The aim of this study is to discuss the implementation of Swedish integration policy from the perspective that public officials, so called front-line bureaucrats, are the real creators of this policy. The concept of integration is far from unambigous; it can have different meanings depending on the theoretical perspective applied. This give topical interest to the question of how the concept is conceived on the national level versus the implementation level. I also aim to uncover how these front-line bureaucrats look upon their role as creators of integration policy. My material consists mainly of interviews with front-line bureauctrats.

AbstractIn this essay I discuss narrative in the reconstruction of national identity. I discuss exclusion as a side effect in thick identities. That means that thick national identities always exclude another part. From this I´ve discussed the Swedish identity and its effects in the European co-operation. Identity is a discourse that reconstructs linguistically.

This essay examines upper secondary school pupils as well as the Swedish National Agency for Educations views on the education in subject of religion. How they describe its purpose, what content the topic should address, how the education should be implemented and what influence the pupils should have over their own studies. This to examine how the views of pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Education correlate and to analyze how it possibly can affect the pupil?s motivation. The survey is conducted by semi-forging tured interviews and text analysis in order to ascertain the pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Educations opinions on the issues.

This work studied the information flow and information handling among different parties. The study focused on how educational materials on national tests from The Swedish National Agency for Education is managed by school principals and teachers and how the information is passed on to students. The data material was based on observations and interviews at two different high schools. Six teachers and their classes and principals participated in the study. The Agency was also interviewed.

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the principal problem of the study of national self-images and by questioning the congruent existence of one in the case of Sweden. Through the use of qualitative method and semi-structured interviews the ambition of the study is to compare and to understand the national self-images portrayed in a major Swedish town, Stockholm and to that of a smaller town on the countryside, Sjöbo. A social constructionist approach in co-operation with key temporal and spasial dimensions are used to penetrate the interviews at hand. The main conclusions drawn from this study highlights the difficulties in addressing the concept of a congruent national self-image. Several major discrepancies appear in the analysed material, mainly in the past and the external dimensions, both from a regional approach, but also very much within the local entities themselves..

Syftet med detta arbete har varit att undersöka på vilket sätt ordet kultur förändrats i en jämförelse mellan Svenska akademiens ordbok och Svenska akademiens ordlista 1998. I undersökningen har det endast ägnats intresse åt efterleden i orden. Efterleden från SAOB har jämförts med efterleden i SAOL 98. Efter en sortering i semantiska fält har det i arbetet konstaterats att ordet kultur förändrats från betydelsen ?odling? mot ?bildning?..

Uppsatsen behandlar sex kurdiska killar som bor i Stockholm och deras beskrivningar kring omvärldens bild av deras kultur.Vår frågeställning lyder: hur förhåller sig kurdiska killar till bilden av kurder som finns i omvärlden? Genom att intervjua dessa sex personer individuellt och ha med en liten medieanalys försöker få en uppfattning om dessa kurdiska killars identitetskonstruktion.Resultatet som man kan ta del av är att dessa kurdiska killar ofta försvarar sin kultur och sitt ursprung samtidigt som de har börjat tänja på gränserna som finns kring deras kultur..

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to analyse the basis of Russian diplomacy, and by doing that develop the analytical instruments available, in order to improve the comprehension between the parties in negotiations. Descriptions of the national characteristics of Soviet and Russian diplomacy are made by an analysis of memoairs and other examinations of their negotiating behaviour. To ensure the result of the characteristics two case studies of the non-nuclear proliferation negotiations are made, followed by a comparation between the Soviet and Russian diplomacy. From these results, I analyse the groundworks of russian diplomacy, using three theories about how ideology, national identity and prevailing self-image can affect the national negotiating behaviour. The results show that there have been changes in only some parts of the negotiating behaviour and that there is a need for all three theories to explain different parts of the complex system of Russian diplomacy which is based on the plurality of culture, ideology, language, ideology and history..

Uppsatsen syfte är att identifiera och problematisera hur diskurser om kultur förhåller sig till våld mot barn hos socionomer samt att problematisera och reflektera över diskursernas konstruktion. Frågeställningarna i uppsatsen är: Vilka diskurser om kultur i förhållande till våld mot barn förekommer hos socionomer? Vad innefattas i dessa diskurser? Hur kan dessa diskurser problematiseras? Uppsatsens ontologiska inriktning baseras på ett postmodernt och socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv. Undersökningen bygger på kvalitativ metod. Empirin utgår ifrån fyra halvstrukturerade intervjuer med socionomer.

The purpose of our study was to investigate whether national adoptions could be an option within the childcare system in Sweden. We wanted to create an understanding of how the professionals agree to this. We have implemented a comprehensive literature review as well as a qualitative study, taking benefit of a phenomenological method of analysis. The result of our study shows that national adoptions cannot replace foster placements but be a good addition to foster homes. Adoption gives the children a more secure and stable life..

Within the political science research it is common to examine the effects on the national parliaments caused by European integration. In this Bachelor Thesis the aim is instead to show what involvement of the national parliaments in the European Union implicates to the European integration process.The object of examination is the introduction of the parliaments as supervisors of draft legislative acts, this is also known as ?the Early Warning Mechanism?, through the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. An analysis of answers from the national parliaments in the tests of three pilot cases, conducted by the COSAC, is made with help of Institutional theory and an Europeanization perspective.The main findings show that the mechanism of early warning probably will not become an obstacle for continued European integration, but it could slow down the process in some areas. Most probably though is that the mechanism forces the national parliaments to adapt and to be better equipped to react at events taking place at the European level.

För västerländska företag som etablerar sig på den kinesiska marknaden kan kulturskillnader göra det svårt att nå kinesiska konsumenter med standardiserad global marknadskommunikation. Kultur- och språkskillnader bidrar till att reklambudskap kan tolkas annorlunda i Kina. Vi har utifrån ett hermeneuistiskt perspektiv undersökt vilka aspekter företag bör ta i beaktning vid utformning av reklam för den kinesiska marknaden. Det empiriska materialet har insamlats via djupintervjuer som har analyserats utifrån kultur- och kommunikationsteorier. Företag som ska etablera sig i Kina bör beakta den kinesiska kulturens vidskeplighet, val av humor, sexistiska budskap, översättingar, samt funktionell/emotionell reklam.

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.

Today there is a large consensus about the importance of Swedish schools providingconditions enabling students to develop the ability to manage and learn through information technologies (IT). The goal of this study was to describe and examine how national education goals for the use of IT transformed into municipal IT-strategies for the school. A content analysis was conducted of thirty-eight municipal IT-strategies collected from Swedish municipal websites on the Internet. The content in the municipal IT-strategies was compared with the content in both the Swedish education act and the national curriculum. The results showed that the content in the Swedish education act and the national curriculum in fact was translated into municipal IT strategies, but that the range of strategies concerning technology, pedagogy and content in relation to IT was broad.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate how some teachers in multicultural school environments reflecton and experience the educational work with national tests in the third grade for students who do not have Swedish as their native language. The research questions I have chosen to work with are:How do teachers experience working with national tests in groups of students where there are children with Swedish as a second language?How do the teachers reflect on the students linguistic preconditions relating to the national tests in these groups of students?What strategies in their teaching on national tests do the teachers use when it comes to students with Swedish as a second language?In this study I have chosen to use a qualitative interview method. Since the purpose of the study is to understand how teachers reflect on students with Swedish as a second language the obvious choice was to interview teachers who work in a multicultural school. In my thesis I have chosen to use sociocultural theory, Cummins four quadrant model and context for theoretical approach.