Search Results (127)

This paper examines the critical role of youth engagement in building urban climate resilience in secondary cities of West Africa, with a specific focus on Bo City, Sierra Leone. As one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, Sierra Leone faces significant challenges exacerbated in urban environments where infrastructure gaps, rapid population growth, climate migration, and limited resources intersect with intensifying climate impacts (rising temperature, extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and socio-economic health impacts). We describe a pathway to invest in the adaptive capacity of this community by developing and implementing a Youth Climate Science Hub designed to inform and empower secondary school students as future climate leaders. Drawing on theories of social–ecological resilience and transformative education, we analyze how youth-centered approaches can bridge the knowledge–action gap in urban climate adaptation. The initiative represents an innovative practice-based example for building resilience in secondary cities expected to receive climate migrants while demonstrating the power of youth mobilization in creating locally appropriate climate solutions. Full article

This paper investigates how Toronto’s Portuguese-Azorean community has shaped the city’s multicultural and psychological landscape, focusing particularly on intergenerational experiences of trauma among immigrant youth. Framed within North America’s broader migration dynamics, the study explores the creation and transformation of the ethnic enclave “Little Portugal” as both a space of cultural resilience and chronic urban stress. It introduces the concept of chronic urban trauma to describe the persistent psychosocial impact of displacement, assimilation pressures, and gentrification on young Portuguese-Azorean Canadians. While first-generation immigrants constructed cohesive ethnic infrastructures grounded in work, faith, and language, younger generations face cultural dissonance, linguistic loss, and identity fragmentation that manifest as emotional distress and social alienation. These experiences illustrate how structural urban change can perpetuate transgenerational trauma within immigrant families. By integrating perspectives from urban geography, trauma studies, and migration theory, this theoretical work underscores the need for trauma-informed educational and social policies that promote inclusion, belonging, and mental well-being among immigrant youth. Ultimately, the study positions “Little Portugal” as a microcosm of how multicultural cities negotiate the intersections of ethnicity, urban transformation, and psychological resilience. Full article

Youth unemployment remains one of the most persistent and structurally sensitive challenges in emerging economies, particularly in environments characterized by macroeconomic volatility and frequent shocks. This study investigates the dynamics and forecasting performance of youth unemployment in Turkey by adopting a symmetry-based multivariate framework that explicitly contrasts equilibrium-oriented and asymmetric temporal behaviors. Using monthly data covering the period 2009–2024, youth unemployment is modeled jointly with key macroeconomic indicators, including economic growth, inflation, overall unemployment, labor force participation, migration, exchange rates, and consumer confidence. The empirical strategy integrates traditional econometric models and modern machine learning approaches under a unified and leakage-free evaluation protocol. Stationarity and long-run properties of the series are examined using unit root tests and the Bayer–Hanck cointegration approach, followed by long-run coefficient estimation via FMOLS and DOLS. Forecasting performance is then compared across VARIMA, Prophet, and deep learning models (RNN, LSTM, and GRU), including both vanilla and hyperparameter-tuned specifications. The results reveal a clear performance hierarchy. VARIMA models, particularly the VARIMA (p = 2, q = 0) specification, consistently outperform all alternatives by a wide margin, achieving exceptionally low forecast errors. This finding indicates that youth unemployment in Türkiye is predominantly governed by symmetric co-movements and long-run equilibrium relationships among macroeconomic variables. Prophet and GRU models capture short-term and regime-sensitive fluctuations more flexibly, reflecting asymmetric temporal responses, but at the cost of higher forecast dispersion. In contrast, RNN and LSTM models exhibit limited generalization capability and are prone to overfitting in the small-sample macroeconomic context. As a result, this study positions the estimation of youth unemployment as both an econometric challenge and a symmetry-based analytical problem, offering new methodological and conceptual insights consistent with a fresh perspective. Full article

