61.
Nylin, Anna-Karin, 1984-
(author)
The making and breaking of families : Studies on inequalities in the face of parenthood and separation
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Becoming a parent for the first time is one of the most life-altering events individuals experience. For some, this life-altering change is also followed by the breaking of families when couples part ways in either divorce or separation. This thesis is comprised of four studies in which women and men are followed over the process of becoming parents as well as through separation from marriage and cohabitation, and is mainly centered on Sweden. Study I gives an overview of how parents’ labour earnings have developed over time in Sweden within couples. At the birth of the first child, women's contribution to the family's work income drops sharply. The study shows a small change among couples who became parents more recently, especially in those families where the woman has a high level of education. The change seems to be driven by men’s work adjustments, pointing to a small, albeit important shift towards increases in equal parenting.Study II tracks how first-time parents’ labour earnings develop in relation to separation from cohabitation and marriage. In the study, it is argued that the benefits from the economies of scale that exist when resources are pooled in one household unit cannot be accessed following a separation and that this would constitute a driving force for separating women and men to take measures that increase their labour earnings. As a side effect of the separation, earnings would thus develop better for separated parents than for coupled parents. Contrary to expectations, the results show how separating mothers’ earnings trajectories instead lag behind coupled mothers’. This is most pronounced among women who already from start has the lowest labour earnings. Among men, separating fathers are on poorer earnings trajectories already before the separation compared to coupled fathers.Study III broadens the previous argumentation to also include counterarguments about constraining factors. By comparing the situation for mothers in Sweden with that in Western Germany, where women's labour market participation is lower after childbirth, strengths and weaknesses are revealed in both countries' social policies. In Sweden, separations are followed by a negative effect on mothers' labour earnings, raising the question of what constraints single mothers face in working life. German mothers are instead pushed towards increasing their earnings. But also here, women face constraints as they never reach the same earnings levels as before having children, which Swedish mothers do. In both cases, mothers with the lowest earnings seem to face the greatest obstacles.Study IV investigates how sick leave patterns for mothers and fathers in Sweden vary over time around the separation. The study supports that both selection- and causal effects explain parents’ sick leave patterns. Clear peaks in sick leave rates during the separation year indicate a crisis effect among mothers and fathers across educational levels. Sick leave patterns following the separation show that mothers experience cumulatively growing sick leave rates compared to partnered mothers that exceed the initial peak, while fathers, especially those with primary education, have chronically higher long-term sick leave rates compared to partnered fathers.
62.
Palmtag, Eva-Lisa, 1982-
(author)
Breaking down break-ups : Studies on the heterogeneity in (adult) children’s outcomes following a parental separation
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
This thesis comprises three studies investigating heterogeneity in children’s outcomes post parental separation. The studies analyse diversity in outcomes after parental separation, applying both a retrospective long-term approach and a child perspective. The aim is to identify conditions that might buffer negative outcomes, intensify them or add additional stress. The data used comes from the nationally representative Swedish Level of Living Survey (LNU). The first two studies (I and II), take a long-term perspective to investigate outcomes among adult children of divorce or separation compared to adult children from intact families, emphasizing the diversity among separated families. Study III takes a short-term perspective to further understand the diversity in the parent-child relationship after separation.Study I focuses on the link between four post-separation childhood circumstances – inter-parental conflict, post-separation contacts with the non-resident parent, age at separation, and the experience of living with a stepparent – and later parent-child contact. The results show that a separation in childhood associates with later intergenerational contact. In general, adult children with separated parents have less frequent contact with their parents compared to children in intact families. Lowest rate of contact is found within the father-child subsystem as the father tends to be the non-resident parent. However, children with regular contact with the non-resident parent showed higher rates of adult contact with the father, without the contact with the mother being negatively influenced. These results support equal contact distribution between children and both parents in childhood after a parental separation.Study II uses a similar approach but focuses on variance in the adult child’s health and the main heterogeneity aspect under investigation is family conflicts. The results show that both parental separation and conflicts in the childhood family associates with children’s self-rated health in adulthood. Although parental separation can lower the degree of parental conflict, parent-child conflicts are still associated with a higher risk of less than good self-rated health in adulthood after controlling for separation. These results support the spillover hypothesis and suggest that parental quarrels spill over into the parent-child relationship. It underlines the importance of considering children’s own participation in family concerns during childhood.Study III applies a “here and now” approach and investigate how children’s perception of the relationships with their parents is influenced by residence arrangements and other post-separation circumstances. The findings indicate that shared residence arrangements enable children to maintain a social relationship with both parents post-separation to a higher degree compared with children in a sole parental residence. Additionally, the study found no significant difference in emotional support seeking patterns between children in shared residence arrangement and those in intact families. These results support previous research highlighting the benefits of shared residence when it comes to maintaining high levels of parent-child contact as well as support after the parental break-up. Collectively, these three studies contribute to the field of family sociology and separation (divorce) research by providing new insights into the effects of parental separation on child outcomes.
