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The article investigates internal strategies and struggles in civil society organizations' (CSOs') policy advocacy work from the vantage point of policy professionals by using the concepts of field, symbolic capital, and logics. A main claim is that mediatization acts as a strategic-tension mechanism within a CSO, putting communicators at the center of policy units, which in turn is consequential for the strategies chosen for the organization's policy work. In this way, mediatization as a process celebrates certain professionals and strategies as particularly relevant, creating frustration among employees not specializing in communication. The study identifies a trend for organizations to put more resources and influence into communication and less into actual policy analysis. This article combines research on organizational logics, policy professionals, and mediatization by drawing on 38 interviews with, and ethnographic work among, policy professionals in Sweden, Latvia, and the Netherlands. As manuscript in dissertation with title: Do communicators take over? Mediatization and conflicts in civil society organizations

This research aims to map and analyse the phenomenon of male sex workers (specifically men who sell sex to other men) in Italy and Sweden. While female sex work has been studied by several scholars worldwide, there is a lack of attention on the male side of the phenomenon. This gap in the academic literature mirrors a more general “invisibility” and “misconception” of the issue in other domains: in politics, the press, and in public opinion. Moreover, although masculinity is a powerful concept in both sociology and gender studies, previous investigations have forgotten to analyse sex work from this viewpoint. Therefore, the main objective of the research is to analyse sex work from the perspective of masculinity in order to understand what types of relationships are created between sex workers and their clients and what role is played by masculinity; how the relation is shaped by it. Indeed, the first part of this contribution is devoted to the concept of masculinity and to which declinations of masculinities sex workers embody in their encounters with other men, considering the behaviour of both “straight” and “gay” male sex workers. Reflections on the construction of discourses about differing identities in male sex work are particularly useful to understand how – in the cultural contexts of northern and southern Europe – the masculinities involved can re-adapt to the normative gender order which requires the femininisation of men who have sex with other men, and the constant flaunting of a masculinity that can contribute to pluralisation of sexual desires and sexual subjectivities. Since selling sex and sexual services is perceived as a stigmatised activity, especially for those men who self-identified as “heterosexuals”, men who engage in these behaviours need to find ways to justify their presence in the market. At the same time, it is possible to observe the growing presence of self-identified homosexuals in sex work. In the analysis, the behaviour of these two categories of sex workers is then compared to understand differences and commonalities regarding the type of masculinity employed. Indeed, doing sex work is also a way to do masculinity, a means through which sex workers can elevate themselves under different perspectives: socially, economically, and culturally. The research deals with these issues and grapples with the different sides of the phenomenon through a qualitative methodology. In-depth interviews with forty-five sex workers (the so-called “supply-side”) were carried out in Milan and Stockholm to examine the working conditions of sex workers and the types of relationships they establish with their clients. Today, male sex work is strongly related to the use of the internet, new media, and mobile applications (or “apps”). Therefore, it becomes important to analyse how new technologies have shaped this activity and what type of relations they generate in terms of both social class and educational credentials. Another object of this investigation is the encounter between sex workers and clients, with the focus being on the strategies that sex workers employ and on how emotions and pleasure become instruments of these relations. Indeed, despite previous feminists’ opinions that this relationship is charged with power – that exercised by clients over sex workers – it will be showed that power has a more nuanced presence in male sex working and that the sex workers themselves employ different ways to handle their relationships with clients. The last point touched on deals with clients themselves and their characteristics. If male sex workers have been relegated to the margin, their clients are even more marginalised. In the final part of this research some of the primary traits of clients are highlighted along with the motivation behind their decision to buy sex, according to sex workers’ perceptions. All in all, this study shows that sex work in general, and male sex work in particular, can be analysed as an actual job and those who work in the field in the same way as other types of workers.

Migrant integration is theoretically conceived as a multidimensional process where integration in one life domain does not necessarily imply integration in another domain. An expanding literature analyses several aspects of the lives of migrants and their children. However, to date research has mainly assessed how attainment in one life domain influences attainment in another domain. This study analyses the extent to which attainment across multiple life domains–socioeconomic, social and residential–coincides among second-generation migrants. Using Swedish register data, we compare 10,450 children of migrants from six regions of origin, who were aged 30–40 in 2015, to individuals born in Sweden with two Swedish-born parents. Multigenerational linkages moreover allow us to control for parental socioeconomic status as well as residential characteristics when growing up. Our analyses reveal considerable disparities in social and residential outcomes between second-generation migrants and the Swedish majority group, as well as across origin groups. Differences in socioeconomic attainment are comparatively small once we account for parental characteristics and residential background. Second-generation Turkish and Middle Eastern migrants differ in terms of their social and residential outcomes when compared to the Swedish majority group, but have commensurate socioeconomic attainment. In contrast, we find overall consistency across domains for Polish, ex-Yugoslav and Latin American second-generation migrants. Our findings underline the importance of studying outcomes in multiple domains in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the life situation of second-generation migrants.

The increase in one-person households (OPHs) in the developed world is often seen as the result of a trend in which individualistic values and behaviors are replacing family solidarity. Nordic countries have been identified as frontrunners in this development. In Asia, equally developed countries like Japan retain elements of a strong-family system and an asymmetrical gender regime, simultaneously as they are experiencing rapid increases in OPHs. This article aims to uncover how the demographic and socioeconomic composition of OPHs have developed since the 1990s among working-age women in Sweden and Japan. Our results show that, in particular, civil status and income play different roles for OPH-living in Sweden and Japan. In contrast to Japan, the level of OPHs remained stable over time in Sweden, and even declined among women with high incomes. This suggests that the negative association between family formation and women’s economic activity is temporary and only prevails as long as society has not adapted to the convergence of men’s and women’s socioeconomic roles. The findings are discussed in light of the "second demographic transition" and "dual equilibrium theory". Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation (Grant No. 2019.0029)

It is a matter of debate whether free school choice should lead to higher or lower levels of school segregation. We investigate how school choice opportunities affect school segregation utilizing geocoded Swedish population register data with information on 13 cohorts of ninth graders. We find that local school choice opportunities strongly affect the sorting of students across schools based on the parents country of birth and level of education. An increase in the number of local schools leads to higher levels of local segregation net of stable area characteristics, and time-varying controls for population structure and local residential segregation. In particular, the local presence of private voucher schools pushes school segregation upwards. The segregating impact of school choice opportunities is notably stronger in native areas with high portions of highly educated parents, and in areas with low residential segregation. Our results point to the importance of embedding individual actors in relevant opportunity structures for understanding segregation processes. Funding Agencies|VetenskapsradetSwedish Research Council [2013-5460, 2020-02488]; Riksbankens jubileumsfond [M12-0301:1]

Sweden is among the countries with the highest share of single households in Europe, but not all are truly partnerless. We examine the potential vulnerability of individuals in living-apart-together relationships at age 30 and above, analyzing data from the Swedish GGS. We apply multinomial logistic regression. The results show that individuals engaging in LAT occupy an intermediate position in terms of socioeconomic resources (homeownership and economic situation), being less advantaged than co-residents but better-off than singles, especially men. We find no association between ill-health and living in a LAT arrangement. Having previous family experiences (unions with or without children) is positively associated with LAT, but childhood family composition does not matter. The majority of LAT individuals claim to be constrained to living-apart-together rather than LAT being their preferred alternative. Women and the elderly (aged 70+) are, however, more likely to engage in LAT by choice and appreciate their non-residential partnerships. The power of one? The long-term increase in one-person households in Sweden, 1900-2017, from Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation (MAW 2019.0029) Ageing well—individuals, families and households under changing demographic regimes in Sweden, from the Swedish Research Council for Health,Working life and Welfare (FORTE), grant number 2016-07115

This article analyzes lay people’s use of nutritionistic discourse in written correspondence with the Swedish Food Agency, an authority responsible for dietary advice. Examining 60 food related written digital messages, we apply a critical discourse analysis to parse the lexical items and grammar people use when constructing “food” in scientific terms. The findings show how message writers place nutrients at the discursive center. Message writers’ grammatical constructions instrumentalize food and eating. This is reinforced by the message writers’ frequent use of terms that indicate preciseness, such as numbers and amounts. Messages therefore emphasize the what, but not the how, of eating, implying a focus on food as subject to regulation and control. As such, eating is discursively reduced to an act of ingesting nutrients that can be decontextualized and managed in isolation—as entities to increase or avoid separately. These discursive features preclude the conceptualization of food choice and eating as subjective experiences of feelings, taste, and tradition.

