Based on individual interviews author locates Slovenian care workers who daily commute to Italiy in order to perform cleaning, child and elderly caring in private housholds in contemporary global care economies. The main purpose is to identify specific characteristics of informal care work in this micro border region between Italy and Slovenia, and to highlight specific position of Slovenian care workers in global informal care markets. The analysis is based on 16 semi-structured interviews with female Slovenian citizens at the border region with Italy who daily commute for work in Italian households, and on actual research evidence about global care economies in Europe.
COBISS.SI-ID: 37353517
Even before the end of the one-party system, both Hungary and Slovenia experienced systematic internal market reforms. After the abrupt political transition there has been a complete shift to a market economy. In Hungary, this had clear features of a neoliberal transformation; but in Slovenia an alternative path was taken, involving neo-corporatism with its Keynesian welfare correlates. Yet during the last decade, a new wave of radical neoliberal change has occurred in both countries. In this article, I compare the transformations in both countries, in order to identify the conditions underlying the neoliberal turn in each.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32731229
In the paper we first present relevant discourse about higher education, the labour market and graduates' 'employability'. Second, we discuss general changes in the work of academics and administrators, and problematize the characteristics and particularities of their hybridization. Building on this, we generate a holistic conceptual and research model that questions how the external 'employability' societal and policy drivers are related to a wide range of work in academia (e.g. curricular developments, management and reaccreditations, university-business cooperation, public relations, career success evidence, etc.). Finally, we map and identify these areas further and explore differences and similarities among academic, administrational and hybrid jobs. The analysis is based on mixed methods research - an open-ended survey on the profiles of 234 higher education institutions from 20, mainly European, countries, and on 37 expert interviews. The results indicate differences in the priorities of individuals playing different roles within higher education institutions. Contrary to the administrators, who favoured more practically-oriented topics related to training and career-related issues, and the persons in hybrid roles - often called higher education professionals or similarly - who favoured accreditation, quality assurance and higher education management issues, the academics appear to have the most balanced portfolio of priorities, as will be shown below. Moreover, we can identify the omnipresent urgency to be responsive to labour market needs, the increasing adjustment of academic work to bureaucratically infused assessment as well as the ostensible polarization between research and teaching.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33121117