Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070425

Authors: Daniel Emeric-Méaulle Pablo A. Cantero-Garlito Ana A. Laborda-Soriano

Ethical conflicts are an inherent—yet often invisible—dimension of occupational therapy practice. Most available evidence remains qualitative or conceptual, and the empirical articulation of ethical conflicts in Spain is still limited. This study examines the nature, distribution, co-occurrence patterns, and meanings of ethical conflicts reported by occupational therapists in Spain. A concurrent convergent mixed-methods design was used. From a broader national sample of 596 valid responses, the analytical sample consisted of 160 practitioners (84.4% women, reflecting the gender composition of the profession in Spain) who reported having experienced ethical conflicts and provided open-text information. Data were collected via an online questionnaire combining closed items and open-ended narratives. Quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics and Jaccard-based co-occurrence estimates derived from a non-mutually exclusive thematic coding matrix. Narratives were analyzed inductively with a descriptive phenomenological orientation (Giorgi), using thematic procedures as an analytic scaffold (Braun and Clarke). Findings were integrated through joint displays and meta-inference. The most frequently selected primary conflict categories concerned professional competence and practice (19.4%), relationships with family members/caregivers (14.4%), and the user–therapist relationship (12.5%). Co-occurrence analysis indicated that conflicts rarely occurred in isolation and tended to cluster across relational, structural, and professional domains. Integration of quantitative patterns and narrative meanings supported a preliminary interpretive three-dimensional framework (relational, structural, professional) for understanding ethical tensions in practice. Across narratives, participants described experiences interpreted as consistent with moral distress, economic and workload pressures, limited professional recognition, and normative gaps. Ethical conflicts in occupational therapy practice in Spain are best understood as recurrent, situated tensions shaped by relational dynamics and organizational conditions, rather than isolated dilemmas. Supporting moral agency requires organizational supports, spaces for collective ethical deliberation, and context-sensitive ethics education.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070424

Authors: Ling Lin Ching-Teng Yao

Stimulating leisure activities have been increasingly recognized as meaningful strategies to maintain cognitive health and reduce psychosocial risks among older adults. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a structured board game intervention in enhancing cognitive function and reducing loneliness among older adults living in long-term care facilities in Taiwan. Using a quasi-experimental design, 67 residents were assigned to either an intervention group, which participated in a six-week board game program, or a comparison group that continued with their usual activities. Data were collected at baseline and immediately after the intervention. Generalized estimating equations were used to analyze changes over time. Results indicated that the intervention group showed significantly greater improvements in cognitive function (β = 3.86, p < 0.001) and reductions in loneliness (β = 2.31, p = 0.004) at week 6 compared with the comparison group. These findings provide preliminary evidence that structured board game activities may represent a feasible, low-cost, and socially engaging approach to support cognitive and psychosocial well-being among older adults living in long-term care facilities. Implications for gerontological social work practice and activity programming are discussed.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070423

Authors: Robert Florin Similea Cosima Rughiniș Răzvan Rughiniș Dinu Țurcanu

This article examines how professionals who use generative AI in their daily work reshape their temporal experience. Drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews with experienced AI users and developers in Romania, and building on Flaherty’s concept of “time work”, it introduces the notion of delegated time work: a form of temporal agency in which individuals transfer part of the time-shaping effort to an AI tool while retaining judgment over the temporal structure of activity. The results show clear support for delegated time work in three dimensions of temporal experience: duration, sequence, and allocation. Evidence for frequency, timing, and taking time is limited: delegation succeeds in the dimensions professionals control individually and fails in those governed by shared institutional rhythms. Delegation also generates its own temporal costs through learning and verification overheads, unevenly distributed between developers and users. Drawing on the “time capital” framework of Matei and Preda, the analysis traces three outcomes of the freed time: accumulation as a personal resource, conversion into professional or economic capital, and absorption by rising expectations, leaving workers faster but not freer. In Romania’s dependent market economy, market exposure shapes who keeps the time that AI frees.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070422

Authors: Melissa Mariani Gabriel Lomas Carolyn Berger Stacy Butkus Hyuncheol Yoon

Lockdown drills have become standard practice in K-12 schools across the United States, but there are concerns about the psychological health impact, quality of implementation, and equity implications of current practices. This scoping review compiles the empirical literature on lockdown and active-threat drills to provide insight into how drills are defined and conducted, what outcomes are measured, and the remaining gaps. In accordance with well-researched scoping review methodologies, 27 peer-reviewed U.S.-based studies were aggregated from six primary areas: drill definitions and typologies, implementation practices, reported outcomes, trauma-informed and developmental considerations, equity and disability inclusion, and evidence gaps. Findings reveal wide variability among drill terminology and protocol categorization and most studies emphasize advance warning and low-realism practices. Psychological outcomes are measured much more often than objective measures of implementation fidelity or physical preparedness. Educator and staff experiences, caregiver perceptions, and longitudinal outcomes are underrepresented. Although a number of studies report developmental adaptations and disability accommodations, comprehensive equity analyses remain rare. Overall, potential psychological harms are more clearly documented than protective effects in the literature. This review emphasizes the importance of standardized drill taxonomies, fidelity measurement methods, trauma-informed mental health integration, and inclusive designs to inform school safety policy and practice.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070421

Authors: Syed Uzair Jaffri Ah-Choo Koo Salman Hussain Choo-Yee Ting

The implementation of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based system for monitoring, forecasting, and learner performance support has been intensified by the rapid expansion of online education systems. Existing online educational platforms completely rely on learning analytics and machine learning to customize content delivery. On the other hand, these platforms fundamentally focus on behavioral and cognitive indicators, whereas the integration of affective computing into learning analytics and adaptive decision-making processes is lacking. During the learning process, emotions like engagement, boredom, and confusion play a vital role. Nonetheless, the integration of adaptive online learning systems is still fragmented and underdeveloped. The latest progress in affective computing and multimodal sensing technologies allow for the inference of the affective state of learners in real-time, which creates a range of potential opportunities to create emotionally sensitive learning spaces. Despite technological innovations, the existing studies do not have a conceptual framework that is unified, design-oriented, and clearly incorporates affective computing with AI-based learning analytics to inform real-time pedagogical adaptation. To address this gap, this study introduces a design-oriented conceptual framework for AI-based online education systems that incorporate real-time affective computing. This conceptual framework combines the theoretical foundation of learning analytics, affective computing, and adaptive learning systems. The suggested framework offers a clear and scalable basis of online learning environments that are affective-aware by offering a clear framework of development, assessment, and consequent empirical validation.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070420

Authors: Olaniyi Joshua Olabiyi Nicolette Vanessa Roman

This study provides a systematic examination of global research trends and developments in the field of family and marriage over a twenty-five-year period (2000–2025). Employing a hybrid review design, the research integrates bibliometric analysis with PRISMA guidelines to ensure methodological rigor and transparency. Data were retrieved from the Web of Science, where an initial pool of 97,171 records was refined to 2974 eligible publications through a structured screening and inclusion process. The reduction to 2974 publications was the result of structure bibliometrics using CiteSpace, which employs algorithmic thresholds to identify the most structurally significant publications within a large corpus. Utilizing CiteSpace (version 6.4.R1), this analysis maps the intellectual structure and evolution of the field. By synthesizing co-citation, co-authorship, institutional, and keyword co-occurrence data, this study identifies critical collaboration networks, influential contributors, and dominant thematic domains. The findings reveal prominent research clusters, including premarital cohabitation, partner effects, family structure transitions, marital discord, systemic family functioning, and marriage education. Key contributors identified include influential scholars such as Catherine Walker O’Neal, Birditt, Kira S, Higginbotham Brian J, Beach Steven R. H., and Matthew D. Johnson. Leading institutions are the University System of Ohio, the University of California System, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE), Pennsylvania State University, and Pennsylvania State University–University Park. At the country level, the United States, Canada, England, Australia, the Netherlands, and Belgium emerge as the most significant contributors. The findings offer a comprehensive synthesis of authorship trends, institutional influence, and shifting research trajectories within the field of family and marriage studies.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070419

Authors: Ben Avital-Lev Arnon Hershkovitz

This study examines where socioeconomic differences in students’ computational thinking (CT) learning become visible by comparing a diagnostic assessment of conceptual CT knowledge with behavioral indicators derived from interaction data in a digital programming environment. The study involved 444 elementary school students who completed a structured sequence of programming tasks while their activity was recorded. Conceptual CT knowledge was assessed using a validated diagnostic instrument, and four behavioral indicators were derived from learning logs: average first-try stars, attempts per challenge, highest challenge reached, and average solution time. Analyses were conducted at two complementary levels: individual indicators and integrated digital behavioral types identified through clustering. The findings revealed no meaningful socioeconomic differences in diagnostic CT performance and no consistent differences across most individual behavioral indicators, with the exception of average first-try stars. However, socioeconomic differences became visible when students’ interaction patterns were examined as multidimensional configurations of engagement. These results suggest that socioeconomic variation is reflected primarily in students’ engagement with digital problem-solving processes rather than in conceptual knowledge alone. The study highlights the value of combining diagnostic and log-based measures for understanding how educational inequality may become observable in computational thinking development.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070418

Authors: Mahdis Azarmandi Maryam Sharifkhani

School peace, or Schulfrieden, is often portrayed in German education as a neutral condition enabling learning. Yet this study interrogates how peace itself becomes a tool of governance, selectively policing who can safely occupy the classroom. Examining the Berlin Senate’s October 2023 directive, which banned symbols showing solidarity with Palestine, we show that school peace is less about conflict resolution than about shaping affective hierarchies. Fear, anticipation, and symbolic association circulate to mark some bodies as threats while leaving others unexamined. Through the lens of Sara Ahmed’s affective economies and Zembylas’s affective ideology, we argue that the directive transforms political expression into a site of emotional correction, preemptively disciplining marginalized students and rendering their solidarity politically suspect. Peace, in this framing, is primarily rule and order: it secures institutional comfort while curtailing engagement with global injustice. The classroom becomes a laboratory of anticipatory governance, where ethical awareness is unevenly distributed, and dissent is contained before it emerges. By tracing how school peace operates affectively, the study reveals the subtle mechanics by which liberal education reproduces racialized hierarchies under the guise of neutrality.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070417

Authors: Julie Andersson Lisa Stafford

Background: Knowledge of place-based communities and the lived experiences of diverse citizens such as disabled people are key to making more inclusive sustainable communities. Yet many voices in public planning and community engagement, such as people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, children and young people, are often not heard. Method: Bringing people together requires an artful approach that amplifies diverse voices and stories while enabling solutions through knowledge exchange. In this article we share the art of designing and doing community chats as an inclusive dialogical method. The community chats used The World Café’s principles and framework adapted with inclusive processes, enabling us to explore the concept of planning inclusive communities and, importantly, solutions for them with community members with and without disabilities. Findings: In this article we firstly critique the current tensions regarding community engagement in public planning and participatory research methods, before outlining our approach. This includes outlining in detail our design approach and applied processes for maximising the participation of diverse people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. We offer critical reflections on our key lessons learnt and the non-negotiables in undertaking community chats. Conclusions: By sharing our thinking, approach and lessons learnt, we offer an inclusive adaptive approach to a popular method—the world café—that can be useful to evoke meaningful and empowering knowledge exchanges with diverse people with disabilities to help progress actions towards making communities more inclusive.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070416

Authors: Naiara Ozamiz-Etxebarria Nahia Idoiaga-Mondragon Maitane Picaza Gorrotxategi Idoia Legorburu Fernandez Itziar Kerexeta Brazal

The ongoing Palestinian conflict, particularly the escalation in Gaza since October 2023, has raised pressing concerns regarding human rights and international justice. This study explores how university students in northern Spain perceive the situation in Palestine, analyzing their levels of knowledge, emotional responses, and critical positioning. Using a mixed-method approach based on an online questionnaire and the Grid Elaboration Method, data were gathered from 147 students enrolled in education-related programs. The findings reveal three core themes in students’ representations of the conflict: resistance as a form of national identity, humanitarian suffering of civilians, and structural injustice perpetuated by global power dynamics. Gender and academic background influenced discursive emphasis, with Social Education students showing more politicized perspectives and women focusing more on Palestinian dignity and resistance. These insights underscore the potential of higher education to foster critical thinking, empathy, and engagement with international conflicts, and highlight the role of universities in cultivating a culture of peace and human rights.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070415

Authors: Silvia Lourdes Vidal-Taboada Nilthon Pisfil-Benites Luis Tuñoque-Morante Yenny Anali Tenorio-Ortiz Tanya Gabriela Makita-Balcorta Diana Paola Diazgranados-Villa

Background: The transition toward sustainable development models has increased the relevance of the circular economy (CE) as a strategy for improving resource efficiency and reducing environmental impacts. In this context, higher education may contribute to strengthening sustainability-oriented competencies and environmental awareness among university students. Methods: This study aimed to assess differences in knowledge of the circular economy, perceptions regarding higher education in circular economy education, and sustainability dimensions among university students in Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. A quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional design was adopted using a structured questionnaire administered to 702 university students. The analysis included descriptive statistics, the Kruskal–Wallis test, and Dunn’s post hoc comparisons. Results: The results showed significant differences among countries regarding knowledge of CE principles, sustainability initiatives, and perceptions associated with higher education in circular economy education. Peruvian students generally reported higher levels of knowledge and more positive perceptions across several indicators, whereas Mexican students presented comparatively lower scores. Differences were also identified across the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability, particularly in the economic dimension. Conclusions: Overall, the findings suggest that higher education may support the development of CE-related competencies and sustainability-oriented educational strategies within diverse Latin American contexts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070414

Authors: Jia-Hui Tan Soon-Nyean Cheong Chee-Onn Wong Ahmad Hishamuddin Bin Mohamed

University orientation programmes are a primary mechanism through which new students become familiar with campus facilities, academic spaces, and institutional procedures. However, many orientation activities are delivered as single in-person sessions, limiting opportunities for students to revisit spatial and procedural information after the event. To help address this constraint, a digital twin-inspired metaverse orientation application, the Digital Twin Metaverse Orientation (DTMO), was designed in Unity and hosted on Spatial.io as a spatially faithful virtual replica of a faculty environment. An exploratory pilot evaluation was conducted with 30 university students from multiple faculties after a facilitator-guided orientation session. The System Usability Scale (SUS), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and two open-ended questions were used to examine perceived usability, recommendation intention, and the reasons underpinning recommendation decisions. The application obtained a mean SUS score of 86.83, corresponding to an excellent perceived-usability rating, and an NPS of 53.33, indicating positive immediate recommendation intention. Qualitative responses suggested that participants valued the DTMO for engagement, accessibility, ease of navigation, and support for spatial familiarisation, while some participants emphasised that it should complement rather than replace physical orientation. These pilot findings indicate promising user reception in a small, guided-session sample, but they do not establish orientation effectiveness, learning transfer, wayfinding performance, retention, belonging, institutional integration, or sustained use. Further research with broader samples and outcome-based measures is therefore needed.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070413

