rss_2.0Sciendo RSS Feed for Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologiahttps://sciendo.com/journal/SUBBShttps://www.sciendo.comhttps://sciendo-parsed.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/64738fa24e662f30ba542206/cover-image.jpghttps://sciendo.com/journal/SUBBS140216https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0011<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The Baia Mare region was once one of Romania's main mining centres, with a significant proportion of the local population engaged in industry jobs. However, the extensive economic restructuring that followed the collapse of the old communist regime and the emergence of capitalist development was characterized by brutal privatization measures and great economic instability. While the transition years brought new opportunities for some, for most they meant unstable housing and employment, debt, and a declining social status. Thus, many workers quickly became ‘surplus populations’ (Li 2017) and were forced into patterns of circular migration abroad. Employing a qualitative research methodology, analysing both interviews and secondary data, this paper will focus on the adaptive responses of workers from Baia Mare to the changes in the socio-economic landscape after the collapse of the communist regime and the advance of neoliberal policies in Romania. In particular, the paper looks at Roma and non-Roma migrants from Baia Mare, attempting to compare their strategies and work histories in the context of migration, to see the extent to which class and race differences play a role in creating specific migration patterns in the post-socialist context. The comparison between racialized people living in improvised shelters on the periphery of Baia Mare and those who are working class but not living in a situation of destitution will show us the role that dispossession plays in creating certain conditions that lead to debt dependency and specific migration patterns.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00112024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0014ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00142024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0010<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article aims to uncover two main features of ‘re-industrialisation’ in Central and Eastern Europe: the reconfiguration of the economic geography in Northwest Romania and the multiple ways in which the Romanian working class is being integrated into the new economy. Post-socialist shifts towards a low-skilled, flexible, and generally insecure economy have underlined the need for cheap, easily disposable labour, and the emergence of the new economic geography has changed the accumulation of capital in the region and the patterns of labour mobility. Despite massive migration, many have continued to work in the region or have combined migration periods with work close to home. This study explores the different mobilities individuals engage in and seeks to understand why some workers choose to stay and live in the region and how the available opportunities for workers aiming to stay in the region influence their prospects. This study traces the patterns of labour commuting and how this is structured by individuals’ strategies and motivations, as well as the social relationships that support this work. The article analyses labour commuting to two major industrial hubs in the region: one which manufactures aerospace components, and one that produces medical textiles. Both companies are foreign-owned and concentrate a significant proportion of the region’s workforce. The micro-dynamics revealed will contribute to understanding the patterns of work in the specific form of re-industrialisation in contemporary Romania.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00102024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0012<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The emergence of the ghetto as an urban social formation is regularly conveyed as a specific neoliberal capitalist product. Based on interviews with inhabitants and policymakers and archival data covering more than two decades, this article brings another dimension to the debates on ghetto formation. It traces the urban spatial politics of managing and containing Roma communities in the Romanian NW city of Baia Mare from the late 1970s until 1989. To this aim, it uncovers the debates and decisions regarding the last stages of socialist urban systematization focused on Hatvan, a Roma neighbourhood, and the subsequent relocation projects. Initially, the socialist administration aimed to assimilate the Roma population into the working class. However, a peculiar segregationist policy followed the failed experiment of expropriation and rehousing into low-quality apartments. In the early 1980s, authorities relocated most Roma in the newly built Vasile Alecsandri district to four new specifically designed apartment buildings nearby. The four blocks on Arieșului Street lacked central heating to prevent the accumulation of arrears – a materialization of the decade-long austerity policies. Other urban Roma were funnelled there as well, thus revealing the racialization policies assembled at the local level. . Just before 1990, Arieșului was abandoned, and many people decided to relocate in what became Craica, a ghetto that is still in existence today.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00122024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0009<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Many post-socialist cities in Romania experience population decline caused by both negative natural growth and large-scale international migration. This study seeks to advance an understanding of post-socialist migratory flows from the city of Baia Mare to Western labour markets in terms of its mode of incorporation into the global economy. Using a historical structural lens, the study traces the critical economic transformations, political moments or institutions that influenced migratory flows from Baia Mare. It argues that from its semi-peripheral position, the city’s role, after the regime change, became that of a supplier of cheap labour to Western Europe and a location for low added value industries. Despite its rapid economic growth due to reindustrialisation and its success in attracting relatively large shares of immigrants, its native urban population continues to decrease. The developing manufacturing industry specialised in intensive, low-paid, manual labour automatically excludes more educated and qualified labourers who continue to resort to international migration in order to survive or to improve the quality of their lives.