On September 27, some 70 employees of the French hardware store chain Leroy Merlin gathered in Créteil, a suburb of Paris, not to demand higher wages or shorter hours, but the right to work on Sunday. In a country that prides itself on its carefree lifestyle and boasts one of […]

This article was written in collaboration with my fellow FutureChallenges author Anikó Mészáros who was of great help in finding the interviewees for this piece. As mobility has increased in Europe, women from poor social backgrounds in Central Europe have hit the road to find the work in Western Europe  […]

“What will future scholars see when they study us to create a portrait of women today? There you are ladies: the perfect likeness of a Wellesley graduate, Magna Cum Laude, doing exactly what she was trained to do. (Slide – a Rhodes Scholar), I wonder if she recites Chaucer while […]

A nation essentially dedicated to agriculture for so long has to face some serious challenges when modernization touches rural areas and expels the people who live there. “The city is, more than ever, a poverty pole”, says Milton Santos, a Brazilian geographer in “A Urbanização Brasileira”(“Urbanization in Brazil”), a place whose […]

Who changes the world? Politicians, civil society organizations, the government, businesses, people, ideas, or inventions? I suppose we will never agree on this, but apparently economists think that they can and they have good reasons to do so. The recent Global Economic Symposium, held in Kiel, Germany, took “Redefining Success” […]