The aim of this thesis is to seek understanding to how a national identity is constructed. Five women and five men at the age of 21-37 years old have been interviewed during November 2005 and January 2006. All of them lived Oslo at the time. The informants have been divided into two groups, `Swedish immigrants` and `Norwegian immigrants`, none of the people interviewed is ethnic `Swedish` or `Norwegian`. The empirical material has been analysed with the help of Billig´s theory about banal nationalism and Laclau and Mouffe´s discourse analysis.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of the immigrant-writer. By studying the literary criticism on four debutants, all of whom have been categorised as immigrant-writers, I have come to the conclusion that the critics tend to focus on the authors' otherness. By using postcolonial theory I've analysed the role as representatives of a supposed other reality that is imposed on these four authors by the literary critics. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu, especially his concepts of symbolic capital, literary field and position, have been used to contextualise these conclusions. Although the otherness that the critics accentuate seems to work as a negative symbolic capital in a bigger societal perspective, in the author's position within the literary field it grows their positive symbolic capital.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how social workers experience and understand subjects such as racism, discrimination, and similar attitudes that can exist in institutions of social work. We also want to bring to light how ?race?/ethnicity, gender and class are related to uneven access to Swedish welfare. Our main questions aim to examine how structural and institutional racism forms social workers daily practices and how this in turn affects ?immigrant? women.

This research paper has examined how three teachers in a Swedish state secondary school adapt their teaching to immigrant pupils aged 13 to16 who have recently arrived in the country. The study is based on observation in the classroom and interviews with the teachers. The study showed that all the teachers adapted their teaching methods in the different subjects by actively working with language development during their lessons. The methods employed included explaining words and definitions, using visual methods of teaching and setting frequent written exercises. In this way the pupils developed their language skills whilst covering the subject coursework.

The study aims to evaluate how teachers in my research have reasoned regarding gender and gender equality, notions on ethnicity, and specific conceptions or constructions on ?swedish-ness? and ?immigrants?. The vital point in this study will be to examine the relationship be-tween gender equality, ethnocentrism and racism. The question formulation that I have ap-plied are: On what grounds teachers conceive the concepts of gender and gender equality? How do teachers experience their work with gender equality in remedial classes? Do the teachers that work in remedial classes experience any obstacles in the pursuit of gender equal-ity in their daily work? I have used the method of qualitative interviews with five teachers in remedial classes from five different schools.

The Swedish society has gone through a radical change. From being a monoculture society it has developed into a multicultural society representing a mixture of people from all around the world. This change has had a significant impact on both the Swedish school system and the teacher?s role. Therefore a subsequent ambition for a multicultural school would be to recognize this diversity and establish guidelines for how to meet each individual students need.

The essay aims to highlight the newly arrived immigrant students? experience of social integration and social security in the Swedish school system, which is important for their further language and learning development. This essay aims to see it from the student's perspective. The main question in this essay is: What factors seem to matter the most for the newly arrived immigrant students in their language and learning skills, and what does the students themselves think about the issue? The study is based on a qualitative research method in the form of interviews and observations conducted in a multicultural school for a period of two weeks.

The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the participation of immigrant organizations to the partnerships in the Equal program in Sweden. The focus of the study was on the significance of the participation for the organizations and its impact on them. The point of view of the participant organizations has been object of study through interviews with the persons who, on behalf of the organizations, have been in charge for the work with Equal. Interviews have been conducted with people representing 10 of the 21 immigrant organizations that have been identified among the Swedish Equal partners. Many organizations have experienced that the participation has strengthen the awareness of target groups about their needs and their possibilities.

The media plays a key role in constructing identities and categories, as its messages influence the way we understand the world. In the debate on integration issues, categories such as ?Swede? and ?immigrant? are often treated as obvious and unproblematic. ?Swedish?, being the norm, is seldom defined   and   frequently appears   with   subtlety.   This   paper   set   out   to   study   what   characterizes Swedishness in newspaper articles on integration issues, and how it is represented in relations to immigrants.

Purpose/Aim: Our purpose with this study is to examen the differences in communication between digital immigrants and digital natives, how the digitization has changed our way to communicate in an interpersonal matter.Main Results: Through our study we have concluded that barriers do exist between students (natives) and teachers (immigrants), but not to the extent we first predicted. The digitization has resulted in a change in the way we communicate and our relation to each other. But in a purely communicative matter, the digitization hasn?t made it harder for natives and immigrants to understand each other, but it has contributed to new vocabulary and the use of the language. New codes has been developed, but thanks to the younger generations ability to adapt to change - this linguistic difference it is not a problem for the understanding of the code used by the immigrants.

Background: Getting older means a series of changes in life, some of which lead toincreased risk of poor health outcomes. Older people who immigrate to a new countryalso need to adapt to new cultures and norms, and having to learn a new language inorder to communicate with their environment. Being older and immigrant thus leads toa double vulnerability. Aim: The aim of this literature review was to examine how olderimmigrants? health is affected by not being able to communicate in a country?s officiallanguage.

The purpose of this study is to examine immigrants' experiences of social services' treatmentand their expectations of social services. In this study we have used the following questions:how immigrants have experienced the treatment of the social service, the way in whichimmigrants would like to be treated by social services as well as what kind of beliefs andexpectations immigrants have concerning the social services' duties and powers. We haveused a qualitative method in the study that consists of ten semi-structured interviews. Thetheoretical concepts we have used are culture, ethnicity, cultural competence, professionalismand social psychology. The survey reveals a majority of negative experiences, such as afeeling of being ?tossed around?, suspicion and discrimination by the caseworkers due to theethnicity of the respondents.

Henriksson, I & Jönsson, M. Den svenska glasburken. En diskursanalys av Statens Offentliga Utredningar/ The Swedish glass jar. A discourse analysis of official government reports. Examensarbete i Socialt arbete 30 poäng.

This essay examines the historical development of group rights for cultural minorities in Sweden between the years 1970 and 2010. The purpose of the study is to analyze the development of political measures taken at government level for different minority groups, foremost explaining the division that have arisen between measures aimed at the five national minorities, the Sámi, the Swedish Finns, the Roma, the Jews and the Tornedalians, and measures directed at other ethnic groups.My conclusions are that the division in Swedish public policy between one the one hand national minorities, and on the other hand immigrant groups, is in no way self-evident. The division has arisen from an international standard on how democratic states, such as Sweden, should treat their cultural minorities. Further, this division has had an immense impact in shaping public policy as well as determining the type of group rights introduced for minority groups in Sweden.A difference has also been found in how the minorities are perceived by state actors. Immigrant groups are currently perceived as less entitled to group rights due to their short presence in Sweden, whereas national minorities are seen as more entitled to group rights due to their long historic presence in the country.

This essay will explain the effects of decentralisation, and what impact it has on the efficiency to create a better integration for immigrants on the Swedish labour market. Examples of literature that has been examined are Marcus Gossas and Jon Pierre. From these authors, I have been trying to explain the relationship between decentralisation, cooperation and efficiency.Since the end of the Second World War until the middle of 1980, Sweden mostly received labour immigrant. Since then, the immigrant pattern has changed to consist of mostly refugees. Changed immigration patterns together with increasing debts for the Swedish government has lead to decentralisation and cooperation between public authorities has therefore become a target to reach better efficiency.