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00092024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0013<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This paper starts from the premise that social space, the state space, is a socially productive territory characterized, among other things, by hierarchical social, economic and political relations. This hierarchical dimension of space comes to the fore when researching the urban marginalization of Roma people in Romania. The mechanisms of exclusion employed by the state against Roma groups are situated in a wide range of other policies, among which uneven territorial development ranks chief. As such, this paper seeks to analyse the junction between these processes. It asks the question: how did the process of urban planning reinforce the urban marginalization of Roma people during socialism in Baia Mare? In order to address this question, I mobilize the results of two years of archival research in the city of Baia Mare, coupled with the discursive analysis of this archival material. I perform a diachronic analysis of how Roma people were targeted by state practices of urban marginalization, such as stigmatization, criminalization and repression. I show how the policies of systematisation of Baia Mare shaped the territory of a particular neighbourhood – Hatvan, attempting to manage and control the Roma population there. Throughout the 1960s, Hatvan was considered a focal point for crime. This led to a large-scale plan to completely transform the area through evictions, demolitions and the displacement of Roma people. The result was a place that was seen as clean, ordered and lawful social space, which became what is currently known as the Vasile Alecsandri neighbourhood. However, this space continues to this day to be one of social marginalisation, economic deprivation and institutionalised racism.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00132024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0005ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00052024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0006<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Tens of thousands of labourers work in the factories in and around Baia Mare, a city that is being reindustrialized after an initial industrialization under state socialism. In 2021, most workers were being paid about 280 euro a month, as companies were aiming to achieve the lowest possible production costs while remaining within the European Union. Workers and their families, unable to make do on their low wages alone, constantly scramble for means to supplement their income. Many work overtime systematically; some choose to migrate for work abroad for a few months every year; yet others quit their factory jobs for more lucrative opportunities during the summers, only to return to the factories in the autumn. In this paper, I look at the industrial history of Baia Mare and the work lives of labourers to understand how the workers in the region were impacted by the politics of dispossession. I use two complementary lenses: on the one hand, I understand their position at the junction of global, national, and local forces; on the other hand, I underline the ways in which this specific case speaks to the workings of global capital, not as an exception, but as one of many interconnected stories of human experience.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00062024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0007<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The paper analyses the labour force composition of two adjacent counties in north-west Romania: Maramureș and Sălaj. Regionally, employers stress the lack of available labour force and resort to commuter networks from nearby rural areas and immigrant labour. Why labour shortage? It is argued that Romania’s FDI-reliant export-led growth model factors in. Namely, the growth model’s reliance on low-cost labour that reduces employment incentives to a minimum (often minimum wage) and employment in repetitive labour-intensive activities make the prospect less attractive. If technological upgrading – requiring skilled employees – is absent, regional labour availability tends to be an issue. Alternative subsistence methods are favoured: seasonal transnational migration, household agricultural subsistence and remittances from relatives. Tying livelihood to families and households, these methods pool resources to replace (even if in part) wage labour under global market-dependency conditions.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00072024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0008<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The paper examines Maramureș County’s labour regime and describes its transformation from a heavily unionized formation under socialism to today’s deregulated, transnational condition. The region’s former mining cluster and current furniture production hub are posited as sectoral focal points. Union militantism prevented the mining sector’s accelerated decline in the 1990s, but liberalisation and conformity with the European Union’s regulatory frameworks gradually eroded labour rights and shifted the region’s economic profile to export-oriented sectors. Among these, domestic and foreign furniture manufacturers emerged as dominant economic actors in the early 2000s. While the county is well-known for its wood processing, the companies in question tap into IKEA’s global production network and employ low-cost, flexible labour in just-in-time supply schedules. Recent developments include the use of immigrant agency workers as a solution to the county’s skilled and unskilled labour shortage.