BackgroundStudent wellbeing has become an important focus of higher education research; however, existing studies remain largely behavior-oriented and provide limited explanation of how health-related practices are socially produced within university environments. This study aimed to examine how institutional normativity, social norms, and organizational contexts shape healthy lifestyle practices among university students from a sociological perspective.MethodsA PRISMA-informed systematic review was conducted using Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, Sociological Abstracts, and Google Scholar to identify relevant studies published between 2010 and 2025. Following a structured selection process, 64 studies were included in the final thematic synthesis.ResultsThe findings indicate that students’ practices related to sleep, stress management, physical activity, help-seeking, and substance use are socially organized rather than purely individual behaviors. Universities shape these practices by establishing cultural expectations, institutional routines, and organizational conditions that normalize productivity, digital over-availability, and chronic stress while simultaneously influencing unequal opportunities to maintain healthy lifestyles across different student groups.ConclusionThe review demonstrates that student wellbeing is embedded within broader processes of institutional governance, social stratification, and everyday practice rather than individual responsibility alone. By integrating fragmented evidence into a coherent sociological framework, this review advances understanding of universities as active producers of student health practices and highlights the importance of institutional approaches for promoting sustainable student wellbeing.
Sociological systems theory offers a rich vocabulary for meaning, observation, and communication, but that vocabulary has proven difficult to translate into executable, testable, and revisable procedures. This gap has become more consequential as large language models are increasingly used to read, summarize, and simulate social-scientific discourse without any shared standard for distinguishing genuine semantic stabilization from fluent but ungrounded continuation. This paper introduces the Information–Meaning–Existence (IBE) framework, which reconstructs Luhmannian second-order observation as a validation architecture. A coherence index tracks whether actualized meaning-relations remain viable as their context changes, and a companion diagnostic identifies when that viability collapses—distinguishing collapse as failure from collapse as a precondition for new distinctions. The framework specifies how its central quantities could be computed from text using existing embedding-based and information-theoretic methods, disambiguates several senses in which a meaning-structure can be said to “exist,” and extends the coherence index to register cases in which apparent stability is sustained by structural power rather than genuine resonance. A concluding discussion confronts this coherence-centered vocabulary with dialectical accounts of development in which contradiction, not coherence, drives change, and uses that confrontation to recalibrate the framework's own claims. The paper specifies what an empirical pilot would require to calibrate and test the framework, and explicitly states that absent such calibration, its present status is proto-scientific.
The digital age has brought about many hypes about new technology of which digital twins are among the most recent. Techno-optimistic thought proclaims them to bring about a revolution in societal management. We interrogate Luhmann’s sociology about the relationship between a social system and (its) digital twin(−s). In doing so we discover that common definitions of digital twins do not go beyond long-established technologies. If a digital twin is a computer model that is fed by information of the physical system which it influences in some feedback loop, to Luhmann every computer model is one. Yet, the term points to the apparent necessity to baptize an observable difference. We identify the latest and ongoing acceleration of integrated digital systems as this difference that makes a difference. This systemic acceleration, the maximization of the velocity of self-reference, builds the focal point in our discussion of looming changes. We think that digital twins encode a power relationship. Only if society remains in control of the modes of selection can a digital twin foster its second-order observation. To this end, the engineering derived notion of a direct cybernetic wire that connects the digital twin to the physical must be replaced with a mechanism for structural coupling. A social digital twin can then act as a digital mirror that enables an immediate, radicalized second-order observation. Thus, digital twins are in our understanding the epitome of the accelerative effect that digitalization has on society.
