Journals
2026 EN
Fielding Tony
Abstract Examining the interdependencies between internal migration and national population decline in Japan, this paper begins by analysing the impacts of internal migration on national fertility decline, for example, through the early post‐World War II flows from high‐fertility countrysides to low‐fertility cities. It then focuses on the way in which, in the context of national population decline, internal migration exacerbates the problems facing Japan's rural areas by adding population loss and, in particular, the loss of young adult populations, to the mounting problems of public and private‐sector disinvestment, job losses, ageing (both social and physical) and the abandonment of land use and built form.
Journals
2026 EN
Allan Joanna · Mohamed Azrouk Moiti
Abstract This article argues for greater consideration of the role of poetry and poets in diplomacy and as a medium for the recognition of contested citizenships. We take Western Sahara, the site of an ongoing anti‐colonial war, as our case study and explore how Saharawi poets engage foreign publics in their national struggle to become citizens of an independent Saharawi Republic. We contend that poetry can be considered a form of public or citizen diplomacy, and poets as citizen diplomats, when advocating for a state policy, interest or cause. We also show that studying poetry through the lens of public and citizen diplomacy allows us to learn more about the interplay of emotion and soft power in constituting citizens and in the relations between citizens of different states. In doing so, we contribute to ongoing debates on the role of non‐state actors in public diplomacy and on the place of emotion in diplomacy. The article is based on fieldwork carried out in late 2022 and early 2023, in Mauritania, the Saharawi refugee camps/state‐in‐exile in Algeria, and in Spain.
Journals
2026 EN
MERRITT ADRIENNE N.
ABSTRACT In this article, I focus on F. W. Murnau's 1922 film, Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens , and its connection to the concept of property and the haunting quality of its afterlives. Setting the film within both the historical context of interwar German society and fears of the ‘Schwarze Schmach’, as well as broader discourses in Black Studies globally, I argue that Nosferatu's emergence from the hold of the ship Empusa reflects lingering sentiments regarding the loss of German colonial ‘property’ in Africa, the racialisation of Black individuals, and insecurities about white German subjectivity post‐World War One. I highlight the interplay between the words ‘Besitz’, ‘Eigentum’, ‘Besetzung’, ‘Besatzung’ and ‘besessen’ in my discussion of property in the interwar period, the ship's hold figuring as the space through which subjectivity is both unmade and reconfigured.
Journals
2026 EN
Kessler Frank · Lenk Sabine
ABSTRACT The historiography of Weimar cinema has focused almost exclusively on film production and exhibition in the German capital Berlin, generally neglecting other geographic regions, in particular the Rhineland which, after the First World War, remained under Allied control until the mid‐1920s for some parts, for others even longer. This contribution analyses the situation in Düsseldorf, a film distribution hub that was occupied by Belgian and French troops until 1925, based mainly on reports in the trade press and documents issued by the Allied High Commission. The perspective from the periphery makes it possible to ‘provincialise Weimar cinema’ both geographically and by shifting the emphasis from films and production companies, which dominate German cinema historiography, to distribution and exhibition.
Journals
2026 EN
Hollinger David A.
ABSTRACT Nick Witham's Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America provides cogent and accurate accounts of the careers of five American academic historians of the post‐World War II era who won large popular audiences for national narratives: Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner. Witham omits, without explanation, the highly relevant case of Oscar Handlin, author of the 1951 work The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made America . He also fails to engage the heavily Jewish ethnoreligious matrix of popular American historiography of the postwar era. In Popularizing the Past , Witham is directly concerned with today's challenges for writing popular national histories, and he argues that the very idea of a single, national audience has been rendered anachronistic by ideological polarization and media fragmentation. Whereas Witham insists that works resembling Jill Lepore's 2018 book These Truths: A History of the United States should no longer be attempted, he upholds Ibram X. Kendi's 2016 volume, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America , as an example of what is appropriate today: a narrative for a certain community of readers, and not for other readers. Witham's essentially sound account of major features of postwar American writings about history is marred by his jejune comments about the early twenty‐first century. He leaves us with only a shadow of the witness that each of Witham's subject‐historians bore with distinction to the mission of discovering and disseminating the truth about American history in the interests of a national community.
