Projects with keyword: Social exclusion/inclusion

This project focuses on career-choices of youth with immigrant background. It explores questions of exclusion and inclusion, the importance of of social and cultural capital for school performance. It records reflections on career-paths in a Swedish and transnational perspective. The main result of the project is a PhD thesis on Ethnic Studies focusing on young persons' career-choices, their strategies and orientations and their reflections on these choices. The central research question of the thesis is how young persons with foreign background make their choices relating to education or work. Which are the ambitions, conceptions and visions of these young people? On the background of which influences, conditions, limitations and opportunities do they make their choices? The study reflects on youth's own understandings of their choices, agency and motives. Methods employed are individual and focus group interviews with youth in secondary school combined with participant observation in secondary schools in Stockholm. Teachers and other staff are also interviewed.

This project analyzes the idea and image of the masses in modern European history. To write the history of the masses is at once to write the history of the political, ideological, and aesthetic boundaries that have been fabricated in order for a certain people, nation, or ethnicity to view itself as a unity, and this by rejecting certain segments of the population as "masses". The problem at the heart of this research undertaking is thus central to the ways in which cultural and collective identities have been construed throughout European modernity. The project is completed and has resulted in two major monographs and a number of articles; the first one is "A Brief History of the Masses: Three Revolutions", published in Swedish in 2005, and in English in 2008; the second one is entitled "Crowds and Democracy: The Idea and Image of the Masses in Europe between the Wars", and is (2011) forthcoming.

The project focuses on the role of immigrant associations in combating discrimination. The project sets out from previous research indicating a need for a broader understanding of immigrant associations for the development of alternative strategies in education and the labor market, in order to advance the understanding of the conditions for partnerships between civil society, public and private sectors. The project examines partnership between public, private and voluntary actors through a qualitative study of Anti-Discrimination Agencies, (ADA) in Stockholm, run by immigrant associations. The efforts of the ADA to assist individuals who feel discriminated on the basis of gender, ethnic background etc., indicates the growing importance of ADA as actors in the field of social strategies for social inclusion. One of the preliminary findings indicates that activism among ADA as civil society organisations is based on delicate balancing between volunteer activism and adjustment to increasingly emphasized market exigency.

Studies of neighbourhood effects, school effects, ethnic networks, and other kinds of social contacts have shown that social environments and networks influence establishment and career in the labour market in different ways and, hence, may explain why newly arrived immigrants frequently face difficulty in becoming established in the labour market. The purpose of this project is to study the comparative importance of different kinds of social relations. Several types of social contexts are studied and put in contrast to each other; neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces, national and transnational ethnic networks, as well as formal competence and the situation in the labour market. Hence, the project takes into account both the characteristics of the individual and the opportunities and constraints of the context.

The project illuminates, with Stockholm as a case study in a national and international perspective, how institutional changes and reforms of compulsory and upper-secondary schools affect the social inclusion/exclusion of young people with immigrant backgrounds; their careers and experiences of education and employment in segregated metropolitan environments. Special attention is paid to local cooperation involving the family, ethnic associations, and local educational institutions. The overall research question concerns the impact of education, work and civic agency on social inclusion and full citizenship in multi-ethnic society. Reforms in the system of education and changes on the labour market are related to local community development in order to elucidate the interplay between structural and institutional change, civic agency and individual social mobility.

The project investigates the conditions under which persons with different kinds of immigrant backgrounds get qualified jobs. I examine one firm in the ICT sector in Kista Science City. I show how different kinds of persons get different kinds of jobs. The assignment of jobs relates to the background of the employee, the opportunity structures and various structural relations related to gender, class and ethnicity. I show how persons with immigrant backgrounds can get good jobs and compare women and men and persons without immigrant backgrounds to those with different kinds of immigrant background.

Tänk Om consists of four local labour market projects that are being developed in Norrköping and Linköping. Susanne Urban have in collaboration with Centrum för kommunstrategiska studier, CKS, been given the assignment to evaluate the project. The general aim of the project is to contribute to local development and to develope methods to assist long term unemployed to get into the labour market. The project is a three year long local development project in selected districts of the municipalities and is funded by European Social Fund for activity in the years 2008-2011.

My research project lies in the framework of the restructuring of the states sovereignty in Europe and attempts to analyse the consequences of a set of reforms implemented in social and urban policies. The methods developed through the Local Development Agreements in Sweden as well as the so-called City Policy in France (Politique de la ville) promote new territorial approaches in deprived areas. This new category of public action includes a strategic management, which is most of the time based on public and private partnerships and a coordination of plans in various fields such as housing, education, safety, health and economic development.

In my opinion, the development methods implemented in deprived areas have to be questioned. In general terms, the co-existence of a policy that emphasises safety and one that aim at the involvement of the inhabitants leads to a paradoxical situation in the definition and management of urban development projects. How can one in fact articulate two political directions where one has its object to control and the other to involve a population?

