Sweden is divided according to an ethnic boundary, which divides people in "we" and "the others", "Swedes" and "immigrants" (Ålund, 2002). We believe this is due to the fact that society categorises immigrants all the time as a homogeneous group with fixed and static qualities, resulting in a situation where you cannot represent yourself as a person. Instead you are represented on the basis of your ethnic belonging. Young immigrants often grow up under other conditions and find themselves in more vulnerable situations than Swedish youths. The purpose with this paper was to investigate young people with different ethnic backgrounds, their thoughts and feelings about their identity, group belongingness and future.

The castration of piglets is performed routinely all around the world. Most castrations are done without anaesthesia and analgesia, despite the fact that this procedure has been proved to induce acute pain and stress for the piglets. The procedure regarding castration of piglets is currently a hot topic of debate and an important political issue. The underlying issue is the boar taint which are highlighted in the heating of the meat after slaughter, which in turn can lead to reduced meat sales as it can be perceived as unpleasant for many consumers. The purpose of this study is to examine alternative drugs which may be selected in order to replace the practice of castration of piglets without anaesthesia, in light of improved animal welfare.

There are several reasons why organic chicken production is scarce in Sweden. Lack of slow growing (SG) strains combined with higher production costs, lower meat-yield and uncertainty of consumers? willingness to pay seems to be the main reasons. EU-legislations imply use of indigenous slow- or medium growing strains in organic production, nevertheless, fast growing (FG) broilers are often used due to their effectiveness. Increased consumption of processed food creates a market for conventionally rearing of very heavy broilers.

Young women with immigrant background are generally looked upon as victims of patriarchal structures and cultural determinism.The purpose of this bachelor thesis was therefore to have a salutogen perspective. We investigated how young women with a transcultural background are affected by and how they use their experiences from different backgrounds in their creating of identity.We based our essay on qualitative interviews and current research on the subjects of multi culture, identity and youth. The interviewees were seven young women with experience of multi cultural background and performing different kind of artistic activity.The theory and empirical material combined and compared resulted in three themes: affinity, cultural hybridization, and salutogen factors.We saw that for those young women affinity functioned as a basis for creating identity and that their double background enriches them in several aspects. The three major salutogen factors that the interviewees had in common, and we emphasize, are their struggle, open mind and awareness of freedom.The global youth culture has a great impact upon the young women and to some extent we could recognize cultural hybridization. We consider this neglected subject urgent and very relevant for social work in the multi cultural society of Sweden..

Today, activities funded with public funds needs to present relevant and reliable information which shows the results obtained. Requirements increase in welfare activities to be run based on scientific, empirical knowledge. This applies particularly to social work. The social work is, however, poorly researched in areas such as knowledge of interventions in the content, context and effects. One way to evidence-base social work can be to conduct regular and qualified assessments.

This essay shows how the concept of virtue can deepen our understanding considering processes of empowerment. A virtue is understood as a trait of character, manifested in habitual action, that it is good for person a to have. Virtues are interpreted as socially constructed. Empowerment is presented as a process toward self-confidence and self-determination where recourses and freedom propels the development toward power for the individual, the household and the community. Why does the concept of virtue deepen our understanding? It is argued that our theoretical perceptive of empowerment needs to better encompass values, norms and practise.

Social work is a social phenomenon, existing in most societies, that has given rise to a multitude of special organizations and professions. For that reason social work is dealing with a complex identity. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how social workers and the scientific discourse interpret the concept of social work. In addition to that the study intends to show similarities and differencies. The research process containes two studies, one based on qualitative interviews with five social workers and the other consisting a surway of academic litterature.

