Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060378

Authors: Carly Bailey Dierkhising

Growing evidence on the collateral consequences of youth incarceration, combined with increased attention to developmentally appropriate and trauma-informed care, has advanced national reform efforts aimed at rethinking youth confinement. While attention to trauma-informed care and developmentally appropriate approaches within juvenile justice systems is important, the structural barriers inherent in secure settings limit their potential. As a result, a concentrated focus on decarceration offers greater promise for promoting healthy youth outcomes. The movement toward decarceration emphasizes community-based services grounded in empirical evidence demonstrating that rehabilitation and positive adolescent development are more effectively achieved outside secure facilities. Additionally, an often-overlooked component of this shift is the role of probation, which remains the most common disposition for youth who come in contact with the justice system. Probation can either extend formal system involvement or serve as a bridge to community-based services, thereby influencing the success of decarceration efforts. This paper argues that prioritizing decarceration, while strengthening community capacity and thoughtfully restructuring probation, offers the most promising path for promoting healthy outcomes for youth, families, and communities.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060377

Authors: Yuan Lin Yue Zhao

The governance of traditional medical knowledge faces persistent challenges from biopiracy and the inadequacy of conventional intellectual property regimes. This article examines the transformative potential and limitations of blockchain technology in governing traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) knowledge, adopting a framework that integrates legal validity, procedural justice, and governance implications. Drawing on normative legal analysis of Chinese statutes, empirical case studies of recent blockchain initiatives in China, and comparative analysis of the Nagoya Protocol and WIPO frameworks, the article advances three arguments. First, blockchain-enabled registration can generate legally cognizable evidence of prior existence, though its validity as a property right requires statutory recognition. Second, blockchain can enhance procedural justice by mitigating evidentiary asymmetry, expanding participation, and increasing benefit-sharing transparency. Third, the governance implications demand hybrid institutional designs that combine technological infrastructure with legal frameworks. The article identifies critical limitations—the oracle problem, accessibility barriers, and jurisdictional fragmentation—and proposes targeted optimizations, including statutory presumptions for blockchain records and enhanced international coordination. China’s experience offers actionable insights for equitable, legally embedded, and technologically sophisticated traditional medical knowledge governance globally.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060376

Authors: Nurbieta Abd Aziz Nur Angriani Nurja Hafizol Abu Hassan Abdul Halim Masnan Hasrul Hosshan Nor Siti Rokiah Abdul Razak Syamsinar Abdul Jabar Nurul Khairani Ismail Imanina Ibrahim Dimitar Angelov Rahmahtrisilvia

Video modelling (VM) is widely used as an instructional strategy to support skill acquisition among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), particularly within visually mediated learning contexts. This systematic review synthesises recent empirical evidence on the effectiveness, limitations, and practical implementation of VM interventions in autism education. The review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. Electronic searches were conducted in Google Scholar and Springer Nature Link, focusing on peer-reviewed empirical studies published between 2020 and 2024. Following screening and eligibility procedures, 20 studies were included in the final synthesis. Most studies employed single-case experimental designs (SCEDs), with fewer using group-based or quasi-experimental approaches. Due to heterogeneity in study designs, participant characteristics, intervention procedures, and outcome measures, findings were synthesised narratively. Across studies, VM interventions were applied across multiple domains, including social communication, academic learning, vocational skills, and daily living routines. The most consistent evidence was observed for structured and procedural skills. However, the evidence base remains limited by methodological variability, small sample sizes, and the predominance of SCEDs, which constrain generalisability. This review provides a domain-based and implementation-informed synthesis of recent VM research, highlighting contextual factors influencing effectiveness. While VM shows promise, conclusions should be interpreted cautiously. Future research with larger samples and more rigorous designs is needed to strengthen the evidence base.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060375

Authors: Abbas Jong Shima Jong

This article examines how young Muslim women in contemporary France live, negotiate, and recalibrate the hijab within a differentiated secular order that distributes the conditions of public visibility unequally across institutional sites. Rather than treating the headscarf as a legal controversy or as a symbolic test of the compatibility of Islam with republican secularism, the analysis asks how visible Muslim femininity is rendered institutionally legible, conditionally tolerable, or professionally problematic across the ordinary spaces of school, work, leisure, and public life, and how women respond when the continuity between faith, body, and public presence is repeatedly subjected to regulation. Drawing on a reflexive thematic analysis of seven in-depth interviews with young Muslim-background women in Paris, the article shows that hijab emerges in the core narratives as an ethical form of composure, governed self-presence, and dignity; that schools, workplaces, and recreational sites act as visibility filters that classify which forms of Muslim femininity can appear as acceptable, neutral, and professionally credible; and that these pressures are negotiated aesthetically through ongoing acts of bodily calibration and respectable self-presentation. To capture this practical labor, the article develops the concept of embodied boundary-work and situates it explicitly in dialogue with Foucauldian accounts of disciplinary normalization and feminist scholarship on the ambivalence of agency under norm-governed conditions. The argument is that the French hijab question is most productively understood through the gendered management of Muslim visibility enacted through institutional norms of fit, neutrality, and appearance, whereby the female body becomes the site where secular governance, moral selfhood, professional sorting, and public belonging concretely intersect.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060374

Authors: Hiu Hung Monica Wong

Background: Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to psychological distress following natural disasters, especially in low-resource settings. This study examined the short-term psychosocial outcomes associated with Narrative Drawing Intervention (NDI), a structured, trauma-informed, school-based group counselling program integrating expressive drawing and guided narrative reflection, among students affected by an earthquake in rural western China. Methods: Using a quasi-experimental design, 30 trained educators facilitated eight NDI group sessions for 150 students. Of the 120 students who completed the intervention, a randomly selected subset completed standardized psychological assessments. The final analyzed sample included 64 participants (44 intervention; 20 control). Results: The intervention group demonstrated significant reductions in anxiety (p = 0.011, d = 0.40) and PTSD symptoms (p = 0.008, d = 0.42), with a reduction in stress approaching statistical significance (p = 0.063, d = 0.29). In contrast, the control group showed significant increases in anxiety, stress, and PTSD symptoms over the same period. Depressive symptoms did not significantly change in either group. Descriptive drawing comparisons indicated increased visual elaboration and more centralized figure placement following the intervention. Conclusions: Within the context of a quasi-experimental and exploratory design, the findings provide preliminary support for the feasibility of NDI and suggest potential short-term psychosocial benefits in post-disaster school settings. While baseline group differences and the lack of randomization suggest the need for further investigation, the results provide a foundation for future randomized and longitudinal studies that further examine causal pathways and the sustainability of observed effects.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060373

