 Agenda, women still face many barriers in exercising their land use rights in practice. This study uses a doctrinal legal research method combined with comparative analysis to: (i) systematically analyze the provisions on gender equality in the 2024 Land Law; (ii) compare these provisions with the 2013 Land Law and relevant international standards; and (iii) assess the challenges in implementation from the perspective of substantive equality. The results show three notable areas of progress: (1) gender equality is recognized for the first time as a specific right of land users; (2) gender discrimination is included in the list of prohibited acts in land management and use; and (3) the scope and procedures for joint land use rights certification for spouses are clarified. However, gaps in legislative drafting, enforcement mechanisms, and the persistence of patriarchal social norms continue to widen the gap between equality on paper and equality in practice, as evidenced by the persistent 32% proportion of certificates registered solely in men’s names with no updated official data released nearly four years later; the absence of specific sanctions for gender discrimination in land use under Decree 123/2024/ND-CP; and the lack of mandatory enforcement mechanisms for joint spousal certification under the 2024 Law’s implementing regulations. Based on this, the article proposes several recommendations to improve the law and strengthen enforcement mechanisms to better align with CEDAW and SDG 5.a standards.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050286

Authors: Håvar Brattli Alexander Utne Matthew Lynch

The purpose of this study is to examine how three pedagogical interventions, collaborative learning, authentic problem-solving, and ongoing formative feedback, are associated with student engagement in a design thinking course. While prior research has examined these interventions in isolation, less is known about their relative contributions when implemented concurrently. This study employs a quantitative survey design, with data collected from 77 undergraduate students working in self-selected teams on industry-sponsored design thinking projects. The course design integrated the three interventions to foster active, reflective learning, and regression analysis was used to examine their relative influence on student engagement. All three interventions positively predicted engagement, with authentic problem-solving and collaborative learning emerging as the strongest contributors. Formative feedback exerted a significant but smaller effect, suggesting its impact depends on how students internalise and apply it within group processes. Findings suggest that engagement in design thinking education can be understood through social, cognitive, and regulatory interventions, although the interaction between these dimensions was not empirically tested in this study. The study contributes a layered conceptual model of engagement and offers practical guidance for designing engaging learning environments. While the results provide useful insights, they are based on a single course context and self-reported data, and should therefore be interpreted with appropriate caution.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050284

Authors: Chang Gyeong Kim Nan Chen

From a sustainability perspective, lifestyle choices shape behavioral patterns that extend beyond individual experiences, influencing both human well-being and environmental outcomes. Amid escalating human-induced climate change and its widespread social and ecological consequences, understanding lifestyle transformation has become increasingly important. This study traces the trajectories of lifestyle change within globalized contexts and examines the evolving relationships between lifestyle orientations and life satisfaction, with the aim of informing individual-level strategies to support sustainable development aligned with China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal. Using data from Chinese General Social Survey across three time points (2003, 2013, 2023), a series of two-way analyses of variance reveal that individuals aged 19–35 with higher levels of income and education are more likely to adopt consumption-oriented lifestyles, whereas those aged 60 and above with middle income and lower educational attainment tend to exhibit leisure-oriented lifestyles. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses further indicate that both consumption-oriented and leisure-oriented lifestyles are positively associated with life satisfaction beyond the effects of income alone, although the strength of these associations varies across stages of the life course. Overall, the findings suggest that promoting leisure-oriented lifestyles may offer a viable pathway for enhancing subjective well-being while advancing long-term sustainability goals in contemporary China.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050283

Authors: Lindokuhle Sibusiso Nhlenyama Samson Adewumi

School dropouts remain a complex challenge for educational systems globally, with economic, social and psychological consequences for the individual and society at large. Evidence from the literature supports the high prevalence of school dropouts in rural communities, resulting in teenage pregnancy, exposure to drugs, and early marriage, among others. The study employed an exploratory approach to contribute to existing knowledge on the challenges of school disengagement through the lenses of community and peer-influence among high school students in rural South Africa. A qualitative research design employing semi-structured interviews was used, with a total of 20 interviews conducted (3 parents, 2 community leaders, 5 teachers, and 10 students, including dropouts). A thematic analysis procedure was employed for theme identification and analysis. There was evidence of a lack of community support in ensuring learners remain in school. Peer pressure was prevalent, given the influences and attachments students form with peers. This condition influences students to resort to drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, and early marriages as coping mechanisms for school dropouts. The overarching effect is a decline in academic comprehension, leading to school dropout rates. Parents and guardians play an active and collaborative role in discouraging practices that contribute to school dropout. Parent and community members must also be sensitised regarding the long-term negative effects of peer pressure and early marriage on education and future opportunities, especially for girls.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050282

Authors: Winnie Hiu-ting Chan Wenyan Chen

This article explores access intimacy as feeling, interactional practice, and political vision through an inclusive research project in Hong Kong, where 12 visually impaired adults and 35 university students collaboratively developed accessible board games. Drawing on Mingus’s interdependence framework and Valentine’s justice-based access, we position visually impaired participants as primary knowledge producers while critically examining vulnerability, power dynamics, and research ethics. Analysis of field observations and in-depth interviews reveals three key dimensions: (1) collaborative game design enabled visually impaired participants to experience emotional access by fostering friendship, recognition, and belonging beyond logistical accessibility; (2) negotiation around “independence” and “fairness” generated transformative empowerment for both visually impaired and sighted participants, reframing interdependence as strength; and (3) reciprocal vulnerability in sighted guiding practices disrupted ableist assumptions about autonomy, care, and risk, revealing care as mutual rather than unidirectional. We argue that access intimacy functions as a learnable relational skill, and that attending to it in research design, community planning, and accessibility policy fosters justice-based paradigms that move beyond accommodation toward genuine interdependence and solidarity.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050280

Authors: Catherine Holtmann Evangelia Tastsoglou Mia Sisic

Migrant and refugee women are vulnerable to gender-based violence (GBV) at multiple points along the migratory pathway, including after they arrive in Canada. Their vulnerability in Canada is related to legal and policy frameworks to (im)migration, settlement and integration but also to the precarious nature of social services for migrant and refugee survivors of GBV. Drawing upon theorizing on intersectionality, vulnerability and precarity, this article describes findings from a qualitative study involving the reflexive thematic analysis of 43 interviews with professionals engaged with government policy and the provision of public services for migrant and refugee women survivors of GBV in Canada. Our analysis reveals their marginalization within social systems and their involvement in unintentionally reproducing obstacles faced by migrant and refugee women. The findings add to and nuance the small body of research on the experiences of professionals involved in Canadian GBV services for migrant and refugee women. We make contributions to theorizing, highlighting the structural components that impact service provision to migrant and refugee survivors of GBV, and suggest recommendations for policy change.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050281

