1.
Jansson, Tobias, 1988
(författare)
Vem får stanna? Om politiska problemrepresentationer av rätten att stanna i Sverige 1936–1989
2023
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In 2015, the Swedish government restricted the right to stay in Sweden, to reduce the number of asylum seekers seeking protection in the country. Since then, it has established a restrictive migration policy that only allows people who require a residence permit to stay permanently if they become self-sufficient and are strictly law abiding. Based on a genealogical approach, the aim of this thesis is to analyze changes concerning the right to stay during the period 1936–1989, to make visible assumptions and conditions that underlie a contemporary understanding of this right. This concretely means analyzing the problem representations that precede changes in immigration legislation and related government guidelines, the assumptions on which these are based, as well as the effects in the form of technologies of government that follow from different problem representations. The data comprises 13 government reports and government bills published between 1936–1989. The study’s theoretical framework rest on a Foucauldian approach, combined with combined with selected parts from Bacchi’s analytical framework ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’, and analytical concepts from governmentality research and critical border studies. The analysis shows that problem representations of the right to stay during the studied periods (1930s, 1950s, 1960s and 1980s) have recurringly rested on an underlying assumption that the state is responsible for creating an ordered society. This kind of assumption has legitimized problem constructions and subsequent conditions for the right to stay – historically as well as in 2015 – as a way of achieving such an ideal. Although this type of assumption has existed for a long time, it has taken on a different meaning and form in relation to different discourses. For example, an assumption of state responsibility for an ordered society was clearly linked to an equality discourse during the 1960s, leading to state welfare initiatives as solutions to ‘the problem’. Following from the individualized, workfare discourse of 2015, however, the solutions to contemporary problem representations and underlying assumptions instead target individual asylum seekers, requiring them to prove that they deserve the right to stay permanently in Swedish society by becoming self-sufficient subjects. Moreover, governance within Swedish migration control has undergone multiple shifts during the studied periods, alternating between focusing on controlling territorial borders and making non-citizens in the country adapt to national norms. The contemporary use of temporary residence permits to discipline those granted residence permits towards norms of being self-sufficient and law-abiding thus contains clear traces of historical modes of governance. This study has shown, among other things, that problem representations of the right to stay continuously rest on distinctions between deserving and underserving categories of migrants, although these categories have altered over time. Historically and at present, categories such as ‘bogus refugees’ and socalled unwanted aliens – with ‘socio-economic’ or criminal motivations – have been constructed as undeserving, while hard-working and law-abiding migrants have been constructed as deserving. These constructions have linked the right to stay to notions of who is a ‘good’ citizen and has influenced people’s access to social work services. At the same time, the study has shown that historical problem representations provide political alternatives, such as the possibility to represent problems of the right to stay based on people’s basic need for security.
2.
Lagerlöf, Hannes
(författare)
Conditional Progress: Technical Rationality and Wicked Problems in Nuclear Waste Management
2023
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
While various states and enterprises have produced nuclear power for decades, that is, demonstrated the functionality of the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to power production, the waste that is simultaneously produced has been provisionally stored awaiting a safe solution. Still, no country has implemented such a solution. Nuclear waste is both dangerous and notoriously controversial, implying a range of social and technical problems. However, according to prevailing assertions in nuclear waste management (NWM), lingering concerns have now been addressed and definitive solutions are ready to be implemented. In this thesis, I problematize these claims. By asserting that NWM constitutes a ‘wicked problem’ – that is, a problem to which there is no ‘silver bullet’ solution, only a set of suboptimal options to choose from – my ambition is to produce knowledge of that which has remained unsolved, de-emphasized, sacrificed, or even suppressed as NWM has progressed. Rather than understanding NWM as progressing because it has solved remaining problems, I ask how progression is possible in spite of the insolubility of these problems. Points of departure like my own are marginal in previous research. Albeit sometimes critical, research has far from exhausted critical perspectives readily available for social scientists. I argue that such concepts are a viable future research route. To contribute to formulating a more critical research path, I turn to science and technology studies (STS) because this