The basic aim of this article is to briefly explore the links between socio-economic dynamics and desertification in western Lesvos, Greece. The area is characterised by certain socio-economic and development disadvantages, dependence on few productive sectors (mainly on livestock breeding) and by severe problems of land degradation and desertification. The linkages between socio-economic profile, characteristics and development trajectory with the state of environment in the area are identified through a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with local producers (livestock breeders). Research findings reveal the major socio-economic driving forces towards unsustainable productive practices, which contribute to the persistence of the problems of land degradation and desertification.

In this article we present findings of a qualitative study of Albanian immigrants in Athens and Mytilene (on the island of Lesvos) in Greece. The study investigates the role that various forms of social capital can play in the social, economic and institutional incorporation of Albanian immigrants in Greek society. The paper focuses specifically on immigrants’ interpretations and experiences of social incorporation processes in Greece, placing emphasis on the significance of family, kinship, ethnic and other social networks for immigrants’ working and life trajectories in the country. Finally, the investigation of the impact of three main forms of social capital—bonding, bridging and linking—on the social incorporation of Albanian immigrants, leads to the question of Greek migration policy formation and reveals the need for its radical restructuring.

The concept of landscape has been increasingly used, in the last decades, in policy and land use planning, both in regard to so-called “special” and to “ordinary” or “everyday” landscapes. This has raised the importance of local and public participation in all issues that refer to landscapes and the definition of the groups that “have a stake” in the landscape. In this paper, we provide insights into how stakeholders perceive the dynamics of local processes of landscape change (and continuity) and which processes of landscape change they perceive as important, in positive and negative ways, from five communities within the European Union. These landscapes involve different landscape issues “at stake”, different national and local planning and decision-making traditions and practices, and varying degrees of engagement. The understanding of these complexities and the unraveling of the insights is done through the concept of social capital and its different forms. We report on three series of workshops that have been organized to discuss landscape issues and approaches or ideas for landscape management. We witnessed interactions between the different stakeholders and gained insights into how social capital affects landscape change. We found that despite differences, similarities emerged concerning the interplay between “expert” and “local” knowledge and between “insideness” and “outsideness”. Social capital plays an important part, as it provides the template for personal and collective evaluation of landscape changes, who should manage these changes and how they should be managed. These findings are important to develop in-depth insights on dynamics and values of cultural landscapes and visions for re-coupling social and ecological components in cultural landscapes and translate them into policy and management options.

It is well acknowledged that the categorization of people with specific political, social and economic characteristics as ‘migrants’ – migrantization – is facilitated by mainstream, positivist versions of science and is associated with the production and/or reproduction of power relations. To date, this important critique has been advanced by academics influenced by interpretivism/poststructuralism who tend to relativize the discussion, and who are unable to provide a space for quantitative research. The main objective of this paper is to offer an alternative approach to avoiding positivism and relativism in ‘migration studies’, based on critical realism, which I term ‘migrantization research’. Critical realist migrantization research is multi-methodological and provides an interdisciplinary framework for conducting mixed-method social research on ‘migration’. It aims to discover, uncover or indicate how various causal powers – of structural, discursive/cultural and agential character – interact and produce certain outcomes. It presupposes that both measurable and non-measurable dimensions of the social world are relevant.

Purpose: The aim of the present study is to contribute to the discussion introducing the concept of social capital as a significant parameter influencing students' perceptions concerning greening initiatives in HEIs.Design/methodology/approach: A theoretical analysis is presented concerning the possible links of social capital components with students' perceptions on environmental management initiatives. Furthermore, the results of an empirical study are presented exploring these issues from the perspective of students, both through quantitative and qualitative social research methods.Findings: The empirical study reveals that students' social capital is connected with their perceptions for the environmental management of the university.Social implications: The paper underlines the importance of examining and taking into consideration social factors prior to the implementation of environmental management initiatives in HEIs, in order to increase their effectiveness.Originality/value: The paper is a first attempt to empirically explore the influence of students' social capital on their perceptions for environmental management initiatives in higher education institutions.

In this chapter, I discuss some significant limitations of various epistemological approaches which have been linked to qualitative research in general and to qualitative research on migration in particular. More specifically, I discuss the limitations and problems of some versions of interpretivism and social constructionism and propose the integration of useful aspects of them into the critical realist meta-theory. Offering examples from securitization research, the chapter aims at critiquing relativism, and overcoming unfruitful dichotomies such as those between subjectivity and objectivity and between causal explanation and interpretive understanding. Finally, the chapter discusses reflexivity in qualitative migration research, focusing on the issue of methodological nationalism and offering some thoughts of overcoming it within the critical realist premises.