Authors: Sophie Sparks April Smith

This study examines the impact of imprisonment on the families of incarcerated men in England and Wales. Drawing on mixed-methods survey data collected in collaboration with the Prison Advice and Care Trust (PACT), the research is based on responses from 42 participants. The sample comprised 21 partners/spouses, 11 parents, 5 adult children, 2 siblings, 1 other relative and 1 friend of an incarcerated individual, with 1 participant preferring not to disclose their relationship. The study explores the financial, social, emotional and relational consequences associated with imprisonment. Findings indicate that financial strain was a significant pressure for many participants, driven by loss of income alongside the costs associated with maintaining contact. Participants also described experiences of stigma, social withdrawal, emotional distress and changes to family responsibilities, highlighting the multiple challenges associated with imprisonment for family members. Consistent with emerging research highlighting the wider emotional and psychological consequences of imprisonment for family members, the findings suggest that these pressures were often experienced as interconnected aspects of participants’ experiences rather than in isolation. The study illustrates the value of the symbiotic harms framework for understanding the relational and interconnected dimensions of family members’ experiences of imprisonment in a UK context and highlights the practical and emotional labour involved in maintaining family relationships during imprisonment. The findings underscore the importance of recognising families as individuals directly affected by imprisonment and by the wider consequences of penal policy.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15070412

Authors: Bruce Moghtader Susan Grossman Shubhreet Kaur Dadrao

Over the past decade, educators and administrators in higher education have taken steps toward improving accessibility in teaching and learning. Yet research on supporting students with disabilities in experiential pedagogies, such as community-engaged learning, remains limited, particularly regarding best practices for inclusive instruction. The present study addresses this gap by exploring the perceptions and experiences of students with disabilities in community-engaged learning opportunities, as well as the support mechanisms that may contribute to their meaningful participation in these experiences. Forty-three students with disabilities participated in this qualitative study. Drawing on focus groups, individual interviews, and written responses, the study identifies themes for more inclusive design and delivery, including clearly outlining the physical and digital demands of engagement activities well in advance, designing courses with flexibility in mind, protecting students’ privacy, and including an accessibility statement in the syllabus. While the thematic analysis offers practical recommendations for educators and administrators, aimed at reducing barriers and fostering meaningful participation, the study also advocates for greater theoretical engagement with the personal and relational dimensions of experiential education.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060411

Authors: Tabisa Verdejo Valenzuela Claudia Carrasco-Aguilar José Ignacio Rivas-Flores

This study examined the place of care in early childhood education and the role of the state in the social organization of care in Chile. Official policy documents were reviewed, including the Early Childhood Education Curriculum Framework, Teaching Standards Framework (Marco para la Buena Enseñanza), Law 20.379, and Law 21.805. Following a thematic analysis of these documents, semistructured interviews were conducted with four early childhood teachers to triangulate the findings. The results, presented across three thematic categories, reveal an ambiguity in the state’s positioning, oscillating between its role as a guarantor of rights and a provider of targeted services. Care is also incorporated into the educational sphere in a fragmented manner—as a learning objective and a condition for achieving educational outcomes—without being fully recognized as a constitutive dimension of teaching work. This situation contributes to the invisibilization of teachers as care workers and the reproduction of gender inequalities. The study contributes to the literature by approaching care from an educational perspective, highlighting underexplored tensions and emphasizing the need to incorporate a feminist and intersectional perspective into educational policies to advance the recognition of care as a right and a central component of the teaching profession.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060410

Authors: Letizia Carrera

This article investigates the intricate interplay between ressentiment—as social emotion—social love, and solidarity in democratic societies, focusing on the urban environment as the primary stage where these processes materialize. Far from being a marginal emotion, ressentiment is deeply intertwined with democratic life, arising from the gap between proclaimed values and lived conditions. It represents an affective reaction to the perceived betrayal of the promise of equality inscribed in democratic ideals. The discussion explores how perceptions of injustice can fracture trust and intensify divisions, but also how they, under certain conditions, can be redirected toward political engagement and common action. The city, characterized by density, diversity, and the continuous negotiation of difference, can serve as a privileged arena for this transformation. Urban space does not merely reflect inequalities; it actively shapes social processes and provides the infrastructure through which collective sentiments are articulated. In this context, “social love” is conceptualized not as a sentimental aspiration, but as a relational force capable of redirecting the moral indignation of ressentiment, far from strategies of grievance politics toward constructive forms of social and political belonging. Cities can function as laboratories of solidarity where grievances are reframed into collective projects that strengthen social cohesion. Mitigating the destructive potential of ressentiment requires addressing its structural roots through inclusive urban policies and dialogical spaces. An approach grounded in social love can counter fragmentation, mobilizing emotions in the service of substantive equality. In this perspective, the city can become a space and a laboratory for change, where resentment can be channeled as a generative force capable of sustaining widespread forms of social love and a sense of the common good.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060409

Authors: Nancy Kuhuski Sarah Dubitzky

Protecting the safety and well-being of children in public child welfare is one of the most critical and demanding jobs in social work. Burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and moral injury are prevalent in this field and often occur simultaneously. This intersectional experience impacts the deepest level of a person—their soul. When left unaddressed, these soul wounds come at a high cost to the workers, organizations they work for, the clients they serve, and their greater communities. This qualitative study sought to explore and identify the characteristics of soul care and the power it has to transform the lived experiences of child welfare workers. Collaborative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven workers who had been in this field for 10 or more years and described themselves as having good soul care. Findings from this study concluded the combination of strongly held core beliefs and engagement in a steady regulation loop constituted soul care. Soul care can occur regardless of circumstance. When a soul wound occurs, the Soul Wound Cycle is activated. The momentum of the regulation loop propels one’s movement through this cycle, allowing the processing of the soul wound, resulting in increased resiliency and regaining of equilibrium, ultimately leading to better outcomes for children.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060408

Authors: Masateru Higashida

This study examined how indigenous perspectives are represented and discussed in the mainstream literature within the field of international social work. A scoping review was conducted to map both well-established and under-researched discourses in the literature. The findings revealed that the majority of the papers shed light on indigenous knowledges and practices in non-Western countries or regions and particularly within the Global South context, while countering imperialistic and colonialist discourses. Additionally, several papers addressed the need to move beyond the dichotomy between universalisation and indigenisation and the Western versus non-Western binary. The study findings also indicate research gaps that have remained unfilled in the mainstream literature.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060407

Authors: Elena Morgenthaler Andrew Childs Benoit Leclerc Danielle Reynald

Dark web drug market participants (both buyers and vendors) face frequent disruptions that affect their access to marketplaces. While these disruptions vary in their duration and the actors involved, existing research has largely concentrated on closures by law enforcement. Recognising the broader range of disruptions experienced by participants is essential for understanding how dark web markets adapt and evolve. This paper presents a typology of dark web drug market disruptions, informed by the current literature, categorising disruptions along two key dimensions: the duration of the disruption (temporary versus permanent) and the actor involved (internal versus external) in the disruption. This typology provides a comprehensive framework for analysing how different forms of disruption may influence market participant decision-making processes and the resilience of illicit online drug markets. In doing so, the typology highlights how disruptions that differ in duration and origin may have varying implications for participant behaviour and market resilience.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060405

Authors: Noemí Morejón-Llamas Juan Pablo Micaletto-Belda

Information disorders condition electoral processes, becoming a major institutional concern. In response, the European Union and various fact-checking organisations co-organised the Elections24Check project to curb disinformation in the 2024 European elections. This research analyses the activities, strategies, and editorial behaviour of the five Spanish fact-checking agencies that are integrated into the initiative. Through a content analysis applied to 3256 publications, the findings demonstrate the maturity of the Spanish ecosystem, which led the project by contributing 32.8% of the total content. Strategically, reactive action predominated, except for Newtral, which prioritised prebunking (62.6%). Political scrutiny was minor (6.6%), focusing on major coalitions and far-right leaders. Thematically, highlights included war conflicts, migration, and national/regional frameworks utilised for emotional polarisation, displacing the focus from the strictly European debate. In conclusion, Spain consolidates itself as a cornerstone of European fact-checking. However, the results reveal inefficiencies in the project’s extended timeframe, suggesting more constrained and effective frameworks for election campaigns. Furthermore, the persistence of narratives anchored to local agendas evidences a strategic fragmentation that hinders the construction of a fully pan-European public space.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060406

Authors: Angelique G. Day Carson Ball Norma Hernandez Katie Baudhuin Becky Carino Becky Main

Foster parents working with children who are American Indian/Alaskan Native (AIAN) face challenges to provide trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate, and culturally relevant care for the children in their care. The Tribally Adapted National Training and Development Curriculum is a state-of-the-art training program designed to prepare foster parents to effectively parent AIAN children exposed to trauma and to provide these families with ongoing skill development necessary to understand and promote healthy child development. The current study describes the results of two focus groups (N = 11) that occurred in person in the social services office of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in May of 2022. Findings describe the experiences of participants that completed the tribal NTDC training and how the training impacted their readiness and experience to foster in comparison with parents of AIAN foster children who received the training-as-usual training protocol (Foster Parent College (FPC)) provided by the State child welfare authority.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060404

Authors: Petros Galanis Aglaia Katsiroumpa Ioannis Moisoglou

Several countries have adopted a nationwide ban on social media access for children. Our aim was to investigate public opinion regarding the implementation of a social media ban for children, as well as the factors influencing these views. We measured agreement with the ban, information regarding its implementation, perceived need for additional measures, confidence in the effectiveness of the ban, perceived impact of the ban, and parental familiarity with digital parental control tools. The study sample included 619 participants. In our sample, 69% agreed with the implementation of the ban, while 86.5% believed that additional measures should be implemented (i.e., digital literacy courses in schools, active parental involvement in digital literacy, prohibition of inappropriate content, reasonable parental limits on social media use, and restriction of addictive platform features). Females and higher-educated participants had more positive perceptions regarding the impact of the ban. We found a positive association between age, financial status, social media use, and impact of the ban. Reduced age was associated with increased parental familiarity with digital parental control tools. Social media use was associated with parental familiarity with digital parental control tools. There is a need for holistic and evidence-informed policy frameworks that integrate regulatory measures, educational initiatives, and shared accountability among stakeholders.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060403

Authors: Daniela Grignoli Danilo Boriati

This paper examines whether, and to what extent, social relations can be understood in terms of utilitarian exchange, or whether they are more adequately interpreted through the categories of solidarity and social love. More specifically, the article develops a critical analysis of reductionist theories of exchange by focusing on the relationship between young people, participation, and local communities in the inner areas of Molise, a region in southern Italy that is particularly marked by socio-economic fragility. Within this framework, the study adopts a qualitative research design, based on semi-structured interviews with 62 young people aged 16 to 34, introduced using a photo-elicitation prompt. The findings indicate that, despite experiencing the constraints associated with a limited availability of services, opportunities, and resources, people in these territories cultivate forms of relational well-being that cannot be reduced to a mere cost–benefit calculus. Rather, these relationships generate recognition, mutual support, and orientations towards the common good, through practices of care directed both towards the local territory and towards family ties. From this perspective, the paradigm of social love may provide a particularly successful interpretive framework for understanding youth solidarity and the persistence of community bonds within the contradictions of late modernity.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060402

Authors: Sing-Jian Teoh Soon-Nyean Cheong Chee-Onn Wong Ahmad Hishamuddin Bin Mohamed

This paper describes design, implementation and initial evaluation of Digital Twin Metaverse Classroom for higher education. Digital Twin Metaverse Classroom refers to highly realistic digital replicas or virtual replicas or prototypes of university classrooms or learning spaces. This paper focuses on creating high-fidelity digital replica of typical university lecture room. The main purpose of the Digital Twin Metaverse Classroom is to support teaching and learning in addition to traditional videoconferencing. The pilot involved thirty-two undergraduate students. A single-group pre-test/post-test quiz measured short-term learning, while the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) measured acceptance through perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward use, and behavioral intention. A single session raised the mean quiz score from 6.41 to 9.19, a within-session gain that reached statistical significance, while all four TAM constructs scored highly. Because the sample was small and confined to one institution, with neither a control group nor a follow-up, these findings are best read as early evidence of feasibility, short-term improvement, and favorable acceptance rather than as proof of comparative effectiveness.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060401

Authors: Maha S. Yaseen

This study examines punctuation as a paralinguistic resource in digital political discourse, focusing on its role in encoding stance in a corpus of tweets produced by Donald Trump. Drawing on a dataset of 1000 tweets, the analysis combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to identify patterns in the use of exclamatory, interrogative, and mixed punctuation forms. The findings suggest that punctuation functions systematically as a mechanism of textual amplification, shaping the expression of evaluation, emotional intensity, and interactional meaning. Repeated exclamation marks are closely associated with heightened stance and emphasis, while interrogative forms frequently function rhetorically to signal doubt and challenge rather than to request information. Mixed forms further demonstrate the flexibility of punctuation in encoding multiple layers of meaning within a single utterance. The analysis also shows that punctuation operates in close interaction with lexical intensifiers and capitalization, forming clusters of meaning that reinforce communicative force. By foregrounding punctuation as a meaningful semiotic resource, the study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how written discourse adapts to the constraints of digitally mediated communication. It argues that punctuation should be treated as an integral component of pragmatic and discourse-analytic inquiry and highlights its role in the construction of stance in contemporary digital political discourse.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060400

Authors: Stewart J. D’Alessio Lisa Stolzenberg Jamie L. Flexon

Most delinquent behavior occurs within age-homogeneous peer groups. Using incident-level data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), this study reassesses the extent to which contemporary juvenile group offending reflects peer-only networks versus cross-age collaboration. Results show that while juvenile-only groups remain the dominant pattern, approximately one-third of co-offending incidents involve adult participants. Mixed-age groups are associated with group size, offense type, and situational context, and are especially common in serious offenses such as homicide, aggravated assault, and drug crimes. Mixed-age co-offending is also associated with greater offense severity, particularly higher odds of victim physical injury. These findings have important implications for the criminal justice system’s response to juvenile crime. While most juvenile offending diversion programs currently focus on interventions that counter peer influence and reduce the time spent with peers engaging in antisocial behavior, intervention strategies that also address the facilitating role of adult co-offenders may also be necessary.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060399

Authors: Pragya Mishra Colleen M. Berryessa Fiona A. Hagenbeek

Behavioral epigenetics links experiences of adversity, stress, and care to molecular variation associated with health and behavior and can reshape understandings of embodiment across the life course. As such findings enter legal and policy debates, they raise pressing questions about how judges assess responsibility, weigh extralegal factors in sentencing, and govern the use of emerging scientific evidence. This article develops a framework of biological justice to guide the translation of epigenetic evidence into judicial decision-making without reintroducing biological determinism or naturalizing structural inequality. Integrating insights from epigenetics, sociology of science, bioethics, and criminal law, we clarify the inferential limits of current research and examine risks of biologizing inequality, predictive governance, and eugenic logics. We argue that epigenetic evidence should be restricted to contextual, defendant-protective, and rehabilitation-oriented uses in sentencing and post-conviction proceedings, while predictive and coercive applications should be explicitly excluded. Overall, this framework emphasizes structural framing, community oversight, and equity to prevent molecular accounts of adversity from reinforcing existing hierarchies.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060398