63.
Persson, Max, 1990-
(author)
Turning Privilege Into Merit : Elite Schooling, Identity, and the Reproduction of Meritocratic Belief
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Previous research on meritocratic ideology and elite adolescent identity has mainly approached it from the outside, understanding meritocratic identity as a rhetorical cover to justify privilege. Through a frame analytic approach this study nurtures a phenomenological insider perspective, exploring through a one-year ethnography how adolescents at an elite high school experience, negotiate and perform identity in the tension between the school’s institutional definition of identity and their everyday life as young adults.The findings show that the students relied on a ‘meritocratic frame’ to make sense of situations in the school. First-year students framed situations as meritocratic competition, which positioned them as individual antagonists. The students were engrossed in competition, which reinforced their belief in meritocracy as unequivocal and in themselves as genuine meritocrats. Third-year students framed situations as if meritocratic competition was over—they had endured it together—engrossing them in the shared sense of being a meritocratically tested elite collective. These findings indicate how elite schools contribute to reproduce belief in meritocracy, shaping the students’ sense of who they genuinely are and what the world truly is. Furthermore, the meritocratic frame hides certain aspects of situations, so that students tacitly agree to find social class and ethnic background, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘un-noticeable.’ This inattention denied students from disadvantaged backgrounds to challenge the exclusion they experienced, and simultaneously allowed advantaged students to experience elite belonging as achieved rather than inherited. Nonetheless, the impression of meritocracy was fragile and sometimes doubted and challenged as when students evoked the ‘privilege frame,’ bringing class, ethnicity and exclusion back in.In addition to the situational condition of shared engrossment, the thesis points to two central conditions that contribute to foster and maintain belief in the meritocratic impression. On the one hand, the study shows how the students learn a local and institutionally supported definition of merit and are tacitly trained in the meritocratic game, acquiring the skill to turn social background, popularity and self-confidence into legitimate merit. On the other hand, the study points out the relation between situational framing and structurally determined socialization patterns, indicating that the class and ethnically privileged students have learned the meritocratic frame from experiences in families and previous schooling, while students from dominated backgrounds tend to have been socialized into applying the privilege frame, being more prone to see through the meritocratic impression by drawing attention to how social background structures inclusion and exclusion.
64.
Raoust, Gabriel
(author)
Decision-making in obstetric emergencies. Individual differences and professional boundaries.
