1.
Svensson, Malin, 1976
(författare)
Hoppet om en framtidsplats. Asylsökande barn i den svenska skolan
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The thesis explores how accompanied refugee and asylum-seeking children experience everyday life in Sweden. During the asylum process, as part of a policy for promoting ‘normal life’, these children have the same right to education as permanently resident children. An ethnographic approach brought out data from combining interviews with participant observation and visual material produced by children. Methodological inspiration was sought in the new sociology of childhood and in its potential to make an eclectic analysis of the empirical data. Study I explores how spatial and temporal dimensions theoretically may guide dialogue with refugee children and interpretation of their visual material. The findings point to how children negotiate opportunities for the future where everyday life takes place, and how conditions for education are perceived in relation to their future prospects. Inquiring into the meaning of school, Study II explores the sense of possibility as perceived by asylum-seeking children, and shows how school is a social place that provides structure, a sense of belonging and a learning environment. Paradoxically, schools’ limited attention to the children’s predicament risked accentuating the ambivalent social position of being an asylum seeker and thus weakening the benefits of their right to education. Study III examines the challenges teachers face, as street-level bureaucrats, in catering to the needs of asylumseeking pupils and demonstrates how conflicting goals of education policy and asylum policy conditioned teachers’ work and risked undermining the compensatory pedagogical task. In sum, through analyses that encompass how an unsecured residence permit does not prevent children aspiring to their futures, as envisioned in the present, creating a home can be understood in terms of hope. While the asylum process conditions ideas of the future, the thesis contributes to an understanding of how it also shapes how children and teachers, as social actors, construct what is considered to be ‘normal life’ during the asylum process.
2.
Becevic, Zulmir
(författare)
Utsatthetens röster
2015
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Den här avhandlingen handlar om ungdomar i samhäilsvård och deras livsberättelser, om erfarenheter av att växa upp under kaotiska livsvillkor som karaktäriseras av psykiska problem, trasiga relationer, och andra fotmer av social utsatthet. Syftet är att undersöka hur ungdomar som är placerade i samhällsvård använder sina erfarenheteter för att skapa mening och sammanhang kring sig själva och sina liv. Genom att fokusera på röster, interaktioner och emotioner synliggörs livsvillkor samtidigt som kunskapen om ungdomar i samhällsvård och deras livserfarenheter fördjupas. Ungdomarnas berättelser analyseras i relation till identitet, relationer och emotioner, och framtiden. Avhandlingen tar avstamp i en interaktionistisk och erfarenhetsorienterad ansats, som ger ontologiskt företräde åt den tolkande, meningsskapande, kännande och betiittande individen och individens upplevelse av den sociala verkligheten. Avhandlingen bygger på empiriskt material insamlat genom semistrukturerade livsberättelseintervjuer på fyra samhällsvårdande institutioner. Sammanlagt genomfördes 20 enskilda imervjuer med 13 deltagare, sex tjejer och sju killar i åldrarna 13-21. Analysen har fokuserat på tolkningar av interaktioner som berättelsernas grundläggande byggstenar, vilka på olika sätt spelat en viktig roll i berättarnas syn på sig själva i relation till en bredare social kontext. Analysen visar hur erfatenheter kopplade till problem och avvikelser görs till dominerande erfarenheter genom vilka berättarna förstår sig själva och sina liv. Dessa berättelsers övergripande funktion är att skapa ordning som väger upp mot den sociala oordning som berättarna på ett existentiellt plan upplever att de befinner sig i och behöver förklara och motivera. Resultaten tyder på att tillvaron i institutionell kontext tenderar all förstärka synen på en själv och ens liv som problematiskt och avvikande. Detta ses som en inbyggd motsättning i den problemhmterancle verksamhet vars övergripa nde syfte är att kompensera for och "arbeta bort" problem. Analysen visar att tillvaron i en institutionell kontext istället förstärker orinteringen mot erfarenheter av problematisk karaktär. Andra resultat är att berättelser om relationer får sin huvudsakliga karaktäristik från negativa, emotionella erfarenheter, vilket pekar på vikten av att etablera tillitsfulla relationer i utformningen av hjälpinsatser. Slutligen, berättelser om framtida planer och förväntningar handlar i huvudsak om anpassning till traditionella normer. Livet efter samhällsvården handlar om att passa in i vad som definierns som samtidens vedertagna syn på normalitet och ordning.