Authors: Cristina Soriano-Díaz Juan Manuel Moreno-Manso Alejandro Arévalo-Martínez Carlos Barbosa-Torres María José Godoy-Merino María Elena García-Baamonde

Children in residential care constitute a particularly vulnerable group at high risk of developing emotional and behavioral difficulties as a consequence of adverse experiences and dysfunctional family environments. Identifying risk and protective factors is essential for designing interventions tailored to their needs; however, the available research remains limited and does not always provide the evidence required to guide effective programs within the child protection system. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems among children in residential care and to analyze the role of family factors, sex, and age in these difficulties. The sample consisted of 210 children aged 6 to 18 years institutionalized in residential care centers and supervised apartments. A cross-sectional design was employed, administering the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) along with an ad hoc questionnaire to collect socio-family variables. The results reveal a high prevalence of emotional and behavioral difficulties. The multivariable models explained between 8.1% and 29.4% of the variance in emotional and behavioral functioning and showed that age, sex, exposure to gender-based violence, parental substance use, and parental intellectual disability were associated with specific emotional and behavioral dimensions. The study highlights the need to develop and implement educational and therapeutic programs aimed at strengthening children’s emotional regulation, addressing behavioral difficulties, and considering family-related adversity in intervention planning.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060397

Authors: Mzukisi Xweso Catherina Johanna Schenck Martin Chanza

Informal waste picking and scrap collection constitute critical yet highly precarious livelihood strategies among economically marginalised women in rural South Africa. This article presents a cross-sectional mixed-methods study, guided by Sen’s Capability Approach as its analytical framework, examining the lived experiences, motivations, and livelihood outcomes of 126 Black African women engaged in scrap collection along the N2 Highway in the Eastern Cape, specifically in Mthatha, Xhora, and Qumbu. The study integrates quantitative descriptive statistics with qualitative thematic analysis derived from structured interviewer-administered questionnaires. The findings indicate that participation in scrap collection is overwhelmingly driven by structural economic constraints, including chronic unemployment, household poverty, and extensive caregiving responsibilities, rather than autonomous occupational choice. The sample is characterised by limited educational attainment, frequently disrupted by poverty, bereavement, early marriage, and early caregiving roles, which collectively constrain access to formal employment opportunities. Participants consistently described scrap collection as physically hazardous, economically insecure, and detrimental to both physical health and psychosocial wellbeing, while remaining indispensable for household survival. Through the lens of the Capability Approach, these conditions reflect severe restrictions in substantive freedoms, particularly in relation to economic security, bodily health and human dignity. Expressions of acceptance are interpreted as manifestations of adaptive preferences formed under conditions of prolonged structural deprivation rather than indicators of genuine agency. The study contributes to informal economy scholarship by demonstrating how intersecting structural inequalities constrain capability sets and limit livelihood trajectories and calls for targeted policy interventions to enhance occupational safety, income security and access to sustainable livelihood alternatives.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060396

Authors: Carmit Wiesslitz

This article examines the utilization of WhatsApp as an alternative communication tool for disseminating visual content among social activists during protests. While WhatsApp is typically conceptualized as an interpersonal or group messaging platform, research on its role as an infrastructure for alternative media and citizen journalism remains limited. The study focuses on the “Tikva” group, established at the onset of the public struggle against the 2023 judicial reform in Israel, which evolved into a nine-month mass protest movement described as one of the largest in the country’s history. Through qualitative thematic content analysis of videos distributed within the group, the article explores how WhatsApp functions simultaneously as a channel for digital activism and as a site of bottom-up, democratic, non-institutional news production. The findings indicate two primary trends: functionally, WhatsApp operates as a mechanism for resource mobilization, calls to action in physical and digital spaces, and the cultivation of belonging and solidarity among activists facing institutional power; in terms of content and production, the videos articulate an anti-hegemonic discourse and challenge mainstream media conventions. The analysis shows how these videos dismantle delegitimizing frames and construct a counter-narrative depicting protesters as citizens defending democracy, thereby sustaining the protest movement’s momentum.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060395

Authors: Lisa Stolzenberg Stewart J. D’Alessio

A central question in contemporary bail reform is whether the different forms of monetary release used in large U.S. jurisdictions, commercial surety bonds, deposit bonds, full cash bonds, and property bonds, produce systematically different pretrial outcomes. The commercial bail industry has long defended its role on the grounds that bondsman-supervised release produces superior pretrial outcomes through a private enforcement function not available under alternative mechanisms. The present study tests this claim using data from the 2009 State Court Processing Statistics program on 5271 felony defendants released on financial conditions in 35 large urban counties. Logistic regression models with county fixed effects and cluster-robust standard errors estimate the association between release mechanism and two outcomes, pretrial rearrest and failure to appear (FTA), net of bail amount, prior criminal record, seriousness of offense, criminal justice status at arrest, time from arrest to release, type of legal representation, and demographic characteristics. Three findings emerge. First, defendants released on deposit bonds exhibit substantially lower odds of pretrial rearrest than otherwise comparable defendants released on commercial surety bonds, a finding that is robust across a battery of sensitivity analyses. Second, defendants released on full cash bonds exhibit substantially lower odds of FTA than otherwise comparable defendants released on commercial surety bonds, although this finding is somewhat sensitive to specification choice and is partly mediated by bail amount. Third, no specification supports the public-safety claim made on behalf of commercial bail because surety bonds do not outperform the alternatives for either outcome. These findings indicate that the principal empirical justification for the commercial bail industry is not supported by nationally representative data, and that a shift away from commercial bail toward court-administered alternatives is unlikely to impose behavioral costs and may produce modest public-safety gains.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060394

Authors: Setrag Hovsepian

Internal and civil wars affect the lives of religious and ethnic minorities the most. For Syrian citizens of Armenian origin, the Republic of Armenia represented one of the most accessible and meaningful destinations to relocate to, shaped by shared ethnicity, collective memory, and historical ties. When the Syrian war erupted in 2011, thousands opted to resettle in Armenia, yet they and host institutions struggled to categorize them as immigrants, refugees, or repatriates. This ambiguous status has received little scholarly attention. To explore these complexities, the study employed a survey-based research design involving 124 participants, supplemented by an open-ended question intended to capture personal narratives and nuanced identity negotiations. The manuscript examines how the labels immigrant, refugee, and repatriate carry distinct legal, social, and emotional implications, especially against the backdrop of the 1915 Armenian Genocide’s enduring memory and the particularly negative connotations of “immigrant” and “refugee” in Western Armenian and Arabic languages. Within this contested semantic and policy terrain, repatriation appears not merely as a bureaucratic category but as a culturally resonant and sometimes preferred pathway for some Diaspora Armenians, informed by lifelong exposure to repatriation narratives through formal education (language textbooks) and informal communal practices. The case sheds light on the broader conception of stakeholders, including how they self-identify, how they understand their status in Armenia, and the factors shaping their choices, particularly in the context of contemporary geopolitics and the role of education in influencing external perceptions of them.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060393

Authors: Aklilu Amsalu Mo Hamza

Focusing on how environmental stressors intersect with socioeconomic vulnerabilities to shape migratory patterns, this study examines the relationship between climate change and youth (im)mobility in Ethiopia. It examines how climate shocks—including droughts, unpredictable rainfall, and land degradation—heighten household insecurity and shape young people’s migration decisions. Using mixed-methods data, including surveys and interviews conducted in Chencha, Dugna Fango, and Kebribeyah, the research shows that youth mobility serves both as a proactive adaptation and a reactive coping mechanism. Some young people migrate to pursue education, employment, and independence, while others move to meet immediate livelihood needs. Mobility pathways such as stepwise, return, seasonal, and rural-urban migration are shaped by social networks, local ecological conditions, and perceived opportunities. Kebribeyah emerges as the most vulnerable location according to the Household Susceptibility Index (HVI), highlighting regional disparities. By demonstrating that migration reflects both agency and structural constraints, the study challenges simplified push–pull models and advocates for policies that address spatial variations in vulnerability, support youth aspirations, and recognize migration as a legitimate adaptation strategy. It also offers insights for designing inclusive, context-sensitive interventions that bolster resilience and expand opportunities amid climate uncertainty, promoting a more nuanced understanding of climate-related mobility rooted in adolescent experiences.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060392

Authors: Foteini Papastergiou Belen Quintero Veronica Marin

Autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly participate in decision-making processes that affect individuals, markets, and public administration. Their growing autonomy complicates the attribution of legal responsibility, particularly within regulatory frameworks that were designed around identifiable human actors and relatively stable products. Although European Union instruments such as the GDPR, the AI Act, and the revised Product Liability Directive address specific dimensions of risk and compliance, they do not fully resolve how responsibility should be allocated across the lifecycle of complex AI systems. The difficulty does not lie so much in the absence of legal rules. Rather, it reflects the structural tension between traditional liability models and the distributed architecture of contemporary AI development and deployment. By examining how existing EU regulatory instruments interact, the paper identifies fragmentation in responsibility allocation that may weaken institutional accountability. It then proposes a tiered model of legal responsibility based on meaningful control at different stages of system design, deployment, and operational oversight. Rather than introducing new forms of legal personhood, the model seeks to clarify how existing doctrines can be interpreted and coordinated in order to maintain regulatory coherence and socially intelligible accountability in digitally mediated environments. The model allocates responsibility according to meaningful control within distributed systems, offering a structurally coherent alternative for EU governance.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060391

Authors: Manuel Galiñanes Leo Klinkers

This article argues that journalism plays a structurally significant role in accountability within contemporary democratic governance and therefore warrants constitutional protection beyond traditional press-freedom guarantees. It develops the concept of the Quarta Politica as a constitutional order composed of four branches of democratic governance: legislative, executive, judicial, and ombudsman power. Within this framework, the Ombudsman Council constitutes the Fourth Branch of Power and safeguards the informational, participatory, deliberative, and corrective conditions necessary for democratic legitimacy. The article conceptualizes journalism not as a privileged profession or sovereign authority but as part of the informational infrastructure through which democratic systems monitor and contest the exercise of power. Particular attention is given to a Chamber for the Protection of Journalistic Independence within the Ombudsman Council, designed to protect editorial independence, media pluralism, and informational accountability. The analysis further examines how digital transformation, platform dominance, algorithmic amplification, ownership concentration, and fragmented communication environments undermine the institutional conditions necessary for independent journalism. Situating the framework within theories of horizontal accountability, monitory democracy, and digital constitutionalism, the article concludes that safeguarding the informational foundations of democratic accountability has become a central constitutional challenge of contemporary governance.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060390

Authors: Ahlam Abdullah Alsulami

This study examined Saudi adolescents’ digital use, experiences of cyberbullying, and willingness to seek help when facing online risks. Furthermore, the study examined how perceived online safety, preferred reporting sources, exposure to online safety education, and demographic characteristics are associated with resistance to help-seeking. A cross-sectional online survey was completed by 302 adolescents aged 11–17 years across Saudi Arabia. Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVAs, and hierarchical multiple regression were used to explore patterns and predictors of resistance to help-seeking. Descriptively, the results showed near-universal smartphone access, high daily screen time, and that a substantial minority had experienced recent cyberbullying, including repeated victimization. Although most participants reported feeling safe online, many expressed uncertainty and endorsed self-reliant or avoidant responses, with over half agreeing they would “just ignore” cyberbullying. Parents were the most frequently identified reporting source, yet around one-fifth of adolescents said that they would not seek help from anyone. Regression analyses indicated that female gender, higher socioeconomic status, feeling less safe online, and receiving online safety education from multiple sources were associated with lower resistance to help-seeking, whereas greater cyberbullying exposure predicted higher resistance. Overall, the results highlight the need for multi-source, culturally grounded online safety education and strengthened reporting pathways across families, schools, and digital platforms to support Saudi adolescents who experience cyberbullying and related online harms.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060389

Authors: Gülfem Levent Berkay Mehmet Erçek

In Türkiye, working life operates within a hybrid structure in which modern production relations and traditional gender roles intertwine. The automotive sector, in particular, where hegemonic masculinity and conservative values are reproduced, creates a breeding ground for discriminatory practices and safety issues affecting LGB employees. This study aims to analyze the psychosocial and organizational mechanisms underlying LGB individuals’ decisions to disclose or conceal their identities in the context of neoconservative social pressure and industrial masculine culture in Türkiye. Using a qualitative research design grounded in the social constructivist paradigm, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 LGB individuals working at different levels of the sector. Data were analyzed using reflective thematic analysis. The findings revealed themes of controlled openness, emotional labor, defense mechanisms, organizational silence, micro-solidarity, and ordinary visibility. It was determined that identity management is experienced as “strategic risk management” rather than an act of liberation, that hierarchical advancement increases the “glass closet” effect, and that employees constantly exhaust their cognitive capacity in a state of “hyper-vigilance”. In conclusion, the study examines the divergence between multinational corporations’ global inclusion policies and local practices and explores the structural factors that sustain organizational silence.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060388

Authors: Anna Zenarolla Luigi Gui

This article presents the results of two qualitative studies, realized in Italy, aimed at investigating if and how social love informs social workers’ practices and interventions designed to address situations of poverty and homelessness. In particular, the aim of these studies was to further develop the line of inquiry initiated by a preliminary exploratory study conducted in Italy some years ago, which recognized traces of agapic action within helping relationships in the context of social services addressing conditions of social exclusion and poverty, and found that these agapic actions produce a reality sui generis: a unity between subjects which, from reciprocal action, leads to a ‘generative social mechanism’, existing beyond the parties involved and overabundant. The results of the two studies presented in the article offer further evidence to support this hypothesis. The article highlights the existential and professional perspective with which social workers approach the challenging task of helping vulnerable individuals. Elements of social love have been highlighted that contribute to making professional assistance more sustainable and effective, moving away from neoliberal and managerialist approaches that often ignore the emotional and relational dimensions. Social love fuels motivation for positive change despite social and personal limitations and risks of failure.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060387

Authors: Paolo Bailo Maria Sofia Petrelli Emerenziana Basello Giuliano Pesel Giovanna Ricci