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00082024-06-21T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0004<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The article dissects the subject of online social support exchange on social networking sites, or SNS (mostly Facebook and Instagram) through the eyes of the platforms’ active users. Drawing on 20 semistructured in-depth interviews with SNS users from Ukraine, it discusses both the benefits of support exchange in the online realm, such as speed, resilience, unobtrusiveness, and its drawbacks, such as depersonalization, ‘ghosting,’ and privacy concerns. The text also explores the sentiments towards some of the main digital instruments of exchanging support on SNS, in particular posts and various forms of “likes,” as well as the perceived effectiveness of online social support in general. Additionally, it provides some context on how the phenomenon has been impacted by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00042023-11-23T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0003<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Personal development has become an industry in neoliberal capitalism, used to help employees adapt to the constant pursuit of growth, such as increased productivity, creativity, time management and business development. As part of my doctoral research, I documented how this type of practice works and how it restructures individuals’ social lives and their perspectives on the world. Personal development, as shaped by neoliberalism, serves as a tool for personal empowerment and adaptation to the restructuring of the welfare state. It is also a means of promoting neoliberal values among people. However, during the containment measures during the pandemic, criticisms of this growth-based approach emerged, leading to a resurgence of ideas about personal care. Self-care developed particularly in marginalised communities, where it was defined as a form of resistance to capitalism through caring for oneself as a member of an oppressed community, with Audre Lorde (1988) defining the concept as having a power of resistance to capitalism. In this presentation, I will explore what happens to personal development, which is a key factor in the construction of capitalist ideology, if neoliberalism is coming to an end. I will also consider whether this is a good time to reclaim personal development and how it can be used to create tools for self-building beyond the intrinsic individualism of the process.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00032023-11-23T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0001<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>What is knowledge and how can we analyse it from within social sciences as social knowledge? Our socially driven intuition tells us that knowledge is a special relation that humans have with their surrounding world. Its specificity lies primarily in the fact that it implies a direct interaction with the environment. Another important and interesting characteristic of knowledge is its tendency to replace interactions with reality with interactions between pieces of knowledge produced about that specific reality. Connected to this, regarding the issue of truth, paraphrasing both Einstein and Smith, this article argues that ‘an invisible hand’ of the realities of social phenomena makes it so, that the accepted truths of a certain society are those and only those that are functional for the survival and reproduction of that society. And for this to happen it is a must that the elite designated with the production and the legitimation of ‘the truths’ exists and produces those ‘truths’ that support the ‘general interest’ of that respective society. Most importantly is to understand that the consistency of the legitimated truths with the dominant values of the society imbedded in its social order is far more important that their consistency with the empirical observations of the reality.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00012023-11-23T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-0002<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The article examines how deindustrialization as economic restructuring and housing regime changes evolved interconnectedly in Romania during the Great Transformation from state socialism to neoliberal capitalism. This article also explores how they acted as conditions for the emergence of a real-estate-development-driven housing regime (REDD-HR) alongside other factors. The analysis is from the perspective of the geographical political economy on the variegated pathways of these phenomena across borders and secondary statistical data collected by two research projects conducted in Romania in the past two years. In the Eastern semiperiphery of global capitalism or a country of the Global Easts with a socialist legacy, after 1990, the state restructured the economy by privatizing industry and public housing. During state socialism, the housing regime supported industrialization-based urbanization, whereas deindustrialization-cumprivatization in emerging capitalism facilitated the appearance of real estate development. On the one hand, the article enriches studies on deindustrialization by highlighting the role of housing in the transformation of industrial relations; on the other hand, the paper revisits housing studies by analyzing deindustrialization as a process with an impact on the changing housing regime. Altogether, deindustrialization-cum-privatization and the changing housing sector are analyzed as prerequisites of the REDD-HR.