AbstractDuring the last five years there has been a considerable immigration from the Netherlands to Värmland in Sweden. INVA, Invest in Värmland, wanted to highlight this phenomenon and therefore contacted Karlstad University to make a survey about how extensive the immigration is and what consequences it brings for the business life and municipalities in Värmland. We were luckily chosen to perform this research and the main focus in this study has been the following questions:? Why do the Dutchmen choose to buy their house in Värmland?? What are the main reasons for leaving the Netherlands?? What consequences does the immigration cause for the business life in Värmland?? How do the Dutchmen experience the contact with Swedish authorities?To answer the questions we designed a questionnaire that was sent to 200 Dutch house purchasers. The ambition was to survey all the Dutch house purchasers in Värmland, but with the time constrains and the municipalities having problem to find complete data, we limited the survey to 200 households.

This Master?s thesis is one of two parts of a combined project called Sustainable development around the Lake Victoria, the purpose of which is to investigate the importance of local anchoring and active participation in the work towards sustainable development. The present study aims to investigate whether men and women are empowered by the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) process promoted in their villages by the VI Agroforestry Project Masaka/Rakai. The study is primarily based on interviews with farmers within the project area and brings up a local perspective on the concepts sustainable development, active participation and empowerment. The study shows that to improve the farmers? livelihood and to create a sustainable development in the community, the farmers have to be actively involved in, and in control of, the process.

Care and solicitude about Swedish documentary heritage has varied substantially throughout the years. The main purpose of this essay has been to investigate what efforts have been made to preserve rare book collections at public libraries. These cultural policies have been studied from both a national as well as local perspective. What we have tried to explore can be condensed into three questions: What national initiatives have been taken in the past century to preserve the municipal documentary heritage?What initiatives have been taken in the past century to preserve thedocumentary heritage of what is presently the municipality of Jönköping? What value do rare book collections at public libraries represent? The results indicate few national efforts were initially made to preserve rare book collections in the timeframe we studied.

This essay deals with the question of lines of development within the politics in the rural municipality of Nyed 1950-1962. The aim is to explore how local politics and policies were handled from two perspectives. Firstly the issue of conflict and consensus or majority rule and consensus. Here Arend Lijphard's theory of majority and consensus provides a theoretical base for the essay. Secondly the aim is to explore the actions of the local politicians with regards to leisure time policies to find out whether or not they ideologically belonged to the concept of ?folkhemmets kommun? by Ulla Ekström von Essen.The source material for this essay has been the minutes from the two major bodies of local politics in Nyed, kommunalfullmäktige and kommunalnämnden.

This bachelor thesis is based on interviews with staff from three Egyptian NGOs in Cairo during the spring of 2013. The study examines how three Egyptian NGOs discuss the woman?s situation within the Islamic legal discourse in the contemporary Egypt. The empiric material was analysed through a theoretical framework of gender in Islam, and a discussion of the concept of human rights laws in a local context.The respondents emphasize the societies gender stereotypes as obstacles in the discussion regarding women?s rights.

This is a master thesis on how to develop the central area of Norra Fäladen, a suburban housing area in the town of Lund, Sweden. The area is discussed on the basis of literature studies, analysis, and place descriptions, which leads on to a proposal. The starting point for the proposal is to create a more lively local centre and to make the area pleasanter for the visitor. A large part of the thesis is devoted to giving a background about local centres and to describe and analyse the area. Fäladstorget has an important role as a central place for supply and services and as a local meeting place for the inhabitants of Norra Fäladen.

The aim of this study was to analyze how discourses about domestic violence emerges in policy and practice, and to investigate how those discourses may change from a structural, political level to a local, practical level. The research questions focused how the problem of domestic violence is formulated at national and local level, scrutinizing the different discourses framing and reproducing the causes and solutions of the problem, and also to deduce how different context affects formulations. The empirical material consists of policy plans and interviews with social workers. The findings indicates that the issue of domestic violence is articulated differently on different levels. In action plans on the national level, the domestic violence is formulated within a structural discourse, being a problem on a (gender-) political level, whereas professional social workers recognizes domestic violence as a personal problem within an individual oriented discourse.

The present study discusses the political integration of immigrants in local government in the muncipality of Växjö from 1971 to 1991 in the form of representation. The main data source consists of lists of people holding local commissions of trust in the various boards and committés appointed by the municipality council, as well as in the council itself. These data are then compared to population statistics from Statistics Sweden. Main findings of the study are that immigrants are insufficiently represented in relation to their proportion of the population. It is suggested that this is a result of structural discrimination and possibly insufficient socialisation..