Zoomafia is frequently invoked in Italian public, advocacy, and institutional discourse to describe profit-oriented animal-related crime, but the term remains analytically broad and insufficiently connected to criminological theory. This narrative criminological review examines zoomafia as a cautious social-scientific lens for studying organized animal-related crime across heterogeneous illicit markets. Keyword-driven searches in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and targeted criminological, legal, policy, and institutional sources were complemented by citation tracking and qualitative source selection. Peer-reviewed scholarship forms the analytical core, while legal, institutional, and advocacy materials are used selectively and with explicit evidentiary limits. Findings suggest that organized animal-related crime is best understood through market governance, brokerage, legal-illegal interface management, digital mediation, logistics, facilitation, evidentiary visibility, and variable convergence with other illicit economies, rather than through generic offence labels alone. The Italian perspective is analytically useful because companion-animal trafficking, dog fighting and betting circuits, clandestine horse racing, illicit slaughtering, wildlife trafficking, and online-facilitated trade can be compared within a shared frame that also exposes the limits of rhetorical mafia labelling. The article argues that zoomafia should not be treated as a self-proving mafia label, a new legal category, or a synonym for wildlife trafficking, but as a comparative framework for identifying organizational features, enforcement constraints, and evidentiary thresholds. The evidence base remains stronger on strategic recommendations than on robust comparative evaluation of enforcement effectiveness.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060386

Authors: Andrew Holmes Lisa Stafford Megan Taylor David Bailey Trent Henderson Matt Novacevski Akemi Traill

Practice-oriented or practice-based research is growing in popularity in the social, built environment and health fields for its important role in driving transformative changes at policy, programme/service and practice levels. As planning is a practice with performative characteristics occurring in a socio-political-legal context, practice-oriented research has been utilised to inform and help shape change. However, to be truly effective, practice-oriented research must be connected to day-to-day practices. In this article, we present our experience of using a Community of Practice (CoP)—that brings together people with shared interests and professions—to exchange learning and experiences and to help create knowledge to advance professional practice. In our case, we established a Community of Practice of Planners (CoPP) to help translate stage one findings into tailored knowledge resources to open up a dialogue and raise awareness on Planning for Disability Equity and Inclusion. In this article, we describe the method of CoP, how it works, including our reflections and learnings. We suggest that CoP are an underutilised method in planning practice and research. We argue that the CoP approach should be in a researcher and planner’s toolbox for more transformative progress in equity and inclusion in planning.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060385

Authors: Philip Brown Jamie P. Halsall Santokh Gill Tom Simcock Akosiwa Agbokou

This paper investigates the settlement experiences of Hong Kong British National (Overseas) [BN(O)] migrants in the UK, with a particular focus on housing as a central mechanism shaping their wellbeing, security, and integration. Following the introduction of the BN(O) visa route in 2021, this study draws on qualitative interviews with migrants in the North of England to explore how housing mediates conditional settlement under a marketised migration regime. Findings reveal that housing functions as the primary infrastructure of settlement, influencing employment, education, and family life, while access is conditioned by migrants’ capacity to absorb market risks such as advance rent payments and landlord discretion. The study highlights significant intra-group stratification shaped by financial resources, family composition, and transnational support, with family responsibilities intensifying housing precarity and constraining choices. Moreover, a moralised ethos of self-reliance among migrants normalises hidden insecurity and limits formal support-seeking. This research contributes to migration and housing scholarship by demonstrating how ostensibly humanitarian migration pathways reproduce uneven security through housing systems, underscoring the need for policy interventions that address the cumulative effects of housing insecurity on settlement and wellbeing.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060384

Authors: Emanuela Proietti

This paper offers a theoretical-interpretive contribution to the sociology of lifelong learning (LLL), exploring a sociological reframing of lifelong learning through the concept of social love as an analytical framework for reading the institutional practices of universities in the domain of LLL. Drawing on classical and contemporary sociological traditions (including recognition theory, French pragmatic sociology, and relational sociology), the paper develops the argument that lifelong learning, when understood as a relational and generative practice, can be interpreted through the four dimensions of social love: overabundance, care, recognition, and universalism. The paper proposes what can be interpreted as a theoretical and educational transposition of the World Love Index (WLI) framework: a shift in scale, from the nation-state to the university, and in domain, from general social policy to educational practice, that preserves the core logic of the WLI while adapting it to the context of higher education. This transposition responds to a gap explicitly identified within the WLI research program and contributes to the debate on the civic and relational dimensions of higher education. Empirically, the paper draws on a national survey conducted within the Italian University Network for Lifelong Learning (RUIAP), which mapped lifelong learning services across 27 universities between 2022 and 2023. The survey data are used not as a basis for hypothesis testing but as exploratory empirical material through which to illustrate and develop the proposed framework, following a logic of theory elaboration. The findings reveal a heterogeneous and evolving system, characterized by uneven levels of institutionalization across the four dimensions: recognition practices are most widely present, though concentrated on formal pathways; care emerges in dedicated services for vulnerable and non-traditional populations; universalism remains largely unrealized in terms of territorial outreach; and overabundance (institutional investment exceeding regulatory compliance) is present in limited but analytically significant cases. The study concludes that understanding LLL as a practice of social love offers new insights into the civic mission of universities and their contribution to fostering social cohesion and democratic participation. It further proposes the need for observatories of institutional social love in higher education (such as RUIAP) and identifies directions for future research and policy oriented toward the generation of relational goods and the common good within university systems.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060383

Authors: Christopher Chase-Dunn Qing Pei

Natural and human-caused disasters have operated as selection mechanisms in the evolution of within-polity and interpolity sociocultural systems by destroying lives and the human-built environment, and they have provoked challenge-and-response dynamics that caused human polities to innovate and to implement innovations that resulted in increases in complexity and hierarchy. Individuals, households, communities, settlements, and polities and interpolity systems that were most prepared and resilient to these selection mechanisms survived and prevailed. This article reviews the theoretical literature in geography, historiography, sociology, anthropology, political science and economics on hypotheses regarding the effects of disasters on human social change, including both increases and decreases in sociocultural complexity and hierarchy.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060382

Authors: Drew Meehan Sora Lee

Social disconnection, encompassing both loneliness and social isolation, is increasingly recognised as an important public health concern. While employment provides opportunities for social participation and role engagement, less is known about how different forms of labour market detachment relate to subjective and objective dimensions of social connection in later working life. This study examined the association between labour force attachment and both loneliness and social isolation among Australians aged 50–64 years using cross-sectional data from Wave 22 (2022) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey (n = 3362). Participants were classified into labour force attachment groups including in work, underemployed hidden workers, unemployed hidden workers, discouraged workers, those not wanting work, and other. Survey-weighted logistic regression models were used to estimate adjusted predicted probabilities of loneliness and social isolation across labour force groups. After adjustment for sociodemographic and health characteristics, predicted probabilities of loneliness were elevated across hidden worker subtypes relative to those in paid employment, with point estimates 10–13 percentage points higher across categories. Differences in social isolation between hidden worker subtypes and those in paid work were small in magnitude. The highest adjusted predicted probability of social isolation was observed among individuals who reported not wanting work. These findings suggest that, in later working life, labour market marginalisation is associated more strongly with subjective experiences of social disconnection than with the structural availability of social contact. Interventions to reduce loneliness among older working-age adults may benefit from recognising the institutional functions of paid work alongside approaches targeting social contact.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060381

Authors: Mohammed Alkharusi Rahima Aissani Bushra AlBusaidi Suad Alkharusi Islam Habis Mohammad Hatamleh

This study aims to explore the role of digital public relations in enhancing the corporate image of educational institutions by focusing on Bayan College in the Sultanate of Oman. The study is based on a central question regarding the effectiveness of social media platforms in improving the institution’s image among its audience, particularly students. To achieve its objectives, the study employed the descriptive and analytical method using a questionnaire tool, with a sample of 662 students from various academic disciplines at the college. The results showed that Instagram was the most widely used social media platform and that digital public relations played an effective role in strengthening the college’s image. The findings also indicated no statistically significant differences attributable to gender or academic specialization, while differences were found based on academic year. The study recommends adopting effective digital communication strategies and enhancing the use of social platforms to build a positive and sustainable institutional image.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060380

Authors: Jaime Fierro

Western theories and empirical comparative research on attitudes toward immigrants and their rights have largely overlooked Latin America. To address this gap, we conducted multilevel ordered logistic regression analyses on Latinobarómetro surveys from 17 countries (N = 19,004). The findings show that support for immigrants’ social rights is more contingent on immigration-related benefits—especially cultural enrichment—than on perceived threats. When threats do mobilize opposition, the perceived fiscal burden emerges as the sole significant driver, overriding both concerns about labor market competition and fears of rising crime. Furthermore, right-wing individuals were no less supportive of immigrants’ social rights than left-wing individuals. Instead, the most welfare-chauvinist attitudes were found among the politically disengaged. At the macrosocial level, the results provide evidence that contextual factors not only exert a direct statistical effect on public support for immigrants’ social rights but also moderate the influence of perceived micro-level threats. In particular, the national unemployment rate and the immigrant stock exacerbate the exclusionary effect of the perceived fiscal burden on levels of support among citizens. Ultimately, these findings challenge some theoretical assumptions derived from intergroup threat theory, provide novel evidence for the Threat-Benefit Model, and further suggest a distinct political dynamic in the region.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060379

Authors: Tatyana K. Konovalchik Olga Yu. Strizhitskaya

Objectives: Fear of falling (FoF) is a common psychological phenomenon in later life and is often accompanied by avoidance behavior and activity restriction. Although FoF is associated with anxiety, depressive symptoms, reduced self-efficacy, and fear of loss of autonomy, older adults with FoF may differ substantially in the configuration of these characteristics. The present study aimed to identify data-derived profiles of older adults based on FoF, avoidance behavior, self-efficacy, and fear of loss of autonomy, and to examine profile-specific psychological predictors of FoF and avoidance behavior. Methods: The main analytical sample included 217 older adults aged 60–97 years (M = 76.45, SD = 10.14) with Mini-Mental State Examination scores of 20 or higher. Latent profile analysis was conducted using FoF, avoidance behavior, self-efficacy, and fear of loss of autonomy. Anxiety components, depressive symptoms, coping strategies, pain catastrophizing, and loneliness-related indicators were examined in class-specific regression models. The stability of the class solution was tested across different MMSE cut-off scores. Between-class comparisons were conducted for functional, fall-related, socio-demographic, and psychological indicators. Results: A three-class solution was selected and interpreted as adaptive, vulnerable, and maladaptive profiles. The profile structure remained relatively consistent across MMSE cut-off scores, including in the broader sample with MMSE ≥ 15. The classes did not differ significantly in postural balance or number of falls, suggesting that the profiles could not be fully explained by objective fall-risk indicators. Significant between-class differences were found for age, daily pain level, and state social defense. Class-specific regression models suggested that psychological variables associated with FoF and avoidance behavior differed across profiles. Pain appraisal and emotion-related coping were more relevant in the adaptive profile, phobic anxiety and anxious appraisal of future events in the vulnerable profile, and anxiety-related, depressive, interpersonal, and coping-related factors in the maladaptive profile. All reported associations remained significant after false discovery rate correction. Conclusions: FoF and avoidance behavior are related but not identical phenomena and vary across data-derived psychological profiles. A profile-oriented approach may provide a more differentiated understanding of activity restriction in older adults and help identify profile-specific targets for psychological support.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060378

Authors: Carly Bailey Dierkhising

Growing evidence on the collateral consequences of youth incarceration, combined with increased attention to developmentally appropriate and trauma-informed care, has advanced national reform efforts aimed at rethinking youth confinement. While attention to trauma-informed care and developmentally appropriate approaches within juvenile justice systems is important, the structural barriers inherent in secure settings limit their potential. As a result, a concentrated focus on decarceration offers greater promise for promoting healthy youth outcomes. The movement toward decarceration emphasizes community-based services grounded in empirical evidence demonstrating that rehabilitation and positive adolescent development are more effectively achieved outside secure facilities. Additionally, an often-overlooked component of this shift is the role of probation, which remains the most common disposition for youth who come in contact with the justice system. Probation can either extend formal system involvement or serve as a bridge to community-based services, thereby influencing the success of decarceration efforts. This paper argues that prioritizing decarceration, while strengthening community capacity and thoughtfully restructuring probation, offers the most promising path for promoting healthy outcomes for youth, families, and communities.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060377

Authors: Yuan Lin Yue Zhao

The governance of traditional medical knowledge faces persistent challenges from biopiracy and the inadequacy of conventional intellectual property regimes. This article examines the transformative potential and limitations of blockchain technology in governing traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) knowledge, adopting a framework that integrates legal validity, procedural justice, and governance implications. Drawing on normative legal analysis of Chinese statutes, empirical case studies of recent blockchain initiatives in China, and comparative analysis of the Nagoya Protocol and WIPO frameworks, the article advances three arguments. First, blockchain-enabled registration can generate legally cognizable evidence of prior existence, though its validity as a property right requires statutory recognition. Second, blockchain can enhance procedural justice by mitigating evidentiary asymmetry, expanding participation, and increasing benefit-sharing transparency. Third, the governance implications demand hybrid institutional designs that combine technological infrastructure with legal frameworks. The article identifies critical limitations—the oracle problem, accessibility barriers, and jurisdictional fragmentation—and proposes targeted optimizations, including statutory presumptions for blockchain records and enhanced international coordination. China’s experience offers actionable insights for equitable, legally embedded, and technologically sophisticated traditional medical knowledge governance globally.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060376

Authors: Nurbieta Abd Aziz Nur Angriani Nurja Hafizol Abu Hassan Abdul Halim Masnan Hasrul Hosshan Nor Siti Rokiah Abdul Razak Syamsinar Abdul Jabar Nurul Khairani Ismail Imanina Ibrahim Dimitar Angelov Rahmahtrisilvia

Video modelling (VM) is widely used as an instructional strategy to support skill acquisition among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), particularly within visually mediated learning contexts. This systematic review synthesises recent empirical evidence on the effectiveness, limitations, and practical implementation of VM interventions in autism education. The review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. Electronic searches were conducted in Google Scholar and Springer Nature Link, focusing on peer-reviewed empirical studies published between 2020 and 2024. Following screening and eligibility procedures, 20 studies were included in the final synthesis. Most studies employed single-case experimental designs (SCEDs), with fewer using group-based or quasi-experimental approaches. Due to heterogeneity in study designs, participant characteristics, intervention procedures, and outcome measures, findings were synthesised narratively. Across studies, VM interventions were applied across multiple domains, including social communication, academic learning, vocational skills, and daily living routines. The most consistent evidence was observed for structured and procedural skills. However, the evidence base remains limited by methodological variability, small sample sizes, and the predominance of SCEDs, which constrain generalisability. This review provides a domain-based and implementation-informed synthesis of recent VM research, highlighting contextual factors influencing effectiveness. While VM shows promise, conclusions should be interpreted cautiously. Future research with larger samples and more rigorous designs is needed to strengthen the evidence base.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060375