Authors: Dolly Eliyahu-Levi Avi Gvura

The article examines conservative rhetoric and discourse in Israel toward the LGBTQ+ community from a sociolinguistic perspective that conceptualizes language as an arena of socio-cultural struggle over identity, power, and normativity. Drawing on queer linguistics theory and identity politics, the study explores how language constructs reality through metaphors of illness, sin, and existential threat, as well as through theological framing and appeals to family and national values. These rhetorical strategies produce a social hierarchy in which heteronormativity is positioned as a “natural truth” while queer identities are labelled as deviant or threatening. From sociological perspective, the study reveals how conservative discourse establishes social boundaries and reinforces collective identity through the exclusion of the Other, thereby reproducing power relations and hierarchies. The article calls for the development of an alternative public discourse grounded in pluralism, inclusion, and the recognition of diverse identities as a means of strengthening democracy and social justice. While existing studies have examined conservative discourse toward LGBTQ+ communities primarily in Western contexts, this study contributes to the field by centering the Israeli case as a distinctive site of analysis, where conservative voices emerge from multiple and ideologically heterogeneous traditions: national-religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Muslim-Arab. By examining how rhetorically divergent speakers converge around shared mechanisms of exclusion, the study reveals that heteronormative discourse is not the product of a single ideological source, but a cross-sectoral phenomenon embedded in the specific political and cultural tensions of Israeli society.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060372

Authors: Óscar Delgado-Mohatar Raúl Alelú-Paz

Democratic erosion often begins rhetorically before institutions show visible damage. Here we test whether large language models (LLMs) can detect early linguistic signals of authoritarian drift in political speech. Formal speeches by Adolf Hitler (1922–1939), Donald Trump (2017–2025), Nicola Sturgeon (2014–2023), Giorgia Meloni (2022–2025) and Viktor Orban (2022–2025) were scored using an 11-indicator taxonomy derived from the Levitsky–Ziblatt framework and evaluated independently by GPT-4o, Gemini 2.5-Pro and Grok-4-Fast, with near-perfect inter-model agreement. Principal Component Analysis revealed two poles: an authoritarian–populist cluster (Hitler–Trump–Orban) and a democratic-institutional pole (Meloni–Sturgeon). To quantify proximity to an authoritarian reference, we introduce the Authoritarian Reference Index (ARI), defined such that it captures both its alignment and intensity relative to the Hitler gold-standard vector. Trump exhibited the highest proximity to the reference (99.1% alignment, 80.7% intensity), followed by Orban, who mirrored the structural alignment (97.6%) with a moderated intensity (72.4%). In contrast, the democratic-institutional pole was distinguished by significantly lower intensity scores, with Meloni (16.4%) and Sturgeon (22.3%) remaining distant from the authoritarian magnitude despite varying degrees of structural overlap. These results show that extreme rhetorical peaks carry disproportionate diagnostic weight and that LLMs can expose structural authoritarian patterns relevant for democratic monitoring.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060371

Authors: Juan Manuel Martínez-Ripoll Marta García-Domingo Yolanda M. de la Fuente Robles

Epidermolysis Bullosa is a group of rare genodermatoses characterized by extreme mucocutaneous fragility, significantly affecting the quality of life of those who live with the condition and their families, thereby making integrated and coordinated social work intervention with other health and social care professionals essential. This qualitative descriptive study examines social work practice with individuals with Epidermolysis Bullosa through online open-ended surveys administered to twenty professionals, analyzed using a reflexive thematic approach. The findings reveal key barriers, including the lack of specialized training, the absence of standardized protocols, and administrative complexity, as well as the need to address intersectional factors that exacerbate socioeconomic vulnerability. Despite these challenges, social work intervention contributes to enhancing family autonomy, improving caregiver well-being, and promoting social, educational, and occupational inclusion. The study highlights the importance of strengthening such interventions through interinstitutional coordination, the development of structured protocols, and the central role of community social services. In conclusion, advancing specialized training and consolidating coordination structures may significantly improve the quality of care and the well-being of affected individuals and their families.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060370

Authors: Ye Luo Miao Li William Haller Yu-Bo Wang Patricia Carbajales-Dale Savannah Jones Xi Pan

This study examines the relationship between COVID-19-related discrimination and mental distress in the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also explores whether this relationship can be accounted for by loneliness, resilience, and financial worries. A random sample of 302 respondents from four Upstate South Carolina counties completed surveys between March and August 2022. Results from path analysis indicate a strong positive association between experiences of COVID-19-related discrimination and mental distress, with approximately half of this association accounted for by loneliness, resilience, and financial worries. Additionally, job disruptions and material hardships account for the relationship between discrimination and financial worries. While recognizing that causal inferences cannot be drawn from the cross-sectional design, these findings highlight the interconnected social, psychological, and economic factors linked to discrimination and mental distress and suggest potential targets for future research and intervention.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060369

Authors: Sultan Akel Zekiye İrem Gözübol Kerem Toker

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between young adults’ perceptions of gender equality and their recognition of psychological and physical dating violence while considering the role of sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 465 young adults aged 18–24 in Türkiye. Data were collected via an online questionnaire that included the Gender Equality Scale, the Perceptions of Dating Violence Scale, and sociodemographic variables. Nonparametric tests, Spearman correlation analyses, and OLS multiple regression analyses were used to assess group differences, bivariate relationships, and the unique predictive contribution of gender equality perceptions while controlling for sociodemographic variables. Results: The findings revealed a significant positive correlation between lower perceptions of gender equality and greater tolerance for psychological and physical dating violence. Educational level, perceived economic status, and romantic relationship status were associated with differences in perceptions of gender equality and violence, while gender and employment status were not significant factors. Conclusions: This study highlights the link between perceptions of gender equality and attitudes toward dating violence. These findings suggest that individual beliefs and sociodemographic characteristics influence how young adults perceive and respond to psychological and physical violence. Further research is needed to explore these relationships across broader populations and cultural contexts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060368

Authors: Javier Ferrer-Aracil Víctor M. Giménez-Bertomeu Mercedes Cuenca-Silvestre Elena M. Cortés-Florín

This paper analyzes perceptions of competencies and other employability-related factors in Social Work from two complementary perspectives: that of final-year Bachelor’s students in Social Work, and that of Social Work professionals serving as field supervisors during practicum. A quantitative, cross-sectional, and descriptive study was conducted. A total of 96 individuals from a Spanish public university participated: 77 fourth-year students and 19 professionals. Data were collected through two ad hoc questionnaires on competencies related to employability, the usefulness of practicum and the degree of job placement, additional training, geographic mobility, and the transition to employment. In both groups, although from different positions and perspectives, professional ethics and responsibility, social commitment, and teamwork were highlighted. Likewise, practicum and the Degree in Social Work were considered highly useful for finding employment, and the establishment of partnerships with companies and institutions was identified as the most effective measure to improve employability. In contrast, different results were observed among students and professionals with regard to additional training, mobility, and the transition to employment. The results underscore the value of further exploring the connection between higher education and the professional world, as well as studying the transition to professional practice.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060367

