Josefina Syssner

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.

In recent decades, tourism and travelling has increasingly come to be recognized as a highly complex field of research that raises questions that are both local and global, that involves questions about identity and self-understanding, as well as questions relating to human rights, development, global economy and international political relations. Still, there are yet few Swedish textbooks where contemporary tourism and travel is highlighted from a critical perspective, or where issues of global power relations are in focus. Therefore, the purpose of this project has been to produce text books in Swedish, in which international tourism and travel are confronted with new, critical, theoretical perspectives.

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.

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.