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In affluent nations, variations in obstetric care, particularly during emergencies, perplexingly manifest in differing intervention and outcome rates. Although these variations mirror systemic disparities, they are also suggested to reflect the interplay of social and professional interactions between obstetricians/gynecologists and midwives, stemming from adherence to distinct professional paradigms and the influence of personal factors on decision-making and collaboration. This thesis sought to unpack these complexities by exploring individual differences and professional perspectives in decision-making during obstetric emergencies through a blend of interpretive and statistical approaches in a series of studies.Utilizing a narrative methodology with in-depth interviews and subsequent thematic analysis, Papers I and IV investigated the experiences of obstetricians/gynecologists (N=17) and midwives (N=27) during obstetric emergencies. Paper I used images of artwork as associative triggers in interviews, helping to illuminate decisionmakingprocesses, while Paper IV critically evaluated its thematic findings through the sociological lens of “boundary work”. Concurrently, Papers II and III employed psychometric instruments, including online questionnaires and the Five Factor Model personality test, to collect and analyze data from obstetricians/gynecologists and midwives (N = 472 for Paper II and N = 447 for Paper III). This involved investigating variables, such as Decision-Making styles, Negative Impact of Inductions, Healthcare Crisis Experience, and Job Satisfaction, alongside personality dimensions and complementary variables through various statistical tests.The studies revealed a diversity of findings: Paper I highlights that obstetricians/gynecologists navigate flexible decision-making environments, crystallizing into one of three distinct styles intertwining with their identities and practice narratives. Paper II unveils a specific personality profile among obstetricians/gynecologists and demonstrates correlations between personality traits, particularly Neuroticism, and distinct decision-making styles, while spotlightinggender and experience as significant influential factors. Paper III identifies divergent perspectives between the professions regarding labor inductions and job satisfaction, and highlights correlations among job satisfaction, views on labor inductions, and Neuroticism. Lastly, Paper IV underscores the multifaceted roles of midwives, who navigate, and sometimes resist, medical hierarchies to advocate for women’s physical and emotional well-being during childbirth, in a manner reshaping healthcare norms yet potentially sustaining historical tensions with obstetricians/gynecologists.This research highlights the intricate ways in which the personal and professional identities of obstetricians/gynecologists and midwives impact decision-making during obstetric emergencies. These insights invite a thoughtful reevaluation: How can training, support systems, and collaboration be recalibrated to encompass theseinfluential dynamics comprehensively? How can we as practitioners create work environments that not only acknowledge but also actively integrate varied personal perspectives and professional values and goals?
65.
Rasan, Imad
(author)
Women in the public sphere in Egypt : 2011–2014
2023. - 1
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Through interviews, many documents and secondary data, this dissertation investigates how fifty-four women activists participated in the public sphere in Egypt from the outbreak of the 2011 uprising to the re-emergence of the authoritarian regime in 2014. The women activists studied in the dissertation took part in various counter-publics of social movements, opposition political parties, and civic engagement. Their aim was to influence the political scene at large by participating as women and as citizens in ways that placed their demands within the broader context of the national revolutionary discourse. At the same time, they increased their visibility through participation in the face of various constraints, including the patriarchal order and masculine norms at the family, community, and societal levels while challenging the regime’s repression.The findings of the dissertation emphasise ‘participation’ as encompassing collectivity – which here refers to the process of accessing the public sphere – and visibility – which refers to the content of this participation thereafter. The findings give us a new perspective on how women pushed gender boundaries in different contexts in the public sphere and how they developed a new agency through which they employed different strategies to overcome their exclusion and marginalisation. The findings show how they consciously resisted acting and being portrayed as agents of a liberal/secular Western discourse or submitting to cultural nationalists and Islamists who regard them as victims of an anticolonial nationalist discourse.
66.
Rodineliussen, Rasmus, 1990-
(author)
Underwater Worlds : An Ethnography of Waste, Pollution, and Marine Life
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In this dissertation, I investigate relations between humans, waste, pollution, and marine life. I introduce the concept of Aquabiopolitics as a means to understand how humans govern life in water in order to enrich human life on land. The study focuses on the Baltic Sea and Lake Mälaren, using Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, as the connection point. Throughout the dissertation, I explore how human practices over time have had devastating effects on marine life and continue to have so today. The dissertation engages with the marine world through underwater ethnography to provide a perspective on water from below the surface. In this endeavor, I employ the assistance of marine scientists and trash scuba divers who are jointly invested in tracking human maltreatment of water and finding solutions for treating water differently in the future. We will follow the scientists on expeditions at sea and to their laboratories in order to learn about their methods and relations to underwater worlds. Together with the trash scuba divers, we will dive into the dark murky waters around Stockholm—experiencing what it is like to move below water, among sharp and toxic waste, without any visibility. The work of creating a knowing and caring relationship between humans and water is of key importance to both scientists and divers. Therefore, one of the main parts of this dissertation is to analyze how, and if, this relationship can be created: via social media, images, installations, or other means. For as the divers often say: Water is Life. Make it Important!
67.