Previous research has demonstrated differences in health between immigrants and natives in Sweden along several dimensions, e.g. regarding self-reported health, hospitalisation rates, as well as mortality rates. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of early life conditions in the country of birth and current socioeconomic conditions in adult life in Sweden on severe morbidity (leading to hospitalisation) and on mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancers, and other causes, among immigrants and natives in Sweden.
The study uses two large-scale databases; SMD (Social Medicine Data Base) and SLI (Swedish Longitudinal Immigrant Database) Results show that when controlling for demographic characteristics only, most immigrant groups display higher rates of hospitalisation and higher all-cause mortality than native Swedes, but when socio-economic factors are introduced, only Nordic immigrants display rates that are significantly higher than for Swedish born.
The effects of current adult life socioeconomic conditions in Sweden on mortality are both stronger and more straightforward than the effects of early life conditions.

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.

The project analyses how changes in policies and regulations affect conditions and opportunities for small business development in different industries over time, and how self-employed persons act in response to changes in opportunity structures. We study strategies of growth and survival within specific industries and markets, but also transitions of self-employment across industries and types of markets. The project will contribute new knowledge through a systematic and coherent longitudinal and spatial investigation of the dynamics of self-employment among immigrants in Sweden. The project systematically applies and develops instruments from recent international research on ethnic minority businesses (EMB). Theory in the field is developed through the integration of entrepreneurship theory and new theoretical contributions from EMB research. Theoretical perspectives on strategies and self-employed as actors is combined with theory on opportunity structures (the framework of ?mixed embeddedness?). Methodologically, the approach implies coordinated analyses of different dimensions on different levels, using a combination of policy studies, case studies and quantitative analyses.

European societies have recently turned toward more austere political regimes. Evidence of this can be seen in budget cuts, management of the labor market and restrictions of welfare systems, as well as in new regimes of migration and citizenship. Against the backdrop of such processes, this project investigates how a current politics of austerity affects our cultural memory. This project seeks to extract the correlation between how minorities, migrants and their descendants are treated by present policies and how memories and experiences of migrants, minorities and colonized peoples are treated in historiography and historical pedagogy. The project is unique in the sense that it brings together social scientists analyzing ethnic relations and migration in contemporary Europe and historians studying Europe?s history and cultural memory. It is also potentially path breaking as it crosses borders between languages and academic traditions and initiates a truly inter-European academic discussion on scholarly and intellectual concerns that are deeply shared by most national communities of Europe but usually studied only in the contexts of the various nation states.

This project examines the position of the white subject in Africa. Specifically, it examines Nadine Gordimer’s exploration of the notion of whiteness and white Africanity in her fiction and prose, as well as her investigation of the oppressor’s consciousness, and her negotiation and interrogation of her own position as a white South African. In essays and speeches she intervened in debates and voiced feelings and apprehensions that concerned the futurity of whiteness in a shifting political and social context. As I argue, these interventions were made from a new emerging subject position that resulted from the social and political constraints of apartheid and colonialism, inhabiting the interstice of an old, given colonial order, and the decolonial processes of the antiracist, anti-imperial and anticolonial struggles in Africa and Europe which was bringing the colonial era to an end. Through her fiction writing she was able to shape this subject position, which lacked representation and hence existence within the dominant political discourse. Projected into her fiction, the subject position emerges as an object of knowledge within the intellectual history of South Africa.

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.

This project is part of a larger project analyzing the implications of school choice reforms, school choice and its long-term consequences for individuals' social mobility in Sweden in general, with a particular focus on three medium-sized Swedish cities; Örebro, Norrköping and Jönköping. The project as a whole examines the general political context and implementation of school choice reforms at the local level, the experience of school choice at the individual level and the long term consequences for young people's future educational and professional careers. This particular part of the project examines the implementation of the school choice reform at the local level, through interviews with politicians and officials, and analysis of policy documents at the national and local levels. Overall, the project offers new knowledge about whether school choice reform has led to increased freedom of choice, and the long-term effects of school choice reforms for individuals' social mobility.

This communication project will produce exhibitions and arrange lectures and conversations in the exhibition space to
communicate research and knowledge about the refugee situation in Europe and Sweden today. A particular focus is on the
problems and possibilities of municipal refugee reception. The project is thus not only about knowledge dissemination, but
also dialogue and communication between professional groups, the general public and researchers.
The overall aim of the project is to combat xenophobia by increasing knowledge and to contribute to a pro active
discussion about a sustainable refugee reception system which corresponds to the humans rights we as citizens and as a
political community have committed to.

