| 1. |
- Enokson, Uffe, 1965-
(författare)
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Livspusslet : Tid som välfärdsfaktor
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis sheds some light on the duality between time-rich and time-poor living conditions and examines in which way this duality/polarisation paves the way for new patterns of inequality. The purpose is to explore the living conditions of two groups in society: those who are established in the labour force and who experience great demands on their efficiency and educational level and those who are unwanted and who do not have a natural place in the labour market.Theoretically, time geography shows a diversity of time patterns and time space restrictions between different life forms in everyday life. The conclusion contradicts the understanding of time as a monolithic concept. The results show how working time standards are essential to understand the access to time and economic resources that time-rich and time-poor life forms have. This is something that not only poses questions about household strategies and individual needs, but also shifts the perspective to social positions and demands of society.In a process analysis of Swedish working time policies I investigate how structural policy change, from a social discourse closely related to Swedish welfare reforms, is moving towards an economic discourse motivated by financial arguments. By doing so, the political measures for solving working time related problems in today’s flexible working life appear to be contradictory. On the one hand we find time-poor people in the labour market mainly supported by tax reductions and private time saving solutions while on the other we find time-rich people mainly supported by activation programmes and/or welfare benefits. It is thus a working time regime and policy strategy that obviously disregards these two sides of the coin.The European Union is a relatively new actor and powerful force on the working time agenda. The European Commissions’ policy solution is Flexicurity. A policy analysis shows that flexicurity has a life course perspective where social arguments have a central position in terms of security in a flexible working life. In comparison, Sweden is moving in the opposite direction by leaving social arguments behind. Conclusions show that the economization of time creates vulnerabilities and tensions between time-rich and time-poor living conditions. In looking at time as a welfare factor, traditional ways of solving old problems are being challenged by a policy that can open up for new kinds of welfare solutions that value work and life time patterns both inside and outside the labour market.
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| 2. |
- Enokson, Uffe, 1965-
(författare)
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Tiden i senmodernt vardagsliv : En rollteoretisk analys av hushållens livsformer
- 2006
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Tiden i senmodernt vardagsliv utgör en teoretisk fördjupning av den tidigare utgivna rapporten Tid, pengar och sociala nätverk (2005). Där undersöks klyftorna mellan tidrika och tidfattiga levnadsförhållanden. Kontraster som visar på en obalans i fördelningen av tid, pengar och sociala roller på och utanför arbetsmarknaden i vardagslivet. Syftet i denna rapport är att undersöka teorier om de sociala rollernas betydelse genom att jämföra två konkurrerande teoribildningar och granska deras generaliserbarhet och förklaringsvärde. I huvudsak används teorierna för att analysera tidrika och tidfattiga livsformers levnadsmönster i förhållande till självupplevd tid, multipla roller och stress. Tillsammans utgör de två rapporterna författarens licentiatavhandling.
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| 3. |
- Harju, Anne, 1965-
(författare)
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Barns vardag med knapp ekonomi : En studie om barns erfarenheter och strategier
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about the every day life of children who suffer from economic hardship. The aim is, from the children's point of view, to create an understanding of the consequences that economic hardship has on their relationships with their parents and other children. A further aim is to gain an understanding of how children act in relation to the families' economic situation and how they experience their every day life and general living conditions. Parents have also been interviewed about the families' general living conditions and the interaction between children and parents in relation to the economic situation. The empirical data has been collected over a period of fourteen months. Fourteen children aged 7-19 years and eight parents in seven families have been interviewed on five occasions. A total of 44 interviews have been conducted. The theoretical foundation of the thesis is childhood sociology, symbolic interactionism and social identity. The conclusions of this thesis can be summarized in two major results. The first is that economic hardship is of importance in the relationship with other children and in the interaction between children and their parents. The children's possibilities of participating together with peers through possessions and activities are affected to a varying extent depending on the circumstances. The relationship with their parents is also affected by children having to take economic responsibility and by children cooperating with them. Economic hardship also causes a strain on the relationship. The second major result is that children are active in forming theirs and their families' every day life in relation to the economic limits. On the basis of their understanding and their definition of the situation they choose different strategies, the aims of which are either to live within the limitations of the situation, so-called reactive strategies, or to change their own situation and sometimes also the situation of their household. These are defined as proactive strategies in the thesis.