This article examines how New Urban Economies (NUEs) contribute to, and reveal the contradictions of, socio-ecological transition in Italian cities, using Bologna as a case study. It brings together three strands of research that are usually treated separately: studies of distinctive and environmentally oriented consumption practices; sustainable entrepreneurship research combining supply-side and demand-side explanations; and scholarship on temporality, prefiguration, and everyday utopias. Integrating these perspectives allows us to shift attention from macro-level sustainability indicators to the micro-relational and organizational practices through which socio-ecological change is interpreted, negotiated, and enacted. NUEs are defined as innovative market-based activities that systematically combine economic viability with environmental and social sustainability. Their originality lies not simply in offering green products or services, but in experimenting with alternative ways of organizing economic relations within the urban context. The empirical analysis draws on 23 semi-structured interviews with founders of small businesses in the food and clothing sectors. Three main findings emerge. First, becoming an ecopreneur often represents a biographical turning point through which individuals seek coherence between critical consumption practices, personal values, professional aspirations, and concerns about climate change and social justice. Second, doing ecopreneurship involves the continuous negotiation of sustainability in everyday organizational choices, particularly in supplier selection and relationships with employees and customers. Third, the transformative potential of ecopreneurship does not lie in eliminating contradictions or producing immediate systemic change, but in turning such contradictions into sites of practical experimentation. The article argues that NUEs can be understood as everyday utopias: situated micro-scale economic experiments that connect past experiences, present constraints, and imagined futures. Rather than attributing heroic agency to individual entrepreneurs, it shows how NUEs make alternative economic relations locally practicable while exposing the structural limits, uneven responsibilities, and institutional weaknesses of urban socio-ecological transition in contemporary Italian cities.
IntroductionFemale academics face multidimensional institutional demands arising from work–family conflict, glass ceiling barriers, and technostress, which may undermine job satisfaction. Although supportive organizational culture is frequently regarded as an important organizational resource, limited evidence is available regarding its capacity to buffer the adverse associations between these demands and job satisfaction. This study examines these relationships among female academics employed in Indonesian Catholic higher education institutions.MethodsA quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted among 406 female academics from 22 Catholic higher education institutions in Indonesia. All constructs were measured at the individual level. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to examine the associations of work–family conflict, glass ceiling barriers, and technostress with job satisfaction and to test the moderating role of perceived supportive organizational culture.ResultsWork–family conflict, glass ceiling barriers, and technostress were negatively associated with job satisfaction. Perceived supportive organizational culture significantly moderated all three relationships, such that the negative associations between these institutional demands and job satisfaction became weaker at higher levels of perceived organizational support.DiscussionThe findings indicate that supportive organizational culture can function as a protective resource for female academics, although such support attenuates rather than eliminates the adverse associations of role, career, and technological demands with job satisfaction. The findings extend the Job Demands–Resources framework and Conservation of Resources theory by demonstrating the buffering role of perceived organizational support among female academics in faith-based higher education.
Colonial power in South Asia operated not only through territorial administration but also through the systematic codification of indigenous societies into Western epistemic categories. This article investigates the historiographical construction of the Nair community in Kerala, South India, specifically focusing on the matrilineal institutions of marumakkathayam and sambandham. Situating the study within debates on colonial epistemology and postcolonial theory, the article analyses how ethnographic and historical narratives emplot Nair social institutions within Eurocentric interpretive frameworks. Drawing on Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s concept of epistemicide, Bernard Cohn’s theorisation of colonial forms of knowledge and Edward Said’s method of contrapuntal reading, the article traces how imperial discourse framed indigenous social practices into reductive binaries of “oppressor” and “oppressed”. The study advances debates in decolonial historiography by exposing the narrative structures through which colonial knowledge systems produced and perpetuated epistemicide. This contributes to the ongoing efforts to decolonize the study of South Asian communities.
IntroductionThis study examines how religiosity shapes tolerance for corruption in societies where Muslims are the majority. It assesses how a person’s religious commitment influences attitudes toward corruption and compares this influence with criminological theories, including anomie, rational choice, amoral familism, and broken windows, which also explain tolerance for corruption.MethodsThis study uses data from the World Values Survey (2017–2022) to identify factors influencing individuals’ tolerance toward corruption in Muslim-majority societies. The sample includes 5,050 respondents from 10 Muslim-majority countries. Using multiple regression models, the study seeks to explain corruption tolerance by employing criminological factors and religiosity to examine their relative explanatory power for the former.ResultsThe results suggest that the magnitude and significance of religiosity’s coefficients vary depending on how we measure religious commitments in Muslim-majority societies. In particular, criminological variables—particularly perceived detection risk and tolerance for minor offenses—appear to play a stronger, more consistent explanatory role in respondents’ tolerance toward corruption. The findings highlight the importance of institutional quality and enforcement mechanisms in shaping attitudes toward corruption, suggesting that strengthening legal accountability and governance structures may enhance the effectiveness of religious ethical norms in strengthening anti-corruption attitudes.DiscussionThis research contributes to the literature on religion and tolerance for corruption by examining Muslim populations in countries where Islam is the dominant religion. It integrates religious and criminological explanations to examine how social norms, institutional conditions, and religious commitment interact to shape individuals’ tolerance for corruption.
