Perspectives on social citizenship in the EU – from status positivus to status socialis activus via two forms of transnational solidarity

Ever since the inauguration of EU citizenship, elements of social citizenship have been on the agenda of European integration. European level social benefits were proposed early on, and demands for collective labour rights have followed suit. This chapter uses the theoretical umbrella of transnational social citizenship in order to link transnational access to social benefits and collective labour rights. It promotes transnational rights as the best way to conceptualise EU social citizenship as an institution enabling the enjoyment of EU integration without being forced to forego social rights at other levels. Such a perspective sits well in a collection on EU citizenship and federalism, since it simultaneously challenges demands of renationalisation of social rights in the EU and pleas to reduce EU-level citizenship rights to a merely liberal dimension. Social citizenship as promoted here requires an interactive conceptualisation of regulatory and judicial powers at different levels of government as typical for federal systems.
In linking citizenship with human rights the chapter highlights different statuses of citizens. It argues that the rights constituted by social citizenship derive from a status positivus and a status socialis activus, expanding the time-honoured categories of Jellinek. This concept is developed further by linking the notions of receptive solidarity to the status positivus and the notion of participative solidarity to the status socialis activus. In relation to European Union citizenship it promotes a sustainable transnational social citizenship catering for receptive and participative solidarity.
These ideas contrast with most current discourses on EU citizenship. The stress on social citizenship takes issue with a retreat to mere liberalist notions of EU-level citizenship, and the stress on rights takes issue with conceptualising EU citizenship as a community bond with obligations, downplaying the empowering potential of rights. The difficulty of conceptualising transnational social citizenship is to avoid, on the one hand, taking up the tune of populist discourses imagining those moving beyond state borders as a threat to national social citizenship and, on the other hand, to reject the legitimate fears of those remaining at home of creating rupture in the social fabric of Europe’s society. Promoting transnational social citizenship rights based on receptive and participative solidarity the present chapter aims to contribute to avoiding these pitfalls.

EU Social and Labour Rights and EU Internal Market Law: Study for the EMPL Committee

EU Social and Labour Rights have developed incrementally, originally through a set of legislative initiatives creating selective employment rights, followed by a non-binding Charter of Social Rights. Only in 2009, social and labour rights became legally binding through the Charter of Fundamental Rights for the European Union (CFREU). By contrast, the EU Internal Market - an area without frontiers where goods, persons, services and capital can circulate freely – has been enshrined in legally enforceable Treaty provisions from 1958. These comprise the economic freedoms guaranteeing said free circulation and a system ensuring that competition is not distorted within the Internal Market (Protocol 27 to the Treaty of Lisbon). Tensions between Internal Market law and social and labour rights have been observed in analyses of EU case law and legislation. This study explores responses by socio-economic and political actors at national and EU levels to such tensions, focusing on collective labour rights, rights to fair working conditions and rights to social security and social assistance (Articles 12, 28, 31, 34 Charter of Fundamental Rights for the European Union). On the basis of the current Treaties and the CFREU, the constitutionally conditioned Internal Market emerges as a way to overcome the perception that social and labour rights limit Internal Market law, or vice versa. On this basis, alternative responses to perceived tensions are proposed, focused on posting of workers, furthering fair employment conditions through public procurement and enabling effective collective bargaining and industrial action in the Internal Market.

Exploiting Human Resource Requirements to Infer Human Movement Patterns for Use in Modelling Disease Transmission Systems: An Example from Eastern Province, Zambia

In this research, an agent-based model (ABM) was developed to generate human movement routes between homes and water resources in a rural setting, given commonly available geospatial datasets on population distribution, land cover and landscape resources. ABMs are an object-oriented computational approach to modelling a system, focusing on the interactions of autonomous agents, and aiming to assess the impact of these agents and their interactions on the system as a whole. An A* pathfinding algorithm was implemented to produce walking routes, given data on the terrain in the area. A* is an extension of Dijkstra's algorithm with an enhanced time performance through the use of heuristics. In this example, it was possible to impute daily activity movement patterns to the water resource for all villages in a 75 km long study transect across the Luangwa Valley, Zambia, and the simulated human movements were statistically similar to empirical observations on travel times to the water resource (Chi-squared, 95% confidence interval). This indicates that it is possible to produce realistic data regarding human movements without costly measurement as is commonly achieved, for example, through GPS, or retrospective or real-time diaries. The approach is transferable between different geographical locations, and the product can be useful in providing an insight into human movement patterns, and therefore has use in many human exposure-related applications, specifically epidemiological research in rural areas, where spatial heterogeneity in the disease landscape, and space-time proximity of individuals, can play a crucial role in disease spread.

