Post-National Strategies for Growth, Inclusion and Diversity
The focus of this stream is the analysis of a wide range of strategies for ?renewal?, developed in a European context, as part of a wider change of welfare policy. The stream examines strategies for development, inclusion and diversity, from the post-national to the national, regional and local level, initiated in a variety of policy areas, such as education, regional and urban development, entrepreneurship and the inclusion of migrants and refugees in the labour market. Of particular importance is the development of networked and deliberative forms of governance based on partnerships between actors across sector divisions, including public sector institutions, business, trade unions, employer agencies, NGOs and civil society.
Stream leader: Professor Emerita Aleksandra Ålund
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.
Migrants and solidarities
The project explores the fundamental question of who is, and who is not, considered deserving of welfare services, how deservingness is negotiated and with what implications, in a context of increasing diversity driven by migration, welfare restructuring, and austerity. Such negotiations serve to draw boundaries between those migrants who have access to the support and services of the welfare state, or are believed to have access, and those who are excluded, e.g. because they are deemed as not belonging or are seen as responsible for their own neediness. Variation will be made visible and comparable by exploring how solidarities are informed by different constellations of welfare and migration regimes, in both urban areas and rural / small towns with varying degrees of diversity and migrant settlement. Our multi-sited ethnography in Denmark, Sweden, and the UK will focus on six welfare micropublics, local spaces where entitlements to support and services are negotiated. We focus on how deservingness is constituted according to migrants’ generational status and according to spatial dimensions of the neighbourhood where migrants settle.
Urban justice movements
Aleksandra Ålund, Professor Emerita
After the violent youth rebellions in Swedish suburbs during 2009, a plurality of new dialogue oriented activist groups have emerged, profiled as youth urban justice movements (YUJM). They address issues of segregation, racism and welfare transformation in Swedish cities.The project will explore expressions of agency; claims, network building and knowledge production with focus on cooperation and dialogue between YUJM and the wider civil society.
Questions for research: how YUJM relate to the broader civil society; what situated knowledge is produced and find expression in strategies and action repertoires; how YUJM constitute themselves as public voice relating to local, national and international contexts.
The project combines perspectives from urban studies and social movement studies. It employs a battery of qualitative methods aiming at highlighting activism as embedded in suburban livelihoods, local institutional conditions and wider structural change.
Finished Projects
Trade Union Strategies, migration and informal labour
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor
The collaborative project focused on changing strategies of trade unions and other civil society organisations in Turkey, South Africa and Sweden, facing irregular (or “undocumented”) migration and increasing precarity of labour connected with restructuring and informalisation of economies and labour markets in the context of emerging multilateral frameworks for the global governance of migration.
Implementation of the Policy Goal of 'Integration of Immigrants'
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?
Josefina Syssner, Research fellow
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.
Refugees, reception and inclusion
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.
Cooperation, education and inclusion in multi-ethnic suburbs
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.
School choice reforms - implementation and consequences
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.
Diaspora as an instance of transnational governance
Khalid Khayati, Postdoctor fellow
This project focuses those transnational civil society organizations and networks, created by diasporan populations residing in western states that function not only as a substantial means of integration in their residing societies, but also as genuine transnational institutions that aim in, in one way or another, to affect the politics of their former homelands, especially in the direction of democracy, promotion of the human rights, gender equality and peace settlement with non-violent means. In this regard, this study considers diaspora as an instance of transnational governance.
Partnerships, Anti-Discrimination and Immigrant Associations
Aleksandra Ålund, Professor Emerita
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.
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.
Regional Citizenship & Belonging
Josefina Syssner, Research fellow
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.
Place Branding: power, identity and belonging.
Josefina Syssner, Research fellow
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.
Education, Work and Civic Agency
Aleksandra Ålund, Professor Emerita
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.
Refugees, the Labour Market and the Welfare State
This PhD-project examines the role of inter-organizational collaboration and partnership in the governance of local integration programs targeted towards refugees in Sweden. For decades these programs have been criticized for delaying entrance into the labour market and it has been a longstanding goal for the government to incorporate them in the Swedish employment strategy, ‘arbetslinjen’. Governmental agencies have applied ‘soft’ policy measures such as guidelines, comparisons, knowledge dissemination and ‘agreements’ for voluntary policy coordination to create conditions for joint efforts at the local level. Drawing on institutional theory the PhD project examines the impact of this norm building process by focusing on how local actors respond to the governing strategies and in what way collaboration contributes to the development of the programs.
Ethnicizing employability
This research project aims to highlight the European Social Funds (ESF) task to increase the labour supply with “a particular focus on target groups with a foreign background”. My aim is to examine how this mission is formulated, practiced and made comprehensible in various empirical material related to labour market projects co-funded by the ESF.
More specific, my aim is to analyze how ethnicities (and other social categories) are constructed and problematized in relation to ideas about individual employability. Furthermore, I am interested in examining how different techniques are described as suitable (or not suitable) to address target groups with a foreign background, in order to make the individual employable according to certain norms. How, and what ethnicities are made problematic in relation to norms are also questions of interest.
Foucaults notions of power/knowledge relations and governmentality are central to my theoretical understanding of these questions.
Work, Market and Integration
Maritta Soininen, Professor, Guest researcher
The multidisciplinary project Work, Market and Integration addresses the local public-private collaboration in developing novel methods for labour market integration. The main research question is how potential tensions between market-informed solutions and solutions based on strengthening target group involvement inform partnerships: project logic (means and goals), norm building and identities of partners and target groups, and dissemination, learning and communication of new methods.
Tourism and development: critical perspectives
Josefina Syssner, Research fellow
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.
Evaluation of Tänk Om
Susanne Urban, Associate Professor (biträdande professor)
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.
Changing Frameworks in School Governance
The project explores partnerships between schools, public institutions for adult education and immigrant associations concerning the impact of education and civic agency on social inclusion. The project relates to changes in the wider framework of school governance in Sweden in order to elucidate the interplay between structural and institutional change, civic agency and social change. Special attention is paid to cooperation between ethnic/immigrant associations, home and school and local educational institutions, and the consequences of the ways in which different kinds of partnerships are organized, in terms of democratic governance, and social inclusion/exclusion of ethnic minorities (as parents, organiserd in associations etc.).
Migrant precariat and the frames of solidarity
Nedzad Mesic, Associate Professor
The project deals with the relations between social movements, trade unions and disadvantaged groups of migrant workers on the labour market. These groups could also be denominated as the precariat. More specifically the focus is set on irregular immigrants, discriminated workers and seasonal guest workers. The primary target for the project is to explore the ways actors in the civil society manage to build supportive relations to these groups of workers and other organisations in the field. The project is guided by the overarching research question: What are the possibilities and constraints for civil society organisations to establish and maintain transversal relations with disadvantaged groups of migrant workers and their organisations? The task is thus, on the one hand, to investigate how trade unions take on these new challenges within their field and to explore: the new strategies developed by the trade unions; and their collaborations with new social movements organisations. On the other hand, the project centres on new social movements’ collaborations with neighbouring actors, their articulations of the problems; and their strategies to provide solutions to the problems.