Authors: Zhuo Chen

Working from home (WFH) has increasingly been adopted globally as a family-friendly arrangement that enables employees with greater family responsibilities to reconcile work and family demands. However, little is known about which parents take up WFH in the Chinese context. Using nationally representative pre-pandemic data from the China General Social Survey 2015, this paper examines the sociodemographic determinants of parents working from home in China, with particular attention to gendered patterns among mothers and fathers. The results show no statistically significant gender difference in the overall likelihood of WFH among parents. However, the sociodemographic determinants of WFH show different patterns among mothers and fathers. Specifically, Chinese mothers are more likely to WFH when they are engaged in non-standard employment arrangements and do not live with grandparents, whereas Chinese fathers are more likely to WFH when they are employed in the agricultural sector and hold more traditional gender role attitudes. A positive but weak association is observed between the number of children and mothers’ likelihood of WFH, while no such association is found among fathers. In addition, unlike in Western contexts, WFH uptake among Chinese parents is not found to be concentrated among more advantaged groups.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050279

Authors: Thumah Mapulanga Victoria Meya Daka Loyiso Currell Jita Lineo Mphatsoane-Sesoane Nonjabulo Madonda

School leadership practices may influence teachers’ motivation and professional engagement, which, in turn, may affect overall school performance. This study explores how secondary school teachers and deputy head teachers perceive head teachers’ leadership practices and how these practices are understood to influence teacher motivation and professional engagement. Drawing on a qualitative design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers and six deputy head teachers from six government secondary schools in Kabwe District, Zambia. A qualitative approach enabled an in-depth exploration of leadership perceptions across participants from multiple school contexts. Data were analysed using thematic analysis to identify patterns in leadership practices described by participants. The findings indicate that participants frequently described leadership practices aligned with delegation, mentorship, and open communication, shaped by contextual and organisational factors. However, these practices were not consistently experienced across all school contexts. Participants also described the presence of democratic and autocratic leadership practices. Participants perceived participatory and supportive leadership practices as contributing to their motivation and professional engagement. However, participants from several schools reported that autocratic leadership practices continued to shape decision-making, largely due to contextual, institutional, and workload-related constraints. The study highlights the importance of understanding leadership as contextually negotiated and relationally enacted. It contributes to African educational leadership research by demonstrating how leadership practices are experienced and interpreted within specific school contexts and emphasising the value of examining leadership beyond a single theoretical model. The implications of these findings for school leadership practice, policy development, and international educational leadership research are discussed.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050278

Authors: Alexander Angsongna Maxwell Bogpene Vitus Ngaanuma Adams Bodomo

In Ghana’s political landscape, actors from both ruling and opposition parties deploy a range of linguistic and rhetorical strategies in their pursuit of political power. Prominent among these is political labeling, a discursive practice used to construct favorable self-images while delegitimizing opponents through derogatory and face-threatening expressions. This study examines how political labeling functions as a strategic tool for identity construction and power negotiation in Ghana’s electoral landscape. Situated within the fields of political discourse and communication studies, the study demonstrates how labeling operates simultaneously as a rhetorical and framing device that reflects and reinforces underlying sociopolitical power dynamics. Drawing on empirical data from major Ghanaian news portals, the study adopts an integrated analytical framework combining Framing Theory and the Theory of Impoliteness. It analyzes public labeling directed at three prominent political figures across three election cycles (2016, 2020, and 2024). The findings show that politicians, activists, and their supporters strategically deploy labels to reconstruct rivals’ identities, inflict reputational damage, and provoke ridicule, thereby undermining their perceived competence and public credibility. Focusing on derogatory labels, we argue that political labeling serves primarily to generate emotional responses, shape public perception, and mobilize collective action, ultimately influencing the trajectory of national political discourse. By examining the interplay between language, identity construction, and power, this research offers a nuanced account of how political labeling shapes individual attitudes, group dynamics, and the broader political culture in Ghana.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050277

Authors: Teresa Gómez-Rasco Rocío Muñoz-Moreno Elena Ferri-Fuentevilla Octavio Vázquez-Aguado

The incorporation of digital technologies has transformed Social Work, generating new demands in terms of professional competencies. It is worth questioning whether, in contexts as sensitive as social services, the mere acquisition of instrumental mastery of these tools is sufficient to ensure safe practice. Considering that the level of proficiency with these tools is influenced by age, the aim of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the digital competence levels of social work professionals and students in order to contrast the skills and shortcomings of both groups. To achieve this, a quantitative methodological design was employed using questionnaires based on the European DigComp 2.2 framework. The sample included 451 professionals from Spain and 171 students from the University of Huelva, whose data were processed using statistical software (SPSS 27). The results show that students display a higher overall level of digital competence, particularly in the creation of digital content and the use of artificial intelligence tools. Professionals, on the other hand, demonstrate stronger competencies in digital security and data literacy. The findings reveal a clear complementarity between the two groups, highlighting an opportunity for mutual feedback and learning that can help combine technological efficiency with ethical responsibility and respect for human rights.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050276

Authors: JaeRan Kim Josal Diebold Annette Semanchin Jones Laurel Bidwell Katharine Hill

Voluntary placement agreements are a less understood avenue through which children and families receive child welfare services. This article describes a qualitative exploratory study of participants who oversee and engage with children and families utilizing voluntary placement services in two states (n = 12). Thematic analysis of interviews revealed voluntary placements are used as a strategy for strengths-based engagement with families, including creative problem-solving, to help obtain resources for youth with emotional and behavioral health needs. Participants also described challenges managing ambiguity regarding the use of voluntary placements and acknowledged limitations and varied outcomes of voluntary placement. Youth in voluntary placements are often overlooked in broader child welfare and foster care practice and policy discussions. Stronger accountability and guidance on voluntary placements are needed to ensure children and families are provided adequate supports to reduce the need for out-of-home placements when possible.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050275

Authors: Celeste Berti Belinda Winder Rachel Armitage Michael Underwood Katie Duncan Andrea Wakeham-Nieri

“The knock” refers to the moment when the police first arrive at a house to investigate suspected sexual offending by a member of that family. This paper examines the levels of trauma, wellbeing and crisis support for partners, both at the time of the knock and at the current time. Forty-eight participants who had experienced the knock completed an online survey. All respondents were female; they had experienced the knock 0–20 years previously (M = 3.88 years). Participants provided demographics and completed the World Health Organisation (WHO) Wellbeing Index, the International Trauma Questionnaire (ITQ) and the Crisis Support Scale (CSS) for (i) retrospective (at the time of the knock) and (ii) current levels of social support. Participants reported lower levels of wellbeing and higher levels of trauma in comparison with general population norms. Approximately 40% of participants’ scores on the ITQ exceeded the criterion for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with a further 25% of participants meeting the criterion for Complex PTSD. Levels of trauma were negatively correlated with wellbeing and with both retrospective and current self-reported crisis support. Qualitative analysis of open-ended questions explored participants’ experiences of the knock, their perceptions of police conduct, and the personal, relational, and practical consequences that followed. The findings highlight substantial and enduring harm among partners and are discussed in relation to implications for current policy and practice.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050274

