The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate if the views of Sayyid Qutb and Tariq Ramadan regarding social structure and religion are possible to unite with western liberal democracy. The basis of the study is the problematizing approaches written by Qutb and Ramadan regarding the possible unity between Islam and democracy. These problematizing approaches are then tested on the political philosophy of liberalism to see if a unity is possible.The result showed that Qutb's view did not meet the criteria of democracy, which wasn't surprising due to his negative views on the system. However, Ramadan's reformist view on Muslim identity did unite with the views of liberal democracy, though questions regarding the possibility of creating and preserving a European Muslim identity in the secular society were immediately brought to attention.The importance in Qutb's view is social equality, unity and submission to God and the importance of Ramadan's view is to create and preserve a European Muslim identity and adapt to the society where you live and participate as a citizen. Qutb's view will not tolerate diversity and one is to keep or convert to the Muslim faith.

Citizenship and immigration policy are controversial aspects of the European integration project. Fourteen years ago Roger Brubaker stated that the vital differences between German and French citizenship policy were unthinkable to harmonise. This paper therefore seeks to investigate whether the old image of the two countries are accurate. By evaluating citizenship and immigration policies in today's context with the increasing influence of European Union policy I here present a more correct picture of the situation in both countries. Partly to see how the harmonisation has come this far.

The Latvian building company Laval un Partneri Ltd (Laval) posted Latvian construction workers at the rebuilding of a school in Vaxholm in autumn 2004. Because the company refused to sign a collective agreement with Svenska Byggnadsarbetareförbundet (Byggnads), which is the Swedish trade union for constructions workers, Byggnads put the construction site under a boycott. Next Laval sued Byggnads for damages in the Swedish Labour Court (AD) because Laval considers the boycott as well as Byggnad´s demand that Laval signs a collective agreement incompatible with EC Law. AD has now demanded a preliminary ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ). While waiting for the preliminary ruling from the ECJ, several important questions of principle stand unanswered.

The aim of this study was to compare educational systems in Sweden, Czech Republic, Italy and Scotland. In the light of the Bologna Declaration signed in 1999, I was particularly interested in comparing social work educations in these four countries. Especially to clarify how far they have come to fulfill the goals of the common European educational policy.Central questions asked were: How do the educational systems look like in each of the four countries? How are the social work educations organized in each of them? In what ways do the social work educations differ? How can we explain such differences?Each country in this study represents a different welfare regime, and therefore I was challenged to find out if this has an impact on the implementation of the incentives of the Bologna Declaration. By studying various documents from the European Union, documents from each country and presentations of various social work programmes, I have come to the conclusion that the differences found mainly depends on the historical and socioeconomic traditions in the countries.

To achieve the goals that the government has put in place for equal opportunities in the labour market, the Swedish law is divided into two separate regulatory frameworks. One is positive action to promote equal opportunities and the other is the prohibition of sexual discrimination. Since males, despite the measures taken so far, still have a great advantage on the labour market, the law concerning equal opportunities has an exception from the prohibition of sexual discrimination, whose purpose is to promote the progress of equal opportunities, also known as preferential treatment. The regulations concerning preferential treatment allow the employer to hire a less qualified person from an underrepresented gender in spite of the presence of higher qualified applicants of the overrepresented gender. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the meaning and the application of preferential treatment as well as to give an insight to the argumentation around its application.

The power of news media to shape public opinion has been widely researched and acknowledged. In the globalized world of today, media representations of different ethnic groups therefore contribute to social segregation or desegregation. This thesis investigates how Spanish news media frame Spain?s most numerous minority of non-European ethnicity: the Moroccans. Using a quantitative content analysis, we have analysed about 200 news articles in the two most read Spanish online newspapers, El País and El Mundo, published during a two-year period, 2010-2012.

In the near future we need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions significantly for the benefit of the environment around us. The European Union has de-manded a variety of climate and energy goals to be achieved by year 2020, the ?20-20-20? targets. With these aims, The European Union means that we must reduce our emissions from fossil fuels and instead increase our renewable fuels. With stump harvest in the forest it?s possible to increase the use of renewable fuels and reduce our emissions from fossil fuels.

It is clear that media advertising is one of the crucial marketing tools for companies in order to promote their products and services. As we are moving towards more and more economic integration, both on a regional and global scale, the question about standardisation of media advertising has become increasingly important and is nowadays subject to discussion in most international companies. This thesis deals with the issue of standardisation in a region where the process of political, legal and especially economic integration is taking its course, but where cultural and linguistic diversity is still a remaining fact: Europe. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the potential gains from a standardised advertising approach but also to identify its limitations. Especially on a market place like Europe, with its diverse cultural and linguistic background, a fully standardised approach might be difficult to implement.