Authors: Katalin Parti Addison Midkiff

This study examines audience reception of two implementations of an interactive theatre-based scam-prevention program developed to raise awareness of scams targeting older adults. The 2023 and 2024 implementations differed in cast composition, pacing, length, audience interaction, and scenario structure. Rather than treating these differences as the basis for causal comparison, this article uses the two implementations as programmatic cases for identifying how audience members made sense of theatre-based cybersecurity education. The study is guided primarily by andragogy, with geragogy used as an age-specific extension for interpreting older participants’ comments about accessibility, pacing, repetition, and instructional support. It uses a qualitative, multi-method design based on post-performance surveys with open-ended questions (N = 332; n = 164 in 2023, n = 108 in 2024) and follow-up interviews (N = 27; n = 15 in 2023, n = 12 in 2024). Findings show that participants valued practical scam-prevention information, emotional resonance, humor, accessibility, and opportunities for reflection, while also identifying design tensions around pacing, interactivity, repetition, and emotional tone. Age-group patterns were directional rather than categorical: interviews suggested stronger contrasts in how older and younger adults interpreted the program, while survey responses showed more mixed and overlapping forms of learning and engagement. The study contributes design-oriented insights for theatre-based cybersecurity education and suggests that andragogy, supplemented by geragogical attention to later-life accessibility and support, offers a useful framework for future program development.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060366

Authors: Joan Casas-Martí Paula Andrea Fernández-Dávila Lorena Valencia-Gálvez

This article examines experiences of loneliness among older adults from a life course perspective, fostering a dialogue grounded in Social Work. The aim is to understand how loneliness is constructed, expressed and reinterpreted as a subjective, relational and dynamic experience embedded in diverse life trajectories and shaped by structural factors. A qualitative, descriptive and interpretative approach was adopted, involving 30 individual interviews and 4 focus groups with 74 participants (older adults, social workers and other social-sector professionals) in Barcelona (Spain). The analysis was structured around the three core concepts of life course theory and its five key principles. The findings show that loneliness, understood as distinct from social isolation, is linked to biographical processes marked by expected and unexpected life changes. Its intensity and meaning vary according to timing, historical context, social position and life decisions. Employment, family, institutional, migratory, and sexual orientation and gender identity trajectories significantly shape experiences of loneliness. The study highlights the role of agency and underscores the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding accumulated inequalities. From a Social Work perspective, the article advocates a biographical, situated and relational approach to loneliness, promoting interventions that recognise individual trajectories and support meaningful social relationships.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060365

Authors: Linzi Williamson Randy C. Duncan Grace Rath Aliegha Dixon Christina Chandler Colleen Anne Dell

The lack of publicly available demographic and prevalence data on service dog (SDog) teams in Canada challenges our understanding of how and to what degree limited industry regulations, unharmonized standards, differing pathways to acquiring an SDog, and other variables can affect individuals with disabilities’ (i.e., handlers/consumers) ability to acquire, train with, or live with an SDog in Canada. The present study aims to develop empirical knowledge on SDog handler/consumer experiences with navigating the Canadian SDog industry. Current, former, and prospective Canadian SDog handlers/consumers (N = 263) were surveyed on personal demographics, SDog acquisition experiences, and experiences training/working with an SDog. Descriptive statistics were calculated for all quantitative data and open-ended responses were content analyzed. Participants reported diverse experiences and processes in acquiring an SDog. The typical respondent was a novice SDog handler, inexperienced in formally training with dogs, grew up with dogs and cats, had no negative experiences with dogs, needed an SDog to support a mental health disability/ies, trained their SDog on their own or with some professional support, did not join a wait list, completed basic obedience, public access, and/or task-specific training with their SDog 0 to 5 h daily using positive reinforcement or fear-free training approaches, spent on average $2567 to purchase their dog and $6695 for ongoing training costs, and had minimal but satisfactory experiences with Canadian SDog organizations. There are numerous gaps in our understanding of SDog team experiences in Canada, and future research is warranted.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060364

Authors: Ruben Karapetyan Karine Qocharyan Arman Andrikyan

Diaspora communities often develop institutional structures that shape patterns of social participation and integration within host societies. While immigrant integration is commonly assessed through individual socio-economic indicators, the organizational capacity of ethnic communities also plays an important role in sustaining collective engagement and leadership formation. This study examines patterns of community participation among Armenian diaspora populations in two major host contexts, Tehran and Los Angeles, which represent contrasting historical and institutional environments of diaspora development. The analysis draws on sociological survey data collected between 2018 and 2023 from 1600 respondents (N = 800 in each city), complemented by expert interviews with community leaders and organizational representatives. Community participation was categorized into three levels of engagement: organizers, active members, and non-participants. The results indicate that both communities demonstrate relatively high levels of organizational participation, yet their leadership structures differ significantly. In Tehran, leadership roles are distributed across diverse occupational groups within historically embedded institutional infrastructures. In contrast, leadership in Los Angeles is more concentrated among highly educated professionals, reflecting a more professionalized model of diaspora organization. These findings suggest that diaspora participation should be understood as a context-dependent form of institutional capacity that shapes patterns of collective engagement and immigrant integration.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060363

Authors: Elvis Williams Elvis Nshom

The relatively recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused the displacement of millions of Ukrainians. Studies have found that Ukrainians have seen a warmer welcome and embrace than other groups; they have also shown that there is generally a higher willingness to help Ukrainian refugees than other refugee populations. This study explores American’s attitudes towards Russia and President Vladimir Putin, and the extent to which these attitudes predict American’s willingness to help Ukrainian refugees. In a sample of 201 participants, results showed that, even though negative attitudes towards Russia and President Putin were both high, negative attitudes towards Putin were significantly higher than negative attitudes towards Russia. In addition, negative attitudes towards Putin significantly predicted Americans’ willingness to help Ukrainian refugees but not negative attitudes towards Russia. Implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060362

Authors: Christian Dumba Maditobane Robert Lekganyane

Community home-based care is an essential component of health care. Although mainly dominated by females, men have also played a crucial role as caregivers. Given the role stereotypes prescribed by societal norms driven by patriarchy, it is important to understand the challenges of males who perform duties that are deemed female roles like caring for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA). This study sought to explore the psychosocial challenges encountered by male community home-based caregivers caring for PLHA in a South African community. The study was conducted in Pretoria West, a community under the city of Tshwane Metro Municipality, South Africa. Designed with a phenomenological, explorative, and contextual research framework, this descriptive qualitative study involved ten male caregivers of PLHA who participated in semi-structured interviews that were thematically analysed. The study’s trustworthiness was upheld through credibility, confirmability, transferability and dependability. The results pointed to complex psychosocial issues experienced by male caregivers including the difficulties in managing caregiving responsibilities, struggling to balance caregiving and personal life, and the impact of caregiving on their wellbeing and lifestyle. Furthermore, caregivers were found to be uncertain and anxious. Male caregivers experience complex challenges that negatively affect their psychosocial wellbeing. It is essential to design wellness programmes that support this category of caregivers.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060361