The IPCC stated in its special report on global warming of 1. 5°C (SR15) that meeting the temperature target of the Paris Agreement requires rapid and far-reaching changes across all aspects of society. This is called a need for transformative change. However, what is meant by transformative change? What should be changed, and how should it be changed? These questions are explored in this paper, which is structured in three steps. First, it develops a conceptual meaning of transformative change that is centered on society. Then, it analyses how the IPCC in SR15 understands transformative change. The analysis finds that the proposed pathways to reach the targets of 1.5 and 2°C have a strong technical focus on energy supply, which makes broader and deeper transformative change almost unnecessary. This finding is related to the recently published IPCC report on mitigation. Even if institutional and socio-cultural dimensions of transformative change are better covered in this report, they are insufficiently integrated into the overall assessment of necessary transformative changes. Finally, it turns to the national level, analyzing Sweden's ambition to become the first fossil-free welfare society in the world. The analysis shows, in line with SR15, that Sweden has a restricted focus on changes in energy supply, making transformative change, such as restructuring the economic system and questioning consumption patterns, unnecessary. Based on this analysis of international (the IPCC) and national (Sweden) levels, this paper identifies a need for an elaborated, consistent and deeper understanding of transformative change. It concludes that to be relevant to countries' work to achieve ambitious climate targets, the IPCC should develop a more qualified understanding of transformative change, which requires a better integration of social science research., vetenskapsrådet 2018-01634

In Sweden, palliative care has, over the past decades, been object to policies and guidelines with focus on how to achieve “good palliative care”. The aim of this study has been to analyse how experts make sense of the development and the current state of palliative care. Departing from this aim, focus has been on identifying how personal experiences of ‘the self’ are intertwined with culturally available meta-level concepts and how experts contribute to construct new scripts on palliative care. Twelve qualitative interviews were conducted. Four scripts were identified after analysing the empirical material: 1. script of paths towards working within palliative care; 2. script of desirable and deterrent reference points; 3. script of tensions between improvement and bureaucracy; and 4. script of low status and uncertain definitions. The findings of this study illustrate how experts in complex ways intertwine experiences of ‘the self’ with meta-levels concepts in order to make sense of the field of palliative care. The participants did not endorse one “right way” of “good” deaths. Instead, palliative care was considered to be located in a complex state where the historical development, consisting of both desirable ideals, death denials and lack of guidelines, and more recent developments of strives towards universal concepts, “improvement” and increased bureaucracy altogether played a significant role for how palliative care has developed and is organised and conducted today.

Increasing immigration and intermarriage in Sweden and Japan have led to a growing multiracial and multiethnic population. Approximately 7% of the Swedish population and 2% of the Japanese population are multiracial and multiethnic today. Based on a total of 39 interviews with mixed persons in Sweden and Japan, I examine the self-claimed and ascribed identification among mixed Japanese and mixed Swedes. I argue that, despite the contextual differences, there are commonalities of experiences and identification. These commonalities of experiences shed light on the conditions the mixed individuals feel that they must fulfill in order to have their different claims to identities validated. The study gives a unique insight into how racial appraisal constrains individual choices of identity in a context where there is no official classification of racial and ethnic groups.

This study investigates how the probability to live alone has developed among working age individuals with and without disabilities in Sweden during the period 1993–2011 when extensive political reforms to improve the integration of disabled individuals in society were implemented. The results show that individuals with disabilities are approximately twice as likely to be living alone when compared to individuals without disabilities. People with disabilities were also more likely to report low life satisfaction, and this was especially true among individuals with disabilities living alone. Men and women with disabilities also tend to experience longer periods of living as a one-person household than non-disabled people. Over time we find no indications of reduced differences in family outcomes between disabled and non-disabled individuals but rather evidence to the contrary. These differences are interpreted as being the result of the disadvantage disabled individual’s experience in the partner market and that people with disabilities are less successful in forming partnerships that can lead to cohabitation and family formation. The results thus show how disabled individuals still face societal barriers that limit their possibilities to find and sustain relationships that result in stable cohabitation despite increased efforts to improve their inclusion in Swedish society.

This article elaborates on previous research showing that educational achievement is negatively related to poor mental health during adolescence and positively related to the family’s socioeconomic resources. We examine (i) the potential moderating effects of family resources on the negative relationship between educational achievement and poor mental health and (ii) the impact of resources linked to the mother and father, respectively, on educational achievements. We use register data that cover all children born in Sweden in 1990 who still lived there in 2010 (n = 115,882). We use two dependent variables – upper secondary school graduation and grade point average (GPA) – and analyse the performance of girls and boys separately. Our results indicate that the impact of mothers’ socioeconomic resources on children’s school performance is stronger overall than that of fathers’ resources. The compensatory effects of family socioeconomic resources on the risk of failure to graduate are more pronounced amongst girls than boys. With regard to GPA, compensatory effects are largely absent.

The aim is to explain why union density is not only considerably higher in the Ghent country Sweden than in non-Ghent Norway but also why it has declined much more in Sweden, in particular among blue-collar workers. We show how changes to Swedish unemployment insurance in 2007–2013 were followed by a decline in union density and how white-collar unions were more successful than blue-collar unions in developing supplementary income insurance schemes that counteracted membership losses. This type of institutional explanation is nevertheless insufficient. In Norway, too, blue-collar density has decreased while white-collar workers have maintained their density rate. Norwegian data further show that even without unemployment insurance funds, it is possible to achieve a fairly high union density at workplaces with collective agreements. However, without unemployment benefits like we find in Sweden, it is increasingly challenging to establish an institutional foundation for a social custom of unionization.

