1.
Stretmo, Live, 1977
(författare)
Governing the Unaccompanied Child - Media, Policy and Practice
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Through three different case studies, this thesis analyzes how unaccompanied minors are constructed and governed as a specific group of refugees in Norway and Sweden. The first study investigates the Norwegian and Swedish media debate from 2000-2008 by examining how incidences of so-called “missing unaccompanied children” were highlighted on the media agenda. Part of this has also been to analyze the specific official actions taken by Norwegian and Swedish authorities. The second study analyzes how unaccompanied minors were framed in a more broad selection of Norwegian and Swedish official policy between 2000-2010 by looking at how unaccompanied children and youngsters were singled out as subjects of knowledge, and the actions and practices that legitimized these constructions. These two case studies demonstrate that unaccompanied minors have been similarly problematized in Norway and Sweden, hence making similar changes in mode of conduct legitimate. They were sometimes singled out as vulnerable children or child victims, but concurrently also as possible strategic migrants (adults trying to pass as children, problematic youngsters, etc.). This poses different types of threats to the asylum system, thus justifying care-oriented amid control-oriented strategies in their regard. The third case study analyzes how a selection of caregivers (i.e., officials and support staff) talk about their work with unaccompanied youngsters and children, and describes how 10 youngsters give meaning to their experiences of being categorized as unaccompanied. The caregivers held a repertoire of various constructions that clearly connect to many of the official or public narrations. Sometimes unaccompanied minors are framed as respectable exceptions to other problem categories, and at other times as problematic youngsters in need of compensatory pedagogics in order to overcome specific shortcomings. These caregivers, plus the media and national policy, further frame unaccompanied minors as specific rights holders due to their position-ing as “any other child”, therefore legitimizing softer and more care-oriented strategies. The interviews with the 10 youngsters illustrate how they try to re-position themselves as positive exceptions to the official images of strategic or problematic youngsters highlighted in the media, policy and practice. This study identifies a discourse where a lot of consensus and agreement on problematizations coexist in Norwegian and Swedish policy, public narratives, and in how people in the micro context talk and make sense of unaccompanied minors.
2.
Lovén Seldén, Kristina, 1980
(författare)
Europafacklig samverkan. Problem och möjligheter
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The overarching aim of this thesis is to examine the conditions for cooperation among trade unions in Europe, and to identify factors making it easier or more difficult. The dissertation centers on two crucial areas: wage determination and working-time regulation. The theoretical framework combines theories of industrial relations regimes with ideas on meta-organizations, and an approach focusing on the power resources of trade unions. The empirical data was collected through a web survey sent by e-mail to all member organizations of the ETUC, all the ETUFs and trade unions just below the central level in 14 European countries. I also carried out interviews, made observations at trade union meetings and collected all kinds of documents. Trade unions in different countries and institutional settings were strategically selected for the interviews and the survey. In study I, I examine the revision of the EU Working Time Directive and how European trade unions and employer organizations have responded to this revision. Study II explores trade union attitudes towards issues of future wage setting on national and European level, and in particular, their attitudes towards statutory minimum wages. In study III I address the conditions for transnational trade union cooperation in the wake of the Laval case, and examine whether the case is perceived to have affected European trade union relations. Study IV, finally, focuses on trade union attitudes towards a European regulation of working time and whether these attitudes are related to what industrial regime the trade unions belong to. The article also compares the trade union approach to a European working time regulation with the approach to a European regulation of minimum wage. The analyses showed that comparative regime theory has quite large explanatory power as to various union attitudes towards certain regulations, strategies and cooperation in Europe. Whereas today there is increasing support among trade unions in Europe towards statutory minimum wages on European level, there is rejection of this solution among the Nordic unions who insist on keeping their system with negotiated wage-setting. The results can be understood with reference to differences in the domestic labour market and to the strength of the trade unions or, in other words, their membership and bargaining power. Trade unions in countries with high union density and strong collective bargaining power are inclined to preserve their current wage systems, whereas trade unions in countries with weak bargaining power are more likely to seek new ways to defend wages. However, as I argue based on the analyses, trade union attitudes towards transnational cooperation may also be issue-specific, which the case of a European working-time regulation illustrates. Although institutional differences between countries are important obstacles they cannot alone explain union cooperation or the lack of union cooperation in Europe.
3.
