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Nowadays, social media influences tourists in their decision making process and plays an important role in the digital marketing strategy of tourism service providers. The purpose of this study is to examine the presence of tourism businesses in the most popular social media channel in Russia – VKontakte (VK). The data consist of Finnish and Russian groups devoted to tourism in VK: 10,000 Finnish groups and 5,000 Russian groups were found and the 12 most popular out of each group were chosen for the analysis. The findings show that VK is widely used by Finnish and Russian tourism firms, but there is still potential for more effective implementation of the channel. The group discussions on the most popular topics can provide firms with useful knowledge for planning their digital strategies for the Russian market.

Purpose – This chapter explores the nature of spatial change processes in the urban–rural fringe of Ireland's capital city, Dublin. These areas have experienced rapid population growth between 1991 and 2002 in changing social structures, a rapidly changing built and natural environment, and increases in commuting. The chapter investigates how coalitions of community interests have responded to these spatial changes through opportunities for public participation in local governance processes.

Methodology/approach – We adopt a qualitative approach to assess the relationship between residents’ associations and the local state through a detailed empirical examination of the activities of residents’ associations within the rural–urban fringe.

Findings – Community and residents’ groups are very active in attempting to shape land-use and spatial planning policy outcomes with a complexity of motivations for engaging with the planning process, beyond simplistic portrayals of Not In My Back Yard-style local opposition to any change. However, attempts to influence policy outcomes were undermined by powerful developer and landowning interests, resulting in a deep-seated cynicism towards the public participation process, particularly with regard to the relationship between developers and councillors, and the probity of the planning system.

Implications/value of chapter – The limited ability of community interests to influence policy represents the economic and political reality of the development process, where the strategies and tactical behaviour of a few dominant interests and embedded power relations can compromise a deliberative and participatory policy process.

This chapter investigates the role of gender, mentoring and social capital and contributes to literature about the career development of women in senior management roles in the National Health Service of the UK. It draws on a doctoral study of senior-level managers in a Scottish NHS Board. The data collected are: (i) documentary; (ii) quantitative; and (iii) qualitative. The quantitative data are collected through questionnaires, while the source of qualitative data is in-depth semi-structured interviews. The doctoral study is embedded within an interpretivist and feminist paradigm. Although access to mentoring and social capital was seen as likely to enhance the career progression of females to senior managerial roles, gendered work and family expectations, gendered organisational culture, and normative performances of gendered senior management were identified as obstacles in taking advantages of mentoring and social capital. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only piece of work that explicitly investigates the role of mentoring and social capital in managing gender diversity at the senior managerial positions of the NHS.

This chapter explores the multifaceted present-day social and cultural constructions of adolescence in a Nordic Atlantic society, the Faroe Islands. Based on young people’s perspectives and narratives, this chapter delves into the transition from youthhood to adulthood in the context of a small-scale, family-oriented society in shift. Drawing on sociological theoretical writing about “waiting” and “waithood” in relation to the (often temporally extended or delayed) transition from adolescence to full adulthood in a globalizing world, as well as social anthropological studies of future-making, my aim is to outline the new futural orientations of contemporary adolescence with focus on aspirations for work and family life. Young people, the chapter argues, are waiting and navigating in a society with multiple parallel temporalities: When to marry? When to get children? When to earn your own money and have your own home? These and many other questions define waithood in contemporary society, which is characterized by an increasingly precarious avenue toward promising futures resonating the socially accepted ways of performing adulthood. In the Faroe Islands, an island society with roughly 54,000 inhabitants, young people’s waiting is very often also a question of staying or leaving, that is, mobility and migration strategies. The waiting entails pace as a strategy for the future (Eisenstein, 2021). Adolescent islanders aim to “hit the right pace” in their future imaginaries. This chapter contributes to sociological discussions on the social construction of adolescence with focus on the meaning of time and temporalities. It relies on empirical material from extensive qualitative studies in the Faroe Islands.

United States immigration policy is one of the most dynamic and fiercely argued public policy issues today – often including questions of how many and from where. Poor economic conditions overseas, perceptions of a relative abundance of opportunity in the United States, flight from persecution and upheaval, and revolutions in communication and transportation are often cited as the major factors explaining historic and current waves of immigrants (legal and illegal) to U.S. shores (Batchelor, 2004; Borjas, 2004; Porter, 2006). U.S. immigration legislation is also a key factor in determining the numbers and composition of America's new residents. The focus of this chapter therefore consists of the costs associated with providing illegal immigrants with the benefit of free, public schooling within the context of globalization. More specifically, given the broader social, political, and economic parameters of the immigration debate and its meaning, the chapter discusses the legal and educational issues faced in the United States by those undocumented students who desire to attend public schooling, as well as the ways current state and federal laws both empower and discourage them.