Authors: Elli I. Anitsi Stelios A. Nikopoulos Philip J. Candilis

Methods examining eyewitness testimony and its identification of suspects have not received sufficient analysis internationally. In the face of growing empirical evidence of methodologic and judicial errors, Greece’s judicial process nonetheless prioritizes eyewitness testimony in gathering evidence and preparing cases for trial. Due to its pluralistic geographical and cultural position uniting European, Balkan, and Mediterranean influences, and its alignment with non-Napoleonic code nations, Greece is a useful example for studying witness interviewing in evolving judicial systems. Drawing on 87 semi-structured interviews with Greek legal professionals, this study identifies systemic variables affecting eyewitness interviews and suspect identification. Prominent barriers to robust witness interviewing included inappropriate questioning techniques and wording, frequent interruptions, scripted questions, and failure to develop a sense of trust. In identifying suspects, participants highlighted inadequate compliance with defined protocols, inadequate management of negative emotions, pressure on witnesses to make positive identifications, and introduction of improper guidance about the alleged perpetrator. Lengthy delays before the eyewitness interview and a lack of infrastructure were core influences alongside a lack of familiarity with best practices. The findings signal the need for authorities to adopt reliable methods and specific guidance for utilizing eyewitness testimony.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050273

Authors: Beatrice Taringa William Lungisani Chigidi

Globally, the effects of widowhood on the welfare, health, financial security and education of the widow’s children in many contexts have been the subject of much research. This paper aims to uncover the nexus among culture, gender and language on widowhood dignity and welfare among four chosen African ethnic groups in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The widowhood phenomenon is culture-bound and value-laden as it signposts the reality of existence in the linguistic and cultural contexts in which it is created and operationalised. Through Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1989 intersectional theory, this paper provides an in-depth, inductive qualitative investigation of the implications of culture, gender, language, and especially the nomenclature that African communities ascribe to the widowed, which in turn stigmatises widowhood. Two (2) South African and two (2) Zimbabwean ethnic groups were purposefully chosen for the multiple case study approach. Grounded theory is the coding framework and analysis technique. The coding starts off with picking key words, phrases and sentences and axial coding which is a higher level in which related data are grouped into sub-themes, themes and global themes. The search revealed that widowhood language, culture and nomenclature denote gendered, culturally contested spaces in which the widowed women especially face dehumanising and dewomanising rituals. The results gathered fall into five broad categories, namely, sexualised widowhood mourning rituals, psychological and emotional widowhood torture rituals, ritualised widowhood dispossession, swearing, movement and space restriction widowhood rituals. The rituals affirm the ascribed socially depressed widowed status implied in the stigmatising nomenclature. The paper recommends redefining widowhood in terms of humanising and womanising language, cultural rituals and nomenclature in the context of equality before the law. Such a move prevents discrimination against the widowed that unintentionally violates their constitutionally espoused right to equality.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040272

Authors: Natalia Pires de Vasconcelos Maíra Rocha Machado Mariana Morais Zambom Ana Beatriz Guimarães Passos Ana Clara Klink de Melo Andreia Beatriz Silva dos Santos Camila Prando Carolina Cutrupi Ferreira Fabio Mallart Leticia Faria de Carvalho Nunes Felippe Costa Bispo Rafael Godoi Saylon Alves Pereira Viviane Balbuglio

Deaths caused by or connected to exposure to Brazilian prisons are widely acknowledged as frequent and preventable, yet official data fails to capture their scale, causes, and circumstances. To circumvent what official administrative datasets miss, this article examines an original dataset of 1077 criminal case files from 27 Brazilian state courts involving individuals who died between 2017 and 2021 after having been incarcerated. Drawing on the systematic document review of these cases, we analyze sociodemographic characteristics, health information, causes of death, and judicial responses, distinguishing between deaths occurring in custody (“internal”) and after release (“external”). Our findings reveal pervasive omissions in basic demographic and medical information, extensive use of ill-defined causes of death, and a striking absence of investigation in most cases, including deaths under direct state custody. We identify instances of obfuscation and judicial inaction that, together with the absence of reliable administrative data, are likely to sustain institutional ignorance and normalize preventable deaths. This study advances debates on incarceration and health, state accountability, and proposes the concept of prison lethality: the capacity of carceral spaces to increase people’s exposure to health risks and harms, combined with the epistemic practices that shed light on or obfuscate this capacity.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040271

Authors: Farhat Taj

In Norway, children are entitled to all individual and collective rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), while parents play an important role in facilitating access to these rights. However, conflicts may arise when a teenager’s right to freedom of association clashes with their parents’ religious beliefs and identity. This article studies the ontological (in)security challenge faced by Muslim parents in Norway when their teenage children choose to participate in confirmation rites. The article explores how Muslim parents navigate the tension between their responsibility to pass on religious beliefs and identity to their children and their children’s assertion of the right to freedom of association with peer groups. The study is based on a pilot survey of Muslim parents whose children participated in confirmation rites at the Norwegian Humanist Association (NHA).

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040270

Authors: Silvia Grinberg Julieta Armella Marco Bonilla

The return to in-person classes after the COVID-19 pandemic revealed an increase in physical violence among students of secondary school. This article examines the role of the school as a setting that enables students to learn how to coexist with others. Based on an educational qualitative research study conducted in two state-run schools in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, located in urban poverty contexts, it investigates the effects of COVID-19-induced isolation on school coexistence. The fieldwork involved participant observation, interviews, and analysis of student productions during school workshops. Students and teachers were selected through purposive sampling. The working hypothesis posits that learning to coexist involves not only dealing with conflicting situations but also the need to verbalize them, a practice that schools actively foster. The findings show that, by providing a place where time and space are shared, the school acts as a key mediator, where students’ physical and verbal interactions become essential to reconfiguring relationships among classmates. The study concludes that the school plays a decisive role in transforming conflict into voiced experience, replacing physical aggression with meaningful narratives.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040269

Authors: Chantrey Joelle Murphy Jane Sell

Status characteristics and expectation states theory (SC-EST) describes how general beliefs about capability contribute to disproportionate rates of power, prestige, and resource outcomes between group members. Similarly, endorsements for competition stem from a general belief that it is useful for identifying which people are more capable and therefore more deserving of limited or highly valued resources. This paper investigates the relationship between both contexts simultaneously by considering whether introducing intergroup competition into an otherwise collectively oriented task situation essentially promotes inequality between diverse group members. Using a two-condition experiment, we demonstrate how interaction dynamics change in racially diverse task groups when their task involves intergroup competition compared to no competition. The findings support our predictions that intergroup competition promotes inequality by reproducing and exacerbating macro-level inequalities in micro-level interpersonal interactions. Specifically, white group members were significantly less likely to defer (i.e., accept others’ suggestions) when the group task involved intergroup competition. Overall, these results offer insight into the diverging effects of unequal group processes in group settings and the detrimental effects of competition.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040268

Authors: Ryoichi Semba

In contemporary Japanese workplaces, interpersonal relationship problems have become increasingly serious, leading to heightened psychological stress and declining organizational functioning. One major contributing factor is power harassment (workplace bullying). This study surveyed 1621 Japanese workers to examine how support from supervisors and organizations influences power harassment, with particular attention to differences in self-esteem levels and narcissistic types. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that among individuals with high self-esteem, supervisor support tended to reduce power harassment in those characterized by the Need for Attention and Praise type, whereas organizational support tended to increase it. Additionally, for those classified as the Sense of Superiority and Competence type, the interaction between ego threat and both types of support showed a tendency to exacerbate power harassment. For individuals with low self-esteem, the interaction between ego threat and both types of support similarly tended to intensify power harassment in the Need for Attention and Praise type. These results suggest that the effects of support are not uniform; rather, they may inhibit or facilitate power harassment depending on individual psychological traits. Therefore, tailoring the method, timing, and source of support to workers’ psychological characteristics is essential for both preventing power harassment and promoting psychological adaptation.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040267

