The Motor Group of the European Council was commissioned in the autumn of 1997 to prepare a proposal for a new European Bus and Coach Directive. In the beginning, most of the Member States did not have the accessibility requirements as their main concern; still a smaller network with actors from the National delegations from Britain, Germany and Sweden would influence the other National delegations in the Council group to finally agree to retain the requirement of accessibility of the Directive. Within the EU decision process, the European Disability movement acted as a strong player during the whole negotiation process using the proposal to a new Bus and Coach Directive as a tool to influence key actors to go towards a Directive with a strong approach for accessibility.Policy Transfer and Policy Transfer Network are used as analytical tools to understand and structure the transfer of the question of accessibility during the negotiation process. Actors understanding how the bureaucratic process works within the EU decision system have a chance to contributing for the changes in the directions they wishes for within a range of policy areas. The principal aim of the Directive was to guarantee the safety of passengers and to provide technical prescription in particular to wheelchair users.

 ABSTRACTThis study focuses on immigrant women in Sweden and how their perceptions of resource loss may affect their motivation to learn Swedish. Focus group discussions were conducted with immigrant women who partake in a Swedish language learning project. Their Swedish language skills were very limited, and all of them had no or very few years of elementary level education. Results of the study suggest that the strongest motivator to learn Swedish is its potential role in facilitating everyday activities.    .

Written declarations in the European Parliament have not been given muchattention in the field of political science. The scope of this Master's thesis is toexamine whether symbolic politics are present in written declarations and howthis may show. In this study, the aspects of symbolic politics of writtendeclarations of the sixth parliamentary term are examined using a taxonomy foridentifying symbolic politics developed by Peter Santesson-Wilson. Thetaxonomy is applied on 15 written declarations, all adopted by the EuropeanParliament, dealing with a variety of EU-related issues, ranging from July 2004 toJuly 2008.The main findings of the study show that symbolic politics is a presentphenomenon in nearly all written declarations (13 out of 15 cases) subject to thisstudy.In the final chapter of this study inter alia symbolic politics as a deliberateaction is discussed in the view of written declarations. Irrespective of this, onecould say that symbolic politics are institutionalised in the European Parliament,at least when it comes to written declarations..

The way society categorize different people into groups is problematic in the sense that the categorization can seem stigmatizing and have social consequences for those being categorized. Immigrants are one of those problematic categories.The following essay studies this categorization of ?immigrants? based on a governmental investigation of structural discrimination that took place in 2002-2008. The aim is to study the use of the category ?immigrant? and the consequences that follows such a categorization.

This thesis aims at studying the European Union?s actions against applicant states. In this case Turkey has been chosen as a variable, because of its unique applying accession.Turkey is a country which has been applying for a membership of the European Union since 1989 and Turkey is the only state which has been searching for membership for more than twenty years. Turkey has been given a lot of critic of not fulfilling the political criteria of the Copenhagen criteria?s.

The aim of this study is to describe and analyze how the European union relates to the different dimensions of abortion. What kind of problem is abortion and whose right is it? Does difference framings of the problem enable different solutions?By analyzing debates from the European parliament through Carol Lee Bacchis method ?What?s the problem approach? I have come to see that different representations of a problem changes the problem it self. This emphasis that a problem is a problem in one context, but not in an other.Depending on the work of, among others, Barbara Hobson and Ailbhe Smyth I have focused upon the European union as a economical project, leaving social issues to national competence. This makes the EU a patriarchal project that fails to guarantee women?s rights.

This thesis deals with the supranational organization of European trade unions. The European trade union movement is, via its umbrella organization the ETUC, an institutionalized social partner within the European Union. The ETUC is a very diverse organization with great potential of conflicting interest among its members. This thesis therefore seeks to explore the dynamics and interest heterogeneity of the ETUC. Drawing on previous research and literature it formulates a number of hypothesises to test what variables that influence the member organizations policy preferences (i.e.

The aim of this qualitative deep interview study was to gain deeper understanding of single immigrant mothers´life situation. Grounded Theory was the method of analysis. Repeated interviews with five immigrant women from different parts of the world showed that women were in need of wider and deeper social networks in order to reconstruct their identities. Social support and social networks benefit, not only reconstruction of identity, but also personal well-being. Yet it is difficult for them to create social networks in the new country, because of single motherhood.