Authors: Monica Ewomazino Akokuwebe Godswill Nwabuisi Osuafor Rasidi Akanji Okunola

Although apartheid ended in 1994, its legacy continues to shape South Africa’s higher education system, reinforcing disparities in access, funding, and representation. This study aims to critically examine how apartheid diplomacy has influenced higher education and asks: how do its strategies continue to shape academic practices, institutional relationships, and systemic inequalities in post-apartheid South Africa? It conceptualises apartheid diplomacy as the use of education to entrench racial hierarchies, reproduce class domination, and suppress indigenous knowledge. Grounded in Marxist and Weberian class theories and Crenshaw’s intersectionality framework, the analysis traces how apartheid-era policies institutionalised systemic inequalities and how these legacies persist within institutions. A scoping review was conducted using five databases (EMBASE, APA PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and Scopus) between January 2007 and April 2025, guided by PRISMA ScR and Arksey and O’Malley’s six-stage framework. Of 75 articles retrieved, 15 met the inclusion criteria. Findings reveal that apartheid diplomacy shaped academic governance, resource distribution, and knowledge production, leaving enduring inequities despite ongoing reforms. Transformation efforts, including financial aid schemes, equity policies, and curriculum debates, have achieved progress but remain constrained by structural, cultural, and intersectional barriers. The study underscores that achieving lasting equity requires continuous policy interventions, inclusive leadership, and curriculum decolonisation, alongside advocacy and interdisciplinary research. It reframes higher education as a diplomatic arena where equity and epistemic justice are negotiated, offering an original lens for understanding and dismantling apartheid’s enduring influence on South African academia.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060360

Authors: Felipe Alckmin-Carvalho Iara Teixeira Constança Proença Nayara Martins Guilherme Wendt Martim Santos Henrique Pereira

Loneliness has emerged as a significant public health concern among vulnerable populations, particularly gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM), and is shaped by sociodemographic and sociocultural factors. This observational, cross-sectional study aimed to estimate the prevalence of loneliness and examine its associations with sociodemographic and sociocultural factors among Brazilian MSM. A total of 1196 participants (mean age = 39.96 years, SD = 12.41) completed measures of loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale), sociodemographic characteristics, economic vulnerability, social and community capital, religiosity, and clinical–behavioral factors. More than half of the participants (52.7%) reported moderate or high levels of loneliness. A hierarchical multiple linear regression model was estimated and explained 23% of the variance in loneliness. Greater economic vulnerability and problematic substance use were linked to higher loneliness, whereas being in a romantic relationship, reporting a stronger sense of community belonging, and having social networks composed predominantly of LGBTQIA+ peers were linked to lower loneliness. The absence of formal religion was independently linked to higher loneliness, and HIV serostatus was not significantly related to loneliness after adjustment. These findings highlight the relevance of loneliness in this population and inform interventions targeting material vulnerability and community-based social support.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060359

Authors: María Dolores Muñoz de Dios Cristina Díaz Román Cristina Belén Sampedro-Palacios Trinidad Ortega Expósito

Community Social Services constitute the primary level of intervention within Social Services systems and play a key role in assessing needs, planning interventions, and coordinating support in situations of vulnerability. The growing incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into professional practice has generated increasing debate regarding its implications, benefits, and ethical challenges. This study aims to analyse current scientific evidence on the application of AI in Community Social Services. A systematic review was conducted following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, examining high-impact academic publications that address AI implementation in Social Service contexts. The selected studies were analysed through thematic synthesis to identify recurring trends, tools, benefits, and challenges. The findings reveal a progressive integration of AI mainly as a decision-support tool, including predictive models, automation of administrative processes, and early risk detection systems. Reported benefits include improved efficiency, enhanced data systematisation, and reduced administrative burden. However, significant ethical concerns, such as algorithmic bias, data privacy risks, and potential dehumanisation of interventions, were also identified. Overall, AI is emerging as a complementary resource in Community Social Services, whose responsible and ethically grounded implementation is essential to ensure alignment with core Social Work values.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060358

Authors: Sipho Sibanda Robert Lekganyane Gontse Maubane

With the introduction of antiretroviral treatment, HIV has become more of a chronic disease, resulting in people living with HIV living longer. This progress has also been realised among children and adolescents living with HIV, whose primary caregivers have always been instrumental in supporting and caring for them. Despite the general progress in the fight against HIV and the crucial role of caregivers in supporting children living with HIV, the reality is that the struggle is not yet over. The existing literature demonstrates that there are some untold sufferings not only of those children who are living with HIV but also their families and primary caregivers. Drawing from the biopsychosocial theoretical framework, this exploratory qualitative study sought to explore the experiences, challenges and coping strategies of caregivers of children living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. A total of eight participants were recruited from Pretoria and Cape Town through purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed through Braun and Clarke’s thematic model of qualitative data analysis. The findings revealed various experiences, including reluctance to disclose the child’s HIV-positive status, financial challenges, experiences involving support systems and the coping strategies for managing challenges. The study demonstrated the complexity of HIV as a condition involving the interaction of biological, psychological and social dynamics.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060357

Authors: Rachel M. Schmitz Israt Jahan Juie Ke Wang

This qualitative study examines how menstruation structures the lives and futures of married adolescent girls in the Centre for Girls’ Education’s Married Adolescent Safe Spaces (MAS) program in rural northern Nigeria. It addresses a key gap by focusing on married adolescents and treating menstruation as a social process linked to early marriage, schooling, mobility, and sexual and reproductive health, rather than only a hygiene issue. Guided by an intersectional social ecological and menstrual health-and-rights framework, the study draws on three years of ethnographic fieldwork. Methods include participant observation in MAS clubs, in-depth interviews, informal group discussions, and Hausa field notes from multiple rural communities, analyzed through iterative thematic coding and collaborative memoing. Findings show that menstruation operates as a “catalyst of constraint.” Menarche signals sexual maturity, intensifying moral surveillance, prompting threats or realities of school withdrawal, and accelerating pressure toward marriage. Girls describe menstruation as a “joy killer” and becoming “a shadow of myself,” as stains, pain, and shaming by teachers and peers lead to absenteeism and, at times, permanent dropout. Silence and stigma mean that asking questions can be read as promiscuity, pushing girls away from parents, religious leaders, and male teachers and toward sisters, peers, and mentors for incomplete guidance. Structural deprivation further individualizes the burden of menstrual management. Poverty, lack of affordable pads and underwear, and inadequate WASH facilities compel girls to “make do” with cloths and other unsafe materials, restrict movement during bleeding, and engage in small income-generating activities or kin negotiations to obtain basic supplies. MAS safe spaces partially disrupt these patterns by offering rare venues to discuss menstruation openly, learn cycle tracking and hygiene, and build peer solidarity and self-advocacy. However, the analysis underscores that program benefits remain constrained when poverty, weak school infrastructure, and restrictive gender norms remain intact. The study highlights how equitable sexual and reproductive health interventions must integrate menstrual health centrally, combining safe-space programming with subsidized products, improved WASH infrastructure, protective school policies, and norm change efforts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060356