Authors: Tawanda Masuka Sipho Sibanda Olebogeng Tladi-Mapefane

Children are some of the most vulnerable members of society who must be protected at all costs. Zimbabwe has a long history of disjointed formal and indigenous social protection systems, which have resulted in the exclusion of many children, leading to high levels of child abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence. In policy and practice, there is a strong bias towards the ineffective statist formal system, yet the indigenous social protection system is the mainstay for the protection of most children. The study aimed to explore how asset-based community development can be used as a strategy to integrate the fragmented formal and indigenous social protection systems for sustainable child protection. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design was employed, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data from 76 participants. The study findings indicate that asset-based community development by positioning the indigenous social protection system at the centre of the social protection framework provides a blueprint for a community-led and integrated social protection system, which can translate into effective child protection. This system, which utilises a wider network of community and external resources, can counteract the limits of fragmented social protection and sustainably promote child protection among impoverished households in Zimbabwe and similar contexts. The recommendation is that asset-based community development should be promoted as a strategy towards integrated social protection and sustainable child protection.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040266

Authors: Shurla Charles-Forbes

With the recent ban on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, this study seeks to address an under-researched area—the lived experience of workplace training participation (WTP)/non-participation of Black administrative employees at Canadian universities. While research in academia has focused on faculty and students, there is a lack of research on administrative employee participation within university settings in Canada. This gap is especially significant as this group composes a significant ratio of the entire workforce in Canadian universities. It is also important to understand the implications of WTP/non-participation for employees who identify as Black. This study used Stephen Billett’s conceptualization of affordance and access as a starting point to identify gaps in the workplace training (WT) literature, specifically as it pertains to Black employees. Data was collected from 26 Black administrative employees who discussed their lived experience with WTP in these settings. A qualitative approach from a phenomenological perspective was used to better understand the participants’ lived experiences with WTP. The results revealed a lack of transparency in the WT approval process, experiences of time pressure, managers’ discretion and racism as factors that influence WTP.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040265

Authors: Adnan Turan

This study examines how UNHCR’s administrative category of the “person of concern” functions as a governance mechanism in refugee education policy, stripping refugees of political agency and positioning them as subjects of institutional control rather than rights-bearing actors. Employing Fairclough’s three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis alongside Quijano’s coloniality of power, the paper analyzes five key policy documents: four UNHCR education strategies spanning 2010 to 2020 and the World Bank’s INSPIRE Guide to Refugee Inclusion in National Education Systems (2025). The analysis identifies four dominant discursive themes: education as a mechanism of control, dehumanization and the passive subject, the neoliberalization of refugee education, and colonial legacies in knowledge production. The INSPIRE Guide is examined as a paradigmatic text crystallizing the shift from humanitarian parallel systems to developmental inclusion, revealing how the language of inclusion, efficiency, and sustainability reconfigures refugee education as economic governance while leaving the “person of concern” category uninterrogated. The study argues that UNHCR education policies reproduce colonial governance patterns in which education actively produces particular refugee subjects who can be governed, surveilled, and integrated into host-state frameworks on institutional terms. Findings challenge the assumed neutrality of humanitarian education frameworks and call for decolonial approaches centering refugee agency, epistemic sovereignty, and self-determined educational futures.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040264

Authors: Daniel Holgado Francisco J. Santolaya Isidro Maya-Jariego

This study examines the relationship between institutional embeddedness, community factors, and the outcomes of labor market integration programs in contexts characterized by high social vulnerability and unemployment. The aim is to analyze how the local embeddedness of organizations and the mobilization of community resources influence the effectiveness of interventions designed to enhance employability. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining qualitative and quantitative techniques. Data were collected from 100 participants in a labor market integration program in a southern Spanish city, using standardized scales that measured the sense of community, perceptions of community assets, employability, and perceived impact of the program. Additionally, the program’s implementation team was interviewed, a documentary analysis was conducted, and direct observations of training and job-placement activities were carried out. The findings highlight that the institutional and community embeddedness of organizations facilitates access, sustained participation, and the contextual adaptation of interventions. Connection with local dynamics is crucial for enhancing the impact of labor market integration programs, allowing for more personalized interventions that are sensitive to sociocultural barriers and focused on improving employability and the overall well-being of individuals at risk of exclusion.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040263

Authors: Joonpyo Lee Jaemyung Park

This study examines how Vietnam regulates overseas study and how this regulatory structure shapes international student mobility to South Korea. Through a qualitative analysis of key legal and policy instruments, especially Decree No. 86/2021/ND-CP, it finds that Vietnam governs overseas study through a centralized legal-administrative system that structures eligibility, student management, intermediary oversight, and return obligations. It also finds that important implementation gaps persist, particularly in relation to private intermediaries, monitoring capacity, and the gap between formal regulation and students’ actual mobility trajectories. These findings suggest that receiving countries such as South Korea should pay closer attention to the pre-departure institutional conditions that influence student mobility before arrival. The study contributes by providing a legally grounded account of how sending-state regulation operates in the Vietnamese case and why pre-departure institutional conditions matter for receiving-country contexts such as South Korea.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040262

Authors: Elvi Chang Komalsingh Rambaree Päivi Turunen Stefan Sjöberg

This study examines how local social policies addressing young people’s well-being and working-life capacities within the framework of sustainable development are understood, and how they might be further developed in a Swedish municipal context. The study draws on three qualitative datasets: professionals from municipal social services, representatives of municipal units and civil society organisations, and young people aged 15–19. Data were analysed using abductive thematic analysis informed by Doyal and Gough’s theory of Human Need and Helne and Hirvilammi’s Having–Doing–Loving–Being model of relational well-being. Findings indicate that professional participants recognise links between social, economic, and ecological dimensions of sustainability, yet practice is largely oriented towards individual and social concerns, with limited engagement with the natural environment. Youth participants indicated detachment from both nature and societal processes, framed responsibility as habitual, and exhibited intergenerational detachment alongside temporal and geographical distance from sustainability issues. The findings also indicate siloed municipal sustainability policies. The study concludes that current policies may insufficiently integrate the ecological and relational dimensions of human needs and that there is a need to develop ecosocial policies and practices that promote more sustainable well-being and working-life capacities, especially for young people.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040261

Authors: Ashley J. Blount Abby L. Bjornsen Kayla J. Hundt Kara M. Schneider

Elite and high-performance sport is frequently framed as an individual or coach–athlete endeavor, obscuring the broader family systems that sustain athletic careers. Recent scholarship has begun to document the central role of wives and partners within athletic family systems, highlighting the extensive emotional, domestic, logistical, and identity-related labor they perform to support athletic participation and success. Despite its centrality, this labor remains largely invisible within sport science research, organizational policy, and athlete support structures. Drawing on feminist theories of care and family system theory, this narrative review synthesizes interdisciplinary literature examining the unpaid and unrecognized labor of women partners, also commonly referred to as the wives and girlfriends (WAGs), across athletic career stages. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040260