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2023-00022023-11-23T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-0008<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Twenty years ago, NATO’s intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), taking place without the approval of the UN Security Council (UNSC), challenged the sovereignty and non-interference norms the UN had perceived as international peace and order, until that moment. While the military action served to question existing principles, it simultaneously examined the effectiveness of non-authorization. Moreover, the Kosovo case stimulated one of the most important UN reforms that transformed the concept of sovereignty from right to responsibility. Conceptually, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has largely advanced since then. The transformation shifted the attention from political to sociological peace making society, gender and victims of conflict at the focus of peacebuilding and peace sustaining processes. The juxtaposition of state and societal peace continues in post-conflict Kosovo with both approaches being intermingled: the security debate covers attempts for a peace-building agenda, whereas the formation of a national army is pursued.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-00082023-04-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-0009<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The political field seems to prefer the intellectual resources offered by Political Sciences and Economic Sciences because they fit well into the habits created by the daily practice of power. Assuming that it is not just about self-censorship, the current perspective offered by these scientific fields has some blind spots, and risks legitimizing an unfounded optimism regarding the effectiveness of the means used in the crisis generated by the Russian-Ukrainian war. That is why I consider the perspective offered by materialist anthropology to be very useful for describing the complexity of the power relations, and for a fine-tuning of what-is-at-stake. This perspective, which looks at long-term trends, can highlight the differences between imagined power (given by habits, abstractions and the assumption of continuities) and real power (given by the technologies and resources that matter, real scarcity and international competition). I concluded that the imagined power relations of today are a <italic>survival</italic> of the real power relations from the near past (when the GDP in the Western world was correlated with powerful local manufacturing and a complete dominance in high-tech research). Our mindset, habits and biases created a blind-spot that made difficult to grasp the complexity of the situation and to react accordingly.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-00092023-04-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-0010ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-00102023-04-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-0006<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This paper looks at how demographic knowledge was articulated in the 1970s in Romania in a context shaped by both a restrictive natalist agenda and the reestablishment of institutional affiliations with western academia. An account is given of the specific institutional affiliations that coordinated and made knowledge transfers possible between French and Romanian agencies. The text then focuses on the specific vocabulary and reasoning mechanisms employed in a series of texts published throughout the 1970s in the sociological journal Viitorul Social, a monthly magazine of socialist doctrine, culture and politics. The aim is to start a discussion about the possibility that the reestablishment of institutional connections with French demographic trends in the early ᾿70s lent Romanian demographers a type of conservative scientific reasoning and vocabulary that was attuned to the natalist politics of the time. In turn, this authorised a highly politicised portrayal of working-class women as culpable for the diminishing birth-rates in Romania. The text ends by suggesting other research paths that might help situate demographic knowledge production and its ties with reproduction politics.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-00062023-04-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-0007<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The exploitation of work and household responsibilities among women and men remains a pressing issue with significant impacts on employee productivity and satisfaction. This study sheds light on the patterns of exploitation and their consequences, with a specific focus on the experiences of HR professionals. The research emphasizes the prevalence of the “flexibility stigma” in society, which views flexible work arrangements, including teleworking, as less committed, motivated, and productive compared to traditional 9-5 work hours. The study also highlights the tendency for workers to extend their work hours when boundaries between work and personal life become blurred. In particular, the study highlights the increased likelihood of working overtime as a result of teleworking, which can further contribute to the exploitation of work and household responsibilities. For HR professionals, it is essential to understand these challenges and develop strategies that support employees’ work-life balance and well-being. The study concludes by calling for a comprehensive approach that considers the institutional and cultural contexts in which employees operate and that prioritizes their well-being and productivity.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-00072023-04-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-0003<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Understanding disability as a social phenomenon opened up the way for disability studies and social justice theories to mutually benefit from each other. One of the most significant recent advancements in the field of social justice has been the capability approach (CA) of Amartya Sen. The present paper builds on the CA to analyse disability form a social justice perspective. We argue that the CA provides several advantages when conceptualizing disability and furthering justice for disabled people. The objective of the paper is to develop a framework for analysis on the basis of the CA and to apply it through the case of D/deaf and hardof- hearing children and their carers in Szeged, Hungary. We demonstrate that the advancement of justice occurs through the scrutiny and comparison of feasible alternatives instead of arguing for principles or institutional guarantees of perfectly just societies.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/subbs-2022-00032022-08-23T00:00:00.000+00:00en-us-1