Authors: Sheila Holz Denise Esteves

The European Union’s Farm-to-Fork (F2F) Strategy sets an ambitious agenda for a socio-ecological transition, positioning agriculture as a critical sector for achieving sustainable food systems. However, its implementation faces significant systemic barriers that hinder its transformative potential. This paper applies a diagnostic framework, derived from the H2020-funded PHOENIX project, that identifies six key challenges to democratic innovations in environmental governance: prolonged timeframes for tangible results, the complexity of environmental issues, the need for transcalar cooperation, the imperative to foster behavioural change, limited deliberative dialogue, and the need to build mutual trust. Through a review of public policies and scholarly literature, this analysis evaluates how these challenges manifest within the F2F Strategy, impacting farmers and the broader agri-food system. The findings demonstrate that barriers to F2F implementation are not solely technical or economic but are deeply linked to governance fragmentation, uneven knowledge flows, and deficits in trust relations. Crucially, the study reveals that Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) and associated Education and Training (ET) consistently emerge as pivotal enabling mechanisms to mitigate these constraints. The research generates actionable recommendations to reinforce F2F by redefining the roles of innovation, education, and multi-level collaboration in building resilient and sustainable EU agri-food systems.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060355

Authors: Paul Gavin Finley MacDonald Cody Normitta Porter Ada Toprak

The ageing prisoner population in England and Wales presents a significant and growing challenge for both criminal justice and social policy. Despite increasing recognition of the complex health and social care needs of this cohort, these needs have not been adequately addressed by successive governments. This conceptual paper critically analyses the broader structural, policy, and practice-based limitations associated with the provision of health and social care for older prisoners through a Sykesian (1958) pain model, as well as through Crewe’s (2011) analytical framework of weight, depth, tightness and breadth. It does this through consideration of three main pains of being an older prisoner—those related to healthcare, social care and death.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060354

Authors: Isabel Ferreira Andreia Barbas Joana Santos

Aiming for a just transition towards climate neutrality requires urban regeneration strategies that address ecological and social vulnerabilities. This study examines the strategies and experiences of developing nature-based solutions (NBS) for the regeneration of public space in neighbourhoods of seven European cities participating in the URBiNAT project. The aim is to move beyond the discussions on material solutions and focus on the sociopolitical components that shape the impact of NBS towards adaptation of urban communities and public spaces to climate change. Drawing on a qualitative sociological approach, the research enquires into the drivers and impact of participatory processes in the ecological and social dimensions of urban regeneration. More specifically, the study addresses the following research questions: (1) What are the individual, collective and institutional motivations that instigate different typologies of actors to engage in these processes? (2) What is the relevance of balancing material and immaterial solutions? (3) What are the lessons learned from the multiple actors, considering their experiences, expectations, and priorities? Findings confirm that the aim to produce socially and ecologically robust climate solutions for urban regeneration can be achieved through collaborative governance strategies emerging from, and tailored to, the typology of actors’ specific sensitivities, expectations, and priorities.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060353

Authors: Petronela Nistor

This article explores the specificity of social assistance conducted by the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) compared to Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) in the UK, USA, and France. The article is a secondary qualitative analysis of a circumscribed subset of the interview material assembled in a wider mixed-methods study on the professionalization of charity in the ROC, pursuing a different research question—the configurational specificity of the Orthodox model—than the parent study itself. Using Grounded Theory methodology on the corpus of nineteen interviews with clergy, social workers, and experts from Northeastern Romania, the analysis develops the category of the sacralization of social assistance—a configuration of practices and meanings in which the spiritual dimension is structurally integrated, sacramentally obligatory, and clerically authorized. While each of these features has been documented individually in Protestant and Catholic faith-based organizations, their joint configuration in the Romanian Orthodox case differs in degree and arrangement from patterns reported in the Western literature. A theoretically informed contrast with that literature highlights six dimensions along which the ROC configuration, as articulated by providers, diverges from the patterns most frequently reported in that literature: (1) the spiritual dimension is structurally integrated in ROC versus optional in UK/USA or institutionally absent in France; (2) leadership remains predominantly clerical versus secularly professionalized in the West; (3) the beneficiary is conceptualized as a living icon of Christ versus a person with civil rights; (4) the purpose of interventions is soteriological versus immanent social reintegration; (5) professionalization generates anxiety about secularization versus comfortable normalization; (6) volunteerism remains informal-communitarian versus formalized-systematic. The research proposes a dual-axis typology that differentiates between the presence and the nature of the spiritual dimension.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060352

Authors: Blantina Ignatia Madutlela Daniel Lesiba Letsoalo

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a critical public health concern in South Africa, which ranks among the countries most severely affected worldwide. Women and girls are reported to bear the greatest burden, with men predominantly identified as perpetrators. GBV is particularly prevalent in densely populated areas such as informal settlements, where adverse socioeconomic conditions create fertile ground for its proliferation. Despite the scale of this problem, to the researchers’ knowledge, few studies, especially qualitative ones, have been conducted in such contexts, even though informal settlements are widespread across the country. To generate nuanced insights into this phenomenon, the current study explored the lived experiences of women victims of GBV in Alexandra, one of South Africa’s largest informal settlements. The study was grounded in an interpretive paradigm, employed a qualitative approach, and adopted a single-case-study design. Participants were purposively selected from a population of women victims of GBV, and the sample size was determined through data saturation. Data were collected through individual, face-to-face semi-structured interviews and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) with Nvivo version 15 software and interpreted through the lens of feminist theory. The findings revealed that GBV has profound effects on women’s emotional, psychological and social wellbeing, extending beyond the immediate incidents to also affect their overall functioning, erode self-confidence, and limit opportunities for independence. The use of intimidation and coercion tactics by perpetrators trapped victims in a cycle of dysfunction which diminished agency, and fostered isolation. Interpreting these findings through a feminist lens highlights the systematic and recurrent nature of GBV, which cuts across personal, structural and relational dimensions. The findings underscore the urgent need for context-specific interventions that will help dismantle structures of abuse while supporting victims’ and/or survivors’ autonomy, recovery and, most importantly, capacity to rebuild identity and trust.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060351