Authors: Jan Breckenridge Georgia Lyons Mailin Suchting

Domestic and family violence (DFV) is a key driver of women’s homelessness and financial insecurity. In Australia, Safe at Home (SAH) programs have emerged as an innovative, wrap-around service response that increases victim-survivors’ safety by implementing a range of strategies and tools that enables them to remain in their home or a home of their choice. SAH responses represent one strategy that effectively prevents homelessness and mitigates the financial, social, and emotional disruption associated with housing relocation after leaving a violent and abusive relationship. This paper examines the implementation of SAH responses in Australia through a critical synthesis of national policy documents and published literature. The paper outlines the four nationally endorsed pillars of SAH (maximising safety, integrated responses, homelessness prevention, and economic security) and examines how these pillars shape service design and outcomes. Evidence from evaluations and outcome studies indicate that SAH can enhance women’s sense of safety, support housing stability, and reduce the financial burden of leaving a violent partner. Access and effectiveness vary depending on the design of the response and location. Challenges include limited affordable housing supply, inconsistent perpetrator accountability, and structural barriers to long-term economic security. Sustained investment in SAH programs, robust data collection mechanisms, and stronger integration of housing and economic supports are ultimately needed to ensure SAH can fulfil its potential as a core component of Australia’s DFV service system.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040259

Authors: William Jankowiak

This paper examines the cross-cultural prevalence of the femme fatale (dangerous woman) motif using folkloric materials, ethnographic accounts, and consultations with ethnographers across 84 societies. Narratives were coded for depictions in which male protagonists suffer harm following involvement with an unfamiliar but physically attractive woman. Results show that 94% of sampled societies contain recognizable femme fatale imagery. When male motivation could be inferred, narratives overwhelmingly emphasized expectations of emotional attachment or long-term partnership rather than short-term sexual encounters. This pattern challenges interpretations that frame male involvement primarily in terms of sexual gratification or predatory intent. Instead, the findings suggest that femme fatale narratives function as culturally mediated responses to recurrent mating dilemmas rooted in asymmetric emotional investment. More broadly, the study demonstrates how universal predispositions toward attraction and attachment are symbolically elaborated within culturally specific moral frameworks.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040258

Authors: Ursula Trummer Paul Bukuluki Girum Hailu Maheteme Ronald Kalyango Michela Martini Davide T. Mosca Hadijah Mwenyango Sonja Novak-Zezula

Building the capacity of health and social care professionals in health and migration is essential for the East and Horn of Africa region, which, according to UNHCR, hosted 23.6 million forcibly displaced people who have fled conflicts and climate change-related floods and droughts by the end of 2024. There is a high demand to build a critical mass of expertise and experts on health and migration that can engage in policy, programme and practice development. To contribute to the building of a community of experts, an online course on health and migration was developed and five courses were implemented from 2021 to 2024 with the participation of international experts in migration and health, universities and international institutions (WHO; UNAIDS, IGAD), in collaboration with the UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Makerere University, Uganda, and the Center for Health and Migration Vienna, Austria (CHM), and with funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior. The courses lasted nine weeks each, offering two three-hour sessions per week, and were complimented by discussion forums and webinars on topics of special interest, e.g., climate change. Participants were working in policy development, programme coordination, research, and service delivery in health and social care in communities affected by migration, cross-border settings, refugee and IDP settlements in the East and Horn of Africa geographic region. The importance of the course for capacity building in the respective countries as well as for personal development is underlined by continuous high numbers of applications from highly qualified people and highly positive evaluations from participants, and the demonstrated impact on the practice of service provision for refugees and IDPs. Future considerations should concentrate on developing sustainable frameworks for courses, including intergovernmental collaboration and community development.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040257

Authors: Braveheart Gillani Meagan Ray Novak Terrique Morris David Crampton

Oilfield worksites and the communities shaped by them are increasingly recognized as gendered spaces in which rotational labor, contractor hierarchies, and production imperatives can reshape norms of accountability and consent. This scoping review synthesizes conceptualizations of oilfield masculinities in scholarship on oil and gas extraction and examines their links to gendered harm, moral strain, and institutional accountability. Following PRISMA-ScR guidance, multidisciplinary databases were searched for English-language publications (2000–March 2024); eighteen sources met the inclusion criteria. A supplementary media scan (2000–2025) was conducted to contextualize cultural narratives surrounding oilfield labor. The synthesis identifies recurring themes, including frontier and breadwinner masculinities, emerging safety-oriented masculinities, gendered workplace exclusion, and the relational impacts of rotational absence and reintegration. Across studies, harms are most consistently described as patterned outcomes of work organization and fragmented governance rather than isolated incidents. Media representations frequently amplify heroism and endurance while minimizing institutional responsibility.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040255

Authors: Justina Mandravickaitė Tomas Krilavičius

In this study, we examined how disinformation and trustworthy news differ in their narrative construction across nine theoretically motivated dimensions. We address the following research question: how do disinformation and trustworthy news differ in narrative organisation and epistemic grounding? We analysed 610 English-language news articles (308 pro-Kremlin disinformation and 302 trustworthy articles) covering selected international events from 2015 to 2023, using data derived from the EUvsDisinfo dataset. Narrative elements were extracted using a hybrid pipeline combining large language models and knowledge graphs, resulting in article-level representations for comparative analysis. Ordinal scores (1–5) were assigned for emotional intensity, cultural complexity, conspiracist structure, source diversity, crisis intensity, evidence support, media control, solutions orientation and memory work. Non-parametric comparisons showed significant differences in eight of these nine dimensions. Disinformation articles revealed stronger conspiracist structuring and greater meta-media hostility, as well as significantly lower source diversity, evidence support, cultural complexity and weaker memory work. Emotional intensity did not differ reliably across disinformation and trustworthy news. A simple additive NarrativeRisk score, which we designed as a transparent and interpretable summary measure, showed between-group differences in both parametric and non-parametric tests. As a univariate discrimination indicator, NarrativeRisk achieved ROC AUC ≈ 0.84. Cluster analysis identified three recurrent narrative profiles, including one dominated by disinformation, one by trustworthy news and one mixed profile. These findings indicate that disinformation is distinguished not only by factual unreliability but also by different patterns in narrative organisation.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040256

Authors: Narcis Eduard Mitu George Teodor Mitu Mihaela Zglavoci

The European Union (EU) relies heavily on voluntary tax compliance, yet evidence on how tax literacy (TL) and tax education (TE) relate to tax morale (TM) and voluntary tax compliance or compliance intentions (VTC) remains fragmented across partly disconnected strands of the literature. This systematic review examined EU-relevant evidence on the stakeholder contexts in which TL/TE are discussed in relation to TM and VTC, with particular attention to schools, communities, and public institutions. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020, searches in Scopus and Web of Science (2000–2025) applied two complementary query streams focused on TL/TE and TM/VTC-related mechanisms. The searches identified 1327 records; after deduplication and screening, 402 studies were included. Based on structured coding of titles, abstracts, and author keywords, the review maps patterns of emphasis and framing rather than causal effects. Public-institutional and education-related contexts were the most frequently signposted stakeholder environments, while digital and outreach-oriented delivery cues were more visible than classroom-based cues. Trust and fairness/justice dominated the explanatory vocabulary. Overall, the review supports an ecosystem-oriented interpretation of stakeholder coordination in EU tax literacy research.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040254