This report describes the design and realisation of the Neighbourhood Survey 2020, within the research program “The Neighbourhood Revisited: Spatial polarization and social cohesion in contemporary Sweden”, directed by Bo Malmberg at the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University. The program, in which the survey is one of the main information sources, is funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, RJ), grant registration number M18-0214:1. The overarching aim of the survey was to provide the program’s research team with recent tailor-made data, to enable empirical investigations of how spatial polarization may lead to a society that is increasingly divergent in terms of attitudes, values and lifestyles. To this end, the survey was based on a stratified sample of individuals (age 18–80) in 10 different types of residential areas in Sweden. This predefined geographic demarcation of the sample—in the report referred to as the ‘neighbourhood clusters’— stems from an empirically grounded classification developed earlier in the research program. The survey was administered by Statistics Sweden, and 4,784 residents completed the survey (either online or on paper), corresponding to a total response rate of 24 per cent. This report details the background of the survey, as an integrated and integral part of the overall research program. Methodological details concerning the neighbourhood clusters are also provided, whereby the linkage between identified clusters and the sampling frame is elaborated. Furthermore, the construction of the questionnaire is described, along with the actual implementation of the survey. Importantly, the quality of the data obtained is also assessed in terms of measurements, coverage, and non-response. Riksbankens Jubileumsfond "Lyckliga Gatan"

This essay explores if and how welfare attitudes in Sweden and in the United Kingdom have changed since the 1990s. Due to an increase in privatization and globalisation during the last 20-30 years, Sweden has become more economically liberal or right wing, aligning more with countries like the United Kingdom. The question therefore is to see if Sweden’s welfare attitudes have changed to become more like the welfare attitudes in the United Kingdom. There is a lack of research on how welfare attitudes change over time, as earlier research has focused more on comparison between countries or between groups. This essay uses empirical data from The International Social Survey Programme, in which three surveys from the years of 1996, 2006 and 2016 has been selected. In these surveys respondent have been asked how much responsibility they think the government should have for its citizens. The results show that the development in welfare attitudes in Sweden and United Kingdom are remarkably similar to each other. The analysis of the empirical data showed no differences between Sweden and the United Kingdom in welfare attitudes across all time periods. Compared to 1996, most groups in these countries wanted less state intervention in welfare generosities which is meant to aid poorer and more economically vulnerable people in their own society.

In terms of its total population, Sweden is one of the countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in the EU. Several factors are critical in integrating immigrants, especially their economic security in a new country. This thesis examines the relationship between law enforcement and economic security for over- indebted immigrants. The primary purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between migration and debt enforcement governed by legal regulations.A mixed methods sequential explanatory design approach was used to obtain a comprehensive picture of these complex issues. A quantitative study integrating the Swedish Enforcement Authority database with background variables provided by Statistics Sweden is the basis of the thesis. A qualitative interview study was then carried out to provide insights into the participants’ perspectives. An administrative model was used to define and measure over-indebtedness.The foundation of this thesis is Robert K. Merton’s functionalist theory of manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions. The concept of legal culture complements this theoretical framework. The findings show that there is a high prevalence of over-indebtedness among immigrants in Sweden, clearly indicating that the policy to prevent over-indebtedness is ineffective. Individuals with low socioeconomic status are more likely to be over-indebted.The qualitative results indicate that other factors, such as the debtors’ lack of a Swedish legal culture (e.g., legal consciousness and literacy), negatively affect the degree of over-indebtedness. In the end, over- indebtedness and subsequent payment defaults can lead to financial and social exclusion. This, in turn, contributes to segregation. According to over-indebted immigrants in Sweden in general, the current law enforcement strategies are dysfunctional and contribute to debtorisation, which is a process of exclusion that adversely impacts individual economic security.

The proportion of only children – children with no full biological siblings – is growing in high-income settings, but we know little about their life course outcomes and how this is related to long-term health. Previous studies of only children have tended to focus on short-term, developmental and intellectual outcomes in early life or adolescence, and provide mixed evidence. Using Swedish population register data on children born between 1940 and 1975, we compare only children with children from multi-child sibling groups, taking into account birth order, family size and half-siblings to account for family complexity. We consider physical health outcomes measured at late adolescence (height, body mass index and physical fitness), and mortality. Only children with and without half-siblings had lower height and fitness scores, were more likely to be overweight or obese, and had higher mortality, than those with 1 or 2 biological siblings. Only children without half-siblings generally did better than only children with half-siblings, suggesting that only children experiencing parental disruption experience additional disadvantages. With the exception of height, the patterns persist after adjustment for parental characteristics and after employing within-family cousin comparison designs. In mortality models, some of the excess risk for only children was explained by adjustment for fertility, marriage and educational history. We discuss the extent to which the patterns we observe are explained by selection processes and contextual differences in the prevalence of one-child sibling groups.

This study examines how similarity in work-family related attitudes matter for relationship satisfaction and union dissolution among Swedish couples. It utilizes a data set from 2009 (the Young Adult Panel Study) containing information on 1055 opposite-sex couples (married or co-residential), and registered union dissolutions up to 2014. Results indicate that couples who have similar notions on the importance of being successful at work; on the importance of having children; or on the importance of having enough time for leisure activities are more likely to be satisfied with their partner relationship than couples who have dissimilar attitudes. However, there are no effects of similarity in attitudes regarding the importance of living in a good partner relationship or doing well economically on relationship satisfaction, and we do not find any impact of similarity in attitudes of any kind on actual breakups. We find no support for specialization theory, which would predict that dissimilarity in work orientation would increase relationship quality. The study concludes that having similar priorities regarding work, career, and family does seem to matter for relationship quality, at least when it comes to the partners satisfaction with the relationship. Funding Agencies|Forskningsradet om Halsa, Arbetsliv och Valfard [2012-0646]

There is a growing scientific interest in drinking behavior among young people in affluent areas, who report higher levels of alcohol consumption compared to youth in less privileged areas. This phenomenon has been observed in several Western countries. The research has been dominated by variable-oriented analyses and has presented interesting explanations, but there has been little research into these young people's own experiences of and attitudes toward alcohol consumption. To develop interventions targeting this group, we need to understand their lifeworld. This study aims to develop an in-depth understanding of the high alcohol consumption among young people in affluent areas and how they themselves experience it. In the spring of 2019, we conducted 20 in-depth interviews with adolescents in upper secondary school (aged 15–19) in one of the most affluent area in Sweden. The empirical material was analyzed thematically. Theoretically, the phenomenon is understood by relating to social identity processes and considering the group's material, social and cultural means through Bourdieu's metaphors of capital. We found that affluent youth link their social identities to alcohol consumption. Alcohol is a social beverage that opens social networks and contributes to a sense of community. The consumption of alcohol gives experience capital leading to status in this context, with clear norms and expectations governing alcohol consumption. Parties are arranged in protected spaces where young people are free to drink out of the adults' sight. Affluent youths also have considerable purchasing power which contributes to drinking, and they are socialized into a pre-existing adult alcohol culture characterized by a liberal view on alcohol. Finally, when alcohol consumption escalates, the youths perceive that it is difficult to get adequate help from the adult world. The findings are important for future preventive interventions for subgroups of adolescents at high risk for heavy drinking.

Population ageing and discourses on healthy ageing have led to a growing interest in social dancing for seniors. While senior dance has been described as both common and contributing to good health, the fundamental connection between bodily and temporal dimensions has been fairly neglected. As a result, there is a risk of portraying dance among older adults as a general practice, while at the same time the senior dance's potential to shed light on relations between temporality and ageing is not utilised. Based on qualitative interviews with 25 women and eight men, aged 52–81, in Sweden, whose main leisure activity was dancing, this article sheds light on this knowledge gap by illustrating the pleasurable experiences of senior dance. The results illustrate that the pleasurable experiences of dancing can be understood as three different experiences of temporality: embodied experience of extended present, an interaction with synchronised transcending subjectivities and age identities with unbroken temporality. The results also highlight the central role that temporal aspects play in processes around subjectivities in later life, as well as the close connection between ageing embodiment and temporality. They also illustrate the ability of dance to create wellbeing, not only through its physical elements, but also through the sociality that constitutes the core of dancing. In light of these results, the article argues that the temporal processes relate to individuals’ diverse relationship with the world and that they therefore play a central role in subjective experiences of ageing.

