Projects with keyword Welfare
Active projects
Local Governance in Migration and Integration Policy
This project explores how, and to what extent municipalities in Sweden have strengthened their autonomy in the policy fields of migration and labour market integration, despite recently increased centralisation and stricter hierarchies of governance in this policy field. Focus will be put on local efforts to attract, accommodate, and retain migrants, and how this is achieved within the context of an ostensibly anti-migration state, pursuant to austerity politics. In seeking to understand policy divergence between local and central levels of governance, the project aims to explain both why and how it occurs. The former relates to how different levels of governance understands the issue at hand, and the policy frames, institutional logics, and political rationalities that inform it. The latter concerns the material constraints and possibilities associated with local policy implementation, in terms of funding, strategic and operational support, as well as bureaucratic control. Here, subnational cooperative networks and their role in mediating, suppressing, or supporting local policy efforts will be of particular interest. Through a mixed-methods design, including nation-wide survey data and municipal case studies, the project seeks to produce both extensive and rich, detailed data on the Swedish migration and integration regime, laying bare its internal variation.
The REMESO Database
Martin Klinthäll, Associate professor
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.
Finished Projects
Research Communication through Exhibitions and Talks
Erik Berggren, Research Coordinator
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.
Immigrants’ legal status and integration in Sweden
Research on the relationship between immigrants’ entry categories and legal status after obtaining the residence permits and their socioeconomic integration, is fragmented and underdeveloped, both in Sweden and internationally.
The aim of this project is to fill this gap. We intend to examine how differences between immigrants’ entry categories and legal status affect immigrants’ short-term and long-term integration in the Swedish context. As far as integration indicators are concerned, the focus will be on labour market, education and housing outcomes, as well as on the family dynamics among immigrants. We intend to compare different legal categories as they are defined by the immigration board while entering the country (refugees, quote refugees, permits based on humanitarian grounds, family reunion, temporary protection, working permits etc.). Different immigrant groups as well as groups with the different legal status within the same immigrant groups, will also be compared. We will also study legal status differences emerging from the shift to the new Swedish restrictive immigration regime, which was introduced in 2016.
Navigating "Respectability"
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.
Lost in Mobility?
This thesis seeks to make both theoretical and empirical contributions to the understanding of intra-EU mobility, with a focus on labour migration from Lithuania to Sweden. The thesis aims to help to explain the dynamics and individual decision-making behind mass labour emigration from the Baltic states, its socioeconomic consequences and policy responses.
The dissertation shows that the consequences of the neoliberal policies of the post-communist and post-crisis transformations, together with the construction of formal migration channels after EU accession, constitute various migrant categories. Individual strategies of actively looking for channels to exit and enter, combining them in different ways at various points of the migratory process and establishing informal social networks are re-constituting who can be and who is a migrant. Furthermore, following the economic crisis and austerity measures, the decision to emigrate extends beyond individual survival strategies, instead becoming bound to an individual’s perception of the (ine)quality of life and pursuit of a better quality of life for oneself and one’s family across time and in different places.
Swedish retirement migrants to Spain and migrant workers
In Swedish public discourse, retirees born in the 1940s are considered a growing cohort of relatively wealthy consumers, with more cosmopolitan preferences and habits, and different demands compared to previous generations. Swedish retirees are part of a growing stream of Northern Europeans who migrate to Southern Europe to retire in the sun.
Exploring the relations between streams of migrants who meet in Spain, and their intermediaries, this project explores issues of mobility and the globalization of care/service, of crucial importance to welfare states and the future of work, elderly care and retirement conditions in Ageing Europe.
Swedish retirement migrants to Spain and migrant workers:
Swedish retirees are part of a growing stream of Northern Europeans who migrate to Southern Europe to retire in the sun.
Exploring the relations between streams of migrants who meet in Spain, and their intermediaries, this project explores issues of mobility and the globalization of care/service, of crucial importance to welfare states and the future of work, elderly care and retirement conditions in Ageing Europe
Active Citizenship and Democracy for the New Millennium
In Sweden, as in other countries, calls for partnership between state institutions, market and local communities, punctuate discussions of a number of areas of public policy. In recent years, political parties from left to right have stressed that public policy needs to view the exercise of power as one based on “bottom-up” rather than from top-down strategies. These calls for a bottom-up approach reflect a gradual shift that has increasingly put en emphasis on individual agency and freedom of choice vis-à-vis governmental control, endeavours to achieve equality and promote democratic participation, i.e. a shift towards the ideal of an active citizenship. The project engages with normative as well as substantial dimensions of the notion of active citizenship in Swedish politics at the turn of the Millennium, focusing on the relationships between democratic participation and social citizenship in the multi-ethnic society.
Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality in Social Policies
The study focus on the role of the civil servants in the implementation process of social policies. The projects purpose is to study Swedish integration and labour market policies. Issues of how race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class are done in the meeting between civil servants and their clients are often absent in research on public administration. The study focuses on, from a race/ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality perspective, how labour market establishment of newly arrived Swedes are made.
Empirically, the material will be gathered at institutions that are responsible for the integration of newly arrived immigrants, i.e. employment offices.
The project has an intersectional approach and is theoretically framed within gender studies and ethnicity studies. The study also takes it theoretical point of departure in welfare state research and public administration studies. The methods used are participant observation, in-depth interviews and discourse analysis.
The main result of the project is a PhD dissertation on Ethnic and Migration Studies.
Ethnicity and Gender in Primary Health Care
Sabine Gruber, Associate Professor
The main aim of the project is to examine what role ethnicity and gender have in the treatment of women of migrant background in primary health care, and how this is reflected in the every day practice in three different institutions: a primary health care center (vårdcentral); a youth clinic (ungdomsmottagning) and a maternity welfare clinic.
The project contains three sub-studies that examine three different empirical levels. The first study analyses definitions and intentions on a policy level and map out how the work is organised in different institutions. The second study examines the level of implementation and focuses on the every day practice of the three institutions. Method for this study includes both focus group interviews and single interviews. The third study examines, through in-depth interviews, how migrant women experience the treatment from the different institutions. The project applies a comparative perspective and analyses similarities and differences between the different institutions as well as between the different empirical levels.
After the Success with the New Generation of Antidepressants
Anna Bredström, Senior Associate Professor
The purpose of this project is to explore the complex changes brought about by the SSRI revolution from an intersectional and multi-sited perspective. The project particularly focuses on understandings of the self and on experiences, practices, biomedical knowledge production and discourses related to depression and medication. The project applies an explorative and interdisciplinary approach. It involves researchers in science and technology studies (STS), gender studies, developmental biology and cultural studies and thus bridges the epistemological gap between the natural sciences and the social sciences/humanities. The project is multi-sited and focuses on four themes: (1) the everyday experiences of patients/users of SSRI; (2) the clinical practices and professional experiences of primary care physicians that meet and treat these patients; (3) the developments and changes in the production of biomedical knowledge on brains and SSRIs as well as its dissemination into clinical practice; and (4) the discursive construc¬tion of the self, depression and SSRI-usage in policy and public debate. Throughout the project the following questions will be central: (a) how are depression and depressive-like symptoms understood and experienced and what treatments and strategies are seen as appropriate?; (b) how are the effects and efficacy of SSRIs experienced, conceptualised and measured?; (c) how is the self understood, and what is the relation between self and body?; and (d) how are these processes affected by and affecting how different masculinities and femininities are bodily experienced, lived as identities and discursively shaped?
Ethnicity in Preschool
Sabine Gruber, Associate Professor
Since the 1970s, preschool has been seen as an important place for ethnic integration. Yet, it has not been much investigated with respect to ethnicity aspects. This project aims to explore how ethnicity is accomplished in a number of Swedish preschools. More specifically it focuses on the interaction between children, parents and teachers, and how ethnicity is invoked and made meaningful in every day practices. Moreover, it maps the organizational framework for everyday interactions and practices, in relation to bilingualism and ethnicity. The project is planned as four sub-studies in order to reach a broader understanding of how ethnicity is constructed in different preschool contexts. A variety of methods will be deployed – focus group interviews as well as dyadic interviews, video recordings, participant observations, and analyses of documents – which all supplement each other. We believe that the project will deepen the knowledge about how ethnicity is accomplished in daily preschool interactions and practices. The project also aims to increase understandings of everyday constructions of ethnicity, which has relevance both for preschool teachers and for preschool teacher students.
Migration, Citizenship, and the Welfare State
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor
The project surveys, in international comparative perspective, changing welfare states and the transformation of their multiethnic societies through two complementary analytical lenses: on the one hand, the welfare state’s capacity for accommodating migration and ethnic diversity through policies of border control and the allocation of rights of citizenship and, on the other hand, migration and ethnic diversity as a dynamic factor for change in the economic, political and cultural foundations of welfare states. It focuses on changing ethnic divisions of labour related to processes of social inclusion/exclusion and politics of European integration.