This essay is based on seven lifestoryinterviews with people who are undergoing orhave undergone a long asylum process. Four women and three men have contributedwith their stories about their experiences of waiting for a determination of theirapplication for residence permit. The main aim of the essay is to give betterunderstanding of how to be a refugee and a long asylum process affects people's abilityto narrate and thus examine their opportunities to be active in the construction of theirown identity.The questions that are debated and discussed are:? What can it mean for an individual's identity to escape her country and for a longtime wait for decision of asylum?? What stories can be told?? What reality are highlighted as central in the stories?? How do they handle their situation and give meaning to their lives?The analysis is based on two main theoretical perspectives: narrative theory and identitytheory. The approach is that people create meaning of events through storytelling andthat they through this process of narrating construct (and reconstruct) their identities -the self image as one have and wants to present to others.In the analysis three different types of stories are distinguished, stories that arerepresented in the empirical material: the story that can not be told, the story that mustbe told and the story that are gladly told.

The purpose of this study is to examine how a particular niche in tourism can attract international visitors to a certain destination. To do this, the Swedish food culture was used as a tool to find out how it is marketed to attract international visitors to Sweden. International visitors today wants to find destinations with a rich culture, authentications and traditions to get closer to the destinations identity. The study examines how three of the biggest companies, who works with the promotion of Sweden to an international audience, using the Swedish food culture as a marketing tool. We find that the visitor would like to get closer to the Swedish identity, which the Swedish food culture helps with..

Cultural organizations set on capitalizing on artistic ideas are subject to an industry specific economic condition that requires a balance of art and commerce; two opposites reflecting credibility and non-credibility. Hence, commercialization of the cultural industries implies non-credibility in an industry insisting on symbolizing the opposite.This study aims to demonstrate how cultural industries can attract a wide audience, while maintaining credibility. This is done through the perspective of folksiness since its context indicates the existence of credible commercialism.The study demonstrate that credible commercialism is part of folksiness and is possible thanks to the folksiness context that 1) utilizes attributes that balance and disarm "negative attributes" creating an atmosphere of acceptance and 2) meets the consumer's need fulfilment of identity through individualism and belonging, and 3) contains attributes that increases loyalty..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine boys?/young men?s forming of masculinity and gender identity and how discussions around gender stereotypes and conceptions represents themselves in contemporary youth novels. Gender theory based upon R.W. Connell?s theoretical framework which discusses masculinities in plural is used.

This essay focuses on Finnish immigrants living in Sweden and their experiences of educationof literature in Swedish upper secondary school. It concerns the fact of how education ofliterature can be used to strengthen students? formation of cultural identity. The essay tries toidentify obstacles as well as possibilities in the teaching of literature with a view to deepenand enrich this process. The method consists of a phenomenological approach includinginterviews with a group of Finnish immigrants living in Sweden.

People move between countries and establish connections all over the world. This results in a need to solve problems with cross-border inheritances and partitions of joint property. Today these situations are regulated by the countries? own international private law. EU has adopted a constitution that harmonizes rules of jurisdiction and applicable law for inheritances but not the partition of joint property.

In recent years, the Internet has exploded with different kinds of social media, where a significant function is to share your life in text and images. This changes how we form our identity, our religious identity included. The aim of this paper was to study how Instagram forms a space for the creation and development of religious and spiritual beliefs. For this purpose, Instagram updates from five women with yoga oriented Instagram accounts have been analyzed in relation to two theories: Paul Heelas? och Linda Woodhead?s theory of a spiritual revolution and Heidi Campbell?s theory of networked religion.The aim of the study was to explore how these women presented themselves in their Instagram flow and what part religion and spirituality had in their presentations.