The harmonization within EC Company Law has been relativley successful. Despite its relative success; important differences still remains in European company law.The freedom of establishment itself, and the ECJ?s interpretation of the freedom provides European companies with a substantial cross-border mobility. As a consequence of this mobility, together with the differences in national legislation; mandatory rules in company law can be easily evaded. A typical example of this is that a Swedish enterprise, by running their business through a British private limited company, can escape the Swedish legislation on capital contributions when forming a company with limited liability for its members.

This thesis aims to study the indirect effects of the Europeanization on national parties and the presence of an established national opposition towards the European Union (EU) and its effects in Sweden, as a result of the so-called conflict of Vaxholm. The questions asked were whether or not it existed an established national opposition towards the EU, and if so, what the opposition consists of substantially. The research method, which was used, is a quantified text analysis on the chamber debates of the Swedish Riksdag and the party congresses of Socialdemokraterna. The study shows that there is an ambivalent opposition towards the EU and its effects in the aftermath of the conflict of Vaxholm.  Socialdemokraterna presented resistance, but did not manage to present apparent alternatives, which left the party with a rather indistinctive opposition. In contrast to the right-wing party, the left-wing party had some profound difficulties in positioning itself in the new and globalized economy. I therefore suggest, that it might be more providing and exhaustive to introduce Azmanova?s ideal-type analysis, which instead of positing parties on a left-right continuum, posit parties after respective party?s opinions concerning the risks or opportunities which the EU and the internal market?s effects. .

The topic of this thesis is immigration policy in the European Union with focus on the Schengen cooperation and illegal immigration. Immigration policies and other policy areas such as asylum and refugee policies have become hot topics on the EU agenda in recent years. Partly because of cooperations like Schengen, but also because a need of a common immigration and asylum policy has emerged.The purpose of the thesis is to give a better understanding of the relations that might be found between illegal immigration to the EU and the Schengen cooperation. Schengen plays an important role in dealing with international migration in the EU and will probably continue to do so in the future.The thesis is a comparative case study with Spain and Germany as the two specific cases. Their national immigration policies are examined and put in relation to the Schengen cooperation.

This thesis consists of three parts: one normative, one empirical and one constructive, with the intention to explore the enforcement of accountability in megaprojects.The thesis aims to evaluate the level of accountability in the policy process of the European Spallation Source, ESS between 1990 and 2008. In order to make a comparison possible, a norm is created concerning how a policy process should be designed, with primary focus on openness and participation, to make enforcement of accountability possible. The policy process of the ESS is compared with this norm with the purpose of discovering whether the process contains elements that assure enforcement of accountability. After the comparison is done, it is possible to formulate constructive proposals about how the enforcement of accountability can be improved.The thesis also explores how networks, consisting of actors with particular resources, surrounding the ESS-project affects the form of the policy process, e.g. in shaping the social construction of the aim and purpose of the project.

This essay focuses on how trafficking is defined and dealt with in recent European policies,and particularly how prostitution take part of these discursive developments. Treaties andagreements on trafficking in human beings and for sexual exploitation have been made bythe European Union and United Nations amongst others, which have been signed andratified by the EU countries in Action Plans. In this essay, five national Actions Plans, fromAustria, Great Britain, Poland, Spain and Sweden between 2007 and 2009, have beencompared in order to see similarities and differences in how the phenomenon of traffickingis done through language. Based on Discourse theory and focus on discursive struggles, theresult show a hegemony around trafficking as a social issue in the Action Plans studied,exploiting humans, mainly children and women, sexually, but also how trafficking is framedas a problem of the nation state and the domestic labour market. It is also illustrated howdifferent meanings of prostitution make the trafficking discourse antagonistic and contested.Finally, the essay discusses the trafficking discourse in relation to EU strivings towardsharmonisation and power imbalances of migration and economy in Europe..

Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen iKulturvård, Bebyggelseantikvariskt program15 hpInstitutionen för kulturvårdGöteborgs universitet2015:23.

This essay examines the European Union?s (EU) ability to play a leading role as a global actor on the world stage in international relations. Specifically, this essay studies the EU?s role of negotiator in the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.  This essay also analyzes explanations for this role. Research is based on case studies, with conclusions drawn using an inductive approach.