On December 20, 2001, the Swedish citizen Mehdi Ghezali was captured on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ghezali spent the following 930 days in U.S. captivity, without being charged with any crime. My aim in this essay is to analyze how Ghezali was portrayed in three Swedish newspapers under and after his captivity, two nationwide and one local newspaper based in Ghezali's hometown. My purpose is to see whether Ghezali's identity is constructed differently in the three newspapers, as regards The Other, Stereotypization, etc.

The aim of this essay was to examine what kind of help and support social services departement can offer gamblers and their relatives. We also want to examine what the relatives to the gamblers think about the help and support they have got from the social services departement. Central questions we asked were: What kind of help and support can social services department offer the gamblers and there relatives? What kind of help is there to get for children respectively adult relatives? Do the relatives consider that the social worker have enough knowledge about the problem? Do the social workers consider that they have enough knowledge about the problem? This is a qualitative study of three women relatives to the gamblers, three social workers and one specialist in this problem. We have delimited the study to one big city in Sweden.

The chosen task in this thesis is to compare two projects of importance on the impact on the approach to graffiti in Norrköping and Göteborg. My main source for empirical findings was interviews. I have examined the Norrköping project Canslit including legal graffiti walls and a graffiti school and the political process around it. This was compared to the Göteborg project kulturprojekt Röda Sten, which is a cultural center that happens to be covered in illegal graffiti. The conclusion was that due to the very detailed plans and well-functioning communications between actors in the Norrköping project, this has resulted in a creative, tolerant approach to graffiti still with low rate of illegal graffiti.

Abstract Youths and adolescents have for a long period of time, and at a high degree, beenabsent from the party political stage. The causes for this have been discussed inthis essay through a quantitative survey made in an upper secondary school class,consisting of some 19 subjects in the municipality of Kalmar. Tied together withrelevant literature and discourse on the subject, the essay has dealt with thepossible societal-, system- and individual barriers for political interest andinvolvement. Central questions for this essay has been for instance; age, gender,social background, geographical domicile, as well as the decline of ideology, theforms of current party politics, political interest, political engagement and soforth. The concluding remarks contain not only a mix of these barriers existing,not exclusively, for young and adolescents but different ground for them as well.On the one hand, there exist barriers which exclude youth from the conventionalpolitical life, but on the other, the more individualised youth of today, prefer to agreater extent not to participate under the conventional circumstances that partypolitics has to offer.

The thesis analyzes the making of Nordic identity after the cold war which brought an end to Nordic exclusiveness of emphasizing ?soft power?. A need for a revitalization combined with an effort to enter History as an active subject, created constructivist project of a narrative style.My study relies on contemporary literature, focusing mainly on the construction of Nordic identity and regional cooperation in the 1990: s.I argue that Nordic identity was, and still is, determined of its comparable weakness in regard to the superpowers of the cold war, and, nowadays, to the EU.The architects of establishing a new Nordic identity, able to challenge a new Europe, fails in their effort, and what is left of their endeavour are separate states, each following their own agenda..

AbstractThis thesis discusses ideological and rhetorical change of the Moderate Party of Sweden. The aim of the thesis has been to study the party during a time-span of almost 20 years, trying to identify changes related to each of the three party leaders.A hypothesis was developed, suggesting that the three party leaders each represented a different kind of ideology namely neo-conservatism, neo-liberalism and social liberalism. By studying newspaper articles and protocols from the Swedish Parliament, riksdagen, I was able to verify the hypothesis in all but the first party leader, Carl Bildt. It was showed that his ideology had more in common with New Right than with neo-liberalism.After identifying these changes I looked for explanations within Party Strategy Theory and Social Change Theory. My conclusions were that the changes could be understood by the great loss of voters in the election of 2002 and that agents within the Moderate Party acted upon the ambition to win new and old voters to the party, thereby recognizing the need for change.Keywords: Ideological Change, Rhetorical Change, The Moderate Party,Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism, Social Liberalism..

This study is about how students 'performance in school is influenced by parents' educational background. The study has been performed by cooperation with two schools in Stockholm. One class in each school has participated and the students have amongst other questions answered regarding their grades in natural science subjects. To examine whether parents 'educational background affect students' performance, a quantitative survey in the form of poll has been conducted. Even a literature review was conducted in this area to get a clearer picture of how parents' educational background affects the performance of students.This study shows that students who have academic parents perform better than students who have not got academically educated parents.