field contemplates a broader range of sociotechnical issues than does most NWM research. However, STS has increasingly come to elaborate theoretically on instances in which sociotechnical configurations are made unstable, change occurs, and actors challenge taken-for-granted scientific facts and technologies. My core observation is that such a focus downplays the significance of stability and inertia, which I hold to be far more prevalent phenomena in NWM. With a few caveats, I propose that these aspects of NWM can be understood using ‘critical constructivism’, that is, an alloy of the Frankfurt School’s critical procedure and STS. By emphasizing the critical legacy of critical constructivism – primarily by borrowing the concept of ‘technical rationality’ – I argue that NWM’s progress can be understood in new ways. Empirically – by means of participant observation and textual analysis – I engage with four NWM sites, both locally and internationally. In Study I, we study how contradictory social interests in NWM were concealed by means of technical consensus and the production of technicaliv standards at the European policy level. In Study II, I seek to understand why a scientific controversy over copper corrosion remained the main issue in a Swedish court of law for technical and nontechnical actors alike, and why the broader implications of nuclear power and NWM were not made explicit. In Study III, I analyse the Swedish nuclear industry’s tactics to secure consent in order to prevent opposition in a local community where a final repository for spent nuclear fuel will be built. In Study IV, we analyse how internationally influential implementers conceive of public emotions, and how implementers foresee the transformation of public emotions to facilitate the implementation of repositories. On an aggregate level, the individual studies together show the ways in which NWM – in order to implement geological disposal – depresses and excludes reasonable objections that could challenge NWM’s biases or expose its historical contingencies and preconditions. In the prevailing culture of NWM and its technical rationality, one of the few areas in which critique is still seen as legitimate is in strictly technical domains. The scrutiny of scientific and technical detail is recognized as viable because of its association with technical rationality, taking precedence over other forms of critical procedures based on, for example, the lived experience of technology and/or ethical concerns. A core conclusion that I draw, and that is enabled through the deployment of critical constructivism – is that the material nature of nuclear waste has rendered irreversible damage to the prospects of achieving change in the field.
3.
Sunnerfjell, Jon, 1986
(författare)
Un-learning to labour? Activating the unemployed in a former industrial community
2023
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) 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.
4.
Andersson Malmros, Robin
(författare)
Translating grand challenges into municipal organizing : Prevention of terrorism, extremism, and radicalization in Scandinavia
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis investigates why and how municipalities organize to address grand challenges. Previous research shows that municipalities have increased their policymaking and organizing in relation to grand challenges, often without any national regulations forcing them to do so. The rationales, processes, and mechanisms underpinning this type of municipal voluntarism are understudied. The research is based on the case of Scandinavian municipalities and their efforts to prevent terrorism, extremism, and radicalization (TER). From playing a miniscule role in Scandinavian counter-terrorism policies until the 2010s, municipal employees such as teachers, social workers, and youth workers have in current practice become the backbone of the fight against TER. Municipalities generally have little or no strategic or practical experience of preventing TER, resulting in extensive uncertainty and ambiguity as to how to organize the relevant efforts. In this thesis, the process leading from grand challenge to municipal organizing is framed as a translation process. The analysis uses concepts from sociological institutional theory and social movement studies, and is informed by data from newspaper articles, municipal policies, interviews, and observations. The findings are presented in four papers. This thesis shows how the decentralization of a grand challenge from being an international or national to a municipal responsibility is a multi-layered, highly discursive translation process that is dependent on reframing a challenge as a local one. Regarding TER, the local frame was based on a new institutional vocabulary, triggered and legitimized by critical events, which elite actors used to localize the grand challenge. Once localized, institutional pressure was exerted on municipalities to organize preventive efforts. While institutional pressure caused rapid organizational activity, it also led to the ambiguous translation and editing of concepts and preventive approaches with unintended, paradoxical, and problematic consequences. Many of the observed organizing activities centered on rhetorical efforts to legitimize the challenge and its associated concepts and practices. This was a consequence of the grand challenge being contested locally, since it introduced a new institutional logic that conflicted with those dominating the local institutional context.
5.