This thesis explores experiences of meaningfulness and meaninglessness in wage labor, and how these work experiences relate to social and organizational factors in work situations (situational meaning). It also explores the centrality and value of wage labor in life in a broader sense (existential meaning). In the research field ‘meaning of work’, previous research is primarily leadership-oriented, psychological and quantitative. Sociological studies have remained scarce, and the concept of meaning tends to be used in confused ways. An explicit philosophically informed sociological perspective of lived experience, action and meaning is lacking. The thesis argues that this can be initiated through theorizing and interviews with a social phenomenological focus. Theoretically and empirically, the thesis contributes with a sociological perspective that integrates social phenomenological and structure-oriented perspectives. Based on 20 interviews with presently employed and recently retired individuals from professional and more manually oriented occupations, the findings suggest that (a) the wage is fundamental for employees’ initial conceptions and experiences of the purposive meanings of working. (b) People are not really themselves at work. Such inauthenticity has consequences for work experiences of meaning. (c) Employees perceive that managers do not understand their work situations and what is realistic to achieve in them. This can become a source of meaninglessness at work. (d) Some experience working life as a whole meaningful for its broader life structuring temporal and practical functions in terms of socializing, routines and habits in everyday life. (e) Working life biographies matter. Previous work experiences from past and current occupations are central for understanding employees’ expectations of- and ways of framing their experiences of meaning in the current job. (f) At work, non-work activities may be experienced as more meaningful than work tasks. (g) Habits and routines from work may generate an embodied form of work centrality. They may become internalized and embodied and spill over to life outside of work; (h) Employees across occupations value disconnecting from work, either at or in life outside work. This may be difficult to achieve because of (g).

Creating preparedness for climate change has become an increasingly important task for society. In Sweden, the responsibility for crisis preparedness rests to a large extent on the municipalities. Through an interview study of municipal officials, this paper examines municipalities’ crisis preparedness for climate change and the role they assign to citizens. The theoretical approach is that of risk governance, which adopts an inclusive approach to risk management, and that of risk sociology, which states that how a problem is defined determines how it should be handled and by whom. The empirical results show that the municipal officials mainly discuss technically defined risks, such as certain kinds of climate-related extreme events, the handling of which does not require any substantial involvement of citizens. Citizens’ responsibility is only to be individually prepared, and thereby they do not require municipal resources to protect their own properties in the case of an extreme event. The municipalities, however, feel that their citizens have not developed this individual preparedness and therefore they try to better inform them. This analysis finds five different views of citizens, all with their own problems, and to which the municipalities respond with different communicative measures. By way of conclusion, three crucial aspects are raised regarding the task of making societies better prepared for climate change.

Existing research has found heterogeneity in the implementation of Lean and its outcomes in terms of employee involvement across countries. This article explores the potential role of labour–management relations. It relies on in-depth company case studies carried out in the aerospace industry in France and Sweden. The study finds significant variations in employee involvement – higher in the Swedish than in the French cases. Managerial orientations did play a role, as the ‘technocratic’ form of Lean in France echoed a more unilateral top-down conception of management, while Swedish managers appeared more receptive to the ‘involvement-enhancing’ paradigm. But the attitudes and behaviours of unions were also a crucial factor, as Swedish unions were very effective in impinging on the implementation of Lean at workplace level, while their French counterparts, often divided, adopted a more defensive stance, lacking expertise and implication in the promotion of high-involvement work organisations.

While regularly applied to globalized migration, conceptualizations of hospitality have rarely been used to understand healthcare settings. Drawing on interviews with healthcare staff in Sweden, our article contributes to the current conceptualization of hospitality accounting for: the internal contradictions of hospitality that racialized staff experience in their everyday interactions with patients and other staff; the shifting boundaries between host and guest in everyday healthcare practices, especially when examined through the lens of racialization and finally; the subtle though troubled coexistence of hostility and un(conditional) hospitality that weakens resistance against racism. The analysis maps the complex contingencies of professional, ethnic and national relations between staff and patients, in light of their racialized and gendered nature, to suggest that the ambivalences theorized as part of the concept of hospitality show how the hurts of racism are so hard to pinpoint.

This paper analyses the marriage patterns of multi-ethnic people–who have one native-born and one foreign-born parent–born in Sweden (multi-ethnic Swedes). Based on Swedish register data from the period 1997–2016 and multinomial regression analysis, this paper looks into the generational transmission of inter- and intra-marriage for multi-ethnic Swedes versus mono-ethnic individuals who have two native-born parents (mono-ethnic Swedes). It also analyses specific partner choices for multi-ethnic and mono-ethnic Swedes as well as the contribution of other factors to their marriage patterns. We find that the odds of multi-ethnic Swedes marrying individuals with a foreign background are higher than those of mono-ethnic Swedes. Living in one of the three major cities was found to be the strongest predictor among other factors affecting marital patterns. Our results also show that highly educated multi-ethnic and mono-ethnic Swedes are slightly less likely to marry individuals with a foreign background than they are to marry mono-ethnic Swedes. (Less)

The term woodland key habitat (WKH) was launched in Sweden in 1990. Definitions for the concept have changed over the years, and today the WKH concept and its application are issues of debate in Sweden. Consequently, the Swedish Forestry Agency (SFA) initiated a collaborative process including forest stakeholders with the purpose to clarify the application and develop the inventory methodology of WKH. We have studied, by means of interviews and observations, participant perceptions of how endogenous and exogenous factors affect the collaborative process. During our research, we identified three game changers: the pause in WKH registration in northwestern Sweden that caused several participants to drop out of the process; budget allocations for new nationwide WKH inventories that put the process on hold; and formal instructions from the government that came nine months later and essentially re-initiated the collaborative process. Altogether, this not only affected the participants’ abilities, understanding and willingness to participate, but also the overall legitimacy of the process – indicating the difficulty of conducting policy development in collaborative form, especially when it is highly politicized since it impact on the participants’ anticipation of the process and its end results. Future Forests

Background Racism is difficult to discuss in the context of Swedish healthcare for various cultural and administrative reasons. Herein, we interpret the fragmentary nature of the evidence of racialising processes and the difficulty of reporting racist discrimination in terms of structural violence. Methods In response to the unspeakable nature of racism in Swedish healthcare, we propose a phased participatory process to build a common vocabulary and grammar through a consultative framework involving healthcare providers and service users as well as policy-makers. These stakeholders will be involved in an educational intervention to facilitate discussion around and avoidance of racism in service provision. Discussion Both the participatory process and outcomes of the process, e.g. educational interventions, will contribute to the social and political conversation about racism in healthcare settings. Creating new ways of discussing sensitive topics allows ameliorative actions to be taken, benefitting healthcare providers and users. The urgency of the project is underlined.

