Today Europe is faced with an identity crisis concerning its borders. Turkey stands at the threshold for an EU-membership while the EU-Commission is trying to formulate what constitutes a European identity. This identity seeking process will determine the future not only for Turkey, but also for immigrants now living in Europe.In this thesis a discourse analysis, underpinned by socialconstructionist theory, is conducted to explore how the European identity has been constructed throughout history up until today. A starting point is that identity always is defined through a dialectical relationship to "otherness". Therefore the analysis is focused not only on what a European identity consists of but also what and who it excludes.

Youth unemployement in Sweden is at an all-time high, a fifth of all university and college students live in poverty and the number of young on welfare is increasing. This study attempts to answer the question of how youth deprivation has been made possible as a consequence of political action, focusing on youth unemployment. I critically examine the role of the Swedish government, the Swedish Labour Organisation (LO), and the various government departments through text analysis, in order to answer the question of how the current discourse on youth position in the labor market. Because youth unemployment is not an isolated phenomena the analysis covers several policy areas, such as education policy, labor market regulation and housing policy. I use discourse theories drawn from Laclau and Mouffe to expose how language is used as an instrument of political power. I conclude that the current situation is a result of policy choices where the young have fallen behind due to lack of political organization. Their situation is not problematized to the required degree and is often explained on an individual level rather than on a structural level. .

This final project discusses renewal and upgrading of the area of Prim. It is discussed how this industrial area can be an attractive neighborhood with a varied range of services and commercial trade. Prim is located 2km north-east of the center of Barcelona. The area boarders to a deep railway valley that historically has separated Prim from its neighboring districts. At present there is almost no housing, services or commercial trade within the area and the industry is discontinued or the existing industrial buildings are derelict.

Sonja Åkesson is one of Sweden?s most well known poets. Her most productive period was from 1957 to 1977, and besides poetry she wrote novels and drama. Today, Sonja Åkesson is famous for criticizing society, mostly in a feministic way. But she was not aware of her critical approach until she became successful among her feministic readers in 1960, with poems like ?Äktenskapsfrågan? and ?Självbiografi (replik till Ferlinghetti)?.This essay examines professor Yvonne Hirdman?s theory about women?s inferior position in relation to men?s between 1930-1960 in Sweden.

In august 2006 the Swedish government official report (SOU) about the structural discrimination was published and caused a lot of debate in the media. This paper is about the report as such, as much as the academic quarrel it caused in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. My aim is to explore why the report is so provocative and what the debate actually is about. I use discourse analysis both as a method and theoretical framework, inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Using this methodology I explore which discourses that are articulated.

The company Somas, Säffle, has assigned Fredrik Kjellin the project of finding out how ?KVTF DN250?, one of their own valves, reacts on cutting forces under production. They wish to know if and then how much it?s possible to minimize the wall thickness of the valve with neither plastic nor to big elastic deformations caused by processing.The most critical processes have been identified as rough lathing. The study has shown that the marginal for a wall thickness of two millimeters, to fall short of the yield stress in the most critical process, is good.

This study is a comparative analysis of how Hollywood portrays people from the Middle East before and after 9/11. The films used to conduct this study are True Lies (1994), The Siege (1998), The Kingdom (2007) and Body of Lies (2008). With a qualitative methodology, discourse analysis and postcolonial theory this study analysed not only how people from the Middle East is portrayed, but also how the Americans in the films are presented and how the characters in the films changed in the movies produced after 9/11.     The results show that people from the Middle East are portrayed in a negative way and that Hollywood uses stereotypes. However, people from the Middle East are more gradated in the films post-9/11. There is a bigger focus on Islam in the movies produced after 9/11 and the study also shows that family values play a less central part in the story in the films made after 9/11 and that work is of more importance.

This is a qualitative study based on interviews with teachers, social workers and school counselors ? with aim to analyze how norm critical social work is in schools. Gender and sexuality norms are in focus which is analyzed in a intersectional and queer theoretical perspective. The study shows that what is defined as a norm in the society varies both socially, historically and culturally. School is a reflection of its society and therefore also reflects its norms, such as heteronormativity and gender roles.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the media discussions of the rape in Bjästa 2009 and to reveal how stereotypical illusions of ethnicity, religion and gender affect how media understands and defines violence. The rape in Bjästa occurred in a ?Swedish context? but has been defined as honor related in other arenas outside media. This discussion occurred because the whole village turned against the woman that was raped and supported the perpetrator? a phenomena that speaks against the idea of an equal society and a behavior that is usually understood as honor related and something that the ?others? do.