Hunehäll Berndtsson, Kristina, 1977
(författare)
Digitala sexuella trakasserier i skolan: Elevperspektiv på sexting, utsatthet och jämställdhet
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Att sexta, innebär att dela självproducerade foton eller videoklipp med naket eller halvnaket innehåll av sexuell karaktär. Delningen sker genom att en person själv skickar, tar emot eller vidarebefordra sexuella foton eller videoklipp. Samhällsfenomenet ”dickpics” är en specifik form av sexting och handlar om när pojkar skickar bilder av könsorgan. När flickor skickar nakenbilder på motsvarande sätt benämns dessa bilder oftast som ”nudes”. Sexting kan upplevas som kränkande om samtycke saknas. Digitala sexuella trakasserier definieras i avhandlingen som bild- eller filmbaserade sexuella trakasserier. Avhandling är en sammanläggningsavhandling bestående av tre fackgranskade artiklar och ett fackgranskat bokkapitel. Delstudierna syftar till att undersöka elevers erfarenheter av sexting och digitala sexuella trakasserier i årskurs 9 och hur dessa erfarenheter påverkar ungdomarna, både individuellt och som grupp. Studien är designad som en fallstudie innehållande tre grundskolor, belägna i olika socioekonomiska och geografiska områden i Sverige. Elevernas berättelser av forskningsämnet har samlats in genom fokusgruppsintervjuer, parintervjuer och individuella intervjuer. Teoretiska perspektiv på kön, klass, sexualitet, sexuella trakasserier och sårbarhet används för att undersöka maktförhållanden i ungdomars sociala relationer inom skolan. Avhandlingen visar att både flickor och pojkar utsätts för digitala sexuella trakasserier i skolvardagen. Problematiken är komplex, beroende på att sexting missbrukas på ett flertal olika sätt. Via Snapchat får elever oönskade dickpics och nudes skickade till sig från skolkamrater. Nakenbilder eller videoklipp som först skickats i samförstånd mellan två personer, kan senare missbrukas genom att de olovandes delas med andra. Elever blir också lurade eller hotade av skolkamrater till att skicka nakenbilder eller sexuella videoklipp; explicita sextingmeddelanden som sedan visas upp bland kamrater eller sprids på skolan. Resultatet indikerar att elevernas erfarenheter av sextingproblematik tar sig delvis skilda uttryck på de olika skolorna. Skillnaderna kan förstås utifrån dominerande klass- och könsnormer inom de lokala skolkulturerna. Ungdomar saknar däremot ofta både socialt stöd och tillfredställande strategier för att bemöta och hantera digitala sexuella trakasserier i skolvardagen. För utsatta elever kan följderna bli svåra, både emotionellt och socialt, de löper risker som slutshaming, mobbning och psykisk ohälsa.
6.
Mac Innes, Hanna, 1980
(författare)
Older people in Sweden – Age at migration, poverty and utilization of long-term care services
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis studies the significance of age at migration for labor market integration and old-age poverty, as well as the utilization of long-term care services by older people. This thesis comprises four studies. All four are empirical studies using register data from National Board of Health and Welfare and Statistics Sweden, comprising a total population. The results showed that age at migration is a strong predictor for labor market integration compared to other factors such as educational level and number of children. Time until getting a first foothold in the labor market increases rapidly with age at migration, starting already at age 40+. This has implications for the financial situation in older age. Findings of this thesis show that the risk of being both income and wealth poor increases with rising age at migration. This thesis also show that every third person born in a low-income country are booth income and wealth poor. Meanwhile the equivalent number among Swedish born older persons is nearly one percent. Later in life, migration may imply a disadvantage in relation to the labor market and increased poverty in older age. However, when it comes to LTCS, utilization in older age there is a different pattern. The results from this study suggest that late in life migration does not have to imply lower utilization of LTCS. Findings show substantial heterogeneity across and within different birth countries. Although migrating later in life may increase the risk of being poor in older age, it seems as the LTCS are relatively equally distributed across different income groups among Swedish and foreign-born older persons. The Inverse Care Law states that those who most need care are least likely to receive it, while those with least care needs tend to care services more. The results show that that the Inverse Care Law does not apply to the utilization of LTCS by Swedish-born older people, nor by the majority of older migrants. However, the Inverse Care Law does appear to operate for older persons born in low-income countries who do not have a partner.
7.