This conceptual analysis examines interethnic tolerance in Kazakhstan as racialized ethnic boundary-making in multilingual and civic life. Drawing on an author-led thematic-conceptual synthesis of published scholarship and open legal, statistical, and institutional sources, it does not present new primary data or impose a Western biological definition of race. Racialization is used relationally: ethnic, linguistic, regional, migratory, visible, and ethnocultural signs become racialized when treated as durable indicators of competence, loyalty, modernity, or belonging. The article develops a four-mechanism model—linguistic accommodation, civic framing, institutional recognition, and normalization through interaction—and distinguishes silent tolerance from recognitional tolerance. Silent tolerance denotes polite coexistence, conflict avoidance, and official harmony that leave unequal status unspoken; recognitional tolerance requires difference to be acknowledged as equally legitimate in law, institutions, and everyday interaction. The source-based synthesis suggests that choices among Kazakh, Russian, English, and minority languages may soften boundaries but may also reproduce hierarchy through accent evaluation, qandas positioning, minority visibility, and unequal access to mobility languages. Contrasts with Quebec, Belgium, and the Baltic states clarify how multilingual stability can coexist with unequal participation. The article contributes by showing how racialized boundaries can be theorized where race is not a dominant public category and by providing indicators and testable propositions for future empirical research.
Migration is not always by choice, but rather, influenced by circumstance. Displacement due to human-made disasters, such as armed conflict, constitutes forced migration, also known as involuntary migration. This paper examines the experience of forced displacement due to armed conflict and the risk of gender-based violence (GBV) in conflict zones in the southern Philippines, focusing on the survivors of the 2013 Zamboanga Siege and the 2017 Marawi Siege. The researcher examines the dynamics of violence during armed conflict from a gendered perspective and illuminates the extent to which gender-based violence exists on a continuum from personal, to community based and/or state-sponsored violence. Drawing upon interviews and focus group discussions with internally displaced people (IDPs) in traditional evacuation centers, home-based evacuation arrangements, and/or transitory sites, and with duty-bearers from Zamboanga City and the Islamic City of Marawi, this paper discusses the pathways to evacuation of IDPs from both locations and how these shaped the experiences of GBV among survivors. The researcher identifies common themes and nuances in experiences of personal, community, and state-sponsored gendered violence among women and girls and men and boys, who experienced involuntary migration through forced displacement. Migration is not always by choice, but rather, influenced by circumstance. Displacement due to human-made disasters, such as armed conflict, constitutes forced migration, also known as involuntary migration. This paper examines the experience of forced displacement due to armed conflict and the risk of gender-based violence (GBV) in conflict zones in the southern Philippines, focusing on the survivors of the 2013 Zamboanga Siege and the 2017 Marawi Siege. The researcher examines the dynamics of violence during armed conflict from a gendered perspective and illuminates the extent to which gender-based violence exists on a continuum from personal, to community based and/or state-sponsored violence. Drawing upon interviews and focus group discussions with internally displaced people (IDPs) in traditional evacuation centers, home-based evacuation arrangements, and/or transitory sites, and with duty-bearers from Zamboanga City and the Islamic City of Marawi, this paper discusses the pathways to evacuation of IDPs from both locations and how these shaped the experiences of GBV among survivors. The researcher identifies common themes and nuances in experiences of personal, community, and state-sponsored gendered violence among women and girls and men and boys, who experienced involuntary migration through forced displacement. This paper compares and contrasts the extent of armed conflict and the trends in GBV among forced migrants in both cities. The researcher exposes the incidences of gendered violence experienced by IDPs in Zamboanga, the vulnerability of women and children to domestic violence and trafficking, and the covert attempts to recruit men into extremist groups. Moreover, this paper looks into trends in extremist violence, militarism, and other forms of gendered violence among IDPs from Marawi and the risk of clan feud upon returning to their communities. The researcher highlights the links between gender, racial, ethnic, religious, and social class inequality in the Philippines and the vulnerability of people displaced by armed conflict. This paper delves into the continuity of violence at various levels and assesses the intersections between private and public violence confronting IDPs from Zamboanga and Marawi.