Authors: Duane A. Gill Liesel A. Ritchie Adam M. Straub J. Micah Roos Erin Y. Boyle Thomas M. Kersen

In August 2022, the Pearl River flooded portions of Jackson, Mississippi and temporarily closed the city’s water treatment plant, leaving most citizens without access to safe drinking and potable water for more than a month. This event punctuated an ongoing water crisis that had lingered for decades in this predominately African American city. We employ a social production of disaster approach to reveal aspects of slow violence perpetrated against disadvantaged peoples that increased their collective vulnerability to flood risks and limited their access to safe water. Using survey data collected one year after the flood, we examine event-related psychosocial stress as measured by the Impact of Event Scale and associated risk factors related to Conservation of Resources Theory. Multivariate analysis indicates that resource losses from the flood, health concerns about water quality, and trust in government were significantly related to elevated levels of psychosocial stress. Although the 2022 Pearl River flood can be treated as a discrete event, a social production of disaster perspective situates the flood in terms of its cascading effects and cumulative impacts on the city’s water infrastructure and citizens who depend on it.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040253

Authors: Huirong Chen Xianchu Huang Xueliang Zhang Wenwen Tian

Since 1978, Chinese–foreign cooperation in running schools (CFCRS) has evolved from fragmented pilot initiatives into a policy-coordinated system of higher education internationalization. This study employs an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design to examine how national policy shifts reshaped the structure of CFCRS collaboration networks between 1978 and 2025. Integrating longitudinal policy analysis with Social Network Analysis (SNA), the research identifies five policy-driven stages: exploratory opening, legal institutionalization, regulated development, quality enhancement, and strategic repositioning. Network analysis shows that increasing density, expanding degree centrality of leading institutions, and greater diversification of international partners reflect growing integration into global transnational higher education networks. At the same time, persistent structural concentration in key institutional hubs and regulated entry into partnerships indicate strong path dependence shaped by state-steered governance. The network also exhibits a disciplinary shift toward engineering and STEM collaborations aligned with national innovation strategies, alongside gradual spatial diffusion from coastal regions toward central and western provinces. Conceptually, the findings demonstrate that state-coordinated internationalization can generate dense and diversified collaboration networks without fully liberalizing governance structures. The CFCRS case thus illustrates a model of hybrid governance, where centralized policy coordination coexists with expanding network-based international partnerships.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040252

Authors: Juana Valentina Apolón Urquijo Dany Alejandra Téllez Archila Wilkar Simón Mendoza Chacón Gladys Shirley Ramírez Villamizar

This article formulates guidelines for the transactional regulation of surrogacy in Colombia, based on a comparative analysis with the Mexican regulatory model, especially in the states of Tabasco and Sinaloa. To this end, a qualitative methodology was adopted by applying the technique of comparative law to simultaneously analyze the regulations of the focused Mexican states and the most recent (now shelved) initiative in Colombian law, identifying significant contributions to national progress in surrogacy through the theory of legal transactions, the principle of solidarity, and the right to found a family. The results show that, although Colombia had tried to progress in recognizing procreative will as the basis for filiation and has attempted regulatory adjustments to the civil registry, serious regulatory gaps persisted in the design of post-contractual mechanisms, especially regarding the prevention of human trafficking, the well-being of gestational carriers, institutional monitoring, and the guarantee of breastfeeding. The conclusions show that effective regulation should not focus exclusively on formalizing agreements between adults but should also guarantee the fundamental rights of the child from birth. In contrast, the Mexican model offers valuable tools to enrich the Colombian debate, but it also has some shortcomings that warrant revision. Therefore, this study contributes to the Colombian legislative discussion by calling for comprehensive regulation guided by the dignity of all the involved subjects and based on comparative experiences.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040251

Authors: Ina Kayser

The digital transformation of contemporary societies raises fundamental questions for science and policy alike [...]

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040250

Authors: Vered Ben David

Parenting research and policy increasingly emphasize visible practices, measurable outcomes, and parental effort as indicators of competence. Across welfare, education, and family intervention contexts, “good parenting” is often evaluated through intensive doing: monitoring, documenting, optimizing development, and managing risk. While these frameworks foreground parental responsibility, they frequently obscure the relational dimensions of care and intensify existing classed, gendered, and racialized inequalities. Building on feminist scholarship that has long conceptualized parenting as relational, ethical, and socially situated, this paper develops a theoretical framework for rethinking parenting by integrating family studies scholarship on intensive parenting, emotional labor, and inequality with Hannah Arendt’s distinctions among labor, work, and action. Parenting is commonly framed as labor, the daily work of sustaining children’s lives, or as work, the longer-term project of producing competent future adults. Drawing on Arendt’s concept of action, the paper reinterprets parenting as a relational practice grounded in presence, responsiveness, and mutual recognition. Using illustrative examples from diverse family contexts, including Indigenous and immigrant communities, the analysis shows how privatized and performance-oriented models of care place strain on families while rendering collective forms of support less visible. The paper concludes by outlining implications for family research and policy, including a shift from outcome-based evaluation toward relational engagement and from individualized responsibility toward strengthened social infrastructures of care, arguing for greater attention to relational care, shared responsibility, and the structural conditions that shape parenting practices and family well-being.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040249

Authors: Špela Pučko Urška Kumar Katarina Habe

The inclusion of vulnerable groups in cultural life is a central issue of social justice, equality, and sustainable development. While equality ensures formal access to cultural participation, equity requires differentiated, needs-responsive measures that address structural barriers to meaningful engagement. Vulnerable groups—those at increased risk of social exclusion and inequality—often face such barriers despite the recognized role of the arts in promoting well-being, empowerment, and social cohesion. This study examines how Slovenia’s main cultural institutions conceptualize and implement inclusion, focusing on target groups, accessibility measures, and structural challenges and assessing whether their practices reflect principles of equality or equity. A mixed-methods approach combined an online survey of 26 institutions with semi-structured interviews with six representatives. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic coding. The findings indicate that inclusion is present but fragmented and largely unsystematic. Institutions predominantly adopt equality-based approaches through general programming and standard adaptations, while equity-oriented, structurally embedded measures remain limited. Groups requiring sensory, communicative, or content-related adaptations are less frequently included. Overall, inclusion remains capacity-driven rather than equity-oriented, highlighting the need for coherent, equity-based frameworks to ensure sustainable and meaningful cultural participation.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040248

Authors: Antonios Kostas Vasileios Zoumpoulidis Maria Fragkioudaki Anastasios Karasavvoglou

