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National Integration (national + integration)
Selected AbstractsSocial Change and Social Policy in JapanINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JAPANESE SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Masayuki Fujimura Abstract This paper aims to present and discuss social change and social policy in Japan after the mid-20th century from a sociological viewpoint. Japanese social change and social policy from the mid-20th century onward can be categorized into three models in chronological order: escape from mass poverty by means of industrialization, improvement of the social security system to establish a welfare state, and parallel progress of aspiration for a welfare society and workfare. Defined concretely, these are (1) the period that established and improved social security, which started immediately after the end of World War II and ended in 1973, when Japan began to suffer from low growth after enjoying high growth; (2) the period in which finance for social security was adjusted, halfway through which the country experienced a bubble economy; and (3) the period after the 1990s, in which the structural reform of social security went hand-in-hand with labor policy and the advent of globalization. In each of the three periods, the direction of social policy was affected by factors that caused changes in such areas as industrial structure (the decline of agriculture), demographic structure (an aging society), and family structure and work pattern (the growing trend of nuclear families, single-person households, and irregular employment). In Japan, life security now attracts increasing attention, and employment security rather than social security has been the central issue. As it is greatly affected by globalization, employment security grows less conspicuous and makes the vulnerability of social security grow more conspicuous. Social policy has the potential to become an area with which to struggle for national integration and fissures between social groups. [source] Building Walls, Bounding Nations: Migration and Exclusion in Canada and Germany, 1870,1939JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2004Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos This paper considers how the intersection of these factors influenced migration and citizenship policymaking in Canada and Germany. In both cases, migration was harnessed to further economic objectives while groups deemed a threat to national integration because of their putative racial or ethno-national characteristics were excluded. The resultant policies would come to define Canada and Germany's approaches to the migration-membership dilemma for the much of the twentieth century. [source] Interior Design in K-12 Curricula: asking the ExpertsJOURNAL OF INTERIOR DESIGN, Issue 3 2007Stephanie A. Clemons Ph.D. ABSTRACT The purpose of this qualitative study was to assess how interior design content areas (subject matter) could be introduced and integrated into elementary and secondary (K-12) grade levels in support of national academic education standards. Although the minimum standards have been developed for entry level interior designers (Council for Interior Design Accreditation [CIDA] Standards, adopted 2002) and beyond (National Council for Interior Design Qualification [NCIDQ]), a gap exists in the interior design education continuum from "kindergarten to career." Between June 2001 to April 2002, in order to understand perceptions of experts in interior design and elementary and secondary education, focus group sessions and personal interviews were conducted with interior design educators and practitioners, K-12 teachers (elementary, junior high, and high school levels), national standards curriculum specialists (local and state levels), and school-to-career curriculum specialists. The goal of the study was to develop a framework that could guide the integration of interior design content into K-12 levels. This paper reports the findings from the focus groups and proposes a framework that could guide the national integration of interior design content into grades K-12, support national academic standards, and suggest possible channels of dissemination for developed interior design curriculum materials. [source] On Integrating Immigrants in GermanyPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2006Article first published online: 8 SEP 200 Immigration to Germany in the decades following World War II made the Federal Republic the host of the largest number of immigrants in Europe. The size of the population with an immigration background is on the order of 15 million, nearly one-fifth of the total population. (Many of these are ethnic German returnees.) Although restrictive policies and a less dynamic economy in recent years slowed the annual number of immigrants and asylum seekers, the interrelated demographic influences of very low fertility, negative natural population increase, and population aging make continuing future immigration likely and, judged by influential domestic interests, desirable. Anxieties about inadequate integration of immigrants in German society are, however, apparently strongly felt by large segments of the native population. The "Grand Coalition" government that took office in November 2005 considers the formation of an effective policy of integration a high priority. On 14 July 2006 an "Integration Summit" was convened in the Chancellery with the active participation of representatives of immigrant groups. Chancellor Angela Merkel called the Summit "an almost historical event." Reproduced below in full is a non-official English translation of a government statement (entitled "Good coexistence,Clear rules") presented to the participants at the opening of the meeting. Intended as a "start of the development of a national integration plan," the statement highlights existing deficiencies of integration, especially problems with second- and third-generation immigrants: lack of mastery of the German language, weaknesses in education and training, high unemployment, lack of acceptance of the basic rules of coexistence, and violation of the law. The importance of these issues is underlined by a demographic fact noted in the statement: by 2010 it is expected that in Germany's large cities 50 percent of the population under age 40 will have an immigrant background. The statement recognizes the government's responsibility to help immigrants learn German and become better informed about the country's laws, culture, history, and political system. In turn, it demands reciprocal efforts from migrants living permanently and lawfully in Germany. The original German text of the statement is available at the Bundeskanzleramt home page: «http://www.bundesregierung.d» [source] Central-local relations in the people's Republic of China: Trends, processes and impacts for policy implementationPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2010Linda Chelan Li Abstract Central,local relations are a matter of great importance to developmentalists because they highlight an intriguing puzzle in public administration especially in large states: how policies decided at higher echelons of the formal system can possibly be implemented by the multitude of intermediary and local actors across the system. In the case of China,the most populous nation in the world, the contrast between the authoritarian façade of the Chinese regime and yet the proliferation of implementation gaps over many policy arenas adds additional complexity to the puzzle. This article reviews changes in central,local relations in the 60 years of history of People's Republic of China (PRC) as the outcome of four co-evolving processes, and clarifies the roles of each process: state building and national integration, development efficiency, career advancement and external influences. It points out the continuous pre-dominance of administrative decentralization from 1950s to present time, and the new emphasis on institutionalized power sharing in the context of new state-market boundaries since 1980s. In conclusion, the article suggests going beyond the traditional reliance on the compliance model to understand central,local interactions and the abundant implementation gaps in a context of central,local co-agency, thereby improving policy implementation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Reconciliation and Political Legitimacy: The Old Australia and the New South AfricaAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 2 2003Paul Muldoon In both Australia and South Africa a state-sponsored discourse of reconciliation has been deployed as a tool of national integration and state building. This usage has tended to encourage a politics of selective memory that runs contrary to the spirit of reconciliation as recognition of different views of the nation. This article seeks to recover (and promote) a more positive concept of reconciliation by treating it as a discursive, democratic space in which different versions of the national story can be acknowledged and negotiated. The cases of Australia and South Africa are used in a mutually illuminating way to explore what "telling the truth" about the past might mean and how such "truth-telling" might help restore legitimacy to liberal states confronted with a "broken moral order". [source] | ||||||||||