KALMAR UNIVERSITYDepartment of Health andBehavioural Sciences.Education of Social Work 21-40 p.C-essay, 10 p.Title: The Accepted Adjustment ? How Twelve Children Belonging to Ethnic Minority Groups Experiences Everyday Life in School.Authors: Kristin Lundin & Karin SwartlingSupervisor: Jesper AndreassonExaminer: Ulf DruggeABSTRACTThe aim of this C-essay, using a qualitative method and from a child prospective, explore how children belonging to ethnic minority groups participating in the Swedish education system at an intermediate level, experience everyday life at school and the interactions with their teachers. We have interviewed twelve children between the age of eleven and thirteen years old. The children have either immigrated (adopted children are included) or are born in Sweden but have at least one parent who has immigrated.The outcome from our study is that immigrant children have a positive experience of their daily life in school and in their interactions with their teachers. The majority of children state that they view their teachers as good educationalists.

The purpose of the study is to examine and analyze the relation between the existence of global companies and given support to immigrant- owned companies with large cultural difference from public services. This helps answering the question "Which affect does the existence of local dominating companies have on the establishment of small companies owned by immigrants with large cultural differences?" This has been accomplished through a field study containing twelve interviews with small companies in two different cities and two interviews with the community officials in each city. The research was thereby narrowed to only treat the two cities in Sweden in order to examine the relation between public services support to small immigrant-owned companies and how the immigrants experience the support from them. The analyze was made due to a handful of theories such as the The network theory IP model, Hofstede's 4+1 model and the Product Life Cycle.

The background to this study is built upon the results that emerged from our former study: Elever med svenska som andraspråk i mångkulturella skolor - Bakgrundsfaktorer Tester och Utredningar (Odén och Bagge, 2006). Those results made us aware of the lack of cooperation in the work around immigrant pupils with special needs. In this study we have therefore chosen to look at the cooperation processes. The aim that we agreed upon was to explore the intercultural cooperation process around a few immigrant pupils in school year F-5, before and in connection with the pupils possible registration in the special school. We also wanted to pay special attention to the roll that the special need teachers played.

This essay focuses on the reception of Yahya Hassan?s debut YAHYA HASSAN in Swedish media, mainly daily newspapers. Following the work of Magnus Nilsson it analyzes the ?reading strategy of the politics of identity? in ?immigrant literature? and outlines structural racism in the literary scene. By bringing attention to the critics? use of this reading strategy, it is possible to unveil the ?ethnic filter? through which literature by Swedish authors with a ?non-Swedish identity? is being read in contemporary Swedish literary criticism.

Deliberative democracy theory has been prominent within political science research since the early 1990?s, often applied in studies on postnational democratic constellations, in particular the European Union. Of the main institutions of the union, the European Parliament stands out as somewhat understudied from this point of view, which is why the main aim of this thesis is to study the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament.From deliberative democratic theory four criteria have been selected to function as methodological framework in analysing the institutional structure and proceedings of the parliament. Each of the criteria is applied separately to the practice and function of the plenary sessions, the parliamentary committees and the political groups. The analysis shows that the conditions for deliberative democracy differ between the three fora, as do their respective roles in parliament, but all in all they supplement each other.

Unaccompanied minors who are fleeing and being sent way from their countries of origin are nothing new. In 2011, 12 225 unaccompanied minors where registered in The European Union, none undocumented minors included. Most of the minors are coming from Afghanistan and Somalia. The aim of this essay is to investigate how The European Union?s migration policies are applied in reality and how United Nation?s Convention on the Right of Children are put in practice by the member states of The European Union and Norway.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the European certificate of succession, and how it affects Swedish inheritance law. The European certificate of succession is a European document that will be introduced in august 2015 in the EU regulation of succession. The certificate of succession is meant to simplify the current process of cross-border inheritance by legitimizing the concerned parties, which according to the regulation are: heirs, legatees, executors of wills and administrators of the estate. According to the regulation, the member state of which the deceased had habitual residence shall have jurisdiction to rule on the succession as a whole. Since the certificate is a European document, it will have legal effect in all member states.