The first months of 2020 were marked by the rapid spread of the acute respiratory disease, which swiftly reached the proportions of a pandemic. The city and county of Suceava, Romania, faced an unprecedented crisis in March and April 2020, triggered not only by the highest number of infections nationwide but also by the highest number of infected health professionals (47.1% of the infected medical staff nationwide, in April 2020). Why did Suceava reach the peak number of COVID-19 cases in Romania? What were the vulnerability factors that led to the outbreak, the closure of the city of Suceava and neighboring localities, and the impossibility of managing the crisis with local resources? What is the relationship between the population’s lack of confidence in the authorities’ ability to solve the crisis, and their attitude towards the imposed measures? The present article aims to provide answers to the above questions by examining the attitudes of the public towards the causes that have led to the outbreak of an epidemiological crisis, systemic health problems, and the capacity of decision makers to intervene both at local and national level. The research is based on an online survey, conducted between April and May 2020, resulting in a sample of 1231 people from Suceava County. The results highlight that the development of the largest COVID-19 outbreak in Romania is, without a doubt, the result of a combination of factors, related to the medical field, decision makers, and the particularities of the population’s behavior.

Abstract:The integration of East European Countries in European Union has long-term consequences, with migration being one of the main social effects of this process. From an economic perspective, the research on migration has attracted considerable attention, whereas the analyses focused on the social networks are more scarce. The importance of these social networks becomes more substantial due to their quality and ability to reduce costs, risks of movement and uncertainty. Although the migratory networks are known at national levels, there are very few data related to the territorial distribution of migration network between origin and destination areas. In this context, Romania registered the highest level of emigration toward Western European countries, and this case study offers illustrative insights for the broader literature. In order to illustrate the territorial distribution of migrants' network between Romania and France, we used an exhaustive analysis of the trajectories of all clients who used one of the largest transport companies operating between Romania and France (8094 cases). Using the benefits of this evidence-based approach, we identified the regions and the Romanian towns most affected by the migration phenomenon. Complementary, we illustrated the territorial distribution and the preferred destination regions in France for the Romanian immigrants. We present the migration networks that exist between the towns of the two countries and identify the intensity of each migration circuit.

The social inclusion of the Roma population represents a topical issue that must be considered from both the scientific and social action perspectives. Governments, through their pivotal role in defining societal values and norms, are essential to promoting the social inclusion of vulnerable populations. To argue this perspective, the present study examines some other pivotal social institutions that play relevant roles in the professional insertion of the Roma: family, education, and the residential community. The study uses an interpretative approach, leveraging the institutional ethnography methodology. We found that a key predictor of successful Roma population integration is their occupational integration; therefore, we examined the employment obstacles and barriers Roma ethnics face and the effects of the support of public institutions. The interviewees have an undifferentiated perception of all categories of support provided more by public institutions other than government income sources, and less as social, educational, and social integration resources. The research findings show how employment options for Roma population are dependent on the social practices, customs, and values promoted by their family and communities, with clear consequences on their capacity to enter the labor market and keep a job. Thus, our research supports the necessity for new openings in the study of professional insertion in various work contexts and considering the work perspective, which is derived from the social relations outside the labor market dynamics.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lock-down have highlighted the growing awareness of the need to involve the population in solving problems that directly affect the existence and trajectory of the life of the individual and civil society in the local, national, and regional context. The article aims both to analyze the reaction of formal and informal civil society in a context of major crisis and to analyze how the population perceives the involvement of civil society at the level of a county in Romania and its county seat city. The present sociological diagnosis used data that were collected through an online survey at the beginning of May 2020 among the population of Suceava County. It was sought to identify how the reaction of civil society was perceived and how it was mobilized, as well as how the mass media contributed to reducing the effects of the pandemic. After the elimination phase of non-compliant responses, the volume of the sample included a total of 1231 people. The results of the study indicate that this pandemic context, which manifested as a major crisis, also had positive effects in the sense of mobilizing latent but extensive energies at the local level, whose manifestation contributed to diminishing and limiting the effects of the sanitary crisis the county faced. The media, as a component of civil society, has managed to mobilize important segments of the population, both in quarantined localities and in other localities in Suceava County and Moldova. The COVID-19 crisis tested the social cohesion and resilience of communities and offered perhaps one of the most remarkable lessons of solidarity in the post-December period, both locally and nationally. Although the perception of Romanians on the role of civil society would rather be part of a culture of individualism, in extreme situations it was found that its activity has never been more important.

This paper deals with the ways of categorising landscapes as ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ using a physicalist approach, where these terms have special meaning. The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the question whether such a division is still meaningful with regard to anthropogenic landscapes, not least in spatial planning. The concerns raised in this paper depart from the increasingly complicated structure of geographical space, including that of anthropogenic landscapes. Our standpoint is illustrated using cases of landscape ambiguities from Poland, Germany, Romania and Greece. Leaning on frameworks of physicalist (mechanicistic) theory, this paper suggests an explanation to the outlined semantic conflicts. This is done by pointing to the relationality between the impact of centripetal and centrifugal forces, the specifics of socio-economic development, as well as the varying landscape forms that emerge from the differences within that development.