3.
Goldschmidt, Tina, 1988-
(författare)
Immigration, Social Cohesion, and the Welfare State : Studies on Ethnic Diversity in Germany and Sweden
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Can social cohesion and solidarity persist in the face of large-scale migration? One particularly contentious hypothesis states that native majorities will be unwilling to support the provision of government-funded welfare to those whom they do not consider to be part of their own sociocultural ingroup, especially when sociocultural or ethnic otherness and socioeconomic disadvantage overlap. Consequently, majorities’ willingness to accept disadvantaged immigrant groups as legitimate and trusted members of the welfare community is central to the social cohesion of societies diversifying through migration.The dissertation consists of a comprehensive summary, followed by four original studies addressing the interplay between migration-induced diversity and social cohesion through the lens of majority attitudes and the micro and macro contexts within which they are embedded. The studies focus on Sweden and Germany, two European societies that host strong welfare states and large immigrant populations. Together, they seek to answer two central questions:First, does social distance between native-born citizens and immigrants lead the former to withdraw support from all redistributive policies, or are some types of welfare more affected than others? Second, how does the migration-induced diversification of societies come to matter for majority attitudes toward the welfare state and, as they are closely related, for majority attitudes toward the trustworthiness of others?Looking at the case of Germany, Study 1 shows that the conflict between diversity and welfare solidarity is not expressed in a general majority opposition to welfare, but rather in an opposition to government assistance benefiting immigrants – a phenomenon sometimes referred to as welfare chauvinism.Study 2 turns to the case of Sweden and investigates three pathways into welfare chauvinism: via the first-hand experience of immigrant unemployment and putative welfare receipt in the neighborhood context; via exposure to immigrant competition at the workplace; and via negative prejudice against immigrants. We find that the direct observation of immigrant unemployment in the neighborhood increases natives’ preference for spending on other Swedes over spending on immigrants, while competition with immigrants at the workplace does not.Using the same Swedish data, Study 3 hypothesizes that ethnically diverse workplaces imply trust-fostering inter-group contact. Yet, like in Study 2, we find a negative relationship between majority Swedes’ exposure to certain immigrant groups in the neighborhood and their trust in neighbors, while diverse workplaces neither seem to increase trust nor to affect the negative neighborhood-level association.Both Studies 2 and 3 show that negative attitudes toward immigrants increase welfare chauvinism and lower trust, even disregarding majority Swedes’ actual experience of immigrant presence or unemployment. Study 4 thus turns to a social force outside the realm of first-hand experience and explores German online news media debates on the welfare deservingness of various sociodemographic groups – among them, immigrants (as refugees in particular). However, rather than observing the persistent and particular stigmatization of immigrants as undeserving recipients or untrustworthy abusers of welfare, we find much more nuanced descriptions in our vast corpus of news stories.
4.