Authors: Kathy Karatasas Rebekah Grace Daryl J. Higgins

Children’s cultural care is not an ancillary practice concern but a central element of governance, safeguarding, and ethical responsibility within out-of-home care systems. Across child protection systems internationally, out-of-home care services are mandated to safeguard children while upholding statutory and international care obligations. Leadership sets direction, organisational structures embed accountability, and learning cultures sustain responsiveness, forming an architecture that protects children’s cultural identities as inseparable from their safety, wellbeing, and belonging. Cultural care thus signals organisational integrity and the translation of rights-based commitments into practice. Yet many out-of-home care organisations struggle to support children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to maintain connections with family, community, and culture. Responsibility is often delegated to individual caseworkers, limiting systemic impact. Whole-of-organisation approaches are needed to embed cultural connection as a core safeguarding priority, strengthen accountability, and develop practitioner capability. Interviews with representatives from service organisations across five countries examined the organisational drivers that enable effective cultural care and the factors shaping the implementation of practice tools. Findings highlight the interconnected roles of leadership, governance, workforce development, and practitioner teams in sustaining culturally responsive practice. This paper reinforces shared responsibility across organisational levels to act with intentionality and cultural curiosity in supporting children’s rights to identity and belonging and concludes with an A–Z prompt tool offering reflective questions for leaders and practitioners to strengthen organisational approaches to cultural care.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060350

Authors: Margaret Greenfields Maria Faraone Sue Lukes Chantal Radley

This paper discusses emerging findings from a large-scale, ongoing UKRI-funded study (2024–2027) undertaken in twelve diverse areas of England. While the main project focuses on reducing health inequalities for refugees, asylum seekers and migrant populations, this interim paper focuses on emerging evidence related to the question of how perceptions of deservingness and route of entry link to access to housing and support services available to the four main refugee, asylum seeking and migrant groups who are the predominant focus within the wider research study. We argue that the level and type of support received and access to housing have a direct impact on the wellbeing of the populations. Housing is one of the key social determinants of health, with impacts on both mental health and broader wellbeing. Our findings show that nationality, together with route of entry, legal status and eligibility for statutory support (or lack thereof), clearly affects housing pathways. This, in turn, impacts on the likelihood of being housed in temporary/dispersal accommodation, as well as experiencing homelessness and longer-term housing precarity. These are factors which are widely recognised as affecting mental health and wellbeing, as well as the ability to receive uninterrupted health care for other conditions. This study explores how vulnerability, desirability, and deservingness shape different trajectories of refugee housing and resettlement and the resultant impacts on different migrant populations.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060349

Authors: Aaron Kupchik Bernice Petit Samantha Schornstein Benjamin Fleury-Steiner

In 1999, 107,493 juveniles were in residential placements; by 2023 this number declined to 29,314, a decrease of 73%. This extraordinary decline in juvenile incarceration—which we refer to as juvenile decarceration—has been reported primarily by justice advocacy groups without rigorous explanation or exploration. In this paper, we provide a state-level exploration in which we consider how relevant characteristics of states relate to their levels of decarceration. We analyze data from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and several publicly available sources and find correlations between the extent of a state’s rate of decarceration and that state’s poverty rate, high school dropout rate, adult incarceration rate, and voting results in the 2020 presidential election. Most striking, however, is the relative consistency of decarceration across states, and the absence of more robust patterns.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060348

Authors: Suraj B. Patil Mahesh Chougule Channaveer R. M.

Social mobility is a central indicator of socioeconomic development. It indicates the improvement of an individual’s socioeconomic position across generations. Recently, welfare policies, education, and redistribution schemes have received increasing attention from the academic community as they affect social mobility outcomes. Despite the growing volume of literature, there is an inadequate linkage between research on social mobility and social policy. This study uses a bibliometric analysis of 389 Scopus-indexed articles to examine research on social mobility and social policy from 1990 to 2025. The findings highlight the relationship between the impacts of policy interventions on social mobility. Performance analysis and science mapping are used, which provide insight into publication trends and leading contributors and reveal the intellectual and conceptual structures of the research field. Studies are concentrated in developed economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Further, in the science mapping analysis, co-word analysis is followed by bibliographic coupling, which reveals emerging trends and promising themes. The study provides a comprehensive synthesis of the conceptual and intellectual evolution of social mobility research, offers insights for policymakers and highlights the future direction of interdisciplinary research.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060347

Authors: Emiko A. Tajima Kristian V. Jones Jon M. Torres Isaac A. Sanders Carina Mendoza Brittney Lee Jennifer Personius

Extended Foster Care (EFC) provides services and benefits on a voluntary basis to young adults leaving the foster care system without having attained legal permanency. In the US, more than 19,000 young adults transitioned out of foster care without achieving legal permanency in 2021. As states seek to improve supports to young adults eligible for EFC, it is important to identify institutional barriers and needed practice reforms. This study reports on analyses of qualitative focus group data gathered from workers (N = 24) and interviews with community practitioners (N = 14) as part of Washington state’s collaborative systems assessment of EFC. Data from transcripts were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis of coded content. Rapid qualitative analysis allowed for efficient analysis and sorting of data to gather findings prior to the legislative session. Key themes identified related to (1) service and benefit gaps and needs, (2) organizational practice reforms, and (3) a need for culturally responsive services and a representative workforce. Specifically, workforce staff and community partners emphasized the need for EFC-specific units, developmentally tailored training, working from a clearly articulated practice model relevant to youth and young adults, the importance of reducing caseloads, recruitment and retention of a representative workforce, and more evidence-based practice options for EFC.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060346

Authors: Ciprian Bădescu Nicu Gavriluță

This article examines remittances not only as financial transfers but also as datafied political objects shaped by measurement, modelling and presentation infrastructures. Using the UK–Romania corridor, we compare observed personal remittance receipts published by the National Bank of Romania (NBR) with model-based bilateral estimates associated with World Bank/KNOMAD data. The article develops an analytical framework that links quantification, metric power, algorithmic governmentality, hybrid media circulation and emerging bottom-up social policies. It then shows how nominal values, real values at constant 2021 prices, year-by-year changes, moving-average smoothing, employment-scaled scenarios and transfer-balance indicators generate different representations of diaspora contribution, welfare substitution and national economic performance. Rather than assigning final authority to one dataset, the article demonstrates how calculation and presentation choices become communicative interventions. The conclusion emphasises methodological transparency and the need to connect remittance statistics to both political communication and community-level welfare practices.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060345

Authors: Joe Smith Eppie Sprung

This paper examines the social and political consequences of parenting with a conviction for a sexual offence in contemporary Britain. We argue that the systems governing people labelled “sex offenders” operate in ways that exceed what Michel Foucault described as biopolitical governance. While biopolitical frameworks have often been interpreted as oriented toward the optimisation and management of life, including through practices of rehabilitation and reintegration, contemporary punishment bureaucracies frequently foreclose these possibilities in practice. For many parents, redemption is not simply delayed but structurally denied, leaving their citizenship permanently uncertain. Drawing on collaborative, reflexive phenomenology, we develop the concept of cleft identity to describe this condition. Parenting is typically understood as a key site of responsible citizenship, centred on the care and protection of life. Yet parents with sexual offence convictions remain subject to ongoing surveillance, disclosure and stigma, marking them as permanently suspect. They are therefore required to perform the responsibilities of “good” parenting while simultaneously treated as moral outsiders. We argue that this tension produces a form of suspended citizenship in which stigma operates not simply as social reaction but as a mechanism of governance. The paper develops this argument through a theoretically driven, collaborative phenomenological case study intended for analytic illumination rather than empirical generalisation.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060344