The purpose of this study was to examine and illustrate whether employed social workers, working with supplementary benefits at a social service office, felt stressed. If so was the case, we wanted to investigate if this stress that they felt had any effect on their clients. This study was based on eight qualitative interviews, of which four was with social workers and four was with clients. For a better understanding of our results we used Karasek & Theorells demand-control-support model.The study reveals that the social workers do feel stressed, but they only do so in periods. They declare that they would like to have more time for their work assignments, the meetings with the clients in particulate.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the relationship between the definition and bibliographical classification of a certain academic subject; social anthropology. The theoretical framework consists of views held in Information Science regarding the definition and classification of subjects. The methodological onset is based on hermeneutical concepts that allow an extended analysis of abstract structures of thought. This analysis comprises of two parts; a descriptive analysis and a comparative analysis. The result of the descriptive analysis, whose aim is to describe the academic subject social anthropology, shows that this is not easy to define, instead it is nowadays almost the same as cultural anthropology.

The purpose of this study was to analyse the concept of empowerment and its meaning in the political document "En Förnyad Folkhälsopolitik" from the present Swedish government, containing guidelines and politics in the area of public health. The underlying question was if it could be considered as representative for some kind of general "empowerment approach" since the concept is central to the very definition of social work by the International Federation of Social Workers IFSW and International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW).By comparing its definition and consequences in the document with a historical review of different contexts of empowerment the conclusion was made that such a common approach doesn´t exist at all. The meaning of empowerment in the central document showed some similarities with the "northamerican" version of the concept represented by the social scientist Charles Murray, which is just one of the political meanings of empowerment. Alternative ways of understanding the concept was also presented such as being a tool of a constant conflict between central political principles or as a fashionable but not important word. Another alternative was to consider it a means of power through witch different political discourses tries to dominate the world..

In this thesis I discuss and analyse the use of violence of Basque radical nationalists after the 11th of September 2001 and the bombing of Madrid the 11th of March 2004. The field study is performed in the Basque country with interviews both on the French and Spanish side of the border with representatives from the Basque Nationalist Liberation Movement (BNLM).After the 11th of September the Spanish government continued its struggle against the countries own terror - ETA. But as the research will show the new political context after the 11/9 made it possible for the state to intensify the labelling of groups from the BNLM as terrorist organisations and thereby putting its members and leaders in prison for terrorism. My research shows that this social change may lead to a mobilisation of activists inside ETA, which in turn might create a continuity of the group's use of violence. The scenario is though challenged by an other setting in which the political situation after the 11/9 have made use of violence by militant groups like ETA illegitimate and irrational as a consequence of the mental trauma among the people of the western world.

Problem statement and purpose:The purpose of this study was to analyze in what way first-time voters chose to take part of political information. The questions we aimed to answer was how first-time voters use media and other information channels for political purposes, what importance and trust the first-time voters give the different information channels and finally which indicators there is for that structural or individual factors affect the media consumption and political interest.Method and material:We did interviews with twelve 18 years old first-time voters from six different high school programs in Sundsvall, Sweden.Results:The study showed that the premier source of political information were traditional news media, in particular the debates on TV. It?s also in the debates the first-time voter?s trust the most. Even though the social medias are constantly present in their everyday life and even though the first-time voters believe the social medias have potential for engaging young people politically, the possibilities are only taken in advantage by people who are already politically interested.

Aims: The aim of this study is to describe how youth?s political exclusion is constructed as asocial problem. This is done through a study of a project which aim is to engage young peoplein politics.Method and theory: By interviewing the project?s manager and developer as well as eightparticipating young people different constructions of the problem of youth political exclusionhas been analyzed using the social constructionist perspective on social problems.Findings: The dominant perspective found in the empirical material includes framing youngpeople?s lack of political knowledge and self-confidence as the reason for their politicalexclusion. Even though the Youth Board (ungdomsstyrelsen) in Sweden officially views allyoung people as a resource, when youth politics are implemented through projects, this is notthe view that young people meet.

The aim of this study was to look at introduction for staff in a social service office and the social workers experience off the first period at a new workplace. Qualitative interviews have been used as a method of investigating how social workers look at introduction in the workplace and how social workers have experience the first period at the workplace. The empirical material have been analysed by using the theory of Human Service Organizations, street-lever bureaucracy theory and theory concerning work environment. This papers first chapter presents the methodological preferences, the second chapter the theoretical perspective and the results of the study are presented in the third chapter followed by a discussion and ending comments in chapter four. My study showed that introduction is necessary in a complex organisation and could be a way to improve the social workers situation in social service organisations..

Purpose: To compare the expectations of coming profession in social work with experienced social work. We wanted to compare the pictures between the students in school of social work studies with social workers. We also wanted to increase social workers as well as other readers? awareness of social work as a profession.Questions: What characterizes the school of social studies? How do students in school of social work view the coming role as a professional? How do students in school of social work view upon social workers as professionals? How do social workers view upon their own profession? How do social workers view upon the own role as a professional? How do social workers view upon the relation between the idea of the profession and the daily practice? How do the students in school of social work studies and social workers view upon professional social work?Method: Qualitative study with qualitative interviews.Conclusion: Social work is a low status profession. How to increase the status of social work is not easy.