In today’s globalized world leaving one’s country of origin to move abroad has become more common,which often results in families and loved ones living apart from each other. This qualitative study aimsto explore professional women’s experiences of living abroad and their ways of coping with being awayfrom their loved ones. The study relies on theoretical concepts and prior research on transnationalfamilies, the sense of home and identity, guilt and coping strategies when longing for loved ones. Inaddition, the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic and its implications for travel has also beentaken into account. The primary data for thisstudy is based on ten semi-structured interviews with womenthat have been living and working or studying in Sweden for over a year, with loved ones abroad. Thedata is analyzed by a relational and partly narrative analysis and the study has been done from a feministperspective. The results show that moving abroad has impacted individual relationships with loved ones.Our participants expressed longing for physical co-presence with their loved ones, although they weremostly satisfied with their current situation. As our interviews showed, COVID-19 has not significantlyaffected their relationships with loved ones abroad, since the women have already been living apart -some of them quite long distances. In addition to the results the discussion will focus on key issuesencountered during the study, its limitations, strengths and suggestions for further research. I denna globaliserade värld har det blivit mer vanligt att lämna sitt hemland och flytta utomlands, ochdärmed inte bo nära sina nära och kära. Syftet med denna kvalitativa studie är att få en djupare förståelseför kvinnor som bor i ett annat land än deras nära och kära och hur de hanterar det. Studien är baserad påteoretiska koncept och tidigare forskning om transnationella familjer, flyttens inverkan på identiteten ochatt känna sig hemma, skulden av att bo på avstånd och strategier för att klara av att ha sina nära och kärapå avstånd. Detta sätts i perspektivet till den rådande COVID-19 pandemin och de begränsningar, inombland annat resande, som det innebär. Studiens primärdata baseras på tio semistrukturerade intervjuermed kvinnor som bott och jobbat eller studerat i Sverige i minst ett år och har sina nära och kärautomlands. En relationell analysmetod kombineras med narrativ analys och studien har en feministiskutgångspunkt. Resultatet visar att kvinnornas flytt utomlands har påverkat deras relationer med nära ochkära. Deltagarna i studien uttryckte en längtan efter fysisk samvaro med nära och kära i deras hemländer,men ansåg sig mestadels nöjda med deras rådande situation. Det framkom i våra intervjuer att COVID19 pandemin inte hade någon större inverkan på kvinnornas relationer med nära och kära, då de redanbefann sig på ett längre geografiskt avstånd. Utöver resultatet lyfter diskussionen viktiga frågor sompåträffades under studien, styrkor och svagheter samt förslag på vidare forskning.

Increasing numbers of children are being diagnosed with some kind of mental illness and especially the diagnosis ADHD and Autism are often discussed in popular media and academic articles. Several studies have underlined the relation between educational systems and the processes of diagnosing the children. How can we gain a deeper understanding of this connection in the context of Sweden? Between 2013-2017, the proportion of children who received care for some form of psychiatric diagnosis generally increased in Sweden. In terms of education, in the last three decades, reforms with a market tendency in the Swedish educational system changed the expectations towards the performance of the children in the school settings. This scenario makes Sweden an important country to investigate how the psychiatric discourse is being adopted by the school staff. This thesis aims to investigate to what extent the school staff in compulsory schools in Sweden draw on psychiatric discourses to the understanding of children’s mental health and behaviours, focusing on the behaviours classified as mental illness. Furthermore, this work also investigates how the school staff makes use of the psychiatric discourse in their practices. Through theoretical and empirical research, this thesis analyses how psychiatric discourses about children’s mental illness and behaviours are present in the Swedish educational system. The theoretical investigation mainly draws on the works of Foucault, Bourdieu, Hacking, Rose and Conrad. The discussions about the Swedish context is based on readings of school policies and statistical data about the number of children being diagnosed with some form of mental disorder. The empirical part of this research is constructed on interviews conducted with teachers, special pedagogues and counsellors currently working in Swedish compulsory schools. The findings suggest that the school staff in compulsory schools in Sweden support their understanding of children’s mental health and behaviours heavily on psychiatric discourses. However, it is also possible to locate moments in which the school staff questions the broader processes of the medicalization of the children. Finally, the results also point out the importance of investigating the medicalization of children in relation to the educational system.

Funding: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects). The literature on intergenerational contextual mobility has shown that neighbourhood status is partly ‘inherited’ from parents by children. Children who spend their childhood in deprived neighbourhoods are more likely to live in such neighbourhoods as adults. It has been suggested that such transmission of neighbourhood status is also relevant from a multiple generation perspective. To our knowledge, however, this has only been confirmed by simulations and not by empirical research. This study uses actual empirical data covering the entire Swedish population over a 25-year period, to investigate intergenerational similarities in neighbourhood status for three generations of Swedish women. The findings suggest that the neighbourhood environments of Swedish women are correlated with the neighbourhood statuses of their mothers and, to some extent, grandmothers. These results are robust over two different analytical strategies—comparing the neighbourhood status of the three generations at roughly similar ages and at the same point in time—and two different spatial scales. We argue that the finding of such effects in (relatively egalitarian) Sweden implies that similar, and possibly stronger, patterns are likely to exist in other countries as well. Publisher PDF

Authors: Ylva Andrén & Pernilla Winterskiöld Title: To what extent is there a correlation between discrimination in work life and instrumental attitudes towards work? -– A quantitative Swedish survey from a life course perspective. Subject presentation: There are seven grounds for discrimination, and we may all be subject to discrimination; male or female, young and old. Research show that attitudes towards work changes during a life cycle, but is that attitude affected if one is subject to discrimination? That is what we aim to investigate. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate if there is a correlation between discrimination in work life and instrumental attitude towards work. Furthermore, the study investigates whether such a correlation is related to two of the grounds for discrimination; gender or age. Method: An analysis of quantitative secondary data is done in order to investigate possible correlations between discrimination in work life and instrumental attitudes towards work. ISSP 2015 – views on work and work life is the Swedish survey we use as secondary data. Theory: The present study uses life course theory to interpret and analyze the results. Life course theory describes how critical events may impact an individual and subsequently attitudes towards work. Results: The analysis show that there is no significant correlation between discrimination in work life and instrumental attitude towards work when gender and age are considered. Subsequently two of the studies hypotheses were discarded. However, the study did show that women in greater extent than men have been subject to discrimination.

The literature on marriage status and mortality have shown that the married individuals enjoy longer lives than their non-married counterparts. The few studies that included cohabitation have found cohabitants to have a longevity between the married and other non-married groups. There are indications that the cohabiting population is diverse in terms of mortality risk, however, very little is known about how the association is related to age and stages of the life course. This is the first study on mortality and cohabitation for the Swedish population, which is a highly relevant context since Sweden is one of the countries where cohabitation is the most widespread and it has been a forerunner in many family trends. Using Swedish register data this study investigates how different partnership statuses are related to mortality across stages of the life course. It uses cox proportional hazards regression for the years 2012 – 2018 for the adult Swedish born population. Cohabiters were found to have consistently lower mortality risk than all other partnership statuses but the married except premarital cohabiters aged 30-49 who showed no excess mortality compared to the married. Further, the study reproduced findings that the difference between the cohabiters and the married is larger for women compared to men. These results contribute to our understanding of who cohabits at different stages of life, and it underlines that future research must consider cohabiters not as a homogenous group but as a status with diverse meaning that changes across the life course.