Journals
2026 EN
Toossi Parviz · Etemadzadeh SeyedHasan · Sedighimoghadam Mohammadreza
+7 more
ABSTRACT Background Sulfur mustard (SM) was extensively used during the Iraq–Iran War (1983–1988). The study assessed the prevalence of dermatoses in exposed survivors compared to the general population. Methods Using a retrospective cohort study, we visited and compared the prevalence of skin complaints and active dermatoses in 1538 SM‐exposed survivors and 1425 unexposed controls. All participants underwent clinical evaluations by dermatologists across multiple centers. Results The exposed group demonstrated a higher prevalence of chronic diseases (odds ratio [OR]: 4.57, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 3.92–5.34), history of dermatoses (OR: 2.32, 95% CI: 1.97–2.73), need for dermatologic care (OR: 5.91, 95% CI: 4.67–7.50), and corticosteroid use (OR: 10.98, 95% CI: 8.77–13.74) with concurrent use of multiple corticosteroid forms. Dermatologist examinations revealed a higher rate of skin complaints (92.1% vs. 23.4%; OR: 36.47, 95% CI: 29.24–44.5) and dermatoses (86.7% vs. 32.1%; OR: 13.81, 95% CI: 11.48–16.61) in the exposed group. The most prevalent symptom among the exposed group was itching (84.7% vs. 14.5%; OR: 32.46, 95% CI: 26.52–39.74), followed by burning sensation (38% vs. 3.6%; OR: 16.54, 95% CI: 12.28–22.28) and dry skin (36.2% vs. 5.6%; OR: 9.52, 95% CI: 7.43–12.20). Dermatologist visits indicated the highest odds in the exposed group compared to the control group for: blistering disorders (OR: 40.4, 95% CI: 2.4–667.4); persistent warts (OR: 17.7, 95% CI: 1.0–304.5); pruritus (OR: 17.1, 95% CI: 9.5–30.77); xerosis (OR: 11.98, 95% CI: 9.36–15.34); neurodermatitis (OR: 10.28, 95% CI: 5.79–18.56); lichen simplex chronicus (OR: 9.02, 95% CI: 6.13–13.28); and excoriated dermatitis (OR: 7.75, 95% CI: 5.88–10.23). There was no significant rise in the risk of vitiligo, psoriasis, keloids, drug‐induced acne, basal cell carcinoma (BCC), morphea, discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), or melanoma in the exposed group compared to the control group. Conclusions Single‐dose SM exposure—regardless of its amount or duration—leads to significantly more long‐lasting skin conditions compared to the controls.
Journals
2026 EN
Jauhiainen Jussi S.
ABSTRACT This article examines the reintegration experiences of Ukrainians who fled the country to the European Union (EU) following Russia's 2022 invasion and subsequently returned while the country was still at war. Employing a mixed‐methods approach—including surveys, semi‐structured interviews and field observations in Ukraine—the study focuses on the experiences of returnees. By 2025, over 1.2 million Ukrainians had returned from abroad, predominantly women and children from the EU but also from other countries. Return trajectories varied: some returned shortly after displacement, motivated by a strong sense of belonging and sustained ties to Ukraine, while others remained abroad longer and encountered more complex reintegration processes. Most returnees resettled in their original regions, and many found employment quickly amid wartime labour shortages. Although patriotic sentiment intensified during displacement, trust in Ukrainian public institutions remained low. Return was often marked by a decline in life satisfaction and mental health, underlining the psychological challenges of reintegration under war conditions. The study highlights the urgent need for evidence‐based reintegration policies that respond to returnees' lived realities that are crucial for Ukraine's recovery, resilience and social cohesion.
Journals
2026 EN
ChachashviliBolotin Svetlana · TalmiCohn Ravit
ABSTRACT This article examines how social ties are actively constructed, recalibrated or severed by migrants navigating a reality of double war, defined as the simultaneous exposure to war in both their countries of origin and destination. The study draws on thirty‐seven in‐depth interviews with migrants from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus who immigrated to Israel between 2022 and 2024 following Russia's full‐scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and later experienced renewed insecurity during the Israel–Hamas War. Engaging three main bodies of literature, transnationalism, social network theory and migration in contexts of war and displacement, this study explores how migrants manage ties across a geo‐social triangle: the origin country, the host country and third countries. The analysis identifies two relational phases: an initial overload and triage of social ties, followed by a phase of relational calibration, in which migrants make strategic and emotionally and morally charged decisions about with whom to connect, support or withdraw from. These findings offer a conceptual understanding of social ties as dynamic and ethically negotiated responses to instability. By positioning migrants' agency under conditions of insecurity, the study contributes new analytic tools for examining how war reshapes relational life across transnational space.
Journals
2026 EN
Steblytaliia · Dvorak Jaroslav
ABSTRACT With the current study, we aim to continue the discussion about what the borders of the Ruskiy Mir—the Russian World —because the war in Ukraine shows that the forces and special services of the Russian Federation were expected to be welcomed as ‘liberators’, but this did not happen. We have examined media outlets in two Baltic countries (Lithuania and Latvia) that are published in Russian. Lithuania is a portal operating on a national scale, but in Latvia, two newspapers are published in two cities where most Russian speakers’ population lives. Although the analysed newspapers initially portrayed the war as a distant or internal problem for Ukraine, our analysis revealed a gradual shift in focus and thematic emphasis. This shift can be partly explained by the increasing difficulty of continuing to cover the war without including broader geopolitical aspects, as well as by the growing international awareness of human rights violations, civilian casualties, and Russia's role in the aggression. The lack of context and the use of euphemisms initially contributed to the persistence of pro‐Russian narratives, but subsequent thematic diversification, especially in the case of Lithuania, demonstrated a growing sensitivity to the global dimension of the war.
Journals
2026 EN
Nagurney Anna · Pour Ismael · Kormych Borys
Abstract Conflicts and wars can significantly disrupt global agricultural supply chains, with severe impacts on food security worldwide. War risk insurance, on the other hand, can mitigate farmers' losses. In this paper, we use the theory of variational inequalities to construct a new multicommodity international trade network equilibrium model with exchange rates on general transportation networks joining supply markets with demand markets under different wartime scenarios. The model incorporates capacities on production and transportation, as well as potential commodity losses in transportation. We then propose formulae for integrated crop and cargo war risk insurance premiums that are supply market and commodity specific and incorporate them into the model, along with government subsidies for the premiums. A series of numerical examples, both illustrative and algorithmically solved, focusing on the ongoing war on Ukraine, reveal the critical role of integrated war risk insurance and government support in sustaining agricultural commodity trade flows and supply market prices as well as protecting the revenue of farmers.