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| 4. |
- Thorén, Katarina H., 1970-
(författare)
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Activation Policy in Action : A Street-Level Study of Social Assistance in the Swedish Welfare State
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Work-related activation policies are currently developing in most western welfare states. Sweden is no exception and activation policies were introduced in the 1990s in many municipal social services organizations in Sweden. The Swedish form of activation policies requires social assistance recipients to participate in mandatory activation program in return for financial support. This dissertation investigates the street-level implementation practices of activation policies within the context of the Swedish welfare state. The purpose of the study is to examine how street-level workers in the municipal social service systemtranslate activation policy into practice in their interactions with the clients and what factors that structure their implementation practices. The research project is a multiple-case study that examines the street-level practices in two municipal social service settings in Sweden, Skärholmen city-district in Stockholm municipality and Osby municipality and their local activation programs. The data collection consists of observations of the staffs’ daily operations, interviews with local politicians and other key personnel, and the analysis of formal policy and program documents. Theoretically this dissertation builds on the street-level bureaucracy perspective (Lipsky, 1980), which suggests that organizational working conditions shape street-level workers implementation practices through their development of informal coping strategies. But this study extends the street-level buraucracy approach by including political-institutional factors and normative assumptions about public support and social assistance recipients into the analysis. Findings from the study suggest that street-level implementation practices entail a number of informal coping strategies that removes activation policy from formal policy goals. Implementation practices entail, for example, mass referrals instead of individual assessments and tailor-made solutions. Clients were sorted and categorized on the basis of moral perceptions about behavioral deficits instead of employment needs. These informal practice strategies were the results of both coping strategies and normative assumptions that interacted with the organizational context in which these practices took place.
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| 5. |
- Albertsson, Marie, 1956-
(författare)
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Från socialbidrag till äldreförsörjningsstöd. : En reform ur äldre invandrares perspektiv.
- 2008
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In 2003 the Swedish parliament decided to incorporate maintenance support for the elderly within the framework of the state social insurance system. Maintenance support for the elderly entails that individuals who, due to too short a period of residence in Sweden, do not qualify themselves for a full guarantee pension and thus have the right to receive benefits after completion of an income test. A large proportion of these people previously received individually incometested social benefits. Maintenance support for the elderly and how it is perceived by the elderly is the focus of the study. The overall aim of the study is to gain knowledge about what it means for immigrants who moved in later life to be the subject of a transfer from a selective benefit system to one where more general principles apply. More specifically the aim concerns what it means for their possibilities for gaining access to social rights and what it means for their relationship with the Swedish welfare state. The study’s empirical material consists of two parts. The first part contains register data from the social services register of the National Board of Health and Social Welfare and the social insurance register of the Swedish Social Insurance Board. The second consists of interviews with eleven foreign-born elderly persons who previously received social benefits and now receive maintenance support for the elderly. The analysis of the register data indicates that one-fifth of the target group actually includes people born in Sweden while the rest are immigrants arriving in Sweden in later life. For most of those in this latter group the maintenance support is their only source of financial support while it is a supplement for the Swedish-born elderly recipients. The results show that of those, who previously received social benefits and where the maintenance support is their only source of financial support, about onefifth received a smaller amount of benefit after the reform. The interview study indicates the existence of a gap between what the respondents express as needs of more individual considerations both in terms of the contact with the administrating authority and the maintenance support’s monetary content and how the elderly perceive that these needs are provided for. In order to try to understand this gap the result was analysed by using a number of major theoretical concepts such as universalism, stigma and shame, and social citizenship, public identity and recognition. The conclusions of the study is that a comprehension of the gap can be found in the standardised design and administration of the maintenance support and in the socio-economic context that immigrants coming to Sweden in later life find themselves in.