Samzelius, Hanna, 1975-
(author)
Bakom bonusfamiljen : Kvinnliga föräldrapartners och partnerdöttrars omsorgsgörande
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
The purpose of the thesis is to contribute new knowledge about how relationships and care in stepfamilies are constructed, negotiated and renegotiated over time. The study is based on life-story-interviews with stepdaughters and stepmothers about their experiences of care from the beginning of the relationships until the stepdaughter has children of her own. The following questions have guided the analysis: 1) How is care done and negotiated over time? 2) What values, principles and/or motives emerge as important in exercising care? 3) How is good care portrayed in the stories? 4) What events and circumstances are portrayed as significant in terms of the change in the relationships and the practices of care? The study’s perspective is that both families and care are best viewed as negotiated and moral practices. The study shows that the housework and significant emotional work was done by the stepmothers, in the stepdaughters´ childhood as well as in adulthood. While the stepdaughters wanted to feel like the stepmothers´ own children, it was seen as taboo for her to claim a place or title as mother or grandmother, make decisions, set boundaries or have opinions about finances. The principle of “children’s best interests”, together with gender structures, seemed to limit the ability of the stepmother to choose how care was done if it should be perceived as being of good quality. On the other hand, the fact that the adult stepdaughter made a distinction between caring for her biological mother and stepmother was perceived as morally defensible and almost self-evident. The motives for the stepdaughter to provide care seemed to be about emotional closeness or reciprocity, rather than obligation. The study suggests that relationships between stepdaughters and stepmothers are more fragile than those between parents and their own children. The care during the step-daughter’s childhood had an impact on the development of the adult relationship. Moreover, the relationship could be renegotiated after some identi-fied turning points: the stepdaughter´s move away from home, a separation between parent and stepparent, and the stepdaughter’s own parenting. After such events, the relationship could become both closer as well as more distanced. The findings show how the care practices are partly detached from blood ties and legal ties but stuck in conceptions of gender.
68.
Storgaard, Asbjørn
(author)
A potential for democratic emancipation? : Policy and discretionary practices in probation service
2023. - 1
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
How can offender supervision in the execution of state-sanctioned punishment integrate instances of democratic emancipation and thereby inspire participatory citizenship for disenfranchised clients?This project balances an interest in social work and its prospects for delivering emancipation through motivational agency, on the one hand, with an attentiveness to recent developments in Scandinavian criminal policy, on the other. In an attempt to “bridge” these interests, the research focuses on offender rehabilitation. The dissertation comprises two empirical parts. Firstly, it presents a document analysis in a Scandinavian context wherein certain developments toward penal populism and managerialism (a managerial turn) in the discourse on offender rehabilitation are identified. The empirical basis for this part are policy documents such as white papers, organizational strategies and political framework agreements. Secondly, it consists of an ethnographically inspired analysis of empirical materials collected during field work in two local Danish probation offices where I took part in the daily routines, incl. supervisory meetings and team exercises, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with probation officers and their clients. The dissertation is based on a social constructionist perspective and the analyses primarily rely on discourse and discretion theory. The policy documents studied in the first part constitute a distal context for the day-to-day work in the offices. Yet, through the various analyses it is argued that the managerialist tendencies identified in the documents are reflected in the offices and impact the beliefs and practices of the probation officers via the intensive presence of office manuals. These manuals, it is argued, link the distal to the immediate as they micro-manage and streamline not only documentation and case-handling but also the probation officers’ the rehabilitative efforts. It is argued that insofar as these rehabilitative efforts are so comprehensively scripted, the prospect of such efforts facilitating platforms upon which clients may genuinely and sustainably realize their democratic worth and participatory ability is questionable. Consequently, particular interest is paid to subtle instances in which the probation officers’ rehabilitative or emancipatory practices, and the motivations behind them, seem to transgress the manual-based reality of the offices. These transgressive acts are theorized and conceptualized as instances of “democratic emancipation”, as they produce a less scripted situation that allows for genuine participation and greater self-determination. In the offices, democratic emancipation manifests in exceptional social situations in which the probation officers, in their own words, “go out of their way” or “help outside the box”. Yet, these are also elusive situations, not always recognized or intended as such by the probation officers, as they manifest like everyday interactions between client and probation officer where they seamlessly “go off script”. Identifying these situations empirically, describing the ways in which they disrupt the manual-based reality in the offices, as well as theorizing their emancipatory potential, constitute the main findings of this dissertation.
69.
