The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of being a homosexual immigrant in the Swedish society. Our questions were how the interviewed homosexual immigrants experience being treated by the people in their surroundings and how they are influenced by their attitudes. We also wanted to know what kind of thoughts they have about affiliation considering origin and sexuality, and what positive and negative aspects they experience from the combination of being both homosexual and immigrants.To get the answers to these questions we used a qualitative method and interviewed seven homosexual immigrants between the ages of 25 and 40 years. We then compared our material with earlier studies of the living situation of homosexual immigrants in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. We also linked our findings to Goffman's stigma theory and to heteronormativity.The main result was that the combination of homosexuality and immigrantness can result in various difficulties.

Bankruptcy is a problem for the society in form of high costs for including suppliers, customers, employees, investors, banks, insurance companies etc. The purpose of this study is to confirm or dismiss a bankruptcy prediction model that has been developed in a previous Swedish study, in order to predict bankruptcy with help of specific key figures. The model has only been tested in a larger perspective where the population consisted of all small firms in Sweden, in this study the model´s reliability is tested by that it instead been applied to a minor perspective, where the population only includes Stockholm. With a quantitative approach of 12 different key figures from a total of 60 Swedish smaller registered companies in Stockholm between the years 2005-2007, has been studied. The companies are divided into two groups, companies with good financial health and companies that have ended up in bankruptcy.The results shows that the model is applicable in a smaller population, but some of the key figures do not generate essential or any type of information about bankruptcy, but the majority of the key figures in the model did.

The purpose of this essay was to examine whether there were any differences in social workers way of investigating boys and girls, age 13-15. The main questions we wanted to answer were; which were the factors that the social workers focused on? Did the investigations lead to a measure and if so, which one? How were risk and protection factors described and ana-lysed?To answer our questions we read and analyzed 22 reports, written by social workers 2004 at the department for teenagers and families at a social welfare service in Sweden. We came to the conclusion that there were some differences, but these were few and not extensive. Recreational activities was mentioned in a higher degree in the boys reports while health, housing conditions and network were mentioned more often in the girl´s reports.

The aim of this study was to describe and scrutinise the position of the Swedish government on whether children should participate directly or through a representative in judicial proceedings.The main questions for this study were to find out (1) what position the Swedish government has on the subject, (2) how the position is justified, and (3) what view on children the position reflects.A qualitative design was used in the study and in order to describe the position a descriptive method was used. In the second part of the study a critical approach was used to examine and analyse the position.The main conclusions were that the position is ambiguous but that it mainly reflects, with a few exceptions, that it is better for children to be represented than to participate directly in judicial proceedings. The arguments that are given as basis for the position are short and lack both the objective and subjective grounds needed to decide the best interest of the child. The analysis of the position showed that it mainly reflects a view on children as objects and when the statement reflects a view on children as subjects, it relates to age and maturity in the child..

According to Swedish tax legislation, investment funds are taxed differently depending on if the are Swedish or foreign. The difference between the investment funds lies within the taxation of received dividends and the opportunity to shift the liability of tax of received dividends on to the funds shareholders. This measure is only available to Swedish funds. The question in this thesis is whether this difference is discriminatory against foreign investors and therefore constitutes a forbidden restriction against the free movement of capital stated in article 63 EUF Treaty.The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has given several preliminary rulings on this type of legislation and its compatibility with the principle of free movement of capital. It is not compatible with the free movement according to the court.

Corporate responsibility is a popular phenomenon of today. The interest for the subject is extensive and means for implementing corporate responsibility strategies within organizations are demanded. There are studies showing how management control systems can be used in order to implement general strategies into organizations. Still, management control systems designed for the implementation of corporate responsibility strategies, in particular, are not provided by the current academia. The aim of this paper is to contribute to studies within management control systems by studying the management control system specifically designed to implement corporate responsibility strategies.

The focus in this paper was on managers in the middle position in the care of the elderly and people with disabilities. The aim was to develop knowledge about the conditions of work among managers in the middle position and what they characterized as good leadership and which strategies they used in their work. The empirical data consisted of nine qualitative interviews with managers in the middle position in the municipality of Halmstad.The frameworks that mainly limited the middle managers' discretion were laws, political regulations and most of all it was the allocated budget. Their discretion was found closer to the operation such as working methods, recruitment and changes in job schedules. The middle managers spent the majority of their working hours with personnel administrative work and that they often had to prioritise among their tasks.

