What is the European Union (EU) and which countries should be part of it in the future? These questions became topical during the first part of the 21st century when political and geographical changes hasten the need to decide the nature of the European cooperation. In the European Constitution, that never come into force, the European values that a key role but was taken away in the succeeding Lisbon Treaty. Nevertheless EU continues to expand, recently to the East and non-European countries asTurkey are now on the ?waiting-list?.

The purpose of this study is to examine what characterizes brand identity and positioning regarding festivals on the current Swedish festival market. In relation to our purpose we are also going to analyze how festival attendees relate to a festivals brand identity. Our research question is as follows:What characterizes festivals brand identity and positioning on the current Swedish festival market?This study has been written with a qualitative research method and an inductive approach. Our empirical foundation is built on a rich content based on personal interviews.

This essay focuses on the relationship between Islam, secularism, girls and sexuality. These categories problematize gender and how it affects identity processes of young women with a Muslim background. Sexuality is especially emphasized. The Muslim background is placed in contrast to the prescribed norms and ideals of the Swedish society/context concerning gender, sexuality and identity and this essay analyses how young women create gender and identity and which possibilities and strategies they have and use to negotiate about space in the relationship to other people. A girls? relationship to her own and others? sexuality is precisely what makes her a girl, but more importantly, also to which kind of girl.

The purpose of this study is to examine how a particular niche in tourism can attract international visitors to a certain destination. To do this, the Swedish food culture was used as a tool to find out how it is marketed to attract international visitors to Sweden. International visitors today wants to find destinations with a rich culture, authentications and traditions to get closer to the destinations identity. The study examines how three of the biggest companies, who works with the promotion of Sweden to an international audience, using the Swedish food culture as a marketing tool. We find that the visitor would like to get closer to the Swedish identity, which the Swedish food culture helps with..

The aim of this study was to analyze the assessment of the national tests seen from the teacher?s perspective. The national tests are performed in the Swedish school, classes 3, 5, 9, and the upper secondary school (gymnasiet). There has been an ongoing discussion regarding assessment and grading for a long time and it is of high interest now more than ever. The last control assessment done in 2009 by the department of school inspections on the order of the Swedish government, showed big differences between the assessments done by the teachers, and the assessments completed by the department of school inspections.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how officials within the Swedish public libraryorganisation view the IT-development, how the IT-development progresses within theorganisation and if there is a need for a national IT-strategy for the public libraries in Sweden.Four unorganized interviews with officials within the regional- and county libraryorganisation and one within the national organisation where conducted. This study is aqualitative examination where the phenomenographic approach has been used as inspirationfor the analytic model. The analytic result has been compared to the system theory of how anoptimal system should be constructed to perform in an optimal way and to be able to producegood results. The results of this study show a wish for a better national cooperation regardingthe IT-development for the Swedish public libraries. Today?s library structure should bereviewed over in order to enable the libraries to produce even better results from the cooperation?s..

This report is written in cooperation with the Swedish National Road Administration South-Eastern Region in Jönköping. The report is a result of the evaluation to give an answer to the question about how well the function contract has been carried out on the E4 in Östergötlands and Jönköpings län. The evaluation is divided in two hard parameters and one soft.The Swedish National Road Administration is interested in knowing how the standard on the road have been changed during the functions period, which is the reason why the first hard parameter is considering road standard. To evaluate the standard there have been a comparison of values from measures taken every year on the current road stretch. The second hard parameter considers economy.

The aim of this study is to analyze the change of Basque nationalism during the last ten years and discuss how the main nationalist party (PNV) tries to impose "we"- feelings and support for its cause. Theories of nationalism and national identity are used in the analysis.A textual analysis of PNV:s unofficial documents is discussed and compared with a discourse analysis of its official documents. Although the unofficial documents deal with similar view of basic political/territorial ambitions, language and identification, there are some differences in the latest documents regarding the view of who is defined as Basque and also to the detoriated relation to Spain. Although references are made to the regard that the Basque Country is for everyone, the persistence of emphasizing the uniqueness and myths of the Basque culture signals a different matter. The discourse analysis of the official documents supports this claim and although they contain an ambiguous relation to Spain it is clear that Basque nationalism has been radicalized.