Authors: Marie-Michèle Dufour Katia Kutlesa Jade Éliane Klemme Charlotte Moore Philippe Leroux Justine Larochelle-Guy Megane Jalbert Isabelle Préfontaine

Research on trauma in autistic individuals has proliferated in recent years. This scoping review aims to (1) provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on trauma and autism, (2) identify and synthesize key themes, and (3) highlight gaps to inform future research. Following Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework and the PRISMA-ScR guideline and checklist (Tricco et al.), we included articles published after 2000 in French or English that explicitly addressed trauma in autistic individuals. Four databases were searched: PsycINFO, Medline, ERIC, and Web of Science. A two-phase selection process yielded 199 eligible studies. Descriptive analyses and collaborative theme development were conducted to map the field. Findings show that most studies were published between 2018 and 2024, with the United States contributing the largest proportion. Four major themes were identified: (1) the relationship between autism and trauma, including prevalence, vulnerability, and consequences; (2) trauma-related symptoms and clinical manifestations; (3) assessment practices; and (4) intervention strategies. This review offers a critical synthesis of current knowledge, emphasizing the need for approaches that use broader definitions of trauma and reflect the diversity and lived experiences of autistic individuals. It also identifies significant methodological and conceptual gaps, calling for future research that addresses subgroup diversity and promotes equitable, trauma-informed practices for autistic individuals.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060343

Authors: Angelea Panos Paige Lowe Patrick T. Panos Deeqa Hamid

Somali refugee mothers navigating parenting in the United States face compounding challenges that extend well beyond the initial resettlement period. This study employed a multi-method qualitative design, including utilizing a focus group and follow-up key informant interviews with Somali refugee mothers. Thematic framework analysis identified three overarching domains of challenges and resilience. First, a pervasive deficit of functional literacy, defined as the practical capacity to navigate American institutional systems, emerged as the primary stressor, superseding material poverty as a barrier to daily functioning. Second, significant intergenerational tensions were documented, including role reversal between mothers and children, erosion of parental authority, and breakdown of the traditional expectations that adult children provide financial and social support to aging parents. Third, single motherhood amplified all other stressors, producing progressive role strain and mental health decline in the absence of extended family support. Despite these challenges, participants demonstrated substantial resilience through informal mutual aid networks, religious practice, and deliberate cultural and linguistic preservation. Findings have direct implications for the design of culturally responsive resettlement programming, family counseling services, and mental health interventions for Somali refugee populations.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060342

Authors: Daria Dodan Oana Negru-Subtirica

Currently, identity formation is undertaken in hyper-individualized virtual microsystems, such as TikTok. Here, content creators set the boundaries of adolescents’ identity exploration and construction. However, few studies have engaged with the content adolescents actively choose to follow to understand the behaviors and messages that are circulated and modeled by TikTok creators. To bridge this gap, 127 TikTok videos from accounts that a sample of 328 Romanian adolescents (Mage = 16.99, SDage = 0.78; 60.4% male) reported following were thematically analyzed. This resulted in a novel codebook that went beyond surface-level content typologies to reveal exposure to positive content, such as awareness raising, family values, and motivational videos, as well as negative content, such as age-inappropriate behaviors, materialistic values, and gender stereotypes. Results suggest that master and alternative narratives are portrayed by TikTok creators, generating tensions between conforming to norms that might be potentially harmful and following less common identity scripts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060341

Authors: Nina Khairova Ivan Redozub Virginia Dignum Nina Rizun

Collective endorsement of shared values across diverse social groups is essential for the development and sustainability of democratic societies, yet capturing the perspectives of marginalised populations remains a persistent challenge, particularly when examined through ethical, legal, and social (ELS) lenses. This study develops a structured Migration ELS taxonomy to guide a GenAI-assisted semantic classification model designed to identify ELS dimensions in textual data. The model is fine-tuned and evaluated within a human-in-the-loop framework using expert annotations to ensure reliability and interpretive accuracy. As an empirical case, the approach is applied to migration-related official policy documents and narratives of Ukrainian migrants published on the Telegram platform. The resulting framework enables the analysis of alignment between governmental and migrant perspectives, revealing thematic and temporal divergences in ELS dimensions across institutional and user-generated discourse. The findings demonstrate the potential of this scalable framework, which combines taxonomy-driven modelling with generative AI and expert-in-the-loop validation, to reveal patterns of alignment and temporal dynamics in the representation of values across different social groups.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060340

Authors: David García-Valiente Salvador Baena-Morales

Social justice has become a cornerstone of contemporary educational systems, serving as both an ethical principle and a criterion for evaluating equity in learning opportunities. In the field of Physical Education (PE), its bodily and relational nature makes social hierarchies regarding ability, gender, and body image highly visible. This study adopted a qualitative descriptive design to explore how pre-service PE teachers conceptualize social justice and how they envision its didactic implementation within the Spanish curricular context. The findings provide a critical roadmap for teacher education programs, suggesting that fostering social justice requires moving beyond theoretical discourse toward specific pedagogical tools that address power dynamics and inclusion within Physical Education contexts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060339

Authors: Karen-Edith Córdova-Esparza Elvia-Izel Landaverde-Romero Diana-Margarita Córdova-Esparza Rocio-Edith López-Martínez Teresa García-Ramírez

This article examines how justice institutions produce and reproduce gender-based violence against women through the invisibilization of moral violence, with particular attention to their spatial dimensions. Drawing on the concept of juridical–patriarchal habitus, the study conceptualizes justice institutions not only as sites of legal action but as spatial formations that shape the visibility, recognition, and adjudication of harm. Using a feminist ethnographic approach, the article analyzes two cases of gender-based violence documented in 2020 in the municipality of Querétaro, Mexico. The findings demonstrate how movement into legal and institutional spaces transforms lived experiences of violence, as procedural requirements, evidentiary expectations, and institutional interactions operate as spatial filters that render certain forms of harm visible while obscuring others. In this process, justice actors construct and reproduce gendered stereotypes about what counts as violence, simultaneously positioning women as victims and subjecting them to processes of revictimization. By conceptualizing the invisibility of moral violence as a spatially mediated process, the article contributes to debates in legal and feminist geography, highlighting how institutional spaces not only respond to gender-based violence but actively participate in its production and concealment.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050338