In advanced economies characterized by sustained immigration, rising inequality, and chronically underdeveloped social housing sectors, demand-side welfare interventions risk being capitalized into higher rents rather than improving housing affordability. This study investigates how Spain’s welfare state transformation—particularly the rollout of IPREM-indexed policies such as the Minimum Living Income (IMV) and the Youth Rental Voucher—interacted with migration flows and tourism-driven housing competition to reshape private rental markets between 2008 and 2025. Using harmonized national data from OPI, Idealista, INE, and the Bank of Spain (2010–2024), we apply a descriptive time-series approach that combines structural break tests (Chow and Bai–Perron), pre/post-2021 correlation comparisons, regional heterogeneity analysis, and robustness checks (including Spearman correlations and jackknife sensitivity analyses). We identify a pronounced structural break in 2021: while consular visa issuances—a proxy for combined migration and tourism inflows—showed no significant association with advertised rental prices before 2021 (r ≈ 0.27, p = 0.41), a remarkably strong co-movement emerged thereafter (r ≈ 0.90–0.92). This shift aligns precisely with the nationwide implementation of IMV, institutionalization of the Youth Voucher, and disbursement of EU Recovery and Resilience Facility funds. The effect is most acute in regions with rigid housing supply and high exposure to tourist-use dwellings (VUT)—notably the Balearic Islands, Murcia, Cantabria, and Navarre—suggesting that increased effective demand may have been absorbed primarily through price increases rather than expanded access. While our observational design precludes causal inference and the findings should be interpreted as exploratory and hypothesis-generating, the convergence of timing, magnitude, and institutional context renders a policy-mediated demand channel plausible. The results caution that, without complementary supply-side measures—such as social housing investment, rehabilitation incentives, or VUT regulation—demand-side subsidies may inadvertently reinforce housing inequality and reduce fiscal efficiency, thereby undermining the sustainability goals they aim to advance. Full article

The convergence of youth migration and the nuclearization of families has altered conventional living arrangements in India, indicating a sharp rise in the number of families in which older adults live alone due to the outmigration of their adult children. This study aims to explore the perceptions of left-behind older adults regarding long-distance care practices by their adult children and to describe the practical and functional care deficits that lead to vulnerability and unmet mental health care in migrant households. Twenty older adults above 65 years of age living alone or with a spouse for at least one year due to the out-migration of their adult children were selected purposively. The analysis revealed that distance from migrant children makes older adults feel anxious, miss their family togetherness, and experience increased loneliness and care gaps in later years, contributing to a multifaceted causality of vulnerability while aging alone. Narratives of distance care are often shaped by the bidirectional flow of care across generations through virtual and in-person means, where emotional and functional deprivations continue to challenge the quality of informal distant care among left-behind older adults. Mental health promotion among community-dwelling older adults is crucial for sustaining their functional capacity, thereby delaying psychological morbidities during aging. Full article

Background/Objectives: Migrant youth often experience multiple, intersecting systems of oppression (e.g., racism, poverty, and discrimination) that may contribute to disparities in pediatric pain prevalence, severity, and management. However, pain in migrant youth remains poorly understood. This rapid scoping review will examine the nature and extent of the existing literature on pain among migrant youth. Methods: This protocol has been preregistered on the Open Science Framework. The review will follow guidelines for conducting and reporting rapid and scoping reviews, and will be guided by PCC (population, concept, context) and PROGRESS-Plus methodological frameworks. Electronic searches will be conducted in MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Scopus for primary research studies published since 2015 that describe and examine pain among migrant youth (age < 18 years). Two reviewers will independently screen titles, abstracts, and full texts, with disagreements resolved by consensus or a third reviewer. Data charting will be piloted on 5–10 studies, then independently conducted by two reviewers. Extracted data will include study characteristics (authors, year, purpose, methodology); participant sociodemographic information (e.g., racial and/or ethnic identity, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic position); migration status; countries of origin and destination; definition and characteristics of pain; and measures of systemic factors (e.g., racism). Results: Findings will be synthesized descriptively and interpreted within sociocultural and geopolitical contexts to better understand pain among migrant youth. Conclusions: This review will aim to provide critical insights into the intersections between migration and pediatric pain, offering guidance for future research, clinical practice, and policy to improve pain management and outcomes for migrant youth. Full article

This descriptive phenomenological study investigated counsellors’ perceptions of their multicultural responsiveness and related counselling competencies. Accordingly, we employed a phenomenological research design to investigate these perceptions. Our study focused on 15 participants located in Canada between 25 and 60 years old, all with over three years of experience working in immigration. They completed a 90 min, in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interview about their perceptions of their cultural competence while working with newcomer youth. Results were developed to include four significant categories highlighting the critical role of counsellor awareness, knowledge, and skills, as well as the multicultural counselling relationship. These findings highlight the way multicultural counselling competencies need to be targeted when working with young newcomers in their host country. Implications for practice, training, research, and policy are presented. Full article