PurposeWe assessed changes in US medical schools’ social media communication regarding LGBTQ+ topics and changes in website Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) related content after the January 2025 anti-DEI executive orders.MethodSocial media profiles from the top fifty medical schools as defined by the 2024 Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research were reviewed from Feb–June 2024 and Feb–June 2025 and the number of posts featuring LGBTQ+ content was compared. Platforms included X and Instagram. Medical school websites were reviewed during pre- and post-executive orders timeframes and the presence of a DEI office or diversity statement was compared. We evaluated by linear regression whether results correlated with the medical school state’s 2024 presidential voting record.ResultsThe average number of LGBTQ+ related posts per medical school decreased from 3.10 to 0.88 (p < 0.001) from 2024 to 2025. The presence of a DEI office decreased from 94 to 46% from 2024 to 2025 (p < 0.001). Similarly, 94% of medical schools had a diversity statement posted on their website in 2024 compared to 50% in 2025 (p < 0.001). Medical schools located in states that voted for the Republican candidate in 2024 had fewer LGBTQ+ related posts in both time periods.ConclusionWe found a significant decrease in medical school LGBTQ+ social media content, publicized DEI offices, and published diversity statements after the anti-DEI executive orders of 2025. These changes may impact medical school climate for LGBTQ+ students and faculty and the impact of these changes requires further study.
IntroductionContinuing education programs play an important role in promoting women's employability and social inclusion. However, satisfaction with these programs is influenced not only by participants' individual characteristics but also by broader social contexts, including family responsibilities, decision-making autonomy, and access to educational opportunities. This study examined the associations between sociodemographic characteristics, different forms of decision-making autonomy, and overall satisfaction with the Diploma in Digital Skills for Employment, implemented by Universidad Alberto Hurtado within the framework of the project Transfer, Training, and Promotion of Women's Employment in Urbanized Areas of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, funded by the Regional Government of Santiago, Chile.MethodsA quantitative, correlational, and cross-sectional design was employed. The study included 1,794 adult women who completed a structured questionnaire at the end of the diploma program. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted. Internal consistency of the satisfaction scale was assessed using Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega, and the assumptions underlying the regression models were verified.ResultsParticipants reported very high levels of overall satisfaction with the diploma program (M = 4.44; SD = 0.71). The satisfaction scale demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.864; McDonald's ω = 0.868). The regression model explained a small proportion of the variance in satisfaction (R2 = 0.035), although educational attainment, number of children, household headship, and autonomy in decisions regarding the use of family income were significantly associated with satisfaction, all with small effect sizes.DiscussionThe findings indicate that individual characteristics and autonomy-related dimensions account for only a limited proportion of women's satisfaction with the program. Rather than suggesting that gender inequalities have been overcome or that participants' broader social conditions have changed, the high levels of satisfaction appear to reflect a positive evaluation of the educational experience within their specific personal and social contexts. These results suggest that program-related factors—such as pedagogical quality, institutional support, perceived relevance, and alignment with participants' expectations—are likely to play a more influential role in shaping satisfaction than individual sociodemographic characteristics alone. Future research should incorporate contextual, motivational, and institutional variables to develop more comprehensive explanatory models of satisfaction in continuing education programs for adult women.