Authors: Suzana Turcu

This study examines how individual political predispositions and national mobilisation contexts jointly structure protest participation in contemporary Europe across the pre-pandemic, pandemic and post-pandemic periods. Using data from Rounds 9, 10 and 11 of the European Social Survey (2018–2023), the analytical sample includes 106,106 respondents from 33 countries. Descriptively, protest participation remains a minority behaviour, yet displays pronounced cross-national heterogeneity, with participation rates ranging from below 3% in several Central and Eastern European countries to nearly 20% in the most mobilised contexts and remains remarkably stable across rounds at approximately 8.5%. Building on resource mobilisation theory, political process approaches and New Social Movements perspectives, the analysis conceptualises protest participation not as an isolated behavioural act but as the outcome of interactions between individual resources, evaluative orientations toward democratic institutions and broader mobilisation environments. Logistic regression models, country fixed-effects specifications and multilevel models with random intercepts are used to assess these relationships. At the individual level, political engagement emerges as the strongest predictor of participation: higher political interest is associated with substantially higher protest propensity, while ideological self-placement indicates lower participation among respondents positioned further to the right. Younger age and higher education also increase participation. Lower satisfaction with democracy and stronger perceptions of inequality are consistently associated with protest behaviour, supporting grievance-based interpretations linked to democratic evaluations rather than material deprivation alone. Country fixed-effects and multilevel models confirm that these individual-level associations are robust within countries, while significant between-country variation persists (random-intercept SD = 0.554), indicating that national mobilisation environments shape baseline levels of protest participation. Multilevel results further reveal that protest participation was significantly lower during the pandemic period (Round 10) relative to the pre-pandemic baseline, with only partial recovery in the post-pandemic period. A cross-round comparison demonstrates that the core individual-level associations are stable across all three periods, indicating that these relationships reflect durable structural patterns rather than dynamics specific to any particular mobilisation cycle. Beyond this overall stability, the analysis identifies two theoretically informative exceptions: subjective financial difficulty is significant only in the pre-pandemic period and gender differences in protest participation attenuate over time—patterns consistent with broader shifts in protest repertoires during and after the pandemic. These findings make three contributions to the comparative literature on contentious politics. First, by extending the analysis across three ESS rounds, the study demonstrates the temporal robustness of individual-level determinants of protest—an empirical question rarely addressed in the existing literature. Second, the multilevel design with round fixed effects allows for direct estimation of pandemic-related suppression and post-pandemic recovery in protest activity at the aggregate level. Third, the cross-national scope and temporally structured comparison provide new evidence on how individual political predispositions interact with shifting mobilisation environments across a period of exceptional socio-political strain in Europe.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050337

Authors: Bonnie Stelmach

On the opening page of The Serviceberry (2024), Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote: “all flourishing is mutual.” Channeling biomimicry, Kimmerer asks, “Can we imagine a human economy with a currency that emulates the flow from Mother Earth—a currency of gifts?” (p. 14). I ask a parallel question regarding school–community relationships: can we imagine school and community as members of an ecology of schooling in which mutual flourishing is the aim? Schools often silo from communities, and interactions tend to be transactional, even though partnership language is invoked. Drawing on a case study of a K-6 rural school with a place-based agriculture immersion program in Alberta, Canada, I describe elements of collaboration between school and community using gift as a lens to interpret interview transcripts and field notes. Mutual flourishing was a function of (1) the school being viewed as an extension of the community; (2) the recentering of place as a participant in school–community relations; and (3) a school–community ecology grounded in shared values and goals rather than structured arrangements. The findings reframe partnerships from supplementary arrangements that schools enter into and wield to school–community connections or kinships that bind school and community into a reciprocal web of flourishing.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050336

Authors: Leticia Yulita Susana María Company María Soledad Loutayf

This article examines how kindness can be understood, expressed and enacted through intercultural citizenship education in higher education, with particular attention to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Situated within a theoretical framework that brings together intercultural citizenship and EDI, the study argues that these fields are mutually reinforcing and that their integration is enriched by foregrounding kindness. Empirically, the article reports on a qualitative multiple case study conducted in 2023, involving university students from Argentina and the United Kingdom who collaboratively designed English language teaching materials focused on kindness. Data consisted of student-generated textual and artistic artefacts, including lesson plans, teachers’ notes, drawings, comics and other teaching materials, which were analysed using a multimodal approach. Across cases, kindness functioned as a relational disposition, ethical compass, emotional anchor and intentional action, serving as a pedagogical response to issues of gender inequality, mental health and disability inclusion. The study argues that a structured grammar of intercultural kindness offers a vocabulary that makes visible the relational, ethical, emotional and action-oriented dimensions through which kindness shapes the pedagogical enactment of intercultural citizenship and EDI. This approach demonstrates that kindness can be taught; however, its transformative potential depends on a deliberate political orientation.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050335

Authors: Roelvis Ortiz-Núñez Jazmín Sugey Santa-Álvarez

This article develops a conceptual interdisciplinary model for research evaluation in the Social Sciences based on three core categories: Subject, Society, and Culture. It argues that conventional evaluation systems rely too heavily on quantitative metrics and, as a result, fail to capture the contextual, social, and epistemic complexity of knowledge production in this field. Drawing on an interdisciplinary analysis informed by complex thought and postcolonial theory, the article proposes a framework in which Subject refers to situated reflexivity and the role of relevant actors, Society emphasizes social relevance and public embeddedness, and Culture highlights epistemic plurality, local knowledge, and contextual legitimacy. The model is represented as a dynamic spiral, which underscores the revisable and context-sensitive character of evaluation. As a theoretical-conceptual contribution, the framework offers an alternative basis for broadening research assessment in the Social Sciences beyond productivity-driven and citation-based approaches.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050334

Authors: Zhihao Wei Nazirah Hassan Nur Saadah Mohamad Aun Ezarina Zakaria Sheng Chen

Community-based drug rehabilitation (CBDR) in China involves multiple types of frontline workers, yet little empirical research has examined how these workers carry out their respective roles and collaborate in practice. This study explored the roles, collaborative practices, and role boundaries of drug rehabilitation social workers (DRSWs) and community drug control officers (CDCOs) in CBDR in Guangzhou, China. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 DRSWs and 9 CDCOs across two sequential phases, and data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings revealed that DRSWs primarily performed professional rehabilitation services alongside administrative assistance, while CDCOs focused on administrative management, support for enforcement-related procedures, and upward resource advocacy. Five areas of collaboration were identified, characterized by a spontaneous complementary division of labor. However, role boundary ambiguity was also observed at three interconnected levels: DRSWs’ administrative workload had expanded beyond an assisting capacity, some CDCOs described care-giving practices that approached the professional domain of social work, and workers reported that persons with drug use histories (PWUDs) often had difficulty distinguishing between the two roles. These findings highlight the need for clearer role definitions and institutionalized coordination mechanisms in CBDR.

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: Felipe Leco-Berrocal José Manuel Sánchez-Martín Ana Beatriz Mateos-Rodríguez Juan Ignacio 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 often 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.