We have chosen to focus on the meaning of long-term income support dependency regarding health, goal setting and motivation for the recipient of economical aid. We have chosen to use semi structurized interviews to achieve our goal of reaching the clients experience of long-term income support dependency. The study consists of interviews of six clients whose answers have been analyzed through appliance of Kielhofner´s Model of human occupation, Scheff´s Shame in self and society.   Our results show regarding, 1) the factor health that long-term income support dependency may elevate the risk of illness and less experienced options of possibilities to act. 2) regarding the factor goal setting, that goals may be inefficiently used during social work with long-term income support dependent clients and may result in a disorganized relationship between client and social worker in the sense of making the parties pull in opposite direction. 3) regarding the factor motivation, that long-term income support dependency and the living with the emotion of shame elevates the risk of maintaining a negative image of oneself that limits the willpower to assimilate new knowledge and/or skills.

This study is set out to examine if there is any kind of influence between the EU and Swedish gender policy. More specific the Swedish efforts within the gender policy area, especially in the area of social policy and employment, during the Swedish presidency in the Council of Ministers 2001. And also to examine the impact of Europeanization in Swedish gender policy. We have decided to delimit our study to care of elderly and children when it comes to the area of social policy. We are using a descriptive, examining qualitative method.

This study focuses on the influence a user may have over his or her welfare service, personal assistance. A county, an assistance firm and a user cooperative are compared with the thesis that the organisation that surrounds the users shapes the possibilities the user have to influence his or her personal assistance. There are questions that try to answer if there are outspoken social goals within each organisation. Questions regarding influence of the user when she or he is choosing the assistance provider and the users possibility to influence and his or her power to decide who and when anyone works as an assistant are asked..

The purpose of this paper is to give a view of how violence and victims has been portrayed in novels. I have chosen 6 books where the main character is a child who has been exposed to physical, mental and/or sexual violence. I have asked questions to the book and I have tried to find patterns in the child's strategy to cope with violence and how the violence is described. I have also written two chapters about earlier studies of this field and theoretical standpoints. The main perspective I present is the salutogenese perspective and how people create meaningfulness in their lives.The children in the books have different ways to handle their situations.

The aim of this essay was to examine the impact that parents drug abuse have on their children´s chances and possibilities while growing up. This study is done by investigating literature written by acknowledged authors and experts in this field. The following questions were asked:How does the literature describe the influence of parent´s drug abuse on their child´s ability to develop and learn?Which factors does the literature distinguish as determining factors on the child´s ability to resist and recover, from a childhood with drug abusing parents?The result of this essay showed that having drug abusing parents constitute different types of risks when it comes to the child´s ability to develop and learn. How the child is able to cope with it´s parents drug abuse is determined by several factors such as, the situation in the family, the child´s personality and how people in the child´s surrounding react on the child´s needs..

In this essay we aimed to find how economic scarcity among children and youth presents itself in school, according to how school staff experience it. We have conducted interviews with student welfare staff to hear their experiences of this subject and how the schools try to help these pupils. We have used interpretative phenomenology as a base for our work. We have also used some of this traditions most important notions along with notions of Erving Goffman and Sara Ahmed during our processing off the material.  With help from these, we report our most interesting results. We have seen that a lack of resources exists among youth today and that everyone not has easy access to things many of us might take for granted.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the origin of generalized trust. We compare existing theories on trust to determine what approach is more fruitful in explaining the prevalence, or absence, of trust. Our conviction is that trust should be viewed as an interaction, rather than a disposition or a rational choice. The sample is based on the countries of the OECD. In total, five different hypotheses are tested: i) that generalized trust is created by equal distribution of income, ii) that generalized trust is created through monitoring of the state, iii) that generalized trust is created through rule by law; iv) that generalized trust is created when the welfare apparatus is guided by principles of universalism; or iv) that generalized trust is created when the state integrates trust networks.

Castration of dogs holds many reasons and opinions, therefore methods, traditions and rea-sons vary. The approaches have during time changed from mostly surgical castrations to also including hormonal treatments. Castration is used to control the dog's reproductive abilities, for medical reasons and to possibly rectify problems of behavioral nature. How common a particular method of castration is in a country is highly dependent on the country's traditions. In Sweden it is most common with castration for medical reasons, such as possible elimina-tion of diseases, for example, benign colorectal tumors.