The aim of this study was to find out if the use of the concepts ?terrorism' and ?organized crime' has changed after the event on 11 September, 2001 when terrorists attacked World Trade Center and Pentagon. In this study I make use of discourse theory in a way which is inspired by the writings of Winther Jorgensen and Phillips. Knowledge acquired through this research has been primarily generated from two Swedish Government Official Reports concerning questions arising from introducing secret police surveillance. In these reports, there are many opinions from authorities whom have given their thoughts on introducing new ways of policing which are very interesting to analyze.

Lifestyle magazines portray women in different manners and have an influence on how media consumers create self-images. The importance of knowing how different visual representation of the female acts out in magazines with large target audiences is therefore of weight for the magazines? readers to understand. This thesis analyze how the two lifestyle magazines ELLE and LOVE portrays women in images and how they in turn create ideal images of women.The thesis has been conducted through a qualitative analysis of 5 images from each magazine that represents the magazines artistic styles. The theories used in this study are semiotic image analysis and visual text analysis viewed from a gender- and discourse perspective.The conclusion of this thesis is that ELLE portrays women as strong, happy and feminine, with at tendency towards androgyny, while LOVE describes women as inferior and sexual objects constructed for the male gaze.

This is a study based on discourse theory in purpose to examine the border-politics ofthe EU. Since the EU step by step has developed into an area of free movement on capital, people and services, the external frontiers have been given prioritiy on the political scene. Development in recent years have put questions of foreign- and security politics on a supranational level, meaning that the EU-member states in a wider range now cooperate in these political areas.To handle the increasing ammount of (illegal) migration to the EU an independet agency, Frontex,was established 2005 in favour of coordinating the Member States in issues regarding bordersecurity. The focal point of this study is to critically examine the identity of Frontex by using Becks theory of risk combined with the theory of governmentality. By doing so I seek to highlight the relation between Frontex and the EU and also that of Frontex mission in relation to illegal immigration.

This thesis examines the way that subversivity is produced in relation to the name of the author, as understood by Foucault, and what potential for ressistance that can be glimpsed there. This from the reading of three text that in different ways relate to that theme.Firstly, throught the reading of "Isis mamma a?r genusvetare, skribent och konstna?r, min mamma a?r f.d. sta?derska, kokerska och dagisfro?ken, numera fo?rtidspensiona?r med diagnosen fibromyalgi" by Lidija Praizovic?, a text that actively work with the internal production of different exteriorities.

The aim of our study was to examine how homosexual and heterosexual men and women are represented in the Swedish magazine QX, a magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender people. We wanted to find out what kind of roles the persons in QX appears in, and inquire the relationships that exist between them.We analyzed the texts in twelve magazines, from December 2008 to November 2009, in order to get the most current results as possible. We used a discourse analysis, with focus on identities, relationships and the representation of the world. Representations, gender, hegemonic masculinity and stereotypes have been significant theories to analyze our results.The results showed that the successful gay man is the most important person in QX. He is the perfect masculine macho fagot, who is highest in rank.

The Swedish education system reflects the multicultural society in Sweden, therefore there is a need of school textbooks that pupils can identify themselves with to create meaning and value in their learning. According to the Swedish Education Administrations (Skolverkets) report (2006) and Selander (2003, s. 198) the school textbooks are the main source of education in class. There has been an implicit message in the older textbooks that is associated with the belief that non-Europeans are "seen" as victims, and that Europeans are privileged with a "good life".Many school texbooks has been analyzed from different points of perspectives, however, analysis from a postcolonial perspective on home economics books has practically been nonexistent.Analysis in this study are focused on how non-western people are been portrayed in six different textbooks in the subject to conclude if the colonial discourse is still maintained and reproduced in the school. To answer the question of formulation an image analysis is made of the six, previiously mentioned, textbooks.