This study aims to describe the conditions, of which some youths who live in a segregated area in Sweden, see as important for their development of an identity. The study have been conducted in a manner where we put the youths own words in focus. The youths are in charge of deciding what they regard as important for their own development of their own identity. In this study we assume certain contexts, of which we base the study. These contexts include the society, the urban districts, the school, the family, and the language.

In this thesis I have criticized traditional nationalism theories formulated by Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Anthony D. Smith. The critique has been based on my belief that nationalism theories do not explain nations whose foundation is built on forward-looking, dynamic aspects such as economy, human and civil rights, and democracy. Traditional nationalism theories have been focused on historicizing perspectives whereas I want to draw attention to non-historicizing perspectives within the field of research. So far nationalism theories has had a shared past or a shared ethnicity as its focal point.

The aim of this study has been to reach a deeper understanding of how refugee adolescences experience their ethnic identity, particular ethnic consciousness in terms of integration, assimilation and segregation. Further my intention has been to investigate if the adolescences experienced changes in their ethnic identity.   In order to investigate these questions a qualitative method consisting of four interviews were conducted. The study included two young men at the age of 18, and two young women at the age of 17 and 18. Three of the interviewed persons can be defined as refugees, but not the fourth adolescence.

Total amount of words: 15 269.In this essay, the purpose is to examine the personalization of Swedish national coaches during international championships in the Swedish tabloids. Research shows that a leader nowadays is representative for her organization. Therefore it could be assumed that the way the national coach is portrayed can have some kind of effect on the public opinion about the team as a unit and their sport federation in total. This essay is a quantitative study of the sport tabloids Sportbladet och SPORT-Expressen during three international championships: Euro 2012 in football, WC 2013 in ice hockey and Euro 2014 in handball. We have studied the coverage of the national coaches Erik Hamrén, Pär Mårts and Ola Lindgren/Staffan Olsson in contrast to the coverage of their teams in total.The main results are that the national coaches are mentioned in every second article that is written about the national teams during the championships. They are mainly portrayed in a neutral way, even though the coverage of them is affected by the results in the matches.

Ever since the nation-state has existed identity has been a big deal, it is told that identity is a tool needed to be able to receive consensus from the people concerned on a certain matter. As the European Union is continuously shaped and reshaped due to changing geographical borders, as a consequence of new member-states the aim to integrate the Union equally across its surface has not been an easy task to solve. A lack of trust from the inhabitants in the European Union is a fact, and therefore the main duty of the Union has become to rebuild the trust from beginning to end, creating a Union which easily can be identified with. Since the process of national identity relies upon an excluding-including process and the use of the Other, the identification process on an European level has indeed had fierce effects on the inhabitants within and outside the Union.One of many things that this essay aims at showing is how mythmaking has become a way used by the elite in the Union to integrate a European identity, the myths refer back to a Golden Age when Europe was prosperous and in bloom. Among other tools used to integrate and create a European identity we find such as; unity in diversity, a cultural inheritance based on common denominators such as Christianity and Latin traditions, symbols and a European citizenship.

This thesis deals with local identity and the workplace. We have taken part of stories dealing with local identity and the workplace, by using a qualitative method. We interviewed eleven men working at the same company. The group contained of men from urban areas as well as rural areas. The data from our interviews have been applied to theories of local identity and social theories by sociologists such as Durkheim, Simmel and Tönnies.

The aim of this study is to investigate how the Swedish language proficiency of pupils in vocational programmes in 1977 was measured and assessed with the aid of a national achievement test, and to investigate whether vocational pupils today, in 2014, have similar language proficiency to that of pupils in the 1970s. The study also discusses how the design of the national achievement test from 1977 reflects the view of knowledge that prevailed in society and in the policy documents. The material for the study consists of a total of 75 national achievement tests, 40 of which were taken by pupils on a vocational programme in 1977 and 35 by pupils on a vocational programme in 2014. The national achievement test consists of two parts, the first of which focuses on isolated elements of language proficiency, while the second involves free text production. The material was analysed quantitatively in accordance with the correction material from 1977.