Stratification theory commonly puts education as the link between class of origin and class of destination. This system, where class is inherited through education and education inherited through class is often referred to as meritocracy. The concept of meritocracy - a society dominated by those with the most merits - has gained widespread support. Still, authoritarian and populist resurgences throughout the West indicate that ascriptive factors very much remain of import. So what is happening to meritocracy? In this doctoral project I address this question by studying the Swedish educational system and the phenomenon known as immigrant optimism.

Immigrant optimism refers to the fact that immigrants and children of immigrants tend to be more academically driven than expected given their socioeconomic backgrounds. This would result in advantage in the labor market, were it not for racialization and discrimination. As a result, immigrant optimism is at the intersection of the competing principles of attainment and ascription, making it an ideal subject for a project concerned with meritocracy.

The project examines art, literature and film dealing with collective protests in 2011 and after. It will explore how aesthetic presentations advance our understanding of collective political action in ways that other modes of knowledge such as sociology, history and journalism are unable to do.

The material is a selection of literary and artistic works that present or perform the Tahrir revolution in Cairo 2011, the People's Assemblies in Athens 2011, and the Maidan Revolt in Kiev 2013-2014. The project focuses on the dialogical and multivocal modes of experience at the heart collective protest.

The REMESO database is a register-based database that contains information about all individuals, schools, dwellings and companies in Sweden.
The REMESO database is based on Statistics Sweden's annual registerdata and consists of five parts:
(1) A population register containing information about all individuals who were registered in Sweden as of 31 December for each year;
(2) Longitudinal Integration Database for Health Insurance and Labor Market Studies (LISA);
(3) A business register with information about all economically active companies and organizations in Sweden , whether they belong to the private or public sector;
(4) A school register with information about all elementary schools and upper secondary schools, including student grades;
(5) A real estate register containing microdata administrative and longitudinal information on all properties, buildings, addresses and apartments in Sweden.

The proposed project aims to explore how parenthood is negotiated and constructed by parents with foreign backgrounds in Muslims countries through strategies of respectability when they access welfare institutions such as the family central in Sweden from an intersectional perspective. Studies show that families with foreign backgrounds in general, and those in risk of being racialized as Muslims in specific, pertains to groups that in different ways are marginalized in terms of access to the services in welfare institutions, although there are important variation of experiences within and across these groups. Issues that often are raised concern language barriers and socio-economic factors explaining a status as vulnerable. There are also other factors such as discrimination, stereotyping and stigmatizing discourses against families with a foreign background in welfare institutions. Thus, performing 'migrant respectability' can be a strategy to avoid stigmatization and stereotypes when they access welfare institutions such as the family central in Sweden.

Housing plays a central role in the process of integrating refugees. A home offers stability, a place of resources in the city, which may serve as a platform for participating in society. Although the provision of adequate housing is vital for a transformation into sustainable and resilient communities in cities characterised by hope, such housing conditions have become less accessible in Sweden.

Refugees face a particularly difficult situation concerning housing as they are housed in less attractive residential areas, often in overcrowded and poorly maintained apartments. This situation has been further complicated by the restrictive turn in Swedish migration policy from 2016 and onwards. In sum, this policy turn consists of the introduction of temporary residence status, restrictions in family reunification, a refugee dispersal policy, and limitations in terms of choosing in which neighbourhood to reside.

Our interdisciplinary project aims to understand the impact of the restrictive policy turn on the contemporary housing situation for refugees. We do so by focusing on how the policy change influences actors that use, plan, develop, and organise housing for refugees.

The implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies lies at the core of the construction of peaceful and inclusive societies and cities. But how should migration policies be framed to best promote such development?

This project focuses on the links and impediments between different types of migration policies and refugee inclusion. The project focuses on Sweden, a country which often is associated with open and inclusive migration policies. However, in the aftermath of the so-called “European migration crisis” in 2015 and 2016, Sweden suddenly changed its policy approach. Over a day, migration policy in Sweden changed from an inclusionary to a restrictive approach more in line with the European standard.

This project uses the swift change of regulations in an innovative design to identify two groups of refugees that were granted residence in the same time but were affected and unaffected by the restrictive change. Focusing on these groups, a few novel and unique data sources are introduced and developed to assess the influence of the change on refugees’ inclusion and well-being.

In the context of an expansion of digital infrastructures driven by the impact and recovery of the pandemic, we bring together perspectives from queer feminist technoscience, migration and cultural studies, social and political theory, from the EU and the UK, in order to investigate how infrastructural imaginaries (re)configure democratic sovereignty, imagined communities, and practices of bordering of the European Union. We propose to think and investigate sovereignty through (a) infrastructural and entrepreneurial ways of constituting and imagining e?thnos and demos through technological innovations, and (b) conflicts that emerge where efforts to create new infrastructures meet existing ones. Is it possible, we ask, that new constitutionalities are being imagined, practiced, and produced here?