Mwanika, Kassim
(författare)
COMMERCIAL SUGARCANE FARMING AND RURAL YOUTH LIVELIHOODS IN EASTERN UGANDA
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Commercial farming is a pathway for pro-poor growth because of its economic linkages such as jobs and incomes. However, most of the available studies of commercial farming are largely generic, leaving a dearth of evidence about what it means for population categories such as the youth. Anchored in a capitalist development lens, this study examined the implications of sugarcane farming for rural youth livelihoods in Eastern Uganda. Using a structured questionnaire, interviews and Focus Group Discussions and observation checklists, both quantitative and qualitative data was collected about youth involvement in sugarcane farming, with particular attention to the implications for youth livelihoods and enhancing their outcomes from sugarcane farming. The study reveals a suboptimal impact of sugarcane farming on youth livelihoods in Busoga. Due to a lack of requisite resources, the youth are incorporated into sugarcane farming through circuits of labour, which are hinged on land and financial constraints. Their proletariat class exposes the youth to imperatives of dialectical labour relations such as arbitrary exploitation, and harsh working conditions in physically demanding and low paying sugarcane jobs. Rather than solving youth livelihood vulnerabilities, sugarcane farming is an enclave for well-off groups and local compradors. Thus access to sugarcane jobs seldom guarantees decent youth livelihoods manifested by low purchasing power to acquire assets, and afford education and food. The situation is exacerbated by structural constraints such as a lack of labour regulation and sugarcane price volatility which affect the trickle-down effects of sugarcane farming on the youth. Commercial farming should be coupled with mechanisms that address individual youth constraints and the structural traps embedded in capitalist large-scale farming.
8.
Persdotter, Josefin, 1985
(författare)
Menstrual dirt - An exploration of contemporary menstrual hygiene practices in Sweden
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Menstrual Dirt is a sociological study of how some aspects of menstruation come into being as dirty phenomenon, both in material and symbolic terms. Through engaging with a variety of empirical material Persdotter explores the everyday details of menstrual hygiene practices: how people roll their used pads, dispose their menstrual waste, wash their bloody genitals, change and clean their menstrual cups, clean toilets, and wash dirty clothes and carpets, and much more. With a theoretical basis in Mary Douglas’ arguments surrounding dirt as symbolic pollution, Persdotter explores the symbolic underpinnings of menstrual pollution, while also exploring the materiality and sensoriality of menstrual dirt, as well as adding a focus on the personal and emotional consequences of dirt and pollution. Persdotter employs primarily qualitative research methods, but the empirical material utilized in the study includes both in-depth interviews (12 interviewees) as well as survey data (445 respondents), and documents, commercials, online discussions, and de-scription of selected menstrual technologies. The thesis focuses on two specific technologies: the disposable pad and the reusable cup. The results showcase how everyday practices and technologies take part in the (re)enactment of ideas of menstrual pollution as well as material, sensory and emotional experiences of menstrual dirt. The thesis elaborates on these processes in four analytical chapters. Two revolve around the pad and explore dirt and pollution in relation to wearing the pad, and in relation to disposing of a used pad. Two revolve around the cup and explore the cup as a dirty and/or polluted object in itself, and the practice of changing (exerting, emptying, reinserting) as a practice that can make other objects dirty. Through using analytical tools from Science and Technology Studies, this thesis provides insights on the many heterogeneous actors and factors that take part in making menstruation into a matter of dirt and/or pollution. It explores technological, material and embodied aspects of that which critical menstruation scholarship often have regarded as merely social. This thesis adds to Critical Menstruation Studies also in shedding light on how pollution-beliefs, concealment imperatives and stigmatization of menstruation come into being in everyday practices. Through studying a Swedish context, it makes visible how a polluted status of menstruation can come into being in a Western society with a comparatively high level of gender equality and menstrual activism. Moreover, this research contributes to sociological explorations on dirt, and expands on the ways in which dirt can be utilized as an analytical tool, as well as facilitate greater understanding of the world around us, as well as exemplifying how exploring the seemingly trivial and inconsequential can make visible invisible how gendered inequalities are maintained and reaffirmed. Persdotter argues that exploring makings of menstrual pollution and dirt offers a sociological opportunity to make visible naturalized, routinized and trivialized practices and technologies in our everyday lives, and opening them up as more problematic, less given and more possible to change.
9.