The increase in one-person household (OPHs) in the developed world is often seen as theresult of a trend where family solidarity is replaced by individualistic values and behaviourswhere the Nordic countries have been identified as forerunners in this development. In Asia,countries such as Japan have reached equal levels of economic development but retainelements of a strong family system and exhibit a much more asymmetric gender regime.This study compares the changes in the demographic and socioeconomic composition ofOPH women in Sweden and Japan between 1990 and 2016. The probability to be an OPHhousehold is analysed by means of logistic regression models using microdata covering the entire population in Sweden and the Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions in Japan. In Sweden, the growth of the female OPH population has halted and shifted to a decline compared to Japan where it has increased rapidly since the 1990s. The analysis finds increasing similarities between the countries in the age patterns and urban-rural differences while persistent contrast in the impact of women’s socioeconomic status and family history remains salient. The findings provide evidence that the transformation of women’s economic role does not result in an ever-increasing shift towards “less” family. Rather, living arrangements depend on the extent to which gender regime adapts to increased economic self-sufficiency among women. These findings highlight the need for preparedness for continued increases of the OPH population among policymakers in economically developed strong family societies such as Japan FORTE 2016-07115 Ageing well - individuals, families and households under changing demographic regimes in Sweden

Open access funding provided by Umea University. The Umeå SIMSAM Lab data infrastructure used in this study was developed with support from the Swedish Research Council and by strategic funds from Umeå University. In this paper, we address the questions of whether early family trajectories of parents are refected in childbearing teenagers, and how socio-economic and family background factors impact these intergenerational correlations. We use within-dyad sequence analysis to examine combined marital and childbearing trajectories, up to age 30, of two generations of a representative sample of childbearing teenagers born between 1975 and 1985 and their progenitors, drawn from the Swedish population register data. We fnd evidence for within-family persistence of early family trajectories, with better matches across family state sequences for dyads composed of childbearing teenagers and their parents, than for dyads composed of childbearing teenagers and parents of random birth cohort peers. Regression analysis shows that these intergenerational associations are stronger and occur among later-born siblings from non-traditional family backgrounds, and among families with lower socio-economic backgrounds. This study flls gaps in the knowledge of intergenerational family life course dynamics beyond the early parenthood event.

The work presented aims to analyse the dynamics of power and inequality within the Swedish academic space, and to do so considers the growing diversity of the Swedish academic composition, in the light of increasing internationalisation and a more recent commodification of higher education (HE). Through a critical discourse analysis of official documents published by the five largest Swedish universities, concerning internationalisation-oriented strategies, documents promoting equal opportunities and guidelines governing discrimination, I reflect on the spaces reserved for concepts such as diversity, interculturality and equal opportunities. To do so, I align myself with a decolonial approach, which questions places of epistemic enunciation, revealing inherent power dynamics represented by coloniality. I intend to argue that a decolonial perspective provides me with the lenses through which to analyse the power structures that still foster a colonial attitude in Swedish academia. The increasing internationalisation of Swedish universities and the way in which this internationalisation it is presented are, in my opinion, in tension with current policies that encourage and monitor equal opportunities. While on the one hand there is a tendency to build an increasingly international, global, and diverse university, on the other hand there is a lack of attention to diversity itself, to inequalities, equal opportunities, and potential discriminations. This tension helps to produce and reproduce power dynamics within the academic context, where the potentially global university does not invest enough resources in recognising and critically naming the differences that, even when unnamed, exist between all those who occupy the physical academic space. This tendency, I intend to argue here, is to be understood in the light of Swedish twofold tendency: on the one hand, a type of hegemonic feminism based on whiteness, heteronormativity and marginalisation of the other is produced and reproduced; on the other hand, such feminism, which proposes itself as the bearer of universal equal opportunities, contributes to the exclusion of other pluriversal subjectivities, excluded because they are racialised and do not belong to the nation-state in the strict sense - to which such feminism is in its nature closely linked.

Contemporary international migration is characterized by increasingly complex migration patterns, with high shares of re-migration, i.e., return and onward migration after an initial move. Re-migration not only constitutes a significant part of net migration, but also has long-term consequences on the demographic and socio-economic composition of receiving countries’ foreign-born populations. Moreover, return migrants are considered to be important actors in sending countries' economic, social and political development. At the same time, return is used as a means of an increasingly restrictive migration policy, for example within the EU. In this dissertation, international re-migration is examined in terms of its scope, geographical patterns, underlying factors, individual decision-making processes and consequences. It consists of an introductory chapter, followed by four individual studies. Study I examines patterns and determinants of return and onward migration among foreign-born individuals, using Swedish register data. The study analyses the importance of migration history, and social and economic attachments to Sweden. Although return migration is found to be the main form of remigration, onward migration is more prominent among specific migrant groups such as forced migrants. Whilst sharing many similarities, main differences between return and onward migration are related to age and the time spent in Sweden. Study II assesses the potential bias in estimating the size of different migrant populations due to over-coverage in population registers. The results confirm the existence of over-coverage and the substantial bias in mortality and fertility rates for people of migrating age, due to over-coverage. Accounting for over-coverage is particularly important for correctly estimating migrant fertility, as the bias occurs mainly at the most common ages for migration and having children. Study III examines the extent to which individual re-migration intentions might predict actual behaviour, compare their main determinants, and analyse what factors are related to the realization (or not) of re-migration intentions. Using a unique linkage of Swedish survey and register data, the study finds intention to be a relatively poor proxy of re-migration behaviour. Sharing many similarities, origin country ties are more related to re-migration intentions. Realizing intentions of both staying and leaving the destination country is found hindered by unemployment and economic difficulties. Study IV examines conditions of voluntariness in international return migration and its relation to risks of experiencing economic difficulties post return, relying on rich survey data among Senegalese and Romanian returnees. Whilst emphasizing the complexity of voluntariness, the findings show that semi-involuntary returns are associated with higher risks of economic difficulties. Compared to non-migrants, migrant returnees do not necessarily experience lower risks of economic difficulties. For example, deported returnees to Senegal do not experience migration-related advantages. Through its four studies, the dissertation addresses both conceptual and methodological challenges, which are constantly recurring in international migration research. The main results of the dissertation help to distinguish, compare and nuance the implications of traditional dichotomies in migration research, such as return vs. onward migration, intentions vs. behaviour, and deportation vs. "voluntary" return.

Precariousness in working life is a rising concern in Europe, but scant statistical evidence exists as to the prevalence and development of longstanding precarious employment. Using high-quality individual-level population-wide register data across several decades, this study addresses this issue in Norway and Sweden. Longstanding precarious attachment to the labour market was defined as low/marginal work income during eight years, with frequent substantial income drops and/or reliance on income maintenance schemes. In the core working-age population, 15.3 percent in Norway and 20.0 percent in Sweden had this employment attachment during 1996–2003. Women, low educated, and foreign-born were at higher risk. Contrary to expectations, in 2008–2015, longstanding precarious attachment had declined to 12.7 percent in Norway and 14.5 percent in Sweden. Women in particular, but also immigrants, had attained stronger labour market attachment in the latter period. These results could indicate that key welfare state elements such as trade union strength, strong employment protection and active labour market policies have been successful in shielding workers from negative labour market developments. However, certain population categories with particularly high risk of precarious employment, such as young adults and short-term and undocumented immigrants, have not been analysed by this study. Funding for the work on this study was provided by the Research Council of Norway (project no. 270838/H20) and the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (project no. 2017-02028). The Swedish data was accessed through collaboration with the research programme Studies of Migration and Social Determinants of Health (SMASH) also funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.

What is sex work? I have decided to start this short contribution with a question, which I think the reader should answer before continuing. So what is sex work? Is it a legitimate form of work or is it a job whose only characteristics are exploitation, harassment, and coercion? Also, can a person (woman or man) freely decide to be a sex worker or is it impossible to engage in such profession without considering the patriarchal oppression of our society? After more than three years of fieldwork in both Italy and Sweden, researching men who sell sex to other men, I understood that there are a few subject more politicized than sex work. Assuming a neutral position seems impossible, you must stand on one side or the other. The paradox is that both sides self-defined themselves as ‘pro-sex workers’: on one hand, being ‘pro’ sex workers means fighting for their rights, helping them to gain recognition as workers, and calling for laws that protect and legitimise their activities. On the other, being ‘pro’ sex workers means helping them to give up with their activities, saving them from themselves, and maintaining the status quo where laws seek to stop the commercialisation of sex through strict forms of criminalisation. In what follows, I will do my best to present sex work in a direct and neutral way, even if my position in favour of protecting the rights of sex workers to work and to engage in the commercialisation of sex may occasionally emerge.