The valorization of local plant cover, particularly through the integration of indigenous knowledge, is central to Tunisia’s economic development strategies. These approaches focus on diversifying agriculture by enhancing local natural and cultural heritage to strengthen community resilience amid environmental and socio-economic changes and to address rural exodus. This study examines the feasibility of AMP-based micro-projects in Matmata (southeastern Tunisia) by applying the Water–Energy–Food–Ecosystem (WEFE) nexus and participatory methods involving local stakeholders. Field surveys, literature reviews, and statistical analyses reveal growing youth interest in AMP ventures, driven by rising pharmaceutical and cosmetic demand. Economic viability is confirmed by internal rate of return (IRR) values of 32%, 28%, and 43%, all well above the 10% profitability threshold. Profitability index (PI) values indicate efficient investments, yielding returns of 2.64, 2.13, and 5.31 dinars per dinar invested. The initiatives also deliver socio-cultural and environmental benefits through WEFE-based resource management. Beyond profitability, the study identifies gaps and opportunities to enhance AMP biodiversity, resource management, and sustainable diversification in southern Tunisia. Further efforts are required to increase market value and ensure equitable benefit distribution. Government policies should focus on raising WEFE awareness, building capacity, and investing in climate-smart agriculture, especially in vulnerable, migration-prone regions, supported by reforms in financing, taxation, and spatial planning. Full article

This study explores economic and risk perceptions that spark off-shore irregular migration among West Africans through the Mediterranean Sea to countries of destination (CODs). This study is timely because deaths on the Mediterranean Sea, which are unprecedented in migration history, result in a need to create awareness and save lives. Grounded in the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Cultural Theory of Risk Perception, this study explores the economic and risk perceptions of off-shore irregular migration. This study comprised a literature review, otherwise known as a “meta study”. The study’s findings reveal that there is a nexus between a person’s attitude and behaviours in terms of human action. Human nurturing determines a person’s attitudes and behaviours. The human mind does what it wants when one is desperate for economic survival. This forces humankind to engage in dangerous activities to survive. Therefore, irregular migrants’ choice of unsafe routes through the Mediterranean Sea to CODs depends on their expected outcomes. Irregular migrants consider migration as an “insurance”, and flee from hardship towards opportunities. The perceptions that lead to this range from salary disparities to economic freedom. I argue that spiritual beliefs, peer pressure, media platforms, and personal factors influence irregular route choices. This study recommends collaboration among the ECOWAS, African nations’ governments, and the IOM to engage returning migrants to narrate their in-depth experiences about the routes’ dangers to create awareness. Returning migrants’ narratives should be disseminated in mass media and on social media platforms to target youth. This would discourage West African youth from choosing unsafe routes to CODs. Collaboration should be extended to youth training in entrepreneurship to equip youth as job creators rather than job seekers to curb unemployment, which usually sparks off-shore irregular migration. Full article

This systematic review examines how recent scientific literature addresses place attachment among rural youth, emphasizing the central role of emotional bonds with place in decisions to stay, leave, or return to rural areas. Based on an analysis of studies published between 2019 and 2023, it considers factors such as country of publication, study participants, methodology, research approach, theoretical framework, and main findings. A systematic search was conducted in Scopus and Web of Science, applying inclusion criteria based on type of research, year of publication, language, and article relevance. The review includes 19 peer-reviewed articles. Methodologically, the reviewed articles employ both quantitative and qualitative approaches, with questionnaires and semi-structured interviews as the primary data collection techniques. Key themes include urban migration and the relationship between place attachment and environmental awareness. Despite limitations such as regional disparities in study coverage, the findings highlight the challenges faced by rural youth under urbanormative cultural pressures. The review underscores the need for nuanced approaches that are sensitive to gender and other axes of oppression in addressing rural issues, and it advocates for a holistic understanding of rural youth experiences that takes into account intergenerational dynamics shaping their aspirations and decision-making. Full article

This study investigates how land access, inheritance expectations, and socio-economic conditions influence migration intentions of rural youth in central Vietnam. Drawing on survey data from 200 young respondents and employing logistic regression analysis, the research reveals that youth with higher levels of education and income exhibit a greater propensity to migrate in pursuit of improved livelihoods. Male respondents were significantly more likely to migrate, reflecting gender norms and unequal access to opportunities. Crucially, secure land tenure—measured through formal land titles and perceived inheritance rights—was strongly associated with lower migration intentions. Conversely, tenure insecurity emerged as a significant push factor, undermining youth confidence in long-term rural investment and contributing to land use instability. This study argues that secure land access is not only vital for sustaining rural livelihoods but also foundational for youth and women’s engagement, socio-economic stability, and long-term community resilience. From this viewpoint, this study highlights the need for youth-inclusive land reforms, the promotion of rural entrepreneurship, and expanded access to vocational training as critical policy interventions. Full article