Authors: Abbas Jong Shima Jong

This article examines how young Muslim women in contemporary France live, negotiate, and recalibrate the hijab within a differentiated secular order that distributes the conditions of public visibility unequally across institutional sites. Rather than treating the headscarf as a legal controversy or as a symbolic test of the compatibility of Islam with republican secularism, the analysis asks how visible Muslim femininity is rendered institutionally legible, conditionally tolerable, or professionally problematic across the ordinary spaces of school, work, leisure, and public life, and how women respond when the continuity between faith, body, and public presence is repeatedly subjected to regulation. Drawing on a reflexive thematic analysis of seven in-depth interviews with young Muslim-background women in Paris, the article shows that hijab emerges in the core narratives as an ethical form of composure, governed self-presence, and dignity; that schools, workplaces, and recreational sites act as visibility filters that classify which forms of Muslim femininity can appear as acceptable, neutral, and professionally credible; and that these pressures are negotiated aesthetically through ongoing acts of bodily calibration and respectable self-presentation. To capture this practical labor, the article develops the concept of embodied boundary-work and situates it explicitly in dialogue with Foucauldian accounts of disciplinary normalization and feminist scholarship on the ambivalence of agency under norm-governed conditions. The argument is that the French hijab question is most productively understood through the gendered management of Muslim visibility enacted through institutional norms of fit, neutrality, and appearance, whereby the female body becomes the site where secular governance, moral selfhood, professional sorting, and public belonging concretely intersect.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060374

Authors: Hiu Hung Monica Wong

Background: Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to psychological distress following natural disasters, especially in low-resource settings. This study examined the short-term psychosocial outcomes associated with Narrative Drawing Intervention (NDI), a structured, trauma-informed, school-based group counselling program integrating expressive drawing and guided narrative reflection, among students affected by an earthquake in rural western China. Methods: Using a quasi-experimental design, 30 trained educators facilitated eight NDI group sessions for 150 students. Of the 120 students who completed the intervention, a randomly selected subset completed standardized psychological assessments. The final analyzed sample included 64 participants (44 intervention; 20 control). Results: The intervention group demonstrated significant reductions in anxiety (p = 0.011, d = 0.40) and PTSD symptoms (p = 0.008, d = 0.42), with a reduction in stress approaching statistical significance (p = 0.063, d = 0.29). In contrast, the control group showed significant increases in anxiety, stress, and PTSD symptoms over the same period. Depressive symptoms did not significantly change in either group. Descriptive drawing comparisons indicated increased visual elaboration and more centralized figure placement following the intervention. Conclusions: Within the context of a quasi-experimental and exploratory design, the findings provide preliminary support for the feasibility of NDI and suggest potential short-term psychosocial benefits in post-disaster school settings. While baseline group differences and the lack of randomization suggest the need for further investigation, the results provide a foundation for future randomized and longitudinal studies that further examine causal pathways and the sustainability of observed effects.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060373

Authors: Dolly Eliyahu-Levi Avi Gvura

The article examines conservative rhetoric and discourse in Israel toward the LGBTQ+ community from a sociolinguistic perspective that conceptualizes language as an arena of socio-cultural struggle over identity, power, and normativity. Drawing on queer linguistics theory and identity politics, the study explores how language constructs reality through metaphors of illness, sin, and existential threat, as well as through theological framing and appeals to family and national values. These rhetorical strategies produce a social hierarchy in which heteronormativity is positioned as a “natural truth” while queer identities are labelled as deviant or threatening. From sociological perspective, the study reveals how conservative discourse establishes social boundaries and reinforces collective identity through the exclusion of the Other, thereby reproducing power relations and hierarchies. The article calls for the development of an alternative public discourse grounded in pluralism, inclusion, and the recognition of diverse identities as a means of strengthening democracy and social justice. While existing studies have examined conservative discourse toward LGBTQ+ communities primarily in Western contexts, this study contributes to the field by centering the Israeli case as a distinctive site of analysis, where conservative voices emerge from multiple and ideologically heterogeneous traditions: national-religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Muslim-Arab. By examining how rhetorically divergent speakers converge around shared mechanisms of exclusion, the study reveals that heteronormative discourse is not the product of a single ideological source, but a cross-sectoral phenomenon embedded in the specific political and cultural tensions of Israeli society.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060372

Authors: Óscar Delgado-Mohatar Raúl Alelú-Paz

Democratic erosion often begins rhetorically before institutions show visible damage. Here we test whether large language models (LLMs) can detect early linguistic signals of authoritarian drift in political speech. Formal speeches by Adolf Hitler (1922–1939), Donald Trump (2017–2025), Nicola Sturgeon (2014–2023), Giorgia Meloni (2022–2025) and Viktor Orban (2022–2025) were scored using an 11-indicator taxonomy derived from the Levitsky–Ziblatt framework and evaluated independently by GPT-4o, Gemini 2.5-Pro and Grok-4-Fast, with near-perfect inter-model agreement. Principal Component Analysis revealed two poles: an authoritarian–populist cluster (Hitler–Trump–Orban) and a democratic-institutional pole (Meloni–Sturgeon). To quantify proximity to an authoritarian reference, we introduce the Authoritarian Reference Index (ARI), defined such that it captures both its alignment and intensity relative to the Hitler gold-standard vector. Trump exhibited the highest proximity to the reference (99.1% alignment, 80.7% intensity), followed by Orban, who mirrored the structural alignment (97.6%) with a moderated intensity (72.4%). In contrast, the democratic-institutional pole was distinguished by significantly lower intensity scores, with Meloni (16.4%) and Sturgeon (22.3%) remaining distant from the authoritarian magnitude despite varying degrees of structural overlap. These results show that extreme rhetorical peaks carry disproportionate diagnostic weight and that LLMs can expose structural authoritarian patterns relevant for democratic monitoring.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060371

Authors: Juan Manuel Martínez-Ripoll Marta García-Domingo Yolanda M. de la Fuente Robles

Epidermolysis Bullosa is a group of rare genodermatoses characterized by extreme mucocutaneous fragility, significantly affecting the quality of life of those who live with the condition and their families, thereby making integrated and coordinated social work intervention with other health and social care professionals essential. This qualitative descriptive study examines social work practice with individuals with Epidermolysis Bullosa through online open-ended surveys administered to twenty professionals, analyzed using a reflexive thematic approach. The findings reveal key barriers, including the lack of specialized training, the absence of standardized protocols, and administrative complexity, as well as the need to address intersectional factors that exacerbate socioeconomic vulnerability. Despite these challenges, social work intervention contributes to enhancing family autonomy, improving caregiver well-being, and promoting social, educational, and occupational inclusion. The study highlights the importance of strengthening such interventions through interinstitutional coordination, the development of structured protocols, and the central role of community social services. In conclusion, advancing specialized training and consolidating coordination structures may significantly improve the quality of care and the well-being of affected individuals and their families.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060370

Authors: Ye Luo Miao Li William Haller Yu-Bo Wang Patricia Carbajales-Dale Savannah Jones Xi Pan

This study examines the relationship between COVID-19-related discrimination and mental distress in the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also explores whether this relationship can be accounted for by loneliness, resilience, and financial worries. A random sample of 302 respondents from four Upstate South Carolina counties completed surveys between March and August 2022. Results from path analysis indicate a strong positive association between experiences of COVID-19-related discrimination and mental distress, with approximately half of this association accounted for by loneliness, resilience, and financial worries. Additionally, job disruptions and material hardships account for the relationship between discrimination and financial worries. While recognizing that causal inferences cannot be drawn from the cross-sectional design, these findings highlight the interconnected social, psychological, and economic factors linked to discrimination and mental distress and suggest potential targets for future research and intervention.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060369

Authors: Sultan Akel Zekiye İrem Gözübol Kerem Toker

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between young adults’ perceptions of gender equality and their recognition of psychological and physical dating violence while considering the role of sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 465 young adults aged 18–24 in Türkiye. Data were collected via an online questionnaire that included the Gender Equality Scale, the Perceptions of Dating Violence Scale, and sociodemographic variables. Nonparametric tests, Spearman correlation analyses, and OLS multiple regression analyses were used to assess group differences, bivariate relationships, and the unique predictive contribution of gender equality perceptions while controlling for sociodemographic variables. Results: The findings revealed a significant positive correlation between lower perceptions of gender equality and greater tolerance for psychological and physical dating violence. Educational level, perceived economic status, and romantic relationship status were associated with differences in perceptions of gender equality and violence, while gender and employment status were not significant factors. Conclusions: This study highlights the link between perceptions of gender equality and attitudes toward dating violence. These findings suggest that individual beliefs and sociodemographic characteristics influence how young adults perceive and respond to psychological and physical violence. Further research is needed to explore these relationships across broader populations and cultural contexts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060368

Authors: Javier Ferrer-Aracil Víctor M. Giménez-Bertomeu Mercedes Cuenca-Silvestre Elena M. Cortés-Florín

This paper analyzes perceptions of competencies and other employability-related factors in Social Work from two complementary perspectives: that of final-year Bachelor’s students in Social Work, and that of Social Work professionals serving as field supervisors during practicum. A quantitative, cross-sectional, and descriptive study was conducted. A total of 96 individuals from a Spanish public university participated: 77 fourth-year students and 19 professionals. Data were collected through two ad hoc questionnaires on competencies related to employability, the usefulness of practicum and the degree of job placement, additional training, geographic mobility, and the transition to employment. In both groups, although from different positions and perspectives, professional ethics and responsibility, social commitment, and teamwork were highlighted. Likewise, practicum and the Degree in Social Work were considered highly useful for finding employment, and the establishment of partnerships with companies and institutions was identified as the most effective measure to improve employability. In contrast, different results were observed among students and professionals with regard to additional training, mobility, and the transition to employment. The results underscore the value of further exploring the connection between higher education and the professional world, as well as studying the transition to professional practice.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060367

Authors: Katalin Parti Addison Midkiff

This study examines audience reception of two implementations of an interactive theatre-based scam-prevention program developed to raise awareness of scams targeting older adults. The 2023 and 2024 implementations differed in cast composition, pacing, length, audience interaction, and scenario structure. Rather than treating these differences as the basis for causal comparison, this article uses the two implementations as programmatic cases for identifying how audience members made sense of theatre-based cybersecurity education. The study is guided primarily by andragogy, with geragogy used as an age-specific extension for interpreting older participants’ comments about accessibility, pacing, repetition, and instructional support. It uses a qualitative, multi-method design based on post-performance surveys with open-ended questions (N = 332; n = 164 in 2023, n = 108 in 2024) and follow-up interviews (N = 27; n = 15 in 2023, n = 12 in 2024). Findings show that participants valued practical scam-prevention information, emotional resonance, humor, accessibility, and opportunities for reflection, while also identifying design tensions around pacing, interactivity, repetition, and emotional tone. Age-group patterns were directional rather than categorical: interviews suggested stronger contrasts in how older and younger adults interpreted the program, while survey responses showed more mixed and overlapping forms of learning and engagement. The study contributes design-oriented insights for theatre-based cybersecurity education and suggests that andragogy, supplemented by geragogical attention to later-life accessibility and support, offers a useful framework for future program development.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060366

Authors: Joan Casas-Martí Paula Andrea Fernández-Dávila Lorena Valencia-Gálvez

This article examines experiences of loneliness among older adults from a life course perspective, fostering a dialogue grounded in Social Work. The aim is to understand how loneliness is constructed, expressed and reinterpreted as a subjective, relational and dynamic experience embedded in diverse life trajectories and shaped by structural factors. A qualitative, descriptive and interpretative approach was adopted, involving 30 individual interviews and 4 focus groups with 74 participants (older adults, social workers and other social-sector professionals) in Barcelona (Spain). The analysis was structured around the three core concepts of life course theory and its five key principles. The findings show that loneliness, understood as distinct from social isolation, is linked to biographical processes marked by expected and unexpected life changes. Its intensity and meaning vary according to timing, historical context, social position and life decisions. Employment, family, institutional, migratory, and sexual orientation and gender identity trajectories significantly shape experiences of loneliness. The study highlights the role of agency and underscores the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding accumulated inequalities. From a Social Work perspective, the article advocates a biographical, situated and relational approach to loneliness, promoting interventions that recognise individual trajectories and support meaningful social relationships.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060365

Authors: Linzi Williamson Randy C. Duncan Grace Rath Aliegha Dixon Christina Chandler Colleen Anne Dell

The lack of publicly available demographic and prevalence data on service dog (SDog) teams in Canada challenges our understanding of how and to what degree limited industry regulations, unharmonized standards, differing pathways to acquiring an SDog, and other variables can affect individuals with disabilities’ (i.e., handlers/consumers) ability to acquire, train with, or live with an SDog in Canada. The present study aims to develop empirical knowledge on SDog handler/consumer experiences with navigating the Canadian SDog industry. Current, former, and prospective Canadian SDog handlers/consumers (N = 263) were surveyed on personal demographics, SDog acquisition experiences, and experiences training/working with an SDog. Descriptive statistics were calculated for all quantitative data and open-ended responses were content analyzed. Participants reported diverse experiences and processes in acquiring an SDog. The typical respondent was a novice SDog handler, inexperienced in formally training with dogs, grew up with dogs and cats, had no negative experiences with dogs, needed an SDog to support a mental health disability/ies, trained their SDog on their own or with some professional support, did not join a wait list, completed basic obedience, public access, and/or task-specific training with their SDog 0 to 5 h daily using positive reinforcement or fear-free training approaches, spent on average $2567 to purchase their dog and $6695 for ongoing training costs, and had minimal but satisfactory experiences with Canadian SDog organizations. There are numerous gaps in our understanding of SDog team experiences in Canada, and future research is warranted.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060364

Authors: Ruben Karapetyan Karine Qocharyan Arman Andrikyan

Diaspora communities often develop institutional structures that shape patterns of social participation and integration within host societies. While immigrant integration is commonly assessed through individual socio-economic indicators, the organizational capacity of ethnic communities also plays an important role in sustaining collective engagement and leadership formation. This study examines patterns of community participation among Armenian diaspora populations in two major host contexts, Tehran and Los Angeles, which represent contrasting historical and institutional environments of diaspora development. The analysis draws on sociological survey data collected between 2018 and 2023 from 1600 respondents (N = 800 in each city), complemented by expert interviews with community leaders and organizational representatives. Community participation was categorized into three levels of engagement: organizers, active members, and non-participants. The results indicate that both communities demonstrate relatively high levels of organizational participation, yet their leadership structures differ significantly. In Tehran, leadership roles are distributed across diverse occupational groups within historically embedded institutional infrastructures. In contrast, leadership in Los Angeles is more concentrated among highly educated professionals, reflecting a more professionalized model of diaspora organization. These findings suggest that diaspora participation should be understood as a context-dependent form of institutional capacity that shapes patterns of collective engagement and immigrant integration.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060363