Sunnerfjell, Jon, 1986
(author)
Un-learning to labour? Activating the unemployed in a former industrial community
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
In the aftermath of automation and globalisation of production, the Western welfare states have come to leave industrial society behind in favour of an increasingly competitive and service-oriented economy. Nevertheless, there are many environments whose inhabitants still identify with the culture that developed in typical industrial communities. In addition to high unemployment rates, these environments are often burdened by a situated lack of study tradition whereby unemployed people still aspire to occupy manual labour despite a lack of such jobs. This thesis examines the attempts to break with the reproduction of a manual working-class culture in a former industrial community in Sweden. Using ethnographic methods, it explores how so-called activation policy intending to reduce public expenditures on economic benefits in favour of fostering responsible and employable individuals, is translated locally given the community’s situated rationality. With theoretical inspiration from the governmentality perspective, literature on social class, as well as Boltanski and Thévenot’s economicsociological pragmatism, the analysis shows how the municipality’s translation of activation policy tended to incorporate rather than transform a manual working-class culture in the activation of unemployed. The thesis argues that this hindered the market imperatives and logic of self-realisation pervading activation policy to take root in the activation schemes. Furthermore, the thesis points to how concepts such as inclusion and exclusion, which are central to the active society orientation, appeared ambiguous in light of unemployed who already nurtured a sense of belonging and social attachment. By deepening our understanding of situated rationalities and how they may compete with the logic imbuing supranational policy recommendations on activation and active inclusion, these are conclusions of interest to both policy makers and actors involved in the activation of unemployed locally.
70.
Thaning, Max, 1987-
(author)
Social Mobilities : Multidimensionality, Operationalization, and Subgroup Heterogeneity
2023
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic) abstract
Social mobility is a key concern for societies, as it reflects levels of inequality, life chances, and fairness. A higher mobility rate implies that individuals are less constrained by their family origins. In this dissertation, I explore which parental resources matter, whether transfer patterns are shaped by the parent–child configuration of socio-economic status (SES) resources, how such resources should be operationalized, and whether subgroups differ in social mobility rates. The aim is to go beyond a unidimensional view of social mobility and more systematically explore the existence of social mobilities. Study I addresses how different dimensions of parents’ SES in education, occupation, income, and wealth are associated with educational attainment in secondary tracks and tertiary fields of study. Our results show that there is strong segregation by parents’ SES. However, the association of social background dimensions to educational attainment is not uniform but differs by the combination of dimension and track or field. This selection process by social origin is also linked to future inequality in chances of tertiary graduation and expected earnings. Study II focuses on how to best combine information on parental SES in studies of intergenerational inequality. We assess how much of the sibling correlations in continuous measures of education, occupation, and earnings are accounted for by parents’ SES in the same dimensions using different operationalizations. In conclusion, parental averages are an attractive and parsimonious one-variable alternative that is preferred over the conventional dominance approach, although the highest explanatory power is attributed to models using two parental measures and an interaction term. Study III highlights how multiple parental SES resources are transmitted over corresponding child outcomes. The findings suggest, first, that transmission is particular to given parental and child resource configurations (resource specificity). Second, within-resource transmission implies that the same parental resource as the child outcome matters most in the transmission of advantage. Third, resource transmission follows an SES proximity pattern, where parental education is least correlated with child income and parental income is least correlated with children’s education—with parental occupation in between. The bias resulting from ignoring multidimensionality is estimated to an upper bound of 31 percent, with considerable confounding bias found as well. Study IV is centered on subgroup heterogeneity in social mobility. I propose a three-stage evaluation process that goes beyond a conventional examination of group mean and effect differences using prediction methods. Prediction allows for gauging subgroup-specific changes in explanatory power and comparing the level of uncertainty that each subgroup faces. Although the conventional interpretation of interactive models shows some support for subgroup heterogeneity, predictive results indicate minimal improvements in fit. However, subgroup differences in idiosyncratic error, or the subgroup level of uncertainty in outcomes, suggest substantial heterogeneity. In sum, the interpretation of coefficients and graphical analysis of interactions can be contextualized by expanding the criteria for assessing subgroup heterogeneity. Ultimately this leads to a better understanding of subgroup particularities, thus guiding future research toward richer answers.