The dominant agri-food system’s well-documented failures—biodiversity loss, deepening rural inequalities, and the erosion of small-scale farming livelihoods—have elevated SSE initiatives and social innovation in the agri-food sector and bioeconomy from a niche policy concern to a structural priority. This paper examines how SSE arrangements drive meaningful transformation in agri-food chains while advancing sustainable development at local and regional scales. Through a narrative review of interdisciplinary peer-reviewed literature and key institutional sources, the paper synthesizes evidence that SSE initiatives generate transformation through three interconnected mechanisms: (a) the reconfiguration of governance structures; (b) the deepening of producer–consumer relationships through spatial proximity and relational transparency; and (c) the more equitable redistribution of value across agri-food territories. These findings suggest that place-based SSE models occupy a central—rather than peripheral—role in sustainability transitions and local development. The paper presents a structured analytical framework linking SSE practices to agri-food chain transformation and develops nine concrete policy implications for scaling and sustaining SSE innovations through coordinated collaboration among public, private, and social economy stakeholders. The findings contribute to a sharper understanding of the conditions under which SSE-driven models can foster sustainable, socially inclusive, and community-oriented agri-food systems and of why the solidarity dimension, rather than organisational form alone, is the decisive criterion for identifying genuinely transformative initiatives.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040247

Authors: José Casás García Alba Silva Rodríguez Ana-Isabel Rodríguez-Vázquez

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) extends across virtually all sectors of society, including communication. One of the areas in which its influence is expected to be most significant is disinformation, arguably one of the greatest challenges faced by networked societies over the past decade. Through a systematized literature review with a scoping orientation, this study examines how research on artificial intelligence and disinformation has evolved over the last five years and identifies the main thematic strands structuring this field. The analysis of 62 articles reveals a predominance of qualitative approaches (53.3%) and a technocentric perspective structured around five main research lines: (1) AI as a source of disinformation, (2) AI as a tool to combat it, (3) regulatory frameworks, (4) deepfakes, and (5) algorithmic literacy. These findings highlight both the consolidation of the field and the need to advance toward more interdisciplinary and transfer-oriented research.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040246

Authors: Jeremy Ko Arturo Garcia Franco Yihan Gao

This study examines the relationship between executive aggrandizement and Quality of Government (QoG) deterioration in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. Drawing on the framework of autocratic legalism—whereby legal forms are used to hollow out legal protections—we theorize how constitutional reforms that concentrate executive power through autocratic legalism may systematically undermine the institutional foundations of impartial governance. We employ a synthetic control method to construct a counterfactual governance trajectory for Venezuela, comparing observed outcomes following the 1999 constitutional reforms to what comparable Latin American countries would predict. Our quasi-experimental analysis provides evidence that the institutionalization of executive aggrandizement was associated with modest yet sustained QoG deterioration from 2000 to 2012. This decline manifested primarily through a collapse in the rule of law and rising systemic corruption, patterns consistent with the theoretical mechanisms of autocratic legalism linking constitutional reforms to governance erosion through institutional capture. The findings suggest that constitutional changes concentrating power in the executive, while appearing procedurally legitimate, may potentially compromise the impartial exercise of state authority.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040245

Authors: Tesseltje de Lange Masja van Meeteren

This article investigates the housing precarity of EU migrant workers in the Dutch–German border region, focusing on the Venlo Greenport area. Drawing on documentary analysis, 28 interviews, field observations, and stakeholder engagement, it explores how local governance, market dynamics, and framing practices shape housing outcomes. While EU law guarantees free movement, housing remains excluded from the EU rights frameworks, leaving workers dependent on employer-linked or agency-controlled short-stay facilities. These arrangements—often overcrowded, surveilled, and formally temporary—become long-term solutions, producing what we term short-stay sedentarism: prolonged residence in housing designed to deny permanence. The study conceptualises the local “battleground” where municipalities, employers, housing providers, NGOs, and residents negotiate competing interests. Seven interpretive frames—nuisance/disorder, cowboys, human rights, NIMBY, shadow power, integration, and unwanted accumulation—structure these debates, legitimising certain strategies while obscuring structural deficiencies. Findings reveal that certification and enforcement, while intended to improve standards, often entrench precariousness by sustaining the short-stay model. Emerging integration-oriented policies signal a shift but remain fragile amid economic imperatives and spatial constraints. The paper argues that addressing housing precarity requires structural reforms: expanding access to regular housing, reducing employer dependency, and recognising migrant workers as long-term residents rather than temporary labour inputs.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040244

Authors: Angela U. Ekwonye Sophi M. Cahalan Leila Hoeschen Ehrbright

The well-being of university students is deteriorating, highlighting the need for accessible, non-stigmatizing supports beyond clinical care. Positive psychology (PP) interventions have shown strong potential for improving mental well-being, yet they remain largely underutilized in Nigerian universities. This pilot study evaluated the impact of an eight-week education and intervention incorporating acts of kindness, gratitude, positive reframing, and character strengths in improving subjective well-being among university students in Nigeria. Students were assigned randomly to an education + PP group or an education-only control group and assessed at baseline and post-intervention. Independent-samples t-tests were used to examine group differences in outcomes, while mixed-design ANOVA models assessed the effects of group and time. Compared with controls, the intervention group showed significantly higher mental well-being, positive affect, and resilience, with moderate to large effects. While significant main effects emerged across outcomes, time-by-group interactions were observed only for positive affect and resilience. Given rising psychological distress among Nigerian university students, these preliminary results showed that brief, strengths-based PP exercises can meaningfully improve students’ subjective well-being. They can serve as low-cost, non-stigmatizing additions to university mental health services and a scalable complement to traditional care in low-resource settings.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040243

Authors: Damjan Mandelc

Over the past decade, far-right parties have moved from the political margins into the mainstream of several European democracies. This article examines how migration functions not primarily as a demographic driver of electoral change, but as a discursive resource through which democratic boundaries are redefined. Drawing on a qualitative comparative analysis of political speeches, party manifestos, and public debates in selected European countries between 2014 and 2022, the study investigates how migration is constructed as a threat to welfare systems, national cohesion, and liberal-democratic order. The analysis integrates three complementary frameworks of ethno-pluralism, welfare chauvinism, and civic nationalism to demonstrate how exclusion is legitimized through moralized appeals to culture, fairness, and liberal values. Rather than rejecting democracy outright, far-right actors reinterpret concepts such as citizenship, solidarity, and equality in conditional and culturally bounded terms. Migration thus operates as a symbolic condensation of broader anxieties related to globalization, economic insecurity, and political distrust. The findings show how democratic language itself can normalize exclusionary interpretations of membership, contributing to gradual forms of democratic erosion across Europe.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040242

Authors: Michael Goh Samat Uralbayev Jessica K. Trad

Kazakhstan has aggressively pursued the internationalization of higher education, evidenced by the strategic Bolashak scholars’ program, adoption of the Bologna Process, and expanded academic mobility. In this paper, we argue that these efforts, while structurally significant, have yielded results that have prioritized institutional outputs over intercultural learning outcomes. To achieve genuine modernization, internationalization must move beyond technical compliance and be grounded in the cultivation of intercultural competence and citizenship. We review the trajectory of Kazakhstan’s educational history, development, and reforms and conclude that current efforts lack the cohesion and theoretical grounding necessary to foster globally engaged, interculturally competent citizenship. We narratively review selected international case studies of higher education institutions that have developed intercultural competence and citizenship programs to develop cross-case themes and practices. Consequently, we suggest a contextualized paradigm for developing intercultural competence within Kazakhstani higher education. We present a series of theoretical, practical, and institutional suggestions tailored for Kazakhstani higher education institutions to consider. Ultimately, intercultural competence in Kazakhstan must begin with a critical exploration of national and local values to engage the global community from a “glocalized,” culturally resonant, and decolonized standpoint.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040241