Scarpa, Simone, 1976-
(författare)
The spatial manifestation of inequality : residential segregation in Sweden and its causes
2015
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The thesis examines the relationship between income inequality and residential segregation in Swedish cities. In recent years, in Sweden, much attention has been given to the direction of causality from residential segregation to income inequality. Residential segregation is considered to lead to a differentiation of opportunities between neighbourhoods and, therefore, to be a contributing factor to or even a major cause of income inequality in cities. The thesis focuses on the opposite direction of causality, from income inequality to residential segregation. In fact, residential segregation can also be seen as the spatial manifestation of existing disparities in income distribution, since residential location choices are always (although not exclusively) made within a predetermined framework of economic constraints.Specifically, two research questions are addressed in this thesis. What institutional factors, in the Swedish context, favour the transformation of the social divide between specific population subgroups into a spatial divide between those groups? To what extent and in what ways does income inequality contribute to the development of residential segregation in Swedish cities?The first part of the thesis explains why Swedish cities are characterized by higher levels of residential segregation than cities of other countries characterized by higher levels of income inequality. The historical and comparative analyses developed in the first two studies indicate that it is not so much the magnitude of immigration that accounts for this difference between Swedish cities and their more unequal counterparts in other countries but, rather, the institutional factors influencing the modes of incorporation of immigrants into cities.The second part of the thesis analyses how, in recent decades, the increase in income inequality has influenced residential segregation patterns in Malmö and in the three major Swedish metropolitan areas. The third and the fourth study show that, during the studied period, the widening of income disparities between neighbourhoods mirrored the general upward trend in income inequality in the population. The growth of the immigrant population contributed only slightly to this trend and income inequality was primarily driven by changes in the distribution of market incomes. During the late study period, however, income sorting processes have played a steadily more important role in contributing to economic residential segregation. Therefore, neighbourhood-based urban policies have not succeeded to reverse, or even just impede, the trend towards an increased spatial clustering of poverty and wealth in Swedish cities.
5.
Nordén, Per
(författare)
Regnbågsungar: Familj, utbildning, fritid
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In this thesis, rainbow children’s experience in private, institutional and public spaces is examined. More specifically, the aim is to explore if and how social conflict arises on the basis on their queer kinship structure. 28 interviews were conducted with informants that share the experience of growing up in Sweden with one or more homosexual, bisexual or transgender parents. Their age varied from 15 to 37 years of age. The theoretical starting point is taken in Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985/2008) discourse theory along with the Essex colleagues Glynos and Howarth (2007). Glynos and Howarth break down Laclau and Mouffe’s articulation concepts into three elements, which they define as social, political and fantasmatic logics. In order to analyze these logics in empirical data, Glynos and Howarth state that a moment of “Theoretical and critical interventions” (s. 38) is needed. The intervention in this thesis comes from poststructuralism, feminism and queer theoretical perspectives. I specifically draw on Butler (1990; 1993; etc.), Ahmed (2006), Halberstam (2005) and Stockton (2009) in exploring how queer family structures come to matter in everyday life. The first (1) result chapter, Komma ut som regnbågsfamilj, explores the rainbow children’s stories of their parent’s coming-out process. In this chapter I show how coming-out processes affect family life and how everyday life changes through these processes. Broadly speaking, this chapter deals with negotiations that concern nonnormative positions, but also how this relates to family and kinship structures. The second (2) result chapter, Att framträda i utbildningsmiljön, concerns the experience of rainbow children in the different institutions that organize education, such as pre-school, elementary school and high school. In this chapter I show situations where heteronormativity has social implications for the rainbow children’s right to education. The third (3) and final result chapter, Skiftande fritidssammanhang, shows a span but also specific social communities the rainbow children takes part in during their leisure time activities. In this result chapter I show how the informants are stopped or appear unwanted to participate in certain environments. The conflict areas that appear show, like in the previous chapter, that rainbow children experience heterosexism and transnegativity. The interview touches on occasions and situations when the informants are separated from their previous leisure time contexts. This show that rainbow children, even in the most different contexts, always needs to relate to their queer family structure.
6.