This thesis empirically investigates how law and other social control responses during foreclosure in Sweden are contingent upon differences in social status. The thesis draws upon American sociologist Donald Black’s theoretical framework on social control to explain this social contingency. According to Black, variations in social control responses are explained and predicted by variations in the social structure pertaining to, for example, differences in wealth and relational distance between the stakeholders.The thesis consists of an introductory framework and four papers. Paper 1 employs register micro data from the Swedish Enforcement Authority (SEA) about foreclosure sale, and from Statistics Sweden about the foreclosure debtors, to explore how the socio-economic status of the debtors has changed from 2000 to 2014. Papers 2 and 3 employ the same type of data to explore different aspects of the behaviour of law: the relationship between lender–borrower relational distance and the quantity of law, and between borrower socio-economic status and the compensatory style of law, respectively. Paper 4 employs expert interviews with debt collection officers and managers to explore the relationship between how Swedish mortgage lenders organize and conduct debt collection measures aimed at delinquent borrowers, and the quantity of negotiation. The results in Papers 2–4 indicate that social control responses during foreclosure in Sweden are contingent upon differences in social status between the lender and the borrower.The thesis’ main contribution is that it provides empirical evidence of the socially contingent nature of law and other social control responses. This addresses one of the foundational debates within the sociology of law regarding the relationship between the instititutions of law and social control, on the one hand, and the organization of social relations and behaviour, on the other. Specifically, the thesis contributes with empirical applications of Donald Black’s theoretical framework using register and interview data, and an independent theory of negotiation during foreclosure in the Blackian paradigm. Furthermore,by demonstrating the relevance of Black for empirical studies of social control and for understanding the social contingency of law, the thesis aims to contribute to ongoing discussions within the sociology of law regarding the possibility of attaining positivistic yet critical knowledge about law-related phenomena. In conclusion, the implications of the social contingency of law for the SEA are discussed.

Introduction: Promoting inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable communities is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals ratified in 2015 by 193 UN member states, not least in Sweden. Social sustainability involves preserving particular societal values (e.g., local identity) as well as developing values (e.g., social cohesion) that are perceived as needed. Socially sustainable development also implies promoting integration and preventing segregation. Social capital is one important indicator to measure how socially sustainable an area is. This project aims to explore how social capital can be used as a conceptual tool in developing housing policy for social sustainability in Umeå Municipality. Methods: The three sub-studies in this project combine quantitative and qualitative methods. We will conduct a review of the municipality's documents to understand how the ideas of social sustainability have influenced political declarations and implemented social and housing policies and interventions during the period 2006–2020. The quantitative study includes a longitudinal follow-up to the 2006 survey's respondents to assess the longitudinal impacts of neighborhood social capital on health and well-being; as well as a new repeated cross-sectional survey to investigate how social capital has changed in local neighborhoods from 2006 to 2020. The qualitative study includes case studies in neighborhoods with different social capital dynamics to understand how different resident sub-groups perceive their neighborhoods and how implemented social and housing policies have influenced the social capital dynamics and responded to the needs of different sub-groups. The project is run in close collaboration with the Commission for a Socially Sustainable Umeå. Discussions: This project will create new and unique perspectives on long-term structural changes of relevance for a socially sustainable housing policy; knowledge that is highly valuable for continuous municipal planning; and will outline recommendations to guide local housing policies for social sustainable neighborhoods in Umeå Municipality. Ethics: This study has been assessed and approved by the Swedish Ethics Review Authority (Dnr: 2019-04395; Dnr: 2020-00160; Dnr 2020-02757). Dissemination: The dissemination goals of this project are (1) sustained engagement of key stakeholders throughout the project and (2) dissemination of the research findings through popular science, conferences, and scientific papers.

Sweden is among the countries with the highest share of single households in Europe, but not all are truly partnerless. We explore who are living-apart-together beyond ages of the late twenties and their potential vulnerability, analyzing data of the Swedish GGS. We apply multinomial logistic regression. The results show that vis-á-vis co-residence, LAT is more prevalent among: i) childless men than women, but the opposite is true for single parents; ii) the elderly (aged 70+); iii) those with long-term illness. Individuals engaged in LAT seem to be better off than singles, but are more likely to have economic difficulties than the co-residents. Neither growing up in a non-intact family, non-Swedish origin, metropolitan residence, nor educational attainment matter for living-apart-together rather than in any other living arrangement. The majority feels constrained to have separate households, rather than this being their choice, yet concerns of vulnerability in relation to LAT seem exaggerated. Ageing well - individuals, families and households under changing demographic regimes in Sweden

A compromise in the name of growth: increasing public confidence in the elites in Sweden (1930s – 1960s) The paper deals with historical prerequisites and basic elements of the Swedish elite compromise as it emerged in Sweden in time of the advancement and culmination of mass production in this country between the 1930s and 1960s. A special vision of the future, namely the society of “the people’s home” formulated by the Swedish social democrats in the 1930s, is under focus. The paper takes up briefly reforms introduced in subsequent decades, which transformed Sweden into one of the most affluent and economically developed nations in the world in the second half of the 20th century. It analyses the role played for the compromise by the main elite groups, including the business elites, leaders of political parties, employer organisations and trade unions, as well as by intellectual elite. The paper discusses which lessons of the Swedish experience can be of relevance for contemporary Russia. It suggests that a transition to a more justice and affluent open-access society does not necessarily entail increase in social mobility in this society, as this has been the case in Sweden. В статье рассматриваются исторические предпосылки и базовые элементы элитного компромисса в Швеции в эпоху распространения и расцвета массового производства в этой стране в 1930–1960-е гг. Подчеркивается роль особого видения будущего, общества “народного дома”,сформулированного шведскими социал-демократами в 1930-е гг. Разбираются реформы, осуществленные в последующие десятилетия, которые превратили Швецию в одну из самых богатых и экономически развитых стран мира во второй половине ХХ в. Подвергается анализу роль основных элитных групп в этом компромиссе, включая деловые круги, руководство политических партий, организации работодателей и профсоюзов, интеллектуальную элиту. Делаются выводы об уроках элитного компромисса в Швеции для современной России. В статье выдвигается тезисо том, что переход к более справедливому и богатому обществу открытого доступа не обязательно должен сопровождаться усилением социальной мобильности в этом обществе.

The overall aim of this article is to explore the ways in which refugee reception and integration work is storied in the local newspapers of two rural municipalities in northern Sweden. Our results show that the strong emphasis on integration through employment present in national policy regimes is not readily visible in local media portrayals of integration. Instead, integration work is framed as a matter of commitment of individual refugees, volunteers and government administrative staff and, thus, as work with a high level of social support. We argue that the frame of commitment itself needs to be viewed in relation to the growing public support for limiting the resources available for this kind of work, as well as for the limitations for refugees to enter Sweden in the first place.