This community case study provides a broad sociological account of a pilot curriculum intervention conducted at a regional public university in Uzbekistan, in which modules drawing on Eastern scholastic economic heritage, specifically the thought of Ibn Khaldun, Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni, Al-Ghazali, and Yusuf Khas Hajib were integrated into the general education requirements of both Engineering and Social Science faculties (N = 148). Grounded in Bourdieu's field theory and theory of habitus, Fricker's account of epistemic injustice read alongside Spivak's and Dotson's accounts of epistemic violence and silencing, Connell's Southern Theory, the coloniality-of-power framework originated by Quijano and developed by Mignolo, and Wallerstein's world-systems analysis, the study situates the intervention within the layered structures of tsarist colonization, Soviet epistemic modernism, and post-Soviet Westernization that have marginalized Central Asian intellectual heritage in contemporary university curricula. The article makes three interconnected contributions. First, it offers a theoretically grounded account of the sociological mechanisms through which Eastern scholastic economic heritage is excluded from university curricula in post-Soviet Central Asia, arguing that this exclusion constitutes a form of symbolic violence with implications for students' economic mindset formation and professional habitus. Second, it documents the community dynamics of a 4-week heritage integration module, analysing the social processes of habitus disruption, the collapse of the epistemic division of labor between STEM and Social Science fields, and the emergence of epistemic reclamation as a collective social phenomenon. Third, it develops the concept of “field-licensed ignorance” the socially structured and institutionally reproduced disengagement of STEM students from ethical-economic reasoning as a theoretical contribution to the sociology of education. As a single-institution, qualitative case study conducted without a control group and relying substantially on self-report over a 4-week period, the study is exploratory: its findings are analytically rich rather than statistically generalizable, and they support correspondingly modest causal claims. With that caveat, the findings suggest that even brief, well-designed heritage integration interventions can initiate field-positional shifts among both STEM and Social Science students, though sustainable field-level change requires deeper institutional transformation. The study contributes to the literatures on decolonizing economics education, post-Soviet educational transformation, culturally relevant pedagogy in higher education, and the sociology of knowledge, while providing a replicable model for curriculum reform in resource-constrained university contexts across Central Asia and beyond.
IntroductionThis study examined the potential contribution of artificial intelligence (AI)-supported and digitally enabled assistive technologies to reproductive-health-related access among women with disabilities in Minya Governorate, Egypt. It focused on access to reproductive healthcare services and information and on anticipated informed decision-making.MethodsAn exploratory qualitative case-study design was used. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight never-married women aged 15–49 years with physical (n = 4) or visual (n = 4) disabilities. The study was guided by feminist theory, human-centered AI, and socio-technical systems theory, and the interview data were analyzed using the SWOT framework.ResultsParticipants perceived smart wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, screen readers, smart canes, and AI-enhanced glasses as supporting mobility, navigation, information access, and potential access to healthcare services. Women with physical disabilities primarily emphasized mobility, whereas women with visual disabilities emphasized navigation and information access. Key barriers included high costs, limited maintenance services, privacy concerns, inaccessible infrastructure, insufficient healthcare-provider competencies, economic dependency, and social stigma.DiscussionAI-supported and digitally enabled assistive technologies may create enabling conditions for reproductive-health-related access and anticipated informed decision-making. However, the findings do not demonstrate that reproductive rights or improved health outcomes were directly achieved. Their perceived usefulness depended on supportive economic, institutional, infrastructural, familial, and sociocultural conditions. Given the small purposive sample and exploratory design, the findings are context-specific and should not be broadly generalized.
Medium-sized European cities, often celebrated for their quality of life and civic culture, are increasingly experiencing subtle socio-economic and spatial pressures, such as demographic aging, housing strain, and commodification of urban centrality, that erode everyday proximity and social cohesion without surfacing as visible emergencies. Drawing on 26 in-depth interviews with third-sector and cultural organizations across Bologna, this article argues that Cultural Welfare represents a relational form of urban social innovation. Situated within the second-welfare framework, Cultural Welfare emerges as a relational infrastructure in which artistic practices generate shared meanings, recognition, encounters, and the capacity to aspire to alternative urban futures, producing proximity, relations of trust and care. The analysis identifies two interconnected mechanisms through which these initiatives contribute to addressing socio-spatial inequalities and promoting inclusion by widening access to symbolic and relational resources, and to culture-led urban regeneration that reframes safety and liveability as emergent properties of cultural presence rather than solutions supplied through control, surveillance, or market-led redevelopment. These effects, as reported by interviewed organizations, include reclaimed spaces, a greater sense of safety and belonging, and denser networks of mutual care and solidarity, operating at neighborhood and city scales to complement rather than substitute for structural policies. Reading these practices through relational approaches to urban social innovation, the article contends that the specific orientation of the social enacted by Cultural Welfare is the regeneration of the relational fabric eroded by contemporary individualization, extending scholarship on socio-ecological transitions toward a cultural and relational dimension that dominant strands have left under-theorized.