Authors: Taisik Hwang Soo Young Shin

This study examined how Twitter/X users engaged in the political discourse on the Sewol ferry accident in South Korea. We used a triangulation method by combining a social networks approach with quantitative content analysis. A comparison of the number of links across politically homogeneous clusters with the number of links across heterogeneous clusters revealed that selective exposure occurred on the Twitter topic network. Findings also showed the greater role of independent journalists armed with social media in disseminating information online. Our content analysis indicated that the tragic accident divided the public into two sides over the issue and that the public sentiment was dependent on the political orientations of the clusters within the network. The implications of these findings were discussed for scholars who aim to address the problems rooted in a polarized society.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040240

Authors: Sara Marie Lute

With the rapid technological advancements, persistent retention disparities, and career stability concerns among Generation Z learners, higher education in the United States needs a re-examination of student success. Student support efforts and previous student-centered frameworks require re-examination in light of the current socio-cultural context. In response, this paper proposes the CIRCLE model. This conceptual model is faculty-driven and includes evidence-based practices that predict successful outcomes by benefiting students’ socio-emotional factors. The model stems from an integrated conceptual framework that synthesizes established student success theories, contemporary research on faculty–student relationships, and digital integration in higher education. Traditional student-centered theories are merged with contemporary digital integration models and applied to the realities of Generation Z and first-generation college students. From this, the author delivers a clear, context-responsive plan for faculty supporting a diverse cohort of learners, as we all live in today’s post-pandemic, digitally immersed world.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040239

Authors: Shoshana Gander-Zaucker Gemma L. Unwin J’nae A. Christopher Michael Larkin

Experience-based co-design emphasizes understanding service-users’ experiences to inform service improvement, yet little research has explored domestic abuse survivors’ perspectives within this framework. This study examined survivors’ accounts of their interactions with the police and organizations that support domestic abuse survivors. We aimed to identify aspects of practice experienced as either helpful or in need of improvement. Semi-structured interviews with six survivors in one area of England were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Survivors described obstructive and supportive responses from formal services. Four interrelated themes were developed: The Importance of Being Understood, Believed, and Cared For; It Is Important That There Is Good Communication Between the Survivor and Formal Services; Survivors Want a Victim-Centered, Rapid, and Meaningful Response; and Specific Circumstances Sometimes Influence Opportunities for Help-Seeking. Survivors described being dismissed and disbelieved, which contributed to negative help-seeking experiences and heightened feelings of vulnerability. In contrast, empathic and timely responses validated survivors’ experiences and supported their sense of safety. The findings highlighted the importance of practice that recognizes the different forms abuse can take, provides timely, victim-centered support, and responds equitably to survivors in diverse circumstances. This study demonstrates the valuable insights gained through applying an experience-based co-design approach in this setting.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040238

Authors: Emmaleena Käkelä

Considerations of gender have long been overlooked in legal discourses and public debates on asylum. In more recent years, the right-wing narrative has taken a strategic U-turn, instead misappropriating gendered concerns including gender-based violence for the purposes of promoting racialised border controls on the grounds of cultural incompatibilities, and by painting refugees as a threat to British values, economy and security. This paper calls out the hypocrisy of such femonationalist framings for overlooking the ways in which Western institutions sustain refugee women’s ongoing vulnerabilities. Drawing from qualitative interviews and focus groups with refugee women survivors of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), this paper examines the continuities of harm in the lives of women who have fled gender-based persecution to Britain. The paper critically maps the way prolonged state control during the asylum process perpetuates a sense of violence as ongoing, and its damaging implications on survivors striving to navigate life after flight. In doing so, the findings contribute new insights into established scholarship on asylum harms by illuminating the gendered consequences of violence of waiting, and refugee women’s subtle individual and collective strategies to struggle against violent continuums.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040237

Authors: Katherine M. Fobear

Over the past five years, the number of new United States laws banning gender-affirming care, restricting public access to services and spaces for transgender and gender-diverse persons, and forcibly outing transgender youth in schools has increased dramatically. Much of the focus in the media and research has been on the domestic political and social causes of these anti-transgender and anti-gender-affirming care laws and their devastating effects on vulnerable transgender and gender-diverse communities. This article argues that the current wave of anti-transgender and anti-gender-affirming care laws violates civil and human rights in the context of international human rights resolutions and principles on healthcare and displacement. I explore the implications of using international human rights to challenge anti-transgender and anti-gender-affirming care legislation and what coalitional possibilities exist when expanding the fight against these laws transnationally.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040236

Authors: Miguel A. Bastos-Boubeta Angel M. Loureiro-Lodeiro

We document the evolution of minimum salaries in Argentina during electoral cycles. We argue that incumbent politicians tend to significantly increase the growth rates of minimum salaries a few days before primary elections, and they generally keep them high for a long period until general elections conclude. This is due to the fact that minimum wages are known to be best justified by their social contributions rather than their economic effects. Our findings provide evidence of the strategic tools that are used by incumbent politicians to increase their chances of being re-elected. Our results highlight the importance that incumbents and challengers compete on a level playing field during electoral campaigns, and there are mechanisms in place that guarantee that incumbents do not use strategic tools (such as increases in minimum salaries) for their own benefit just before elections.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040235

Authors: Thor Björnsson James Gordon Rice

This contribution examines the luxury real estate sector in the Caribbean Island of Sint Maarten. Drawing upon an analysis of ethnographic observations, interviews, property market data and marketing materials, we pose two core questions to the data: (1) How are fragments of the Dutch-Caribbean past deployed in luxury real estate marketing? (2) How does cyclical hurricane damage influence the luxury real estate market and heritage preservation? Proportionally very few of the luxury real estate listings directly reference cultural history. Yet when “Dutch-style and “plantation-era” esthetics are referenced, they appear to add value to the properties while enhancing a sense of exclusivity but erase the history of colonial violence. In conjunction with these discursive effects are the material realities of the cyclical destruction of property by hurricanes through which distressed properties are sold at a discount to be redeveloped for luxury builds aimed largely at foreign purchasers. This disaster development model systematically destroys artifacts of tangible heritage while displacing residents from communal spaces. As climate change intensifies, we raise questions about the sustainability of this model on the island going forward.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15040234

Authors: Denise L. Jones Dennis F. Jones Zaida V. Pearson Brittani Parham Deanna C. E. Sinex Lori Crawford Keith Jamison

Diversionary programs in the United States juvenile justice system were designed to redirect youth from formal legal processing towards services such as treatment, community service, or counseling. Alternative to Detention (ATD) emerged as a key strategy to reduce youth incarceration, though research suggests these programs often provide inconsistent and short-term benefits. Despite these limitations, ATD remains one of the primary, and frequently sole, methods funded and implemented by courts and stakeholders as a diversionary strategy. This article introduces Youth Enrichment Services (YES), a community-based non-profit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and describes how the Integrated Model of Juvenile Justice (IMJJ) is applied through universal, selective, and indicated interventions. As a community-based, multi-level approach, YES offers a holistic, practice-based model of prevention, mentorship, and family engagement, with implications for policy and community-driven juvenile justice reform.