Gatekeepers to the profession: recruitment to initial teacher education in the United Kingdom

We develop a framing for research on the relationship between context, process and outcomes in recruitment to the teaching profession. We do this through a ‘home international’ comparison of policies, outcomes and recruitment processes in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There is plenty of movement between these countries in the graduate labour market, but the contexts for teacher supply and demand vary in terms of: (i) scale, (ii) excess supply or demand, (iii) reliance of policy on market forces or bureaucracy and (iv) beliefs of policymakers about whether teaching is a craft or a profession. Recent changes in England and Wales have highlighted the importance of recruitment to initial teacher education (ITE as a policy issue whilst also creating further points of comparison which are useful for research. We draw on trends in data on recruitment to teaching and in-depth interviews with gatekeepers to the profession in each country.

Movement of Capital and Trade in Services:Distinguishing Myth from Reality Regarding the GATS and the Liberalization of the Capital Account

This article will analyze the interplay between capital movements and trade
in services as structured in World Trade Organization (WTO) law, and it will
assess the implications of the capital account liberalization for the freedom of
WTO Members to pursue their economic policies. Although the movement
of capital is largely confined to the domain of international financial or monetary
policy, it is regulated by WTO law due to its role in the process of
financial services liberalization, which generally requires liberalized capital
flows. From a legal perspective, the interplay between capital movements
and trade in services requires striking a delicate balance between the right
of market access and the parallel right of economic stability. Indeed, a liberalized
regime for capital movements could pose serious stability problems
during times of crisis. For this reason, it is necessary that Members are able
to derogate from their obligations and adopt emergency measures.
Regulating the movement of capital in the General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS) requires stretching the regulatory oversight of WTO law
over different aspects of international economic policy. Indeed, capital movements are a fundamental component of the balance of payments and have a
major role in shaping monetary, fiscal, and financial policies. This article will
analyze how the discipline provided by the GATS on capital movements will
affect not only trade in services, but also the Members’ policy space on
monetary and fiscal policy. The article will conclude that while the GATS offers enough policy space for the maintenance of financial stability, it does
not fully take into consideration the need of Members to control capital
movements in order to conduct monetary policies.

The common vaginal commensal bacterium Ureaplasma parvum is associated with chorioamnionitis in extreme preterm labour

OBJECTIVE: To assess the association of vaginal commensal and low grade pathogenic bacteria including Ureaplasma parvum, Ureaplasma urealyticum, Mycoplasma hominis, Mycoplasma genitalium, Group B Streptococcus (GBS), and Gardnerella vaginalis, in women who delivered preterm at less than 37 weeks gestation in the presence or absence of inflammation of the chorioamnionitic membranes.

METHODS: A case control study involving women who delivered before 37 weeks gestation with and without inflammation of chorioamnionitic membranes. A total of 57 placental samples were histologically examined for polymorphonuclear leukocyte infiltration of placental tissue for evidence of chorioamnionitis, and by type-specific nucleic acid amplification for evidence of infection with one or more of the target bacteria. Demographic data was collected for each mother.

RESULTS: Amongst the 57 placental samples, 42.1% had chorioamnionitis and 24.6% delivered in the second trimester of pregnancy; U. parvum, U. urealyticum, G. vaginalis and GBS were all detected in the study with respective prevalence of 19.3%, 3.5%, 17.5% and 15.8%; M.genitalium and M. hominis were not detected. U. parvum was significantly associated with chorioamnionitis (p value = 0.02; OR 5.0; (95% CI 1.2-21.5) and was more common in women who delivered in the second (35.7%) compared to the third trimester of pregnancy (13.9%). None of the other bacteria were associated with chorioamnionitis or earlier delivery and all G.vaginalis positive women delivered in the third trimester of pregnancy (p value 0.04).

CONCLUSIONS: The detection of U. parvum in placental tissue was significantly associated with acute chorioamnionitis in women presenting in extreme preterm labour.

Step by step: reconstruction of terrestrial animal movement paths by dead-reckoning

BACKGROUND: Research on wild animal ecology is increasingly employing GPS telemetry in order to determine animal movement. However, GPS systems record position intermittently, providing no information on latent position or track tortuosity. High frequency GPS have high power requirements, which necessitates large batteries (often effectively precluding their use on small animals) or reduced deployment duration. Dead-reckoning is an alternative approach which has the potential to 'fill in the gaps' between less resolute forms of telemetry without incurring the power costs. However, although this method has been used in aquatic environments, no explicit demonstration of terrestrial dead-reckoning has been presented.

RESULTS: We perform a simple validation experiment to assess the rate of error accumulation in terrestrial dead-reckoning. In addition, examples of successful implementation of dead-reckoning are given using data from the domestic dog Canus lupus, horse Equus ferus, cow Bos taurus and wild badger Meles meles.

CONCLUSIONS: This study documents how terrestrial dead-reckoning can be undertaken, describing derivation of heading from tri-axial accelerometer and tri-axial magnetometer data, correction for hard and soft iron distortions on the magnetometer output, and presenting a novel correction procedure to marry dead-reckoned paths to ground-truthed positions. This study is the first explicit demonstration of terrestrial dead-reckoning, which provides a workable method of deriving the paths of animals on a step-by-step scale. The wider implications of this method for the understanding of animal movement ecology are discussed.