Baral, Anna, 1984-
(författare)
Bad Guys, Good Life : An Ethnography of Morality and Change in Kisekka Market (Kampala, Uganda)
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Based on ethnographic data gathered over a period of almost three years, this dissertation scrutinizes the everyday lives of informal workers selling auto parts in Kisekka Market, central Kampala. Its ambition is to understand how the workers navigated a highly moralized environment in today’s Uganda, where the supposed moral deterioration of society is passionately discussed in public and in private.Analytically the dissertation focuses on three “moral landscapes,” or moral discourses of different geographical scales, that intersected in the workers’ lives: first, the Ugandan nation or the country; second, the Buganda kingdom with its cultural institutions to which the majority of the workers professed allegiance; and third, the capital city Kampala. Materializing in Kisekka Market, each landscape posed moral demands that the workers navigated daily as they struggled to balance norms with lived practices.The workers were perceived by external observers as morally ambiguous for their supposed instrumentality in riots and violent crimes in Kampala. Their notoriousness increased for the fact that they were men, often uneducated, and therefore, in public discourse, potentially threatening. Consequently, they were referred to as bayaaye, translated as hooligans or bad guys, and this label defined their relations with customers from all parts of Kampala and Uganda.In exploring the implications of the three moral landscapes, particular attention is paid to the in-between. Rather than focusing on mediatized events like riots and crimes, the dissertation investigates and locates the workers’ agency in the mundane processes of care and getting by and the tentative paths to a good life that unfolded daily in Kisekka Market, regardless of larger political tensions in Kampala and beyond. The city’s development plan to replace Kisekka Market with a fancy shopping mall rendered the workers’ situation increasingly exposed and their lives increasingly vulnerable. In the workers’ quest for some degree of control and self-worth, the label of bayaaye refracted into its multiple dimensions – proudly appropriated or painfully rejected by the workers themselves – attesting to the complexities of everyday ethics, in Kampala as elsewhere. Consequently, the ethnography of this dissertation problematizes the dominant yet fraught narrative around young men in urban Africa.
7.
Beckley, Amber, 1981-
(författare)
Foreign background and criminal offending among young males in Stockholm
2015
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This doctoral thesis considers how factors from the home country, the family, and the individual impact the risk for criminal offending among young males from a foreign background residing in Stockholm. I use Swedish register data to examine the risk for police registered suspicion of criminal offending. The introductory chapter presents an historical overview of immigration in Sweden, theories of criminal offending, and details about analysis of register data. It is followed by three empirical studies that consider unique risk factors for crime among children of immigrants while controlling for factors encountered within Sweden. The first study shows that young male children of immigrants do not seem to be inherently violent as a result of coming from a war-torn country. The second study indicates that it is not the age at immigration, but the family situation that seems to dictate criminal propensity. The final study suggests that threats of deportation and stricter immigration policies do not seem to deter criminality. The most interesting result was probably that high home country human development was a protective factor against crime. This is the first known work to uncover such a result. Future theoretical development may be best aimed at unpacking and empirically evaluating the human development index as a risk factor. Together, these three studies suggest that some previously unconsidered uniquely immigrant factors are related to risk for criminality.
8.
Bååth, Jonas, 1985-
(författare)
Production in a State of Abundance : Valuation and Practice in the Swedish Meat Supply Chain
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This thesis is a sociological contribution to the study of abundance. It discusses the case of Swedish meat producers and how they persist in producing pork and beef despite a lack of demand and competitive disadvantages compared with foreign suppliers. In doing so, this study answers how abundance is perpetuated in the production of a foodstuff in over-supply. This monograph further adds new empirical and theoretical knowledge to the fields of food studies, economic sociology, and the social sciences studying problems of abundance.The study explores how Swedish meat producers deal with problems stemming from supplying more than demanded volumes of food. The inquiry into this topic combines pragmatism, economic sociology, and qualitative fieldwork. The empirical materials mainly consist of in-depth interviews with 41 informants and more than one month of participatory observations from the Swedish meat supply chain.The evidence supplied shows how farmers, meat processors, and retailers continue supplying an abundant foodstuff by studying the valuations used in their production practice. The conclusion is that meat is not supplied to meet the consumers’ demand for food. Instead, this foodstuff is supplied as a marketing tool to meet the producers’ demand for commerce as an aesthetic of market exchange, or sustained production in line with Swedish agrifood policy, distinguished by high animal welfare and low antibiotics use. It is further argued that abundance is perpetuated because these producers rely on valuations which distinguish certain qualities of a good, rather than sufficient quantity of supply. Without using a quantitative, commensurable measure, it is not possible to limit the supply. This study contrasts existing theories of abundance by stating that problems thereof depend on how sufficiency is valuated, not the existence of some excess. These findings further support the argument that supply chains must be granted more attention in food studies primarily preoccupied with consumers. They also suggest further investigations into the relationships between markets in supply chains, and the role of production sites in economic life, would benefit economic sociology.