This study explores the migration intentions of university students—representing the potential creative class—in Erzurum, a medium-sized city in eastern Turkey experiencing shrinkage. Within the theoretical framework of shrinking cities, it investigates how economic, social, physical, and personal factors influence students’ post-graduation stay or leave decisions. Survey data from 742 Architecture and Fine Arts students at Atatürk University were analyzed using factor analysis, logistic regression, and correlation to identify key migration drivers. Findings reveal that, in addition to economic concerns such as limited job opportunities and low income, personal development opportunities and social engagement also play a decisive role. In particular, the perception of limited chances for skill enhancement and the belief that Erzurum is not a good place to meet people emerged as the strongest predictors of migration intentions. These results suggest that members of the creative class are influenced not only by economic incentives but also by broader urban experiences related to self-growth and social connectivity. This study highlights spatial inequalities in access to cultural, educational, and social infrastructure, raising important questions about spatial justice in shrinking urban contexts. This paper contributes to the literature on shrinking cities by highlighting creative youth in mid-sized Global South cities. It suggests smart shrinkage strategies focused on creative sector development, improved quality of life, and inclusive planning to retain young talent and support sustainable urban revitalization. Full article

Regional shrinkage, driven by declining birth rates, an aging population, and population concentration in the capital region, has become an increasingly serious issue in South Korea, threatening the long-term sustainability of local communities. Among various factors, youth out-migration is a key driver, undermining the economic resilience and vitality of local areas. This study aims to predict youth population trends across 229 municipalities by incorporating diverse regional socioeconomic factors and providing a foundation for policy implementation to mitigate demographic disparities. To this end, a long short-term memory (LSTM) model, based on a direct approach that independently forecasts each future time point, was employed. The model was trained using the youth population data from 2003 to 2022 and socioeconomic variables, including employment, education, housing, and infrastructure. The results reveal a persistent nationwide decline in the youth population, with significantly sharper decreases in local areas than in the capital region. These findings underscore the deepening spatial imbalance and highlight the urgent need for region-specific demographic policies to address the accelerating risk of regional population decline. Full article

This article discusses the importance of cultural identity for ethnic youth, considering the challenges they face as migrants or from migrant backgrounds. It then develops the idea of using safe cultural spaces as a culturally responsive model of care for these youth. The data used are drawn from a qualitative study with 35 African heritage youth living in Aotearoa–New Zealand as participants. The study was guided by participatory action research (PAR) methodology principles. Data was collected using research workshops (adaption of focus groups) and qualitative survey questionnaires. PAR’s transformative lens, narrative inquiry, and inductive thematic analysis were used to identify and analyse the reported themes. Findings show that ethnic youth value their cultural identities primarily because, in the context of migration, where they constantly navigate multiple levels of social exclusion and marginality, it confers a sense of personhood, uniqueness, and belonging. However, trying to live their multiple cultures authentically presents many challenges. Accordingly, intentional initiatives that are culturally responsive and holistic are critical to support them in navigating this process healthily. Creating safe cultural spaces is proposed as a model of care. The article reports and discusses youth perspectives on what these spaces and the model of care would entail. Full article

Continuous transformations, which have been observed more and more in recent years, require an increase in the effectiveness of measures in the state regulation of the labour market, which is possible only with a clear understanding and realistic assessment of its condition and existing trends of changes. For this purpose, guided by the data of the Bureau of National Statistics of the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the country’s labour market was monitored, and the key factors that played a significant role in its formation were identified. Using these factors as a basis, vector autoregression (VAR) models were built to analyse dynamic relationships between economic variables. The choice of stationary variables ensured the adequacy of the model, which was confirmed by diagnostic tests such as the ADF test, Jarque–Bera test, and Ljung–Box test. Impulse response functions (IRFs) were used to assess the effect of shocks on each variable and other system variables. All results were visualised as graphs illustrating the dynamics of the impact over ten times. The modelling results showed that the changes are interrelated: shocks to youth unemployment (YUR) have the most significant impact on the total unemployment (UR) and the unemployed population (U), while outward migration (NM) has a short-run effect mainly on the economically active population (EA). The model confirmed that the labour market is indifferent to changes in youth unemployment, a key indicator for forming an effective employment policy. The study’s practical significance lies in its potential to inform the government, international organisations, and business communities about the state of the labour market and the necessary vectors of social policy. This will ensure economic growth and improve citizens’ quality of life in light of the changing nature of the labour market. Full article