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| 6. |
- Sandvall, Lisbeth, 1955-
(författare)
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Från skuldsatt till skuldfri : Processer, strategier och påverkande faktorer
- 2008
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Title: From being in debt to being out of debt. A study of processes, strategies and impacting factors. The aim of the study is to gain a greater understanding and knowledge about the ways to get into and out of debt, why people find themselves in serious debt, how the problems are coped with and how they are experienced. The starting point for studying this issue is people with experience of debts and the Debt Relief Act. The study focuses on the relationship between formal, informal and intrapersonal factors. The empirical data is based on 32 semi-structured narrative interviews with people having experience of the Debt Relief Act in three different ways: either having just applied for debt relief, being in the process of receiving debt relief or having been out of debt for two years. The data is analyzed in terms of three aspects; processes, strategies and impacting factors. The debts can have been incurred either over a long period of time or have arisen suddenly and unexpectedly. The reasons can be the result of individual and structural factors combining together. Both strategies and impacting factors can be changed depending on where in the debt relief process a person finds him/herself. The results shows that the strategies can vary from an active to a passive, open or closed approach where the decisive factors are mainly how one is received, health, age, reasons for getting into debt and social relationships. The conclusion is that serious debt problems are not only incurred by a certain group of people but that anyone can find themselves in this situation. It is evident that there is not just one way into and out of debt but several where both individual and structural factors are of major significance. Even if the Debt Relief Act provides a way out of a serious debt problem the results show that it is a long-term solution, which has considerable consequences for both the individual and society.
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| 7. |
- Ulmestig, Rickard
(författare)
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På gränsen till fattigvård? : En studie om arbetsmarknadspolitik och socialbidrag
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation focuses on changes in labour market policies that were provided for unemployed recipients of social assistance between 1989 and 2002 in Sweden. This change is described as a process where the municipalities gradually take greater responsibility for the labour market policies. This group of unemployed is categorized as a particularly problematic group and has been referred to the municipalities. This takes place without any noticeable legislative change or policy decisions and is contrary to the appropriation directions that the government has given to the Labour Market Board. In this process responsibility has ?trickled? through to the municipalities. The process that is described and analyzed in this dissertation is a process that shows how unemployed recipients of social assistance gradually become a municipal responsibility. This entails amongst other things that the unemployed will continue to live off social assistance. The boundary between the government and the municipalities has changed between 1989 and 2002. Categories of unemployed who are adjudged to have great problems in establishing themselves in the labour market are referred to the municipalities. For those unemployed who are established within the unemployment insurance system and who do not need social assistance, there are no major institutional changes. This is ultimately a question of power. While the labour movement safeguards the interests of the unemployed within the unemployment insurance system the recipients of social assistance have few or none who safeguard their interests. Unemployed recipients of social assistance are referred to the municipal system that still has distinctive features from the poor relief period. They are provided with a labour market policy that differs in several essential aspects from the labour market policies that are part of the Swedish welfare state. They are provided with a labour market policy that is bordering on poor relief.
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| 8. |
- Westberg, Annika, 1972-
(författare)
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Becoming an Adult : Living Conditions and Attitudes among Swedish Youth
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis studies youth from different perspectives. These are the life phaseand the generational perspectives, which have been studied via questions of establishment and individualisation. The main question is whether young people are different because they have not made socially important transitions into adulthood or if they are different because they have grown up under different circumstances than earlier generations. The consequences of the outcome are important because they can indicate what kind of society young people will reproduce. The following conclusions are drawn: First, there are clear effects of social structurations (class of origin and gender) in the lives of young people. They affect the distribution of attitudes towards welfare state expenditures as well as the economic effects in a long-term perspective. Second, there is rather weak importance of role transitions in relation to what young people believe is important for adulthood, role transitions’ importance for the distribution of attitudes towards the welfare state as well as role transitions’ importance in a long-term perspective. Third, increasing age and subtle socialisation processes may be an explanation to the rather weak meaning of role transitions, cause adjustments to surrounding contexts and people’s expectations. It is concluded that the life phase perspective is a more accurate way of viewing young people, mainly because of the impact of social structurations, which are believed to contribute to continuous reproduction rather than complete change of society.
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