Authors: Elvis Williams Elvis Nshom

The relatively recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused the displacement of millions of Ukrainians. Studies have found that Ukrainians have seen a warmer welcome and embrace than other groups; they have also shown that there is generally a higher willingness to help Ukrainian refugees than other refugee populations. This study explores American’s attitudes towards Russia and President Vladimir Putin, and the extent to which these attitudes predict American’s willingness to help Ukrainian refugees. In a sample of 201 participants, results showed that, even though negative attitudes towards Russia and President Putin were both high, negative attitudes towards Putin were significantly higher than negative attitudes towards Russia. In addition, negative attitudes towards Putin significantly predicted Americans’ willingness to help Ukrainian refugees but not negative attitudes towards Russia. Implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060362

Authors: Christian Dumba Maditobane Robert Lekganyane

Community home-based care is an essential component of health care. Although mainly dominated by females, men have also played a crucial role as caregivers. Given the role stereotypes prescribed by societal norms driven by patriarchy, it is important to understand the challenges of males who perform duties that are deemed female roles like caring for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA). This study sought to explore the psychosocial challenges encountered by male community home-based caregivers caring for PLHA in a South African community. The study was conducted in Pretoria West, a community under the city of Tshwane Metro Municipality, South Africa. Designed with a phenomenological, explorative, and contextual research framework, this descriptive qualitative study involved ten male caregivers of PLHA who participated in semi-structured interviews that were thematically analysed. The study’s trustworthiness was upheld through credibility, confirmability, transferability and dependability. The results pointed to complex psychosocial issues experienced by male caregivers including the difficulties in managing caregiving responsibilities, struggling to balance caregiving and personal life, and the impact of caregiving on their wellbeing and lifestyle. Furthermore, caregivers were found to be uncertain and anxious. Male caregivers experience complex challenges that negatively affect their psychosocial wellbeing. It is essential to design wellness programmes that support this category of caregivers.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060361

Authors: Monica Ewomazino Akokuwebe Godswill Nwabuisi Osuafor Rasidi Akanji Okunola

Although apartheid ended in 1994, its legacy continues to shape South Africa’s higher education system, reinforcing disparities in access, funding, and representation. This study aims to critically examine how apartheid diplomacy has influenced higher education and asks: how do its strategies continue to shape academic practices, institutional relationships, and systemic inequalities in post-apartheid South Africa? It conceptualises apartheid diplomacy as the use of education to entrench racial hierarchies, reproduce class domination, and suppress indigenous knowledge. Grounded in Marxist and Weberian class theories and Crenshaw’s intersectionality framework, the analysis traces how apartheid-era policies institutionalised systemic inequalities and how these legacies persist within institutions. A scoping review was conducted using five databases (EMBASE, APA PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and Scopus) between January 2007 and April 2025, guided by PRISMA ScR and Arksey and O’Malley’s six-stage framework. Of 75 articles retrieved, 15 met the inclusion criteria. Findings reveal that apartheid diplomacy shaped academic governance, resource distribution, and knowledge production, leaving enduring inequities despite ongoing reforms. Transformation efforts, including financial aid schemes, equity policies, and curriculum debates, have achieved progress but remain constrained by structural, cultural, and intersectional barriers. The study underscores that achieving lasting equity requires continuous policy interventions, inclusive leadership, and curriculum decolonisation, alongside advocacy and interdisciplinary research. It reframes higher education as a diplomatic arena where equity and epistemic justice are negotiated, offering an original lens for understanding and dismantling apartheid’s enduring influence on South African academia.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060360

Authors: Felipe Alckmin-Carvalho Iara Teixeira Constança Proença Nayara Martins Guilherme Wendt Martim Santos Henrique Pereira

Loneliness has emerged as a significant public health concern among vulnerable populations, particularly gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM), and is shaped by sociodemographic and sociocultural factors. This observational, cross-sectional study aimed to estimate the prevalence of loneliness and examine its associations with sociodemographic and sociocultural factors among Brazilian MSM. A total of 1196 participants (mean age = 39.96 years, SD = 12.41) completed measures of loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale), sociodemographic characteristics, economic vulnerability, social and community capital, religiosity, and clinical–behavioral factors. More than half of the participants (52.7%) reported moderate or high levels of loneliness. A hierarchical multiple linear regression model was estimated and explained 23% of the variance in loneliness. Greater economic vulnerability and problematic substance use were linked to higher loneliness, whereas being in a romantic relationship, reporting a stronger sense of community belonging, and having social networks composed predominantly of LGBTQIA+ peers were linked to lower loneliness. The absence of formal religion was independently linked to higher loneliness, and HIV serostatus was not significantly related to loneliness after adjustment. These findings highlight the relevance of loneliness in this population and inform interventions targeting material vulnerability and community-based social support.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060359

Authors: María Dolores Muñoz de Dios Cristina Díaz Román Cristina Belén Sampedro-Palacios Trinidad Ortega Expósito

Community Social Services constitute the primary level of intervention within Social Services systems and play a key role in assessing needs, planning interventions, and coordinating support in situations of vulnerability. The growing incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into professional practice has generated increasing debate regarding its implications, benefits, and ethical challenges. This study aims to analyse current scientific evidence on the application of AI in Community Social Services. A systematic review was conducted following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, examining high-impact academic publications that address AI implementation in Social Service contexts. The selected studies were analysed through thematic synthesis to identify recurring trends, tools, benefits, and challenges. The findings reveal a progressive integration of AI mainly as a decision-support tool, including predictive models, automation of administrative processes, and early risk detection systems. Reported benefits include improved efficiency, enhanced data systematisation, and reduced administrative burden. However, significant ethical concerns, such as algorithmic bias, data privacy risks, and potential dehumanisation of interventions, were also identified. Overall, AI is emerging as a complementary resource in Community Social Services, whose responsible and ethically grounded implementation is essential to ensure alignment with core Social Work values.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060358

Authors: Sipho Sibanda Robert Lekganyane Gontse Maubane

With the introduction of antiretroviral treatment, HIV has become more of a chronic disease, resulting in people living with HIV living longer. This progress has also been realised among children and adolescents living with HIV, whose primary caregivers have always been instrumental in supporting and caring for them. Despite the general progress in the fight against HIV and the crucial role of caregivers in supporting children living with HIV, the reality is that the struggle is not yet over. The existing literature demonstrates that there are some untold sufferings not only of those children who are living with HIV but also their families and primary caregivers. Drawing from the biopsychosocial theoretical framework, this exploratory qualitative study sought to explore the experiences, challenges and coping strategies of caregivers of children living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. A total of eight participants were recruited from Pretoria and Cape Town through purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed through Braun and Clarke’s thematic model of qualitative data analysis. The findings revealed various experiences, including reluctance to disclose the child’s HIV-positive status, financial challenges, experiences involving support systems and the coping strategies for managing challenges. The study demonstrated the complexity of HIV as a condition involving the interaction of biological, psychological and social dynamics.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060357

Authors: Rachel M. Schmitz Israt Jahan Juie Ke Wang

This qualitative study examines how menstruation structures the lives and futures of married adolescent girls in the Centre for Girls’ Education’s Married Adolescent Safe Spaces (MAS) program in rural northern Nigeria. It addresses a key gap by focusing on married adolescents and treating menstruation as a social process linked to early marriage, schooling, mobility, and sexual and reproductive health, rather than only a hygiene issue. Guided by an intersectional social ecological and menstrual health-and-rights framework, the study draws on three years of ethnographic fieldwork. Methods include participant observation in MAS clubs, in-depth interviews, informal group discussions, and Hausa field notes from multiple rural communities, analyzed through iterative thematic coding and collaborative memoing. Findings show that menstruation operates as a “catalyst of constraint.” Menarche signals sexual maturity, intensifying moral surveillance, prompting threats or realities of school withdrawal, and accelerating pressure toward marriage. Girls describe menstruation as a “joy killer” and becoming “a shadow of myself,” as stains, pain, and shaming by teachers and peers lead to absenteeism and, at times, permanent dropout. Silence and stigma mean that asking questions can be read as promiscuity, pushing girls away from parents, religious leaders, and male teachers and toward sisters, peers, and mentors for incomplete guidance. Structural deprivation further individualizes the burden of menstrual management. Poverty, lack of affordable pads and underwear, and inadequate WASH facilities compel girls to “make do” with cloths and other unsafe materials, restrict movement during bleeding, and engage in small income-generating activities or kin negotiations to obtain basic supplies. MAS safe spaces partially disrupt these patterns by offering rare venues to discuss menstruation openly, learn cycle tracking and hygiene, and build peer solidarity and self-advocacy. However, the analysis underscores that program benefits remain constrained when poverty, weak school infrastructure, and restrictive gender norms remain intact. The study highlights how equitable sexual and reproductive health interventions must integrate menstrual health centrally, combining safe-space programming with subsidized products, improved WASH infrastructure, protective school policies, and norm change efforts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060356

Authors: Sheila Holz Denise Esteves

The European Union’s Farm-to-Fork (F2F) Strategy sets an ambitious agenda for a socio-ecological transition, positioning agriculture as a critical sector for achieving sustainable food systems. However, its implementation faces significant systemic barriers that hinder its transformative potential. This paper applies a diagnostic framework, derived from the H2020-funded PHOENIX project, that identifies six key challenges to democratic innovations in environmental governance: prolonged timeframes for tangible results, the complexity of environmental issues, the need for transcalar cooperation, the imperative to foster behavioural change, limited deliberative dialogue, and the need to build mutual trust. Through a review of public policies and scholarly literature, this analysis evaluates how these challenges manifest within the F2F Strategy, impacting farmers and the broader agri-food system. The findings demonstrate that barriers to F2F implementation are not solely technical or economic but are deeply linked to governance fragmentation, uneven knowledge flows, and deficits in trust relations. Crucially, the study reveals that Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) and associated Education and Training (ET) consistently emerge as pivotal enabling mechanisms to mitigate these constraints. The research generates actionable recommendations to reinforce F2F by redefining the roles of innovation, education, and multi-level collaboration in building resilient and sustainable EU agri-food systems.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060355

Authors: Paul Gavin Finley MacDonald Cody Normitta Porter Ada Toprak

The ageing prisoner population in England and Wales presents a significant and growing challenge for both criminal justice and social policy. Despite increasing recognition of the complex health and social care needs of this cohort, these needs have not been adequately addressed by successive governments. This conceptual paper critically analyses the broader structural, policy, and practice-based limitations associated with the provision of health and social care for older prisoners through a Sykesian (1958) pain model, as well as through Crewe’s (2011) analytical framework of weight, depth, tightness and breadth. It does this through consideration of three main pains of being an older prisoner—those related to healthcare, social care and death.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060354

Authors: Isabel Ferreira Andreia Barbas Joana Santos

Aiming for a just transition towards climate neutrality requires urban regeneration strategies that address ecological and social vulnerabilities. This study examines the strategies and experiences of developing nature-based solutions (NBS) for the regeneration of public space in neighbourhoods of seven European cities participating in the URBiNAT project. The aim is to move beyond the discussions on material solutions and focus on the sociopolitical components that shape the impact of NBS towards adaptation of urban communities and public spaces to climate change. Drawing on a qualitative sociological approach, the research enquires into the drivers and impact of participatory processes in the ecological and social dimensions of urban regeneration. More specifically, the study addresses the following research questions: (1) What are the individual, collective and institutional motivations that instigate different typologies of actors to engage in these processes? (2) What is the relevance of balancing material and immaterial solutions? (3) What are the lessons learned from the multiple actors, considering their experiences, expectations, and priorities? Findings confirm that the aim to produce socially and ecologically robust climate solutions for urban regeneration can be achieved through collaborative governance strategies emerging from, and tailored to, the typology of actors’ specific sensitivities, expectations, and priorities.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060353

Authors: Petronela Nistor

This article explores the specificity of social assistance conducted by the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) compared to Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) in the UK, USA, and France. The article is a secondary qualitative analysis of a circumscribed subset of the interview material assembled in a wider mixed-methods study on the professionalization of charity in the ROC, pursuing a different research question—the configurational specificity of the Orthodox model—than the parent study itself. Using Grounded Theory methodology on the corpus of nineteen interviews with clergy, social workers, and experts from Northeastern Romania, the analysis develops the category of the sacralization of social assistance—a configuration of practices and meanings in which the spiritual dimension is structurally integrated, sacramentally obligatory, and clerically authorized. While each of these features has been documented individually in Protestant and Catholic faith-based organizations, their joint configuration in the Romanian Orthodox case differs in degree and arrangement from patterns reported in the Western literature. A theoretically informed contrast with that literature highlights six dimensions along which the ROC configuration, as articulated by providers, diverges from the patterns most frequently reported in that literature: (1) the spiritual dimension is structurally integrated in ROC versus optional in UK/USA or institutionally absent in France; (2) leadership remains predominantly clerical versus secularly professionalized in the West; (3) the beneficiary is conceptualized as a living icon of Christ versus a person with civil rights; (4) the purpose of interventions is soteriological versus immanent social reintegration; (5) professionalization generates anxiety about secularization versus comfortable normalization; (6) volunteerism remains informal-communitarian versus formalized-systematic. The research proposes a dual-axis typology that differentiates between the presence and the nature of the spiritual dimension.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060352

Authors: Blantina Ignatia Madutlela Daniel Lesiba Letsoalo

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a critical public health concern in South Africa, which ranks among the countries most severely affected worldwide. Women and girls are reported to bear the greatest burden, with men predominantly identified as perpetrators. GBV is particularly prevalent in densely populated areas such as informal settlements, where adverse socioeconomic conditions create fertile ground for its proliferation. Despite the scale of this problem, to the researchers’ knowledge, few studies, especially qualitative ones, have been conducted in such contexts, even though informal settlements are widespread across the country. To generate nuanced insights into this phenomenon, the current study explored the lived experiences of women victims of GBV in Alexandra, one of South Africa’s largest informal settlements. The study was grounded in an interpretive paradigm, employed a qualitative approach, and adopted a single-case-study design. Participants were purposively selected from a population of women victims of GBV, and the sample size was determined through data saturation. Data were collected through individual, face-to-face semi-structured interviews and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) with Nvivo version 15 software and interpreted through the lens of feminist theory. The findings revealed that GBV has profound effects on women’s emotional, psychological and social wellbeing, extending beyond the immediate incidents to also affect their overall functioning, erode self-confidence, and limit opportunities for independence. The use of intimidation and coercion tactics by perpetrators trapped victims in a cycle of dysfunction which diminished agency, and fostered isolation. Interpreting these findings through a feminist lens highlights the systematic and recurrent nature of GBV, which cuts across personal, structural and relational dimensions. The findings underscore the urgent need for context-specific interventions that will help dismantle structures of abuse while supporting victims’ and/or survivors’ autonomy, recovery and, most importantly, capacity to rebuild identity and trust.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060351

