Projects with keyword: Class

The network aims to create an intellectual forum for scientific discussion and criticism, and research initiatives on issues concerning trade unions, globalization and transnational solidarity.
By bringing together researchers from different disciplines and scattered between Universities, the network aims to develop theoretical understanding of the trade union movement's challenges in a social landscape in change, characterized by regionalization and internationalization of production regimes. Within the framework the nework pays particular attention to cases of union cooperation across national borders. The network brings together research on gender, ethnicity and class linked to transnational trade union solidarity. The empirical focus is on transnational trade union cooperation in near areas (the Nordic /Baltic region), regional (EU / Europe) and global (North-South). In addition to a common theoretical focus, the network is aims to coordinate and develop the research and form the basis for initiation of new research. Finally, the network aims to enable cooperation with other international network of researchers focusing on similar research.

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.

Research on trade unions has identified the crises and challenges trade unions face, not only in relation to employers and the state, but also regarding how to keep the trade union and workers together. One particular challenge is how to build solidarity in a context in which the number of migrant workers is increasing and working class support for anti-immigrant extreme right parties is growing.

The research question framing this proposal is how an important organisation for Swedish industrial relations negotiate what seems to be a fundamental contradiction among its members. The aim is to analyse the strategies and actions taken by trade unions in relation to migrant workers, ethnic diversity and members and activists displaying support for extreme right parties.

The theoretical framework is drawn from labour studies and industrial relations research along with migration and ethnic studies, supplemented with gender studies.. Methodologically, the project is an ethnographic study of five blue collar trade unions and Landsorganisationen, employing semi-structured interviews and participant observation, complemented with document analysis.

Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences

As one of the largest organizational complexes in Sweden, trade unions both reflect and influence societal development, affecting policies, regulating labor markets and influencing wage-earner identities and solidarities. The last decades have seen substantial changes in the trade union landscape, with the increasing strength of white-collar trade unions vis-à-vis blue-collar unions, changes in the character of the labor market, while the strength of Sweden’s social democracy has been decreasing.
The aim of this study is to explore white masculinities in the forging of the trade union worldviews, policies and strategies relating to three spheres– socio-political, industrial relations and internal organization. The focus is on three trade unions dominated by men with a Swedish background variously affected by globalization: engineers, managers and construction workers.
The project is inspired by three central theoretical concepts: neoliberal globalization, white masculinity and trade union solidarity. Methodologically, it encompasses ethnography: interviews, focus groups, observations and document analysis.

This project suggests a new research concept. It assumes that aesthetic expressions offer unique methods for inquiring into political emergence. Aesthetic works own this potentiality because they register sociopolitical transformation through voice, embodied experience and subjective expression, comparable to the testimonial mode of the participant, in situations of antagonism and political violence.

– How are collective protests, migrant movements, and authoritarian populism – and their mutualtensions and interdependencies – articulated in contemporary aesthetic presentations and performances?
– In comparison to disciplinary research in the social sciences, what do such aesthetically rendered accounts tell us about the political emergence of collective protest, migrant movements, and authoritarian populism?
– In which ways can the aesthetic dimension improve our understanding of the concept and practices of democracy, in an era of social rearrangement and computational control of collective behavior?

The project engages aesthetics to traverse epistemological boundaries and enables methodological convergences between the social sciences and the aesthetic humanities.