Sverige är ett mångkulturellt land och forskningsområdet kring hur det är att leva med två kulturer är viktig att belysa. Denna studies fokus riktas mot hur unga vuxna upplever kopplingen mellan den personliga och etniska identiteten. En kvalitativ undersökning genomfördes med 16 intervjuer. Respondenterna levde i den svenska samt en utomeuropeisk kultur. Resultatet visade att deltagarna upplever sig som en blandning av de två erfarna kulturerna och att den etniska identiteten upplevs som stark.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how today?s consumer society can be understood from ananalysis of the phenomenon Every Day Carry (EDC). The aim is thus to problematize the daily useof the artifacts that surrounds us and investigate how these can be understood as networks of humanand non-human actors, aswell as identity- and meaning-making practices in today?s consumersociety.The theoretical and methodical framework is built upon an eclectic variety of consumptiontheories,Michel Callon?s, John Law?s and Bruno Latour?s work on Actor-Network-Theory,Discourse analysis inspired by Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and anethnographic methodology specifically adapted for online research. The empirical material consistsof photographs and commentaries from two EDC blogs aswell as commentaries regarding EDCfrom a commentary field on Youtube.com.

This essay focus on work related stress and psychosocial enviroment in working life. The purpose of this study is to present a detailed description of regulation of the the Occupational Safety and Health Act and investigate how well employees are being protected by the law.I will also explain with the help of statistic which employees that most often suffer from work related stress and the results is discussed from a gender perspective.Work related phycosocial health is a big issue in todays workplaces, and people who suffers from stress are supposed to be protecteded by the the Occupational Safety and Health Act, but is that really the truth? The Occupational Safety and Health Act is a frame law, meaning the law is general and needs binding regulations to define the rules, and there is no such act about work related stress at the moment. No employer has ever been convicted for work related stress. At the same time the Occupational Safety and Health Act explains that the employer has a responsibility to take arrangement to prevent mental illness in working life.It?s mostly women who suffer from work related stress.

The purpose of this essay was to examine the packaging design´s communications related to the colloquially brand's symbolic capital and how they became meaningful through experience and perceptions that led to the identification processes in the consumer society. There were eight interviews of snuff users who became my main collections materials. My theoretical framework was discourse psychology´s emphasis on language and Bourdieu´s concept provided important tools in the analysis of the material.I could highlight that packaging design and the brand had influenced the informants and given them symbolic beliefs and what it meant to sniff a certain brand. Color, brand awareness and price were crucial in choosing where the informants attributed themselves the cans symbolic values to their identity. It could be inferred high and low status perceptions based on stereotypes in the design itself..

From July 2005 on, the new Swedish Corporate Governance Code will be applied gradually by companies listed on the stock exchange or any authorized financial market in Sweden. The Code has been drawn up in order to clarify and to improve the self-regulation in Swedish companies. The need for codified self-regulation standards has been considered as urgent due to negative trends on the market such as the last few years? corporate scandals in domestic and international trade and industry. The sought-after consequence is to clarify the mission framework for corporate directors.Ch.

The goal of this thesis was to explore how real estate investment companies are affected by a weaker world economy. The reason to investigate this was that in the 90s in Sweden, the housing market crashed in conjunction with the bank collapse. Therefore I have looked at how the commercial real estate companies would be affected if we were to have a double dip recession, because it has been confirmed by Gyourko that commercial real estate market and the housing market tend to react in the same way on new fundamental information. This was examined through a sensitivity analysis, one investigated the effect of falling rent income and the second analysis looked at the effect of higher interest costs. I found that IAS 40 rule about unrealized profits of properties affected the results in a significant matter and therefore decided to include the regulation in my thesis.

AbstractBackground: Countries can be seen as brands (nation brands) with brand values that transmitto the country?s products. Country-of-origin (COO), the brands nationality, links the productto an associative network of cultural shared national stereotypes. Through associating thebrand with a country or a region, the credibility of the brand can increase and strengthen thebrand. Therefore COO is used in marketing to position a brand.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how luxury fashion brands communicatetheir national identity through analyzing their advertising.

This thesis concerns agreements for the exchange of information relating to tax matters between Sweden and the previous tax havens Monaco and Liechtenstein. Monaco does not apply any tax on income or capital for individuals and Liechtenstein has strict bank secrecy, both aspects are supposed to be counteracted by similar agreements. The purpose is to investigate whether the entered agreements increases transparency and effective exchange of information in accordance with the OECD´s objectives in the area. Furthermore, is there any regulation in the agreements that can be seen as potentially loopholes to avoid the exchange of information and if so; may these loopholes be justified in any way?OECD believe that the tax havens favorable tax regulation is resulting in harmful tax competition and they identify lack of transparency and lack of effective exchange of information as the main reasons.