The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative study between France and Sweden analyzing the veil debate that took place in 2003 and 2004. This debate has been one of the central features of the renewed conflict between the West and Islam post 9/11, and has the presumed oppression of the Muslim veil in focus. With help of critical theory and a differentiated citizenship theory, including gender and post-colonial perspectives, I analyse the veil in a Western context in the arguments presented and the actions taken. Through that I try to distinguish the potential problems posed for the Muslim minorities living in the two countries.Three main areas are covered: the different political actions in the two countries, the consequences for this sidestep in liberal citizenship theory and in what way the view on equality splits the two parties. I conclude: that the French secularism and the Swedish equality have played key roles; the ideal of liberal citizenship is being abandoned for a more partial state; and the view of the veil as simply oppressive is part of a colonial heritage that can be challenged..

The aim of this essay is to examine why and how three teachers who work in elementary classes choose to use ability grouping during math lessons and what they think of ability grouping as a method to individualize the activities according to the pupil?s needs.I chose one main question for this study that is the following:What is the teacher?s point of view and experience of ability grouping in teaching mathematics?And three sub-questions:What are the motives behind the choice of ability grouping?What are the advantages of ability grouping?What are the disadvantages of ability grouping?In order to be able to answer my questions, I used the qualitative method. I interviewed three teachers who work in the elementary classes (First to fifth grade) to find out what they think about ability grouping and how it is experienced in mathematic teaching.The result shows that the common thing between these three teachers is that they don?t use ability grouping as the only teaching method. They all agree that the whole class teaching has many benefits for the pupils.

The Swedish preschool combines both education and care from a holistic point of view. This makes it even harder for both parents and the educators to make an objective evaluation on their own preschool. In Sweden we are proud to have one of the world?s best preschools. It is regulated by the government and is obligated to undertake critical evaluation from the state and the parents that are the consumers of these services.

Umbrella organizations, organizations that have other organizations as members, are in previous research described as arenas of conflicts with problematic decision-making and contradictory parallel action towards political decision-makers. However, the research within this subject is limited, and therefore the aim of this paper is to add knowledge to how such organizations in fact work. After conducting a case study at the trade association ESTOC this thesis challenge previous statements about umbrella organizations and conclude that there, under certain circumstances, may exist harmony within an umbrella organizations. The main implication, thus, is that we have to readdress umbrella organizations in quite another way to be able to make a more realistic interpretation of collaborations in umbrella organizations..

This essay is a qualitative study about Swedish fire-fighters´ ideas of women and people from other ethnic backgrounds than Swedish. The problem in focus is why there are difficulties for those groups of people to be employed in the Swedish fire service. Can there be ideas of these groups which are not favourable for them? And if this is the case, can those ideas be explained by gender theory about construction of masculinity? The purpose is to investigate whether the absence of women and people from other ethnic backgrounds can be explained by the fire-fighters´ ideas of those groups. The study consisted of a one day observation and four one hour long interviews with fire-fighters from different positions within the Swedish fire service.

The purpose of this study has been to examine how female probation officers construct the concept of women who commit crime. This have been done by examining how the probation officers describe the phenomenon from their own point of view, how they perceive society's view of the phenomenon, how they describe the women's self-images and how their own perceptions affect the treatment of these women. To fulfill this aim the study is based on qualitative interviews with five female probation officers. We analyzed their statements by using Gender theory, Goffmans stigma term and Beckers deviant term. The result of this study shows that women who commit crime are described more as victims than offenders and that they are constructed as deviant in two ways; both in relation to the law but also in relation to their gender.

This essay concerns equality statistics as part of a population census. It is a kind ofstatistics that is not in action in Sweden because of data protection law for sensitivedata (Personuppgiftslagen). This kind of an enlarged census is requested frominternational institutions like the UN and the EU as a tool to combat discriminationand to keep track of human rights. In Sweden there is a prohibition against collectingsensitive data regarding for instance sexuality, disability, transgender, ethnicbackground and national minority.The essay examines arguments from minority groups in Sweden, who participated inan enquiry done by the Equality Ombudsman on a government assignment 2011. Theenquiry process was done during 2012 and resulted in the report Statistikens roll iarbetet mot diskriminering (The Role of Statistics in Combating Discrimination).The starting point of the essay is to look at equality statistics with a two foldedpotential: as liberating or oppressive for the counted.

ABSTRACT Poverty, and in particular child poverty, is a serious social problem. Statistics show that the number of children living in poverty has increased over the last ten years. Earlier research shows that there are huge gaps in our knowledge of how the actors in civil society handle child poverty. With this study we hope to help fill this gap. The aim of our study is to look at how four different organisations working in the civil society in Uppsala perceive and handle child poverty.

AbstractThe aim in this dissertation is to investigate into the working of the rehabilitation process as to actors involved. A specific focus has been set on the component ?Work introduction?. The study shows that the road back to work is a complex matter. Individuals involved have different backgrounds and living situations, which influence this rehabilitation.

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..

Experiences in Sport (IPIES; Weibull 2008a) användes som mätinstrument. Resultatet visade att det var stora skillnader mellan spelarnas generella och specifika visualiseringsupplevelser. Resultatet visade även att på en stor dynamik i spelarnas visualiseringsmönster. Förändringar i spelarnas visualiseringsmönster kan förklaras utifrån Action Theory (Nitch, 1985). Vidare visade studie att spelarnas medvetenhet ökade under undersökningsperioden.

This study is an investigation of how fa?adism can be understood as an act of conservation and compensation in Sweden, through the definition of fa?adism as the act of retaining or reconstructing an existing fa?ade with the construction of a new building behind the fa?ade. The study is executed through an investigation and analysis of the definition of fa?adism, arguments for and against fa?adism related to authenticity, and through an analysis of how current legislation, policies and charters regarding conservation and/or compensation can support or counteract fa?adism. The first part of this study is executed through a literature study of fa?adism on an international level.

The purpose of this essay was to develop a conservation program for the outdoor environment at the Zorn House (Zorngården) in Mora, Dalarna, situated in the upper central part of Sweden. In the conservation program the Zorn House garden?s origins and development process has been studied by historical studies of various kinds. As a result a status report also has been made and a description of the garden's values. This has resulted in an objective discussion that provides guidelines for how the garden can be developed in the future.

This study is about the work of including immigrants to the Swedish society. The reason that we chose Landskrona community is that it is a town with a high population of immigrants. The purpose of this work has been to examine how projectleaders reflect about the work of integration in Landskrona and their point of view regarding the term integration. Our questions were: what is the projectleaders view on the term integration, how does the projectleaders reflect about the work of integration in Landskrona, how would the projectleaders like the work of integration to be, how does the projecleaders reflect about the future work of integration in Landskrona.We used a qualitative method to do this study and interviewed six persons who all work in various projects, that are working for including immigrants to the Swedish society.Our main results in our study is various kinds of thoughts and reflections of the work of integration in Landskrona, but there were some things that were more approaching than others. There is a high ambition of integrate immigrants into the Swedish society in Landskrona and the projectleaders had all many reflections of their work.

The purpose of this study is to examine the changes in law and other types of politicialregulation regarding unauthorized absence during the reformation of the Swedish schoolsystem in 2010. How was this ?new? approach on unauthorized absence established; whatmade it possible and which view on ?unauthorized absence? does it implicate? The study hasa discourse analytic approach in which it examines central policy documents regarding thetopic of inquiry. The study has found that the alliance-government?s education policy onunauthorized absence is pervaded by one hegemonic discourse termed the mono-culturaldisciplinary discourse.