This study aims at describing if discrepancies can be found between the rhetoric in Swedish political parties? electoral campaigns to the European Parliament elections in 2004 and their representatives? actual behavior in the European Parliament and to develop plausible explanations to these possible discrepancies. The research method that is being used is content analysis, aiming to answer four research questions regarding the electoral campaigns to the European Parliament elections in 2004 and the behavior by the parties? representatives during the following term of office. The main findings are that some discrepancies can be found regarding which questions are raised most frequently in the electoral campaigns and in the European Parliament, but that no discrepancies can be found regarding the positions taken in questions in the electoral campaigns and in the European Parliament.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to find out in which ways a group of first generation immigrants use Swedish papers and magazines in a public library and which information needs this group has about Swedish society. One important aspect in this essay is integration of immigrants in the Swedish society as a possible effect of newspaper reading. The method used in this study is qualitative. Data is generated through semi-structured interviews.

This bachelor essay studies families that have migrated from countries in Europe to Sweden,and their experiences of adapting to new conditions of the Swedish welfare state. Theirexperiences are studied firstly from an institutional point of view, which refers to the family?s experience of adapting family life to Swedish family social policy. Secondly it focuses how the families experience new norms and values connected to Swedish family social policy. The main aim is to seek what problems families migrating to Sweden might be confronted with when adapting to new conditions of the welfare state.

The study examines conceptions of identity among girls with foreign background. The aim was to study how identity is understood by the girls based on ethnicity, images of the origin, the value of gender and the meaning of the family. The theoretical approach was post-colonial theory based on Stuart Hall in combination with gender theory by Yvonne Hirdman. The study was conducted using qualitative individual interviews of open character with six girls. They were aged 17-18 years old and were born in Sweden or had lived here since the age of six.

The thesis is about integration in the city and how integration can be improved through physical planning. Segregation can result in changing peoples? prerequisites in our society. Opportunities in life become dependent on what area of the city you live in or where you grew up. Integration denotes acceptance for all people, while different cultural and ethnic identities are preserved at the same conditions for everyone.

Having different kinds of literature is an important part of the education in school and schoolbooks, in shape of reading-books, are common in the first year of primary school. The texts pupils encounter in school are important for how they form their identity and thoughts about what is right or wrong and what is natural or unnatural. People of other ethnicity than Swedish, or with another skin colour than white, have often in the past been portrayed negatively in reading-books as if they are of less worth. According to the Curriculum for the Compulsory School System (Lpo94) the school shall act for understanding of all people and every person?s equal value.The study analyses how ethnicity is portrayed in reading-books for pupils in the first year of primary school.

The aim of the study was to examine how the public libraries participate in the integration of immigrants in the Malmö-/Lund region. Librarians and immigrants were interviewed about the services offered by the libraries in the area of multiculturalism and what kind of service that is requested by the immigrants. The interviews also included possibilities to contribute to increased knowledge among the native Swedish people about different cultures represented among immigrants in Sweden. From the qualitative analyses it is concluded that the libraries represented in the study contribute to the integration of immigrants. The respondents gave multiple examples of the libraries? usefulness in the integration process by offering immigrants possibilities to develop their knowledge in the Swedish language, and also to find information about the Swedish society and culture.

This thesis aims to explain the emergence of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, and its institutional shaping, by using elements of Neofunctionalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism.Using Neofunctionalism, the Common Foreign and Security Policy can be explained both as a side-effect of Europe's economic integration, and as a way to maintain the former and the European Union's position as an economic superpower. The institutional shaping is a result of lack of convergence between important national interests. Therefore it rests on a firm intergovernmental base, with rigorously limited use of supranational decision-making.For Liberal Intergovernmentalism, geopolitics and ideology, and to a certain level log-rolling, have played important roles. The reunification of Germany convinced France to form an alliance between the two countries. France, determined to achieve an economic and monetary union, thus offered Germany a political union, including a Common Foreign and Security Policy on intergovernmental terms.

The aim of this essay was to study the European Union?s (EU) role as a democracy promoter and its impact on Croatia?s democratization process. Croatia is a candidate country for membership in the EU which creates a possibility for impact and democracy promotion. The aim is met by studying the following questions:  In what way has the EU promoted democracy in Croatia? How did Croatia respond? To what extent has the EU contributed to Croatia?s democratization process?  Croatia is treated as a case study of the EU?s democracy promotion and the method used was qualitative text-analysis.

The European union started as an area of economic cooperation, but has developed into an area of cooperation in many legal fields. There are these days even cooperation when it comes to dealing with criminals. There is a new procedure called the European arrest warrant which goal is to make the extradition of criminals between the different member states in the European union more efficient. Sometimes when a state receives a European arrest warrant they have to extradite the person in question without doing any investigation of their own. The procedure is based on the principle of mutual recognition.

Integration policies have failed to make diversity into anything more than occupying the same physical space. People of different cultural background still do not share their lives to any real extent. Attempts made within planning and landscape architecture to catalyst the integration process have mainly been focused on structural measures, such as residential policies. As for outdoor environments, non-verbal casual encounters in the shape of crossing paths are assumed to lie at the heart of urban social integration.The aim of the thesis is to question this assumption and, as the thesis will show, there is literature supporting this aim. Looking at the works of Gordon Allport, Lewis Coser and some of their followers, I find intercultural contact to require more complex ways of interaction in order to reduce prejudice and to generate tolerance and understanding.

European cities of today are under the challenge to find ways to stay competitive and flourish in a rapidly changing world, where the old patterns of centrality and periphery not necessarily holds true. New and improved communication networks, a changed political geography in Europe, and the globalisation of not only the financial and industrial markets but also to a certain extent the globalisation of people, have all led to great challenges for cities and regions.In a changed spatial reality the classic monocentric models are challenged by newer models of urbanisation. The polycentric urban region is one such model which has been used to describe urban regions like the Randstad in the Netherlands and the Rhein-Ruhr region in Germany. Regions which lack the single dominant central city of the monocentric models of old, and instead shows a high degree of more equal-sized and sometimes more specialised cities in regional cooperation. The polycentric urban region is in that aspect a possible model for how other urbanised regions in Europe may act to be able to position themselves as attractive urban regions and regional hubs in the European urban network.Polycentric urban regions are not a universal solution, though.

I syfte att undersöka andra generationens invandrares upplevelse av fenomenet och begreppet integration genomfördes halvstrukturerade intervjuer med 10 personer. Dessa personer var födda i Sverige och hade föräldrar som båda var födda utomlands. Syftet var att nå ökad förståelse för hur intervjupersonerna uppfattade begreppet integration och vilka faktorer de ansåg påverkade integrationsprocessen. Avsikten var också att ta del av hur de såg på sin egen, sina föräldrars och sina barns integration. Studiens resultat visar att integrationsbegreppet ofta framkallade negativa associationer och att begreppet upplevdes som svårt att definiera.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the Swedish governments discourse on integration of immigrants and thereby examine what social reality it constructs. The aim is to examine how integration and immigrants are constructed within the discourse. The method and theory being used in this essay is discourse theory. As a methodological instrument we use the policy on functional impairment as a comparison. The material being analyzed in this essay is political documents on the strategy on integration policy and the strategy on the policy of functional impairment.

This study deals with the concept of ?integration?. Starting from the concept of reality as socially and linguistically constructed, it is an attempt to see how lingual constructions and perceptions affect the official structures of society and vice versa. The main purpose is to compare the different meanings integration has in a sociological context and in a political one. Further, the purpose is to see how the relationship between the sociological and political concepts affects the integrational work in the Swedish County Administrative Boards, and which consequences these effects might have.