IntroductionResearch on parenthood aspirations among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults has expanded, yet little is known about the geographic contexts in which parenthood is envisioned, particularly in the Global South. This question has practical relevance because unequal legal recognition, social acceptance, economic opportunity, and personal safety may make the exercise of family formation rights partly contingent on mobility.MethodsUsing a cross-sectional convergent mixed-methods survey, we examined parenthood-related geographic preferences among 184 childless cisgender adults residing in Ecuador who expressed a desire to become parents (LGB: n = 71; heterosexual: n = 113). Closed-ended responses were analyzed quantitatively; and open-ended explanations were examined using content analysis.ResultsLGB participants more frequently preferred living abroad than heterosexual participants, Yates-corrected χ2(1, N = 184) = 9.54, p = 0.002, Cramér’s V = 0.24. In a logistic regression (n = 177), heterosexual participants had lower adjusted odds of preferring another country than LGB participants (aOR = 0.26, 95% CI [0.12, 0.56], p < 0.001). Open-ended responses showed that better opportunities and quality of life were salient across groups, while a subset of LGB participants additionally referred to restrictive social attitudes or limited recognition of same-gender-parent families. Among participants preferring another country, Spain, the United States, and Canada were the most frequently identified destinations. These preferences reflect anticipated conditions rather than migration plans or behavior.DiscussionOverall, these findings suggest that material conditions and anticipated social environments shape where prospective parents imagine family formation, with sexuality-related constraints playing a particularly relevant role for some LGB adults in Ecuador. Thus, this study contributes to emerging scholarship by integrating perspectives on family formation and mobility in underexamined Global South settings.
IntroductionTheravāda Buddhism plays a central role in the cultural and religious life of several ethnic communities in Southwest China, yet the ways minority communities mobilize Buddhism to construct collective identity remain insufficiently explored.MethodsThis study used ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, and semistructured interviews with ten purposively selected participants in Laoman’e village, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan.ResultsThe findings show that Buddhist architecture, including temples, stupas, shrines, monasteries, and ritual areas, functions not only as places of worship but also as symbols of Bulang Buddhist legitimacy and cultural continuity. The sacred biography of Phra Somdet Aggamuni, locally also remembered as Meghamuni, operates as a form of soft religious infrastructure through which spiritual stories and moral values are transmitted across generations. The continuity of Bulang Buddhism is sustained through the mutual engagement of monks, elders, lay Buddhists, women, and youth in rituals, donations, storytelling, temple renovation, and ceremonies such as Kaṭhina.DiscussionThe study demonstrates that Theravāda Buddhism in the Bulang community is not merely inherited as tradition; it is transformed, actualized, retold, and performed as a living system of collective identity.
IntroductionAn extensive body of literature has established that perceived discrimination is linked to adverse health outcomes. In Latin America, a region deemed a pigmentocracy due to its pronounced skin color–based stratification, research on the relationship between color discrimination and health remains limited and mixed. This ambiguity may reflect a perception paradox in the context of national ideologies of mestizaje (race-mixture) and racial democracy that purport colorblindness. Latin Americans tend to report high levels of witnessing color discrimination against others (vicarious discrimination) but paradoxically low levels of experiencing discrimination against themselves (personal discrimination).MethodsUsing cross-sectional survey data for Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia from the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America, I examine the relationship between self-rated health and both personal and vicarious color discrimination. Given that national ideologies have historically privileged class-based explanations of stratification while obscuring the role of skin color, I also examine class discrimination as a comparator.ResultsThe results show that the observed associations between discrimination and health vary by both the target and the attribute of discrimination. While personal color discrimination does not show a statistically significant association with poor health, vicarious color discrimination is robustly associated with poor health. In contrast, personal class discrimination is consistently associated with poor health, while vicarious class discrimination is not.DiscussionTaken together, these findings suggest that associations between perceived discrimination and health must be understood in light of the Latin American racial order in which mestizaje and racial democracy work to define which explanations of inequality and unfair treatment are deemed legitimate and reportable.
ObjectivesArtificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed and revolutionized the technological and informational space of the 21st century. AI has also reconfigured the way of relating and interacting with the information system, the work environment, the occupational structure, and the societal space. Within the framework of this study, the general objective aims to analyze and evaluate employee rights in the context of organizational change, technological innovation-driven algorithmic governance generated by automation and intelligent systems. The specific objective of the research focuses on reskilling under AI rules, AI civil liability for workers’ rights regime, ethical use of algorithmic governance at the workplace, and social and behavioral outcomes.Methods and methodologyThe current research uses legal-organizational analysis (LOA), combining systematic literature review with legal and exploratory-descriptive study of the AI phenomenon in order to identify the current state of regulation in the field. This method is complemented by comparative legal analysis of different regulatory systems at a global level, as well as good practices in the workplace and case studies of representative examples of AI regulation in the workplace to identify how automation is transforming the occupational space and employment relationships.Results and discussionsThe legal-organizational analysis highlights the legal developments in Europe, the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific, identifying the diverse dimensions of the regulatory architectural structure for AI technology across six interrelated pillars. The results indicate that AI regulation across Europe, the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific is increasingly intersecting around human rights and personal data protection, risk-based governance, and accountability mechanisms, particularly in the employment environment. Legal frameworks emphasize transparency, non-discrimination, and the need for human oversight in AI-powered workplace decisions.ConclusionThe conclusions highlight that across Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific, AI regulation is increasingly organized around six dimensions: protection of human rights and data privacy in the workplace; governance frameworks addressing reskilling, job transformation and adaptation to AI-driven work models; risk-based oversight of AI systems; AI civil liability regimes affecting employee rights and HR practices; promotion of ethical AI to foster trust and mitigate bias; and strengthened monitoring, accountability and non-discrimination mechanisms.
Malaysia’s palm oil industry, the world’s second-largest, depends on migrant labor, with foreign workers making up 80% of its plantation workforce. Despite well-documented labor exploitation, research has typically focused on single nationalities, overlooked the interplay of structural and individual factors, and largely excluded Thai workers from comparative analyses. This study addresses these gaps by comparing the experiences of Thai, Indonesian, and Bangladeshi migrants on plantations along the Thai-Malaysian border. The study uses in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, field observations, and NGO input. A four-dimensional framework—structural, institutional, social, and individual—guides the analysis. Findings reveal that nationality-based vulnerability is generated through the interaction of global commodity chain pressures, governance failures, social network structures, and individual constraints. While all three groups occupy precarious, second-tier positions in the labor market, important differences emerge: Bangladeshi workers are concentrated in the highest-risk roles, earning less than 900 MYR per month and burdened by heavy employment debts; Indonesians fill a wider variety of jobs with moderate debts and earnings ranging from 600–1,300 MYR; Thai workers, mostly near the border, have lower debt and greater mobility, but remain highly vulnerable due to their undocumented status. Contrary to expectations from formal bilateral agreements, most Thai migrants enter Malaysia through informal networks, leaving them outside all institutional protection. Theoretically, the study introduces the concept of infrastructure shortcomings to capture how exclusion from regulatory frameworks—not just their distortion—creates risk for migrants, expanding Sunam’s notion of unstable infrastructure. The paper also develops the idea of secondary stratification within multi-national labor markets and distinguishes between freedom of exit and freedom of expression as distinct political dimensions. These contributions highlight the need for policy reforms that address both specific vulnerabilities and overarching structural barriers: employer-tied work permits, exclusion from union protections, and the institutional invisibility of undocumented migrants.
This study examines the systemic dynamic of collaboration and the role of intersystem sensitivity between coaches and physiotherapists in German elite sport support teams. Based on a heuristic that integrates theories of society, conflict, and professionalisation within the framework of Niklas Luhmann’s sociological systems theory, the study employs qualitative content analysis of expert interviews with representatives of both professional groups (N = 45). The analysis identifies key themes, conflict potentials and avenues for optimisation in intersystem interaction. The findings suggest that effective collaboration in elite sport support teams depends substantially on the ability to understand and respect the professional logics and goals of other support team members. More specifically, the results indicate that promoting intersystem sensitivity and targeted professionalisation processes is necessary to reduce professional conflicts and optimise the joint care of athletes. The study provides valuable insights into the complexity of elite sport support team dynamics and underscores the importance of a collaborative relationship between coaches and physiotherapists for sporting success and the health of elite athletes.
