Projects with keyword: Partnership

The project explores partnerships between schools, public institutions for adult education and immigrant associations concerning the impact of education and civic agency on social inclusion. The project relates to changes in the wider framework of school governance in Sweden in order to elucidate the interplay between structural and institutional change, civic agency and social change. Special attention is paid to cooperation between ethnic/immigrant associations, home and school and local educational institutions, and the consequences of the ways in which different kinds of partnerships are organized, in terms of democratic governance, and social inclusion/exclusion of ethnic minorities (as parents, organiserd in associations etc.).

This PhD-project examines the role of inter-organizational collaboration and partnership in the governance of local integration programs targeted towards refugees in Sweden. For decades these programs have been criticized for delaying entrance into the labour market and it has been a longstanding goal for the government to incorporate them in the Swedish employment strategy, 'arbetslinjen'. Governmental agencies have applied 'soft' policy measures such as guidelines, comparisons, knowledge dissemination and 'agreements' for voluntary policy coordination to create conditions for joint efforts at the local level. Drawing on institutional theory the PhD project examines the impact of this norm building process by focusing on how local actors respond to the governing strategies and in what way collaboration contributes to the development of the programs.

The multidisciplinary project Work, Market and Integration addresses the local public-private collaboration in developing novel methods for labour market integration. The main research question is how potential tensions between market-informed solutions and solutions based on strengthening target group involvement inform partnerships: project logic (means and goals), norm building and identities of partners and target groups, and dissemination, learning and communication of new methods.

What Kind of Regionalism? seeks to explore the value basis of regionalism in two northern European regions. By investigating two less favoured, politically defined regions, the author to complement previous accounts of regionalism in western Europe, many of which have revolved either around ethnic regions, known for hosting sub-nationalist demands, or around affluent regions in the economic and political centre of Europe.

A fundamental assumption in the study is that regionalism can be studied as an instance of a political ideology. The author has compared the political debate in Norrbotten (Sweden) and Mecklenburg?Western Pomerania (Germany) from the mid-1990s up to the present, bringing out the norms, values and demands on which regionalism in these two regions rests.

Drawing on extensive empirical material from the two regions, the author seeks to challenge any notion that modern-day forms of regionalism differ from previous ones through an absence of ethno-culturalist elements. The author adopts a critical approach towards treating regional identities, cultures and images primarily as desirable factors for regional economic growth.

Efforts to include refugees in Swedish society have changed since the Establishment reform was introduced in 2010. In this project, the implementation of the reform has been studied in the municipalities of Eskilstuna and Nyköping. The study shows that refugees have difficulties to decode the reception programs, due to the complexity of the reception system, composed of a mixture of different forms of governance: hierarchical governance, horizontal collaboration and market-based control. The centrally organized Employment service leaves relatively limited space for action at the local level. One of the conclusions is that the Establishment reform so far has not led to any development efforts for inclusion of refugees as the authorities have put the most efforts on solving administrative issues and build routines rather than to actively promote the inclusion of refugees.

The project aims at enhancing empirical knowledge and theoretical understanding of this complex research question, focusing on the potential of alternative strategies for social inclusion of migrant youth in multi-ethnic urban settings. We set out to examine different expressions of cooperation for social inclusion in multi-ethnic urban settings. The project studies the question of urban unrest from different empirical perspectives, ranging from institutional representatives to actors in civil society and young people themselves. Empirically, the project will scrutinize how structural change and institutional responses related to welfare reductions affects social exclusion/inclusion of migrant youth in marginalized neighborhoods through case studies in two Swedish urban settings, Stockholm and Malmö. The project is interdisciplinary and is carried out with by the use of qualitative methods such as interviews (individually as well as in groups) and document analysis.