The aim of this thesis has been to investigate women's experience of the Methadone maintenance treatment and what help they believe they need to be able to recover and to improve their social life and whether the medical- and social workers share the similar view.Our method of investigation has been qualitative interviews with four women in the program, two nurses and a counsellor at the methadone clinic and two social workers, who have female clients in the program.The questions at issue were:* how did the women describe their life situation during treatment, compared to the situation they had while they were addicted to narcotics,* did the women experience that the treatment they get in the methadone maintenance program is giving them a better social life situation,* did the employees at the clinic and at the social office share the similar view about the treatments as the female patients?Main problems seemed to be; meeting new non-addictive friends and finding something to do. We could se that, in different ways, they need more support. It wasn't always clear to the people who work with them whose responsibility it was, depending on workplace and/or personality..

The aim of this paper is to examine how boys in grade nine experience and handle stress, to find reasons why stress occur and what help the boys can get to handle stress in a good way. Our supervisor was Gunilla Lindén. In our study we used qualitative interviews to answer these questions. We interviewed four fifteen- to sixteen-year-old boys and two recreation in-structors. We also conducted a group interview with the boys.

After World War II a rapid expansion of the Swedish health care took place. Theexpansion was realised chiefly as a development of the hospitals and was bothproduced and financed mainly within the public sector. The financing consisted to ahigh degree of government grants from the state to the county councils.During the period for this examination (1945-1955) the public responsibility for thehealth care was expanded. This was expressed in the publicly financed system forhealth insurance and the cut down in the charges that the patients had to pay for thehospital care. These changes led to some discussions on the national level but reformscould on the whole, with exception for the suggested reform of the open health care,be implemented.This case-study performed on the county council in Värmland shows that the degreeof consensus was enhanced on the regional level.

The purpose of this study was to examine domestic adoptions in Sweden, and also compare the Swedish adoption system to the Canadian adoption system. I wanted to find out why there are so few domestic adoptions in Sweden, and how it has changed over the years. I also wanted to know why there is such a large difference between Sweden and Canada regarding adoptions.I interviewed five social workers to find out what attitudes the social services have regarding adoptions. My other questions were how the childs best interest is considered when a parent wants to place a child in an adoptivefamily, and which parents decide to place their child instead of keeping it.I found that the social services are reluctant to place children in adoptivefamilies because their main goal is to keep biological families intact. In Canada the social services goal is to provide the child with a safe and stable home.There is no longer any stigma surrounding single mothers and well developed welfaresystems enable most to keep their children.

The purpose with our essay was to examine what favourable factors there are for women to get out of drug abuse and from a gender aspect interpret how these factors are used in the treatment of female drug-addicts, regarded from the treatment personnel view. The questions we have focused on are: What are the favourable factors for women in the way out of the addiction. How can the use of favourable factors be interpreted from a gender aspect. In what way is the knowledge about these favourable factors used in the drug abuse treatment.To fulfil the purpose whit our examination and to get answers to our questions we performed an explorative examination and applied a qualitative method in the form of a half structured interview with five persons.The main features of the results in our examination were that unisexual treatment, the group and the friendship between women, children and pregnancy and professional and private social network were considered as the favourable factors for the women out of their addiction. Certain factors were used in the treatment as a way to socialize or resocialize the female drug-addicts to predominant social models of how a woman should be like..

The purpose with this qualitative text analysis was to study how the sex roles of children are presented in children's books published in 2004 in comparison with children's books published 1972-74. The focus was to find patterns and differences. The study embraces eight books intended for children aged 5-9.The main results of the study showed that the girls were described to have a greater bent to take care, while the boys in general were more aimed to perform and achieve. In both today's and the books from the 70´s, the boys were described as aggressive and independent and the girls were often looked upon as princesses by fathers and boys. Violent rowdy behaviour was the essential thing among boys in especially the books from the 70´s.

The aim of this thesis was to examine how a coordinator at a social welfare project in support of job seekers, achieve results in his efforts to reduce the number of clients with social assistance. The method of data collection was a mixture of open thematic interviews and semi- structured interviews with open questions. The coordinator was interviewed four times during the length of the project. In addition, two of his clients were interviewed. The data also includes a report from the relevant social services and other documents such as newspaper articles.

The purpose of this thesis has been to investigaste the phenomenon of self-harm. To investigate this phenomenon, I interviewed three experts in Malmö and then compared the result with previous research on self-harm behaviour.The questions I wanted to answer were the following: How common is self-harm behaviour and how does it, according to experts, manifest itself among young men in Malmö? What can we learn from previous research about the causes of self-harm? Are there any correlations between the statements made by experts and previous research?My conclusion is that self-harm behaviour first and foremost is a mean of expression, a way of dealing with feelings that the self- harmer cannot deal with in any other way. People who suffer from self-harm behaviour often seem to have difficulties both in expressing and understanding their own feelings. Furthermore, they have often experienced abuse, abandonment, or other childhood traumas.