Authors: Kathy Karatasas Rebekah Grace Daryl J. Higgins

Children’s cultural care is not an ancillary practice concern but a central element of governance, safeguarding, and ethical responsibility within out-of-home care systems. Across child protection systems internationally, out-of-home care services are mandated to safeguard children while upholding statutory and international care obligations. Leadership sets direction, organisational structures embed accountability, and learning cultures sustain responsiveness, forming an architecture that protects children’s cultural identities as inseparable from their safety, wellbeing, and belonging. Cultural care thus signals organisational integrity and the translation of rights-based commitments into practice. Yet many out-of-home care organisations struggle to support children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to maintain connections with family, community, and culture. Responsibility is often delegated to individual caseworkers, limiting systemic impact. Whole-of-organisation approaches are needed to embed cultural connection as a core safeguarding priority, strengthen accountability, and develop practitioner capability. Interviews with representatives from service organisations across five countries examined the organisational drivers that enable effective cultural care and the factors shaping the implementation of practice tools. Findings highlight the interconnected roles of leadership, governance, workforce development, and practitioner teams in sustaining culturally responsive practice. This paper reinforces shared responsibility across organisational levels to act with intentionality and cultural curiosity in supporting children’s rights to identity and belonging and concludes with an A–Z prompt tool offering reflective questions for leaders and practitioners to strengthen organisational approaches to cultural care.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060350

Authors: Margaret Greenfields Maria Faraone Sue Lukes Chantal Radley

This paper discusses emerging findings from a large-scale, ongoing UKRI-funded study (2024–2027) undertaken in twelve diverse areas of England. While the main project focuses on reducing health inequalities for refugees, asylum seekers and migrant populations, this interim paper focuses on emerging evidence related to the question of how perceptions of deservingness and route of entry link to access to housing and support services available to the four main refugee, asylum seeking and migrant groups who are the predominant focus within the wider research study. We argue that the level and type of support received and access to housing have a direct impact on the wellbeing of the populations. Housing is one of the key social determinants of health, with impacts on both mental health and broader wellbeing. Our findings show that nationality, together with route of entry, legal status and eligibility for statutory support (or lack thereof), clearly affects housing pathways. This, in turn, impacts on the likelihood of being housed in temporary/dispersal accommodation, as well as experiencing homelessness and longer-term housing precarity. These are factors which are widely recognised as affecting mental health and wellbeing, as well as the ability to receive uninterrupted health care for other conditions. This study explores how vulnerability, desirability, and deservingness shape different trajectories of refugee housing and resettlement and the resultant impacts on different migrant populations.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060349

Authors: Aaron Kupchik Bernice Petit Samantha Schornstein Benjamin Fleury-Steiner

In 1999, 107,493 juveniles were in residential placements; by 2023 this number declined to 29,314, a decrease of 73%. This extraordinary decline in juvenile incarceration—which we refer to as juvenile decarceration—has been reported primarily by justice advocacy groups without rigorous explanation or exploration. In this paper, we provide a state-level exploration in which we consider how relevant characteristics of states relate to their levels of decarceration. We analyze data from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and several publicly available sources and find correlations between the extent of a state’s rate of decarceration and that state’s poverty rate, high school dropout rate, adult incarceration rate, and voting results in the 2020 presidential election. Most striking, however, is the relative consistency of decarceration across states, and the absence of more robust patterns.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060348

Authors: Suraj B. Patil Mahesh Chougule Channaveer R. M.

Social mobility is a central indicator of socioeconomic development. It indicates the improvement of an individual’s socioeconomic position across generations. Recently, welfare policies, education, and redistribution schemes have received increasing attention from the academic community as they affect social mobility outcomes. Despite the growing volume of literature, there is an inadequate linkage between research on social mobility and social policy. This study uses a bibliometric analysis of 389 Scopus-indexed articles to examine research on social mobility and social policy from 1990 to 2025. The findings highlight the relationship between the impacts of policy interventions on social mobility. Performance analysis and science mapping are used, which provide insight into publication trends and leading contributors and reveal the intellectual and conceptual structures of the research field. Studies are concentrated in developed economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Further, in the science mapping analysis, co-word analysis is followed by bibliographic coupling, which reveals emerging trends and promising themes. The study provides a comprehensive synthesis of the conceptual and intellectual evolution of social mobility research, offers insights for policymakers and highlights the future direction of interdisciplinary research.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060347

Authors: Emiko A. Tajima Kristian V. Jones Jon M. Torres Isaac A. Sanders Carina Mendoza Brittney Lee Jennifer Personius

Extended Foster Care (EFC) provides services and benefits on a voluntary basis to young adults leaving the foster care system without having attained legal permanency. In the US, more than 19,000 young adults transitioned out of foster care without achieving legal permanency in 2021. As states seek to improve supports to young adults eligible for EFC, it is important to identify institutional barriers and needed practice reforms. This study reports on analyses of qualitative focus group data gathered from workers (N = 24) and interviews with community practitioners (N = 14) as part of Washington state’s collaborative systems assessment of EFC. Data from transcripts were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis of coded content. Rapid qualitative analysis allowed for efficient analysis and sorting of data to gather findings prior to the legislative session. Key themes identified related to (1) service and benefit gaps and needs, (2) organizational practice reforms, and (3) a need for culturally responsive services and a representative workforce. Specifically, workforce staff and community partners emphasized the need for EFC-specific units, developmentally tailored training, working from a clearly articulated practice model relevant to youth and young adults, the importance of reducing caseloads, recruitment and retention of a representative workforce, and more evidence-based practice options for EFC.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060346

Authors: Ciprian Bădescu Nicu Gavriluță

This article examines remittances not only as financial transfers but also as datafied political objects shaped by measurement, modelling and presentation infrastructures. Using the UK–Romania corridor, we compare observed personal remittance receipts published by the National Bank of Romania (NBR) with model-based bilateral estimates associated with World Bank/KNOMAD data. The article develops an analytical framework that links quantification, metric power, algorithmic governmentality, hybrid media circulation and emerging bottom-up social policies. It then shows how nominal values, real values at constant 2021 prices, year-by-year changes, moving-average smoothing, employment-scaled scenarios and transfer-balance indicators generate different representations of diaspora contribution, welfare substitution and national economic performance. Rather than assigning final authority to one dataset, the article demonstrates how calculation and presentation choices become communicative interventions. The conclusion emphasises methodological transparency and the need to connect remittance statistics to both political communication and community-level welfare practices.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060345

Authors: Joe Smith Eppie Sprung

This paper examines the social and political consequences of parenting with a conviction for a sexual offence in contemporary Britain. We argue that the systems governing people labelled “sex offenders” operate in ways that exceed what Michel Foucault described as biopolitical governance. While biopolitical frameworks have often been interpreted as oriented toward the optimisation and management of life, including through practices of rehabilitation and reintegration, contemporary punishment bureaucracies frequently foreclose these possibilities in practice. For many parents, redemption is not simply delayed but structurally denied, leaving their citizenship permanently uncertain. Drawing on collaborative, reflexive phenomenology, we develop the concept of cleft identity to describe this condition. Parenting is typically understood as a key site of responsible citizenship, centred on the care and protection of life. Yet parents with sexual offence convictions remain subject to ongoing surveillance, disclosure and stigma, marking them as permanently suspect. They are therefore required to perform the responsibilities of “good” parenting while simultaneously treated as moral outsiders. We argue that this tension produces a form of suspended citizenship in which stigma operates not simply as social reaction but as a mechanism of governance. The paper develops this argument through a theoretically driven, collaborative phenomenological case study intended for analytic illumination rather than empirical generalisation.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060344

Authors: Marie-Michèle Dufour Katia Kutlesa Jade Éliane Klemme Charlotte Moore Philippe Leroux Justine Larochelle-Guy Megane Jalbert Isabelle Préfontaine

Research on trauma in autistic individuals has proliferated in recent years. This scoping review aims to (1) provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on trauma and autism, (2) identify and synthesize key themes, and (3) highlight gaps to inform future research. Following Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework and the PRISMA-ScR guideline and checklist (Tricco et al.), we included articles published after 2000 in French or English that explicitly addressed trauma in autistic individuals. Four databases were searched: PsycINFO, Medline, ERIC, and Web of Science. A two-phase selection process yielded 199 eligible studies. Descriptive analyses and collaborative theme development were conducted to map the field. Findings show that most studies were published between 2018 and 2024, with the United States contributing the largest proportion. Four major themes were identified: (1) the relationship between autism and trauma, including prevalence, vulnerability, and consequences; (2) trauma-related symptoms and clinical manifestations; (3) assessment practices; and (4) intervention strategies. This review offers a critical synthesis of current knowledge, emphasizing the need for approaches that use broader definitions of trauma and reflect the diversity and lived experiences of autistic individuals. It also identifies significant methodological and conceptual gaps, calling for future research that addresses subgroup diversity and promotes equitable, trauma-informed practices for autistic individuals.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060343

Authors: Angelea Panos Paige Lowe Patrick T. Panos Deeqa Hamid

Somali refugee mothers navigating parenting in the United States face compounding challenges that extend well beyond the initial resettlement period. This study employed a multi-method qualitative design, including utilizing a focus group and follow-up key informant interviews with Somali refugee mothers. Thematic framework analysis identified three overarching domains of challenges and resilience. First, a pervasive deficit of functional literacy, defined as the practical capacity to navigate American institutional systems, emerged as the primary stressor, superseding material poverty as a barrier to daily functioning. Second, significant intergenerational tensions were documented, including role reversal between mothers and children, erosion of parental authority, and breakdown of the traditional expectations that adult children provide financial and social support to aging parents. Third, single motherhood amplified all other stressors, producing progressive role strain and mental health decline in the absence of extended family support. Despite these challenges, participants demonstrated substantial resilience through informal mutual aid networks, religious practice, and deliberate cultural and linguistic preservation. Findings have direct implications for the design of culturally responsive resettlement programming, family counseling services, and mental health interventions for Somali refugee populations.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060342

Authors: Daria Dodan Oana Negru-Subtirica

Currently, identity formation is undertaken in hyper-individualized virtual microsystems, such as TikTok. Here, content creators set the boundaries of adolescents’ identity exploration and construction. However, few studies have engaged with the content adolescents actively choose to follow to understand the behaviors and messages that are circulated and modeled by TikTok creators. To bridge this gap, 127 TikTok videos from accounts that a sample of 328 Romanian adolescents (Mage = 16.99, SDage = 0.78; 60.4% male) reported following were thematically analyzed. This resulted in a novel codebook that went beyond surface-level content typologies to reveal exposure to positive content, such as awareness raising, family values, and motivational videos, as well as negative content, such as age-inappropriate behaviors, materialistic values, and gender stereotypes. Results suggest that master and alternative narratives are portrayed by TikTok creators, generating tensions between conforming to norms that might be potentially harmful and following less common identity scripts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060341

Authors: Nina Khairova Ivan Redozub Virginia Dignum Nina Rizun

Collective endorsement of shared values across diverse social groups is essential for the development and sustainability of democratic societies, yet capturing the perspectives of marginalised populations remains a persistent challenge, particularly when examined through ethical, legal, and social (ELS) lenses. This study develops a structured Migration ELS taxonomy to guide a GenAI-assisted semantic classification model designed to identify ELS dimensions in textual data. The model is fine-tuned and evaluated within a human-in-the-loop framework using expert annotations to ensure reliability and interpretive accuracy. As an empirical case, the approach is applied to migration-related official policy documents and narratives of Ukrainian migrants published on the Telegram platform. The resulting framework enables the analysis of alignment between governmental and migrant perspectives, revealing thematic and temporal divergences in ELS dimensions across institutional and user-generated discourse. The findings demonstrate the potential of this scalable framework, which combines taxonomy-driven modelling with generative AI and expert-in-the-loop validation, to reveal patterns of alignment and temporal dynamics in the representation of values across different social groups.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060340

Authors: David García-Valiente Salvador Baena-Morales

Social justice has become a cornerstone of contemporary educational systems, serving as both an ethical principle and a criterion for evaluating equity in learning opportunities. In the field of Physical Education (PE), its bodily and relational nature makes social hierarchies regarding ability, gender, and body image highly visible. This study adopted a qualitative descriptive design to explore how pre-service PE teachers conceptualize social justice and how they envision its didactic implementation within the Spanish curricular context. The findings provide a critical roadmap for teacher education programs, suggesting that fostering social justice requires moving beyond theoretical discourse toward specific pedagogical tools that address power dynamics and inclusion within Physical Education contexts.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15060339

Authors: Karen-Edith Córdova-Esparza Elvia-Izel Landaverde-Romero Diana-Margarita Córdova-Esparza Rocio-Edith López-Martínez Teresa García-Ramírez

This article examines how justice institutions produce and reproduce gender-based violence against women through the invisibilization of moral violence, with particular attention to their spatial dimensions. Drawing on the concept of juridical–patriarchal habitus, the study conceptualizes justice institutions not only as sites of legal action but as spatial formations that shape the visibility, recognition, and adjudication of harm. Using a feminist ethnographic approach, the article analyzes two cases of gender-based violence documented in 2020 in the municipality of Querétaro, Mexico. The findings demonstrate how movement into legal and institutional spaces transforms lived experiences of violence, as procedural requirements, evidentiary expectations, and institutional interactions operate as spatial filters that render certain forms of harm visible while obscuring others. In this process, justice actors construct and reproduce gendered stereotypes about what counts as violence, simultaneously positioning women as victims and subjecting them to processes of revictimization. By conceptualizing the invisibility of moral violence as a spatially mediated process, the article contributes to debates in legal and feminist geography, highlighting how institutional spaces not only respond to gender-based violence but actively participate in its production and concealment.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050338

Authors: Suzana Turcu

This study examines how individual political predispositions and national mobilisation contexts jointly structure protest participation in contemporary Europe across the pre-pandemic, pandemic and post-pandemic periods. Using data from Rounds 9, 10 and 11 of the European Social Survey (2018–2023), the analytical sample includes 106,106 respondents from 33 countries. Descriptively, protest participation remains a minority behaviour, yet displays pronounced cross-national heterogeneity, with participation rates ranging from below 3% in several Central and Eastern European countries to nearly 20% in the most mobilised contexts and remains remarkably stable across rounds at approximately 8.5%. Building on resource mobilisation theory, political process approaches and New Social Movements perspectives, the analysis conceptualises protest participation not as an isolated behavioural act but as the outcome of interactions between individual resources, evaluative orientations toward democratic institutions and broader mobilisation environments. Logistic regression models, country fixed-effects specifications and multilevel models with random intercepts are used to assess these relationships. At the individual level, political engagement emerges as the strongest predictor of participation: higher political interest is associated with substantially higher protest propensity, while ideological self-placement indicates lower participation among respondents positioned further to the right. Younger age and higher education also increase participation. Lower satisfaction with democracy and stronger perceptions of inequality are consistently associated with protest behaviour, supporting grievance-based interpretations linked to democratic evaluations rather than material deprivation alone. Country fixed-effects and multilevel models confirm that these individual-level associations are robust within countries, while significant between-country variation persists (random-intercept SD = 0.554), indicating that national mobilisation environments shape baseline levels of protest participation. Multilevel results further reveal that protest participation was significantly lower during the pandemic period (Round 10) relative to the pre-pandemic baseline, with only partial recovery in the post-pandemic period. A cross-round comparison demonstrates that the core individual-level associations are stable across all three periods, indicating that these relationships reflect durable structural patterns rather than dynamics specific to any particular mobilisation cycle. Beyond this overall stability, the analysis identifies two theoretically informative exceptions: subjective financial difficulty is significant only in the pre-pandemic period and gender differences in protest participation attenuate over time—patterns consistent with broader shifts in protest repertoires during and after the pandemic. These findings make three contributions to the comparative literature on contentious politics. First, by extending the analysis across three ESS rounds, the study demonstrates the temporal robustness of individual-level determinants of protest—an empirical question rarely addressed in the existing literature. Second, the multilevel design with round fixed effects allows for direct estimation of pandemic-related suppression and post-pandemic recovery in protest activity at the aggregate level. Third, the cross-national scope and temporally structured comparison provide new evidence on how individual political predispositions interact with shifting mobilisation environments across a period of exceptional socio-political strain in Europe.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050337