Pettersson, Jane, 1973
(författare)
Governing citizens in the age of financialization: A study of Swedish financial education
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In contemporary Western capitalist societies, the state has increasingly withdrawn from its role as welfare provider, while financial institutions, actors, products, and narratives play an increasingly important part not only in global and national economies, but also in everyday life and thus for societies as a whole. This development is described by scholars as financialization and the financialization of everyday life. Contributing to this scholarly field, this dissertation examines Swedish financial education and the case of the Gilla din ekonomi (Like your personal finance) financial education network and its attempt to create financial subjects who embrace this development and its rationale. The overall aim of this dissertation is to describe and understand the different levels of problematization and practices of financial education, on a policy implementation level, by the study of educational practices, and through the study of how financial education occurs in the everyday lives of the people such initiatives are intended to govern. I do this by investigating financial education from several angles. First, I situate financial education and the problematization of Swedish consumers in the local context of time and place, i.e., in relation to contemporary and historical political discourse and practice. Second, I investigate the translation from policy to practice, showing how consumers are problematized by categorization, and by examining what role emotions play in fostering responsible and rational financial subjects. Through the theoretical lens of governmentality and sociology of emotions, I thus explore how the practices of financial education rely on emotions as a governing technique. Finally, I explore the subjects’ reactions to such governing attempts and their different problematizations, and strategies of resistance in encounters with financial education. In this way, this thesis contributes to and builds on previous research that understands financial education as governmentality in the age of financialization, i.e., the three aspects considered above constitute different methods of influencing the conduct of subjects—by conveying certain ideas, norms, and emotions—to align with and counter conduct, prevailing discourses of what constitutes “good” financial behavior. In summary, I argue that Swedish state-led financial education is a case of financialization of everyday life. Governing citizens’ financial knowledge and behavior has been a political issue since financialization took off in the 1980s. The results of the three studies in this dissertation show that the purpose of financial education is to guide and educate citizens into active, responsible financial subjects. Financial education does this by teaching course participants how to both think and emotionally relate to financial markets and products. Course attendees are taught to take care of, and take responsibility for, their financial well-being through activities such as planning for their future retirement and saving money by investing, while avoiding “bad” financial products and thus avoiding over-indebtedness. Nevertheless, the analysis showed that course attendees (re)acted by problematization, and conducted themselves counter to the encouragement to become financially savvy as they related the teachings to other life concerns that were inconsistent with the financial subjectivity they were encouraged to perform.
10.
Rogat, Mauricio, 1982
(författare)
Even flows and deferred lives: The logistification of migrant settlement in Sweden
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In 2016, rebuilt containers and barracks accommodating so-called ‘newly arrived immigrants’ started to appear in Stockholm, Sweden. People who had been on the move for an extensive time, staying in refugee camps, and transit, reception and asylum centres, found themselves again in a state of deferral, this time within the refuge of the nation-state. This dissertation aims to deepen the understanding of how new thresholds arise and materialise, extending the migration trajectory within the nation-state. To this end, the dissertation attends to conflicting policies, bureaucratic practices and local conditions, focusing primarily on the logic and implementation of the Settlement Act, a Swedish dispersal policy enacted in the wake of the ‘summer of migration’ in 2015. The new law aimed to speed up the transition of ‘newly arrived immigrants’ into the labour market by creating ‘even flows’ between asylum centres and municipal accommodation. More specifically, this dissertation explores how the practices of deferral are enacted in the implementation of the Settlement Act through three separate empirical domains: 1) calculations of the dispersal and matching system at the state level, 2) municipal management and the dwellers’ experiences of temporary accommodation and resettlement in Stockholm, and 3) the professional and social dimensions of the encounters between street-level bureaucrats and ‘newly arrived immigrants’. The dissertation builds on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in Stockholm between 2018 and 2019. It comprises participant observations and interviews with officials and with ‘newly arrived immigrants’ living in temporary housing. The dissertation brings together and analyses the separate empirical domains by drawing on the concept of the logistification of migration. This analytical lens encourages us to dissect the inclusive yet differential mechanisms in the migration apparatus, paying attention to the temporal management of circulation and mobility, on the one hand, and the ensuing friction and contestation, on the other hand. The dissertation argues that the logistification of migrant settlement management includes several practices that defer the housing shortage to sustain the acceleration from asylum centres to municipal accommodation, which produces a post-asylum threshold and incessant forced mobility. This continuous circulation of people operates as a filtering mechanism between asylum and integration, leading the ‘newly arrived immigrants’ into housing and labour precarity. Hence, the dissertation points to the linkages between the logistical management of settlement, practices of deferral and differential inclusion. This dissertation contributes to the growing literature dealing with the logistification of migration by following state policy through its implementation. While large parts of the literature on the logistification of migration have focused on the state level of managing migration and borders, this dissertation pays attention to how the logistification takes shape within the borders of the nation-state.
