This article investigates how international students find and maintain housing and what constraints they have to deal with in the process. It reveals how the interplay between personal characteristics and housing-market features shapes housing biographies and unequally disadvantages certain international students over others. Eighteen in-depth interviews with international students were conducted about the housing situation for them in Utrecht, a Dutch student city. Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) of the interview data found that international students' housing biographies differ substantially, both in progression and outcomes. Despite some students successfully finding adequate housing, many described living involuntarily in conditions of stress, instability and insecurity and a number experienced progressively worsening housing conditions. The students ascribed their difficulties to discrimination and structural disadvantages on the housing market. In light of these findings, this article calls for a re-evaluation of the Dutch student housing system.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Objective: To investigate if divorced parents celebrate their children's birthdays with their respective ex-partner and current partner, and whether they do so "jointly" with both.
Background: Family rituals like birthday celebrations are important and meaningful events in people's lives, but little is known about who partakes in these in contemporary postdivorce families.
Method: We assessed whether divorced parents celebrated their child's birthday together with their ex-partner (i.e., the child’s other biological parent), current partner (i.e., the child’s stepparent), and jointly with both. Dutch Data (N=2,451) was analyzed using linear probability models.
Results: Most parents celebrated the child's birthday without the ex-partner, but with the current partner. One quarter celebrated with both. The ex-partners' presence was more likely when parents' and their current partners' relationship with the ex-partner was good; and less likely when parents had repartnered and when the ex-partners had sole custody or additional biological or stepchildren. The presence of the current partner was more likely in case of coresidence with the biological parent and when the ex-partner had a new partner; and less likely when the ex-partners had sole custody and when parents’ relationship with the ex-partners was good.
Conclusion: Child-related family rituals mostly involve the "new" stepparent rather than both biological parents. The effects of relationship quality, co-residence, repartnering, and having additional biological or stepchildren highlight the importance of (step)parents' willingness to interact with each other, structural opportunities for parent-child interactions, and parents’ shifting loyalties from their ex-partner to their new family.
Objective: To explain whether divorced parents’ ex-partners and current partners belong to the family, and whether they both “jointly” do so. Background: It is uncertain who belongs to postdivorce families and how family boundaries become salient in family interactions. Method: We assessed whether divorced parents celebrated their child’s birthday together with their ex-partner (i.e., child’s biological parents), current partner (i.e., child’s stepparent), and jointly with both. Dutch Data (N=2,451) was analyzed using logistic regression. Results: Most parents celebrated the child’s birthday without the ex-partner, but with the current partner. One quarter celebrated with both. The ex-partners’ presence was more likely when parents’ and their current partners’ relationship with the ex-partner was good; and less likely when parents had repartnered and when the ex-partner had sole custody or additional biological or stepchildren. The presence of the current partner was more likely in case of coresidence with the biological parent and when the ex-partner had a new partner; and less likely when the ex-partner had sole custody and when parents’ relationship with the ex-partner was good. Conclusions: Child-related family rituals mostly involve the “new” stepparent rather than both biological parents. The effects of relationship quality, co-residence, repartnering and having additional biological or stepchildren highlight the importance of (step)parents’ willingness to interact with each other, structural opportunities for parent-child interactions, and parents’ shifting loyalties from their ex-partner to their new family.
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