Authors: Bonnie Stelmach

On the opening page of The Serviceberry (2024), Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote: “all flourishing is mutual.” Channeling biomimicry, Kimmerer asks, “Can we imagine a human economy with a currency that emulates the flow from Mother Earth—a currency of gifts?” (p. 14). I ask a parallel question regarding school–community relationships: can we imagine school and community as members of an ecology of schooling in which mutual flourishing is the aim? Schools often silo from communities, and interactions tend to be transactional, even though partnership language is invoked. Drawing on a case study of a K-6 rural school with a place-based agriculture immersion program in Alberta, Canada, I describe elements of collaboration between school and community using gift as a lens to interpret interview transcripts and field notes. Mutual flourishing was a function of (1) the school being viewed as an extension of the community; (2) the recentering of place as a participant in school–community relations; and (3) a school–community ecology grounded in shared values and goals rather than structured arrangements. The findings reframe partnerships from supplementary arrangements that schools enter into and wield to school–community connections or kinships that bind school and community into a reciprocal web of flourishing.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050336

Authors: Leticia Yulita Susana María Company María Soledad Loutayf

This article examines how kindness can be understood, expressed and enacted through intercultural citizenship education in higher education, with particular attention to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Situated within a theoretical framework that brings together intercultural citizenship and EDI, the study argues that these fields are mutually reinforcing and that their integration is enriched by foregrounding kindness. Empirically, the article reports on a qualitative multiple case study conducted in 2023, involving university students from Argentina and the United Kingdom who collaboratively designed English language teaching materials focused on kindness. Data consisted of student-generated textual and artistic artefacts, including lesson plans, teachers’ notes, drawings, comics and other teaching materials, which were analysed using a multimodal approach. Across cases, kindness functioned as a relational disposition, ethical compass, emotional anchor and intentional action, serving as a pedagogical response to issues of gender inequality, mental health and disability inclusion. The study argues that a structured grammar of intercultural kindness offers a vocabulary that makes visible the relational, ethical, emotional and action-oriented dimensions through which kindness shapes the pedagogical enactment of intercultural citizenship and EDI. This approach demonstrates that kindness can be taught; however, its transformative potential depends on a deliberate political orientation.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050335

Authors: Roelvis Ortiz-Núñez Jazmín Sugey Santa-Álvarez

This article develops a conceptual interdisciplinary model for research evaluation in the Social Sciences based on three core categories: Subject, Society, and Culture. It argues that conventional evaluation systems rely too heavily on quantitative metrics and, as a result, fail to capture the contextual, social, and epistemic complexity of knowledge production in this field. Drawing on an interdisciplinary analysis informed by complex thought and postcolonial theory, the article proposes a framework in which Subject refers to situated reflexivity and the role of relevant actors, Society emphasizes social relevance and public embeddedness, and Culture highlights epistemic plurality, local knowledge, and contextual legitimacy. The model is represented as a dynamic spiral, which underscores the revisable and context-sensitive character of evaluation. As a theoretical-conceptual contribution, the framework offers an alternative basis for broadening research assessment in the Social Sciences beyond productivity-driven and citation-based approaches.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050334

Authors: Zhihao Wei Nazirah Hassan Nur Saadah Mohamad Aun Ezarina Zakaria Sheng Chen

Community-based drug rehabilitation (CBDR) in China involves multiple types of frontline workers, yet little empirical research has examined how these workers carry out their respective roles and collaborate in practice. This study explored the roles, collaborative practices, and role boundaries of drug rehabilitation social workers (DRSWs) and community drug control officers (CDCOs) in CBDR in Guangzhou, China. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 DRSWs and 9 CDCOs across two sequential phases, and data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings revealed that DRSWs primarily performed professional rehabilitation services alongside administrative assistance, while CDCOs focused on administrative management, support for enforcement-related procedures, and upward resource advocacy. Five areas of collaboration were identified, characterized by a spontaneous complementary division of labor. However, role boundary ambiguity was also observed at three interconnected levels: DRSWs’ administrative workload had expanded beyond an assisting capacity, some CDCOs described care-giving practices that approached the professional domain of social work, and workers reported that persons with drug use histories (PWUDs) often had difficulty distinguishing between the two roles. These findings highlight the need for clearer role definitions and institutionalized coordination mechanisms in CBDR.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050333

Authors: Joseph Dippong Zara Jillani Isaac Jamerson

We examine factors that allow higher status people to steal credit from lower status people. Drawing on opportunity hoarding research and status characteristics and expectation states theory, we develop the concept of status hoarding: the use of one’s status position to accumulate more status through illegitimate means. Compared to similar concepts such as the Matthew Effect, which do not offer a mechanism by which benefits disproportionately accumulate, status hoarding explains how group structures give rise to perceptions of competence and reward deservingness among group members, which facilitate higher status actors’ ability to steal credit and thus increase their status. We use two survey experiments to test our arguments on the role of expectations and referential structures in both assigning credit to higher status actors and inhibiting lower status actors from reporting theft of their ideas. In study one, we find that participants were more likely to assign credit for a valued task contribution to a higher status actor, and these effects were mediated by expectations for reward and competence. In study two, we find that people perceive higher status actors as more likely to report credit stealing to their supervisors, but these effects were not mediated by expectations in the way that we predicted. We conclude with a general discussion of the broader implications of status hoarding and directions for future research.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050332

Authors: Gibson Makamure

This study explores how youth masculinities are constructed in Eswatini’s high schools. Using hegemonic masculinity theory as an analytical lens, data were coded to identify patterns of dominance, strength, and gender hierarchy, thereby highlighting the study’s original contribution to understanding the local manifestation of hegemonic masculinity and advancing theoretical knowledge in this context. Data were collected through a qualitative case study approach involving 36 adolescents aged 16 to 18, comprising equal numbers of 18 boys and 18 girls, from six coeducational high schools. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups revealed that hegemonic masculinity shapes perceptions of gender roles, often promoting aggression in boys and marginalising girls. Sports, especially rugby, are key symbols of masculinity, emphasising strength, dominance, and competitiveness, while girls are excluded from these activities, reinforcing gender inequalities. Institutional practices like task allocation and disciplinary methods further sustain stereotypes, influencing youth identities within cultural and peer pressure contexts. The findings highlight persistent gendered power dynamics and stereotypes that perpetuate inequality. The study makes a significant contribution to the scientific literature by demonstrating how hegemonic masculinity manifests uniquely in Eswatini’s educational and cultural context, thus extending regional studies and providing insights for broader applications. It recommends gender-transformative curricula, increased girls’ participation in male-dominated sports, and gender-neutral disciplinary practices to foster more inclusive, equitable environments.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050331

Authors: Narakate Yimsook Kritsada Theerakosonphong

Despite increasing academic interest in return migration, limited understanding remains of how individual resources, workplace experiences, and perceptions of the origin country interact to shape return migration intention among migrant workers in major industrial destinations. This study investigates return migration intention among Myanmar migrant workers in Samut Sakhon Province, Thailand, using a multilevel framework that links micro-level individual and household characteristics, meso-level workplace and social experiences, and macro-level assessments of conditions in Myanmar. A quantitative research design was employed, with data collected from 506 Myanmar migrant workers using proportional stratified random sampling. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, t-tests, and binary logistic regression. The results indicate that the majority of respondents did not intend to return to Myanmar within the next 10–15 years. Workplace discrimination emerged as the strongest positive predictor of return migration intention, while higher income and annual remittance behavior also increased the likelihood of intending to return. Conversely, having family in Thailand, perceived opportunities for job change or promotion, satisfaction with wages and welfare, and perceived safety in Myanmar reduced the likelihood of return migration intention. The findings suggest that future mobility plans cannot be explained solely by economic calculation. They are also shaped by family arrangements, workplace treatment, and migrants’ assessments of the feasibility and desirability of return. The study advances return migration scholarship by demonstrating the pivotal role of workplace discrimination within a multilevel explanation of return migration intention.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050330

Authors: Haiying Xu Jinqi Qu Jing Zhao

Recent studies indicate that Chinese K-12 teachers possess insufficient knowledge regarding learning disability (LD), hindering their ability to provide effective instruction. Given the foundational role of the pre-service phase in cultivating a scientific approach to teaching, this study aimed to boost pre-service teachers’ LD knowledge and explore its subsequent impact on teaching efficacy and attitudes. Fifty-one pre-service teachers with low levels of baseline LD knowledge were randomly assigned to either a training group or a control group. Utilizing a pretest–intervention–posttest design, the study measured changes in LD knowledge, teaching efficacy, and attitudes toward students with LD. Crucially, attitudes were assessed via a vignette paradigm that differentiated between two components of cognitive evaluations (expectations of future student failure) and emotional experiences (anger arousal towards academic failure). The results showed that pre-service teachers in the training group exhibited substantial gains in LD knowledge. These knowledge gains significantly predicted enhanced teaching efficacy, but this relationship was indirect. Mediation analysis revealed that improved knowledge reduced anger arousal, which in turn boosted efficacy. These findings suggest that fostering teaching confidence requires more than mere knowledge accumulation; it also entails using LD-related knowledge to mitigate negative emotions toward struggling learners. This underscores that teacher education programs must incorporate explicit cultivation of emotional and attitudinal competencies alongside conventional cognitive training.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050329

Authors: Chereese Phillips Caroline Black

There is clear evidence that non-safety-related concerns abound in child protection hotline calls. In the United States, over half of Child Protective Services (CPS) calls are screened out because they do not meet criteria for a child welfare investigation. While reporter bias is one factor theorized to contribute to this level of screened out calls, the field has neither used methods that account for culturally specific socialization processes involved in bias nor analyzed hotline calls to determine if these biases were present. This paper describes cultural domain analysis (CDA) as an innovative method to inform the measurement and assessment of bias in reporters’ narratives about children and families during calls to a CPS hotline. We describe CDA, which involves a rapid interviewing technique (freelisting), a participatory method for coding (pile sorting) and how the resultant findings can be used to inform the development of a measurement framework (codebook and scale), which may be tested using recorded hotline calls. Together, these methods provide a useable framework that can help surface common and shared ways bias is conceptualized and defined in the context of CPS hotline calls. This proposed approach provides a socially valid and reliable way for measurement to make generalizable inferences across a jurisdiction. When applied in practice, data collected and analyzed from the proposed measurement framework can inform jurisdictional CPS hotline policy, practice, and training.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050328

Authors: Hélder Prior Maíra Orso Miguel Andrade

This article investigates the discursive construction of populism in the Portuguese digital public sphere, focusing on the communicative strategies of two party media outlets linked to the populist radical right party CHEGA: Folha Nacional and CHEGA TV. Drawing on Entman’s model of framing functions and the literature on populist communication and digital propaganda, the study examines how these outlets articulate simplified, moralized and emotionally charged narratives to mobilize public opinion and legitimize the party’s political agenda. The empirical corpus consists of 4915 video titles and descriptions published between 2024 and 2025 (CHEGA TV, n = 2476; Folha Nacional, n = 2439). Each unit was coded according to five macro-frames characteristic of populist discourse: (1) appeal to the people and antagonism, (2) messianism, (3) moral restitution, (4) anti-system and anti-elite rhetoric, and (5) exclusion of the other. The research combines qualitative frame analysis with quantitative frequency and co-occurrence analysis, enabling the identification of dominant discursive patterns and their temporal evolution. The study contributes by offering a systematic analysis of populist framing in Chega’s party media, an under-explored field, and by proposing a replicable methodological approach to examine the hybridization of propaganda, emotionality and digital political communication in Europe.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050327

Authors: Felipe Leco-Berrocal José Manuel Sánchez-Martín Ana Beatriz Mateos-Rodríguez Juan Ignacio Rengifo-Gallego

Depopulation and structural demographic challenges affect social and territorial cohesion in Europe, a phenomenon that is particularly evident in rural municipalities in Spain, where the loss of the working-age population and the concentration of older adults threaten sustainability. This study analyzes the case of Pescueza (Cáceres, Spain) using a mixed-methods design that combines longitudinal demographic analysis (2000–2024) with a qualitative evaluation of the community project “Quédate con nosotr@s,” which focuses on comprehensive care and intergenerational participation. The results are critical regarding the demographic structure, with an aging index of 500% and dependency levels three times higher than the national average, although a slight demographic recovery linked to local initiatives is observed. This project has positive effects on social cohesion, community capital, and resilience in the face of demographic challenges, establishing itself as a replicable model for rural micro-territories. The study proposes a strategic framework based on the SWOT-CAME matrix and social sustainability indicators, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and European territorial cohesion policies. It concludes that social innovation, collaborative governance, and multilevel cooperation are key elements for addressing rural aging, and recommends public policies aimed at stable funding, inclusive digitalization, attracting young people, specialized training, and the creation of adapted infrastructure.

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15050326

Authors: Manuel José Mera Cedeño Gertrudis Amarilis Laínez Quinde Wilson Alexander Zambrano Vélez César Ernesto Roldán Martínez

The present study seeks to synthesize the scientific evidence from the last decade (2015–2025) regarding the transition from inequality in technological access toward social stratification mediated by automated decision-making systems. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines and the SPIDER model, a corpus of 74 high-impact records from Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, and PsycINFO was examined. The results reveal an exponential growth in scientific production since 2018, marking a shift from infrastructure-based inequality toward a systemic stratification mediated by algorithmic opacity. Three critical sectors of exclusion are categorized: the socio-health nexus, the labor market, and the educational ecosystem. Methodologically, quantitative algorithmic auditing predominates (58%), although mixed sociotechnical approaches have increased by 25% since 2021 to capture experiences of intersectional vulnerability. The study concludes that AI acts as an active agent of social reproduction, necessitating a transition toward “Algorithmic Justice” and “Human-Centric Governance.” Finally, a “Reinstating AI” framework is proposed to democratize technological development and mitigate systemic biases, offering a roadmap for researchers and policymakers in the pursuit of technological sovereignty.