European mobility and local political incorporation: The case of British and Romanian residents in Spain

This paper analyses the impact of European mobility in the field of the political nomination of intra-EU migrants in local elections. The study contributes to the debates in the literature related to immigrant nomination and representation by showing how group resources and political opportunities in the country of residence interact with the political opportunities of the European citizenship regime. It argues that the symbolic and legal status of European identity, representation in the European Parliament and strong links between political institutions in the countries of destination and origin play a positive role in boosting immigrant political entrepreneurs’ visibility vis-à-vis host country political actors. In order to illustrate these findings, the paper provides a qualitative comparison of British and Romanian residents in Spain.

Monitoring pollution in river Mure , Romania, Part III: biochemical effect markers in fish and integrative reflection

Along a downstream stretch of River Mure , Romania, adult males of two feral fish species, European chub (Leuciscus cephalus) and sneep (Chondrostoma nasus) were sampled at four sites with different levels of contamination. Fish were analysed for the biochemical markers hsp70 (in liver and gills) and hepatic EROD activity, as well as several biometrical parameters (age, length, wet weight, condition factor). None of the biochemical markers correlated with any biometrical parameter, thus biomarker reactions were related to site-specific criteria. While the hepatic hsp70 level did not differ among the sites, significant elevation of the hsp70 level in the gills revealed proteotoxic damage in chub at the most upstream site, where we recorded the highest heavy metal contamination of the investigated stretch, and in both chub and sneep at the site right downstream of the city of Arad. In both species, significantly elevated hepatic EROD activity downstream of Arad indicated that fish from these sites are also exposed to organic chemicals. The results were indicative of impaired fish health at least at three of the four investigated sites. The approach to relate biomarker responses to analytical data on pollution was shown to fit well the recent EU demands on further enhanced efforts in the monitoring of Romanian water quality.

Linkage in narratives: A comparison between monolingual speakers of French and Italian, and early and late French-Italian bilinguals

In the course of language acquisition learners have to deal with the task of producing narrative texts that are coherent across a range of conceptual domains (space, time, entities) -- both within as well as across utterances. The organization of information is analyzed in this study, on the basis of retellings of a silent film, in terms of devices used in the coordination and subordination of events within the narrative sequence. The focus on subordination reflects a core grammatical difference between Italian and French, as Italian is a null-subject language while French is not. The implications of this contrast for information structure include differences in topic management within the sequence of events. The present study investigates in how far Italian-French bilingual speakers acquire the patterns of monolingual speakers of Italian. It compares how early and late bilinguals of these two languages proceed when linking information in narratives in Italian.