Projects with keyword: Regional development

Over the past decades, the literature on regionalism and regionalisation has grown considerably, and so has the literature on citizenship. But although globalisation, international migration, and processes of state rescaling, regionalism and regionalisation have vast implications for the formation of political, economic and social citizenship at regional levels, few explicit attempts have been made to bridge the literature on regionalism and regionalisation, with the literature on citizenship. Accordingly, the main aim of this project is to - empirically and theoretically elaborate on the concept of regional citizenship.

This project focuses at the role of branding in urban and regional governance. The project is based on the identification of a growing need for studies focusing on those patterns of inclusion and exclusion that have emerged in the aftermath of the restructuring of the welfare state. In particular, the project seeks to meet the need for studies in which new, geopolitical entities are confronted with questions of inclusion, exclusion and diversity. In short, the project aims to explore whether place branding is a sub-national strategy for growth and competitiveness only, or if it is a strategy for (a) urban and regional governance and (b) inclusion and diversity too.

The objective of the project is to describe and analyze the governments steering of the complex objective of Swedish integration policy in the policy area of regional development and map out obstacles for such an implementation as well as the results of it.

The projects will describe and analyse the implementation of the Swedish integration policy in the policy area of Regional development by using interviews, participating observations and analysing relevant documents. The main research area is on regional and local development partnership. Concepts from network governance theory and policy analysis are used for the analysis. The Study raises questions on the correspondence between governmental policy goals and practises in different regions and local contexts and explores the governmental steering in a network governance model of partnerships with autonomous actors. The project has a comparative approach as well as an in-depth study of a development region.

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.

In Germany and Sweden, portrayed as symbols of hospitality in 2015, politicians and policymakers have since then advocated efficiency and order in refugee reception. New infrastructures and spatial strategies are designed in order to better manage the mobility of newly arrived refugees, for instance through the implementation of arrival centres, refined screenings and mobility predictions in Germany, which is mirrored in recent policy suggestions for Sweden. This project asks whether this development can be understood as a logistification of migration: making the mobility of refugees compliant to needs and resources of national and local communities and labour markets through the art and science of logistics. Through interviews with German experts, policymakers and stakeholders, and ethnographic attention to everyday practices of policy design and coordination, I examine how arrival centres have been implemented as logistical hubs. Inspired by emerging literature on critical logistics the project will contribute with important perspectives on inconsistencies, vulnerabilities and unintended consequences of the logistic imagination of circulation and mobility as governable. Research