9.
Fjellfeldt, Maria, 1976-
(författare)
Choice as governance in community mental health services
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
In 2009, the Act on Freedom of Choice Systems (SFS 2008:962) wasestablished in Sweden, and this enabled municipalities to organise services aschoice models. This thesis describes and analyses the implementation of afreedom of choice system within community mental health services. Daycentre services were in focus, and a case study was conducted of a majormunicipality that sought to be a “world-class city” in regard to citizens’ choice.The experiences of policy makers, managers, professionals, and participantswere explored in interviews, and documents on a national, municipal, and citydistrict level, as well as homepages of providers of community mental healthservices, were all part of the study and were analysed using content-analysismethods.The results showed that the freedom of choice system aimed for two objectives– improvements at the individual level and financial efficiency. In practice,financial efficiency was experienced as the main objective. Increased varietyof services was aimed for by the competitive model, but such variety was notobserved. Instead, services tended to be more similar than specialised.Concerning new providers, they were characterised as committedprofessionals running companies with strained economies. Participantsaffected by the reform expressed anxiety and worries due to theunpredictability and uncertainty embedded in the competitive choice model.Choice within the system concerned where to go, whereas participantsemphasised a wish to be able to influence the choice aspects of who carriedout the service and how much time to attend the services.The conclusion was that the freedom of choice system was implemented as atechnology of governance to increase financial efficiency of services.Individual choice was not experienced as increased in any aspect except forthe choice of where to go. Instead, freedom of choice actually appeared todecrease due to standardisation and hierarchical structures. Aspects that werefound to be relevant when designing freedom of choice systems aiming toincrease individual freedom of choice were to address predictability andcontinuity, to address sustainable financial premises, to analyse the predictedimpact of administrative systems that are to be used, and to avoid the use of“hidden goals” in the policy-making process.
10.
Hämberg, Eva, 1958-
(författare)
Tillsyn i teori och praktik : om statlig styrning och kontroll av socialtjänstens individ- och familjeomsorg
2017
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
The aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding about the function of control in the inspection process and to increase the knowledge about the legitimacy and impact from inspection on different types of social and welfare services. In the thesis the form and legitimacy of the inspection process are studied in two types of social services in Sweden: a less complex service where the task to investigate and make decisions about social care dominates (IAD), and a more complex service where the task to provide treatment interventions dominates (TI). The data consists of policy documents, inspection reports, casefile documentation, and interviews with inspectors, politicians, managers and social workers. The inspection process is discussed in relation to theories about control systems and legitimacy processes. Inspection is a policy instrument whose standards are derived from legislations and where those subject to the inspection are obliged to meet the demands made by the inspectorates. This form of disciplinary control has been questioned given that its complexity makes it hard to regulate the practice of social work through detailed rules. By including a less disciplinary form of control the instrument’s ability to impact on more complex aspects of social services are expected to increase. The results show a difference in how the inspection process is set up in the two types of services. In the IAD services the process takes the form of a disciplinary control system, whereas the process in TI services initially takes the form of a non-disciplinary system. In spite of the differences observed in the initial stages of the process, the results show that the judgments of inspectors in both types of services are almost exclusively based on information about concrete and detailed aspects. This entails that the judgements of inspectors in both types of services mostly take the form of statements on simple observable and concrete conditions, whereas judgments about more complex aspects are rarely made. The study also shows that although the propriety and relevance of the inspectors’ judgements are questioned more in TI organisations inspections seem to have greater validity and impact on TI than on IAD organisations. The results of the thesis point to two explanations. One explanation is that the costs of dealing with the problems underlying the identified deficiencies are lower for TI than IAD organisations. This in turn leads to greater acceptance of carrying out the proposed measures in TI than in IAD organisations. Another possible explanation is that the potential sanctions are greater for TI than IAD organisations.