The development of solar photovoltaic (PV) is increasing,with declining module prices and with a strongenvironmental profile. Policies are developed around theworld to achieve the targets set for renewable energy.In Helsingborg, the local power company Öresundskraft isworking with solar PV to achieve the goals of the city.With their vision: - Energy for a Better World and Powerfor the Region, their work with developing the local solarPV market is continuing and the next step is to create asolar PV policy. Today their offer is 1 SEK/kWh for theexcess electricity delivered to the grid.It turns out that compensating the customer is a vitalpolicy and it has to be dynamic to follow the decisions ofpolitics. The same survey shows indeed, thatenvironmental and technical part is of interest. Solar PVwill be supported locally to act on environmentalsustainability and locally produced electricity and withthis Öresundskrafts vision will be achieved..

This paper examines the opportunities and challenges of integrating conservation practice and the circular economy into practical planning processes. In recent years, the discussion of circular economy and its relevance in the sustainability debate has intensified. According to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the transition to a circular economy is crucial to achieving the national and international environmental and climate goals as well as the global goals in Agenda 2030. Parallel to this, there is a long established heritage discourse that emphasizes the importance of preserving buildings and cultural environments as part of our cultural heritage. These two discourses have common goals, but they differ in how they present their respective arguments.

This study investigates and analyzes experiences of discrimination and racism among social work students, focusing on how these issues occur between peers rather than through hierarchical dynamics, such as interactions with faculty. The research aims to shed light on the academic challenges faced by students with foreign backgrounds, as defined by Statistics Sweden (SCB), particularly those who experience discriminatory practices and behaviors within the academic environment. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, utilizing semi-structured interviews to explore the lived experiences of these students. Participants were selected based on their enrollment in social work programs and their identification as having a foreign background. Data was analyzed thematically to uncover recurring patterns and insights into the participants' experiences.

The purpose of this study is to examine the implementation of the Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, CEDAW, in Uppsala local council and county council. The aim is to examine how the respondents, in their daily work, understand and implement the convention as well as how they consider the prerequisites for a successful implementation. The study was conducted using qualitative interviews with three civil servants and four politicians. The theoretical approach was implementation theory whose concepts willingness, comprehension and capability were used as tools for the analysis. The results portray CEDAW as a well-known treaty amongst the respondents but at the same time absent in local politics and everyday work.

Due to the forest industry downsizing, many communities in rural forest regions in Canada and Sweden are facing problems to survive. In order to create community sustainability, resilience and well-being in remote forest regions, the view on the forest resources has shifted towards multiple use, through the concept of sustainable forest management (SFM). Beside the economic and ecological elements of sustainability, the social forest values are needed, contributing to the human well-being, local participation, stakeholder collaboration, human rights and cultural connection. In this thesis the embodiment of the social component of SFM within Prince Albert Model Forest (Canada), and Vilhelmina Model Forest (Sweden) will be examined. Being partners and facing similar challenges as rural boreal forest regions, the two model forests are compared through analysis of projects and activities, conducted interviews and organization documents. Looking at projects mentioned as successful by the interviewees, they all have elements from the social values of SFM. The direction can be explained by the introduction of the Forest Communities Program in Canada, demanding the Model Forests to work towards community stability and resilience, the Model Forest organization concept itself and the way global focus are increasing around social forest values. In the future, it may be important that the role of the MFs enable some kind of political authorization and legitimacy in order to improve conflict solving and indigenous rights equality.

Electricity production from renewable energy resources such as wind energy and photovoltaics is variable. Integration of these intermittent resources into the electricity system leads to new challenges in how to manage imbalance between supply and demand on the grid.One way to meet these challenges is to develop so-called smart grid solutions. One idea, called demand response, is to adjust the amount or timing of energy consumption, e.g. by control of household appliances, to provide flexibility that could be used to balance the grid. In aggregate, when applied to many units across the system, large volumes of energy could be made available when needed and this grid flexibility can be used as a product on the electricity regulation market.Despite the potential benefits, the number of demand response bids is currently low.

Light pollution in urban areas - How to prevent light pollution at construction Jakob Sjöling Light pollution is a relatively new but rapidly growing form of pollution. Society's increasing demand for light coupled with the pace at which lighting technology evolves is accelerating that growth. The purpose of this study was to analyse how the construction industry plan and design outdoor lighting when erecting new buildings, specifically with regards to the issue of light pollution. It also investigated how local authorities work with these issues during urban planning. In both cases special interest was placed in ways to improve the planning and use of outdoor lighting in order to minimize light pollution.