This study bridges research on squatting and urban commons by studying squatting - when collectively self-organized for community wide social (material and immaterial) benefit and within largely anti-capitalist and anarchist ways - as a practice of commoning. In this paper we analyze the "why" and "how" of such a practice in a Swedish context. A country where the provision of community spaces has historically been satisfied by public authorities within a contradictory hybrid model of corporatist/state capitalism amidst a traditionally well-developed public service sector and strong civil society. Our empirical material consists of 17 semi-structured interviews with squatters, as well as the authors' participant observation at the longest lasting squats in the Swedish capital since 2000. We focus on how the creation of this 'free and voluntary' community led to a 'commoning' of knowledge and skills within squatters' daily lives; and how these practices developed, evolved, and were maintained. Our analysis shows that while the space, most objects in it, and the provisioning of goods there were commoned; the most profound 'commoning' there was immaterial in nature. This commoning centered on the un/intentional sharing, diffusion, and commoning of knowledge, skills, and even emotions and feelings which happened within the mixture of planned and autonomously rotating responsibilities in space. Joint first- and last authorship: Dominika Polanska and Timothy Weldon

This article analyses 262 memes, the majority image-macros, posted to a large Swedish anti-immigration Facebook group in order to explore the memetic normalisation of far-right nostalgia. Through the application of an array of critical visual analysis methods it reveals that the nostalgia that disguises hateful far-right discourses in the group is not merely a reflection of that peddled by Sweden’s organised far-right political parties and movements but a complex crowdsourced amalgam involving different nostalgic modes and moods. Unpacking these modes and moods, the article also highlights some of the nostalgic tensions at play in the group, indicating the need to rethink broader understandings of far-right nostalgia and calling for further research into how it can be used to veil hate in digital settings.

This study examined temporal trends and socioeconomic differences in alcohol use and drunkenness among Swedish 15-year-old students between 2001/02 and 2017/18. Data were obtained from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study conducted in 2001/02, 2005/06, 2009/10, 2013/14 and 2017/18 (n ≈ 1500/year). Socioeconomic status (SES) was measured using two alternative indicators: educational aspirations and family affluence. Logistic regression models were used to investigate the relationships between drinking measures and SES indicators. The results showed a significant decline in alcohol use and drunkenness among Swedish 15-year-old students from 2001/02 to 2017/18. Educational aspirations almost consistently statistically negatively predicted regular alcohol use and drunkenness. Family affluence only had a weak effect on adolescent drinking behavior with a tendency for less affluent students reporting less alcohol use and drunkenness. Trend analyzes within the subgroups indicated that the downward trend was mirrored in all SES groups, but it was not equally steep in all groups. The decrease was generally weaker among students with lower educational aspirations but stronger among students from less affluent families. This study suggests that different aspects of SES may influence adolescent drinking in opposing directions. In future efforts aimed at reducing alcohol use and drunkenness among adolescents, students with lower educational aspirations should be the target population.

This study investigates residential segregation in a small town (countryside) in the municipality of Växjö in Sweden. The purpose of this study is to determine whether there are any relationships between the settlement of “newly-arrived” non-European immigrants in the countryside and the native Swedes’ tendency to move out of the area. The research question follows: Does the settlement of “newly-arrived” non-European immigrants in the countryside have any effect on the displacement of native residents? The study conducted a survey on 200 local native inhabitants. Guided by cultural and structural theories, using logistic regression analysis of moving out versus not moving out of the countryside, results found that the settlement of “newly-arrived” non-European immigrants in the countryside increases the native residents’ tendency to move out of the area. Native residents who experience an increased settlement of non-European immigrants in the countryside are more likely to move out of the area, compared to those who do not have such experience. Results also showed that native residents who experience an increased settlement of “newly-arrived” non-European immigrants in the municipality of Växjö, where the countryside is located, are more likely to move out of the area. In particular, native residents who had moved in from other parts of Sweden and lived a shorter period of time in the area were more likely to move out compared to natives who were born or grown up in the area. Furthermore, those who were employed, male and low-income earners were more likely to move out of the area in contrast to women, high income earners and those who were unemployed.

Racial bias afflicts police practices across the globe. Police discrimination against and mistreatment of racial and ethnic minorities is indeed difficult to underestimate. While much attention has been thus paid to racially biased policing, fewer studies examine the question from the reverse angle, namely how the police themselves combat racist offences. This article offers empirical insights into the policing of racial hatred in Sweden, a relevant yet relatively understudied case. Drawing on interviews with police officers and crime investigators, I discuss law enforcement perspectives, e.g. perceptions and reasoning in relation to the investigation of racist offences. Findings evince a rather narrow approach as regards the constructions of racist motive that involves a relatively restricted use of bias labelling in identifying hate incidents, especially when the boundaries of racial hostility are perceived as blurred. I argue that while such an approach may reflect a legitimate effort to demonstrate the existence of a motive behind an offence, it may also lead to an underestimation of more mundane forms of racism and their harms inflicted upon racialized individuals and communities. The results have implications for ‘recognition’ and ‘belonging’ as benchmarks of democratic policing, and ‘the promise of inclusion’ associated with combatting hate crimes.

The aim of this thesis is to examine educational stratification in the context of out-of-home care (OHC; foster family care, residential care) and to place one of society’s most vulnerable groups in the fields of social stratification and family complexity research. About 5% of the Swedish population experience OHC during childhood or adolescence. OHC is not only a matter of protecting children and youth; it is also intended to improve future opportunities and compensate for adverse childhood factors. However, a vast body of international research, including Swedish studies, shows that a substantial proportion of young people from OHC have poor school performance and low educational attainment as adults. Furthermore, this is strongly associated with their high risk of other adverse outcomes in life. To date there are no signs of improvement in this regard, and the disadvantage of having a low education is increasing in today’s knowledge-based society. Many previous OHC studies have relied on small, local samples, and longitudinal data are often lacking. In this respect, Swedish researchers are well positioned to contribute to the field through research based on our high-quality population registers. The main data source in this thesis – the Child Welfare Intervention Register – covers half a century of OHC data. Based on these data, an overview of OHC prevalence in Sweden and patterns of educational outcomes are presented in the introductory chapter. The thesis further consists of five individual studies investigating different aspects of the transition through the educational system to adult life among children and youth from OHC. Two of the five studies focus on children who spent most of their childhood in OHC and for whom society has assumed a long-term commitment of parental responsibilities. The descriptive data show that patterns of poor educational outcomes in the OHC population have remained stable as long as they can be followed in the registers. Study I shows that youth who exited long-term care were disadvantaged as compared to youth without OHC experience, both in terms of educational attainment and regarding the strong association between poor school performance and other adverse outcomes in young adulthood. Up to 55% of their excess risks of later psychosocial problems were statistically attributable to dismal school performance. Study II shows that 54% of clients in substance-misuse treatment in the 1980s had been in OHC, half before their teen years and half as teenagers. In this group, OHC was associated with excess mortality during the 30-year follow-up from exit from treatment, with statistical significance mainly for females who had entered OHC before their teens. School failure was more common in the OHC population than for misuse clients without OHC experience, and was strongly associated with the excess mortality of females. Two Nordic comparative studies (Studies III and IV) show that the OHC population had a substantially higher risk of not completing upper-secondary education across countries, and that poor performance in primary school inflicted a greater risk in OHC youth of being NEET in young adulthood than for their peers without OHC experience. Study V shows that the intergenerational transmission of education was weak and inconsistent in the foster care setting, and that living in a highly educated foster family did not have a robust positive effect on foster children’s educational outcomes. At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript.