This article analyses transnational communities through the case study of the Sahrawi migrant community in Spain. After reviewing the most important theoretical contributions on transnational migration and determining the characteristics of these communities, this article will examine potential difficulties that derive from regulations and from the process of acquiring citizenship, which in turn affect the inclusion of this group of migrants within the host society. The article studies whether these regulations and processes may become determinants of this group’s vulnerability, and provides the main conclusions deriving from the challenges that this community faces.

In recent decades, the European research and innovation landscape has shifted from addressing gender inequality by focusing on “fixing women” to prioritising “fixing the institution,” with gender equality plans (GEPs) as the primary tool for transformation. While policies have spurred initiatives across EU member states and associated countries, progress remains uneven. Existing studies often attribute the gap between policy intentions and outcomes to GEP implementation issues. This article argues, however, that the complexity of framing institutional change strategies during GEP planning and design contributes equally to this policy–practice gap. Drawing on feminist institutionalism and complexity theories, this article examines how different stakeholders receive, interpret, and reshape policy ideas surrounding institutional change. It interrogates whether there is a shared definition of institutional change among those responsible for planning and implementing GEPs and discusses the (in)consistencies in the assessment of concrete initiatives as institutional change. Empirical data derive from a case study of six European institutions implementing GEPs under the Horizon 2020 project GEARING‐Roles, complemented by interviews with representatives from other 7th Framework Programme and Horizon 2020 GEP‐implementing projects. The findings reveal significant ambiguity in how institutional change is interpreted and translated into actions, with this ambiguity manifesting both among GEP implementers and the European Commission. We conclude that clearer guidelines and more consistent assessments are necessary, alongside theory‐based and practice‐oriented definitions of institutional change, which we propose as an attempt to address this gap.

In this paper, we investigate whether AI deployment for law enforcement will enable or impede the exercise of citizens' fundamental rights by juxtaposing the promises and policy goals with the crude reality of practices, funded projects, and practicalities of law enforcement. To this end, we map the projects funded by H2020 in AI for law enforcement and juxtapose them to the goals and aims of the EU in terms of Trustworthy AI and fundamental rights. We then bring forward existing research stressing that AI implementation in sensitive domains such as defense and law enforcement does not come without drawbacks, especially regarding discrimination, surveillance, data protection, and human dignity. We thoroughly analyze and assess human-centric and socially-driven lens risks and threats of using AI factors from an ethical, legal, and societal perspective (ELSA), including organizational and gender worries.

Background: Gender-based violence (GBV) remains largely under-reported and under-detected. The European project IMPROVE seeks to identify the needs of victims in terms of facilitating their access to support services and to assist frontline responder organisations in enhancing their competencies and capabilities to make the most of innovative solutions that enable and accelerate policy implementation. Methods: To meet these goals, IMPROVE uses narrative interviews, understood as unstructured tools that produce and analyse stories that are significant in people’s lives. These interviews provide the space for re-thinking; there is a reflection on implicit and taken-for-granted norms and insights are given into the life and thoughts of vulnerable groups, in this case, the women victim-survivors of GBV. Results: This methodological approach has led to high-quality interviews in which the women involved have felt comfortable, confident, and satisfied, as evidenced by the depth, complexity, and extension of the knowledge generated, and the commitment of the interviewees to the various activities proposed by the researchers. Conclusions: The narrative approach has allowed for a sensitive investigation into the private lives of GBV victim-survivors and, as a consequence, has contributed to the creation of new knowledge that can provide an in-depth and incisive view of the help offered by frontline responder organisations, from which improvements can be proposed.