Petersson, Jesper, 1974
(författare)
Geographies of eHealth: Studies of Healthcare at a Distance
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis examines the proliferation of healthcare services using information and communication technology to overcome spatial and temporal obstacles. These services are given such names as telemedicine and telecare, which are sometimes grouped together as telehealthcare under the umbrella term eHealth. My main argument is that a prevalent and overoptimistic rhetoric of how the possibilities of digitalization are expected to produce a homogenous and ubiquitous healthcare space conceals many of the spatiotemporal complexities involved in introducing telehealthcare and in the overall organizing of healthcare. To counteract such simplifications, I contend that we need a relational understanding of the technical and the geographical as always nested in the social and vice versa. With such an approach, it is arguably possible to begin to tease apart the many spatiotemporal entanglements of these innovations and to trace their political ramifications. This position is developed by integrating perspectives from science and technology studies with insights from human geography. The four constituent papers of this thesis pursue this argument in qualitatively grounded case studies of telehealthcare and its geographies. Paper I looks at various initiatives for fetal tele-ultrasonography, demonstrating that this practice cannot be reduced to a mere transparent relay for the speedy transmission of digital information across space and time. The paper investigates how its introduction could affect medical knowledge production, power hierarchies, and subject positions, for example, the status attributed to the fetal figure. Paper II traces Swedish transformations of telehealthcare. The use of telemedicine to reach those outside medicine’s range has arguably been accompanied by efforts to achieve intra-organizational streamlining via telemedicine. This process has continued with the emergence of telecare for personal use directed toward the overlapping groups of the elderly people and patients with chronic conditions. I contend that this shift can be understood through a geographical lens as attempts to save space and time by keeping as many patients as possible out of costly hospitalization and preventing them from engaging scarce specialist resources. Paper III compares four telemedicine projects in Sweden. In detailing how the purpose of practicing telemedicine differed between these projects in relation to, for example, the specifics of distance, care availability, and treated medical conditions, the paper demonstrates the existence of many versions of telemedicine. Whereas this fluidity could further the spread of telemedicine, it could also cause problems. To various actors wanting to use telemedicine in a homogenous and fixed way for national streamlining purposes, this diversity has generated confusion when they wished to align telemedicine in a preferred direction. The paper concludes that technology travels best when it can contain both fluid and fixed relationships. Paper IV argues that, whatever is claimed about creating a space- and time-independent healthcare by means of telehealthcare, the use of telecare to connect the standardized spaces of healthcare with the fluid everyday lives of elderly people and patients with chronic conditions actually works by unfolding new spaces of visibilities and establishing new temporalities as well. By investigating these spatiotemporalities, I demonstrate how these applications draw together discourses on individual freedom with medically derived algorithms and concerns about how to make best use of scarce healthcare resources.
4.
Ahlman, Christer
(författare)
Vänskap, värden, vandel: Avvikelser och återhämtningsstrategier hos Göteborgs första generation ungdomsnarkomaner
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how and why a sample of young people who were criminals and drug addicts in the 1960s – Gothenburg’s first generation of young drug junkies – could get up on their feet and then sustain an orderly life. The empirical material consists of recorded and transcribed life history interviews with 15 individuals, 10 of whom had rather central positions within Gothenburg’s first generation of young drug addicts. Three of the remaining five have had close and lasting contacts and relations with the same social circle, while two have had similar experiences from other places. Several of these persons were interviewed both in the 1980s, when they had been drug-free for ten years, and then again in the 2000s, when they were about 60 years old. The connection between relationship and dialogue becomes methodologically important, since several of the interviewees have been the author’s friends and acquaintances. Autobiographical literature and the author’s own memories supplement the transcribed interviews. In the dissertation, the individuals’ entry into the circle of drug users is explained by the cultural environment and spirit of the times, and by the material conditions and situations that surrounded them in Gothenburg in the 1950-60s, but also by broken families and deficient parental attachment. The interviewees’ recollections indicate that they were provided moral cornerstones as children, which in combination with a demanding and exhausting lifestyle fuelled their willingness to break away from their drug-saturated existence. The conflict between internalised ethics and a deviant lifestyle has in such stages of transition often manifested itself in experiences of burnout and psychotic breakdowns. Their recovery has in many cases been characterised by a series of relationships with partners leading a more organised life, and these periods have served as effective training. Rather than resulting in a new lasting period of deviance, the interviewees’ possible relapse attempts have provided dull and dreary experiences. In fact, they have reinforced their recognition of themselves as ‘normal’. Their lasting and intensive drug use has not led to a life-long identification or ex-role as drug addict, compared with their class and gender roles or other deep roles. During the years following their recovery period, most of the interviewees have had longstanding family commitments and partner relations as well as decent working and housing conditions. At the time of the interviews in the first decade of the 21st century, all of them displayed a distanced and controlled relation to drugs (apart from tobacco).
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7.
Öberg, Stefan, 1978
(författare)
Social bodies : family and community level influences on height and weight, southern Sweden 1818-1968
2014
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This dissertation consists of an introduction, four research papers and one paper describing the data I collected for the studies and how I conducted the study. I collected information on men from conscript inspection lists and linked this to a sample of men in the Scanian Economic Demographic Database (SEDD) born between 1797 and 1950. The four research papers analyze influences on height and weight in the 19th and 20th centuries using individual-level data with uniquely rich and detailed information on community context and family background. Paper 1 investigates the long-term changes in socioeconomic differences in height. Sons of landholders were, on average, taller than others in the early and mid-19th century but lost this advantage in the late 19th century. Sons of fathers with non-manual occupations were always the tallest group in the population. The magnitude of the socioeconomic differences in height varied over time but became smaller over time. Paper 2 investigates the association between the number of siblings present in the household and the height of the sons. I find that men with a larger number of siblings were, on average, shorter than others in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Dilution of parental resources is a likely explanation of this. The results show that, even if the parental resources were important, it is also important to consider the societal and historical context. The average height of men in Sweden shows a closely mirrored development to the level of infant mortality. In Paper 3 I test the association between height and the infant mortality rate in the year of birth, first year of life and the adult death rate during pregnancy using a sibling comparison design. I find that both the influence of the risk of being sick as an infant and the selection effect of mortality on height are likely to be weak. Paper 4 investigates the occupational differences in body mass index among men born between 1934 and 1950. Socioeconomic differences in body mass index and the risk of obesity are found almost universally in present-day high-income countries. Information on these differences prior to the most recent decades is scarce, for Sweden and internationally. I find that the occupational differences in body mass index were similar in the mid-20th century and in present-day Sweden.
