Southeast Europe

The social work profession in Albania is relatively young and social services in the country continue to develop. But over the past three decades, Albania has experienced significant growth and transformation in its social work education programmes. Nevertheless, there is very little published work on the Albanian social work education system and its implementation on the ground. Currently, the main sources of social work graduates are three Schools of Social Work in Tirana, Shkodra, and Elbasan. Programmes at the bachelor's and master's level all incorporate policy, research, and practice education. The social work curriculum, originally transplanted from the United States, has gone through reforms following the Bologna process and continues to be revised to meet local needs. Drawing from a multi-country study of the social service workforce in southeast Europe, this paper presents baseline data on social work education in Albania. 62 participants were interviewed using semi-structured interviews, case stories, and focus group discussions with consensus-building exercises. The findings highlight both the opportunities and challenges of this relatively young profession in Albania. Besides increasing understandings of social work education in Albania, this research adds to emerging regional and global themes in the development of social work education and practice. Abstrakt Puna sociale në Shqipëri është relativisht e re dhe shërbimet sociale në zhvillim e sipër. Gjatë tri dekadave të fundit, Shqipëria ka parë një rritje dhe transformim në programet e arsimimit të punonjësve socialë, por pak është botuar mbi sistemin arsimor të tyre në Shqipëri dhe zbatimin e tij. Burimet kryesore të të diplomuarve në fushë janë tri shkollat e punës sociale në vend-Tiranë, Shkodër,Elbasan. Programet 'baçelor' dhe 'master' përfshijnë të gjitha komponentë të politikave, kërkimit dhe praktikës. Fillimisht të transplantuar nga Sh.B.A, ato kanë kaluar në procese reformimi, sidomos pas procesit të Bolonjës, dhe vazhdojnë të përshtaten me nevojat lokale. Nisur nga një studim i forcës së punës të shërbimeve sociale në Europën Juglindore, ky artikull prezanton të dhëna bazë mbi arsimimin e punonjësve social në Shqipëri. 62 pjesëmarrës u pyetën përmes intervistave gjysmë-të-strukturuara, KEYWORDS Social work education; Southeastern Europe; social service workforce FJALËT KyÇ arsimimi i punonjësve socialë; Europa Juglindore; forca e punës së shërbimeve sociale

This paper considers a case study of a recently identified Neolithic burial type, ditch burials, from the site of Nova Nadezhda in the Middle Maritsa Valley. A burial of an adult male and a nested-pots deposit are discussed within the background of the site’s features and of the other mortuary deposits, as well as in a broader spatial and cultural context, giving insights into the repetitive cycles of ditch digging and filling, and burial deposition that have been identified at Nova Nadezhda as a long-term community strategy for the reproduction of social order, collective memory, and identity.

ECEE collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire off ers insights into the Carolingian southeastern frontier-zone from historical, art-historical and archaeological perspectives. Chapters in this volume discuss the significance of the early medieval period for scholarly and public discourses in the Western Balkans and Central Europe, and the transfer of knowledge between local scholarship and macro-narratives of Mediterranean and Western history. Other essays explore the ways local communities around the Adriatic (Istria, Dalmatia, Dalmatian hinterland, southern Pannonia) established and maintained social networks and integrated foreign cultural templates into their existing cultural habitus.

Transferring from triple helix to quadruple helix of innovation supports the trend towards the engagement of all stakeholders in innovation. Companies tend to tap into both internal and external knowledge sources to accelerate innovation, turn to co-creation across innovation processes and allow the flow of knowledge over their organizational boundaries. There are numerous examples that show that the co-creation is seen as a powerful engine for innovation, through an active, creative and social process, usually based on collaboration between producers and users initiated by the company to generate value for customers. However, world regions differ from one another in the sense of accepting the co-creation practice in innovation. South-East Europe is seen as a region with the low level of co-creation initiatives, with very similar characteristics, concerning co-creation type, product development project type, stage of the product life cycle, co-creative environment, types of customers as main co-creators, as well as their motivation to join the co-creation. These similar co-creation initiatives in South-East Europe show that there is unused potential of co-creation in this region, through other co-creation types and product development project types in different stages of the product life cycle. Having in mind there are probably various reasons for the low acceptance of co-creation in South-East Europe, authors of this paper suggest that the national culture could be one of them. Following the results of previous research on co-creation examples in South-East Europe and the cultural dimensions, defined by Geert Hofstede, for countries in this region, and bringing them into a relation, it is explained in this paper how the culture prevalent in South-East Europe can be one of the obstacles for higher adoption level of co-creation practice in this region.

A number of studies link higher levels of education and general wellbeing to lower levels of xenophobia and social distance in relation to strangers. We tested this general assumption on a sample of more than 10,000 young people aged from 14 to 29 years from ten countries of Southeast Europe. More specifically, the focus of our research was to evaluate the effect of young people’s financial status, parental education and self-rated health onto the level of fear and social distance expressed in relation to immigrants and refugees. Our hypothesis was that better-off young people in all three dimensions (money, education, and health) should be less fearful and more open towards immigrants and refugees in each of the ten countries observed. The analyses showed that none of the six tested hypotheses could be confirmed. With very rare exceptions, better-off young people do not hold more positive perceptions when it comes to immigrants and refugees. In essence, our results suggest that negative perceptions in relation to immigrants and refugees are quite evenly spread across the different segments of young people in terms of their financial situation, cultural background and their health. The only partial exception is Bulgaria, where correlations tend to run contrary to our expectations; better financial situation and better self-rated health are related to more negative perceptions of immigrants and refugees.

This article approaches the question of whose interests the internet serves through the prism of online assemblies in the SouthEast Europe (SEE) region. In order to answer this question, the article uses four connected yet different angles. The first part explores opportunities and limitations of international laws, as well as national laws in the SEE region. Furthermore, the article discusses the role of the state in providing and facilitating access to the internet, that is, enabling the space for online assemblies in the SEE region. The article takes into account the variety of actors in the field of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly online, paying special attention to internet service providers. Finally, the article analyses the surveillance of the internet activities and security and its relation with online and offline assemblies. The article uses all four these aspects to explore the situations in the SEE region. The article specifically focuses on four countries, namely, three former Yugoslav republics: Croatia-a European Union member since 2013; Serbia-a candidate country exercising control over the internet the most; Bosnia and Herzegovina-a country aspiring to become a candidate but in which progress is burdened by divisions and legacy of the war; and Turkey, which has one of the most illustrative examples of stifling freedom of expression and assembly, and the influence of which on the Balkans is also visible.

In this article, we explore various forms of travel writing, media reporting, diplomatic record, policy-making, truth claims and expert accounts in which different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars, both old (1912–1913) and new (1991–1999), have been most evident. We argue that the ways in which these perspectives are rooted in different temporalities and historicisations have resulted in the construction of commonplace and time-worn representations. In practical terms, we take issue with several patterns of narratives that have led to the sensationalism of media industry and the essentialisation of collective memory. Taken together as a common feature of contemporary policy and analysis in the dominant international opinion, politics and scholarship, these narrative patterns show that historical knowledge is conveyed in ways that make present and represent the accounts of another past, and the ways in which beliefs collectively held by actors in international society are constructed as media events and public hegemonic representations. The aim is to show how certain moments of rupture are historicised, and subsequently used and misused to construct an anachronistic representation of Southeast Europe.