The purpose of this study is to determine if and how municipal consultative entities through influence may affect the legitimacy of the Swedish democratic model. The study aims to do this through analysing the opportunities for influence present with The Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality, to determine how the councils may affect political participation and the role of elected representatives. To do so, the study asks the following primary research question:"What requisites for influence are present for participants of municipal consultative entities, as found for the representatives of The Youth and the retired within the framework of their participation in The Youth Council and the Council of the Retired in Karlstads municipality?"The study answers this research question by dividing it into one question of policy and one question of democratic perspective, and investigating these matters through nine snowballing interviews with the decision makers, organisational actors and participants of the councils. The information from the interviews is then analysed per council through a framework of democracy theory, policy process theory and organisation theory.

Today many children and youths are allocated to ?The Swedish Authority of Child and Youth Psychiatry (BUP) for the sake of being investigated by means of a neuropsychiatric inquire and many of which are assigned the diagnosis ADHD. During recent years ?The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare? has declared, in it?s annual account of the current psychiatric state of Swedish Children and Youths, that the healthcare provided for those with neuropsychiatric diagnoses ? such as Asperger syndrome and ADHD, has increased.ADHD is short for Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which implies neuropsychiatric impediments i.e. hyper activity, inadvertence and an inability to control impulses.The aim of the Study is to describe and analyze how youth, in the age range of sixteen to eighteen years of age, diagnosed with ADHD define themselves, their daily life, their social state, their next to kin relationships and, finally, their concept of their future.The Study is qualitative.

Young women with immigrant background are generally looked upon as victims of patriarchal structures and cultural determinism.The purpose of this bachelor thesis was therefore to have a salutogen perspective. We investigated how young women with a transcultural background are affected by and how they use their experiences from different backgrounds in their creating of identity.We based our essay on qualitative interviews and current research on the subjects of multi culture, identity and youth. The interviewees were seven young women with experience of multi cultural background and performing different kind of artistic activity.The theory and empirical material combined and compared resulted in three themes: affinity, cultural hybridization, and salutogen factors.We saw that for those young women affinity functioned as a basis for creating identity and that their double background enriches them in several aspects. The three major salutogen factors that the interviewees had in common, and we emphasize, are their struggle, open mind and awareness of freedom.The global youth culture has a great impact upon the young women and to some extent we could recognize cultural hybridization. We consider this neglected subject urgent and very relevant for social work in the multi cultural society of Sweden..

The aim of this study was to examine mental illness among adolescents in the age group 13- 18 in the municipality of Lund. We studied the topic based on counselors experiences. There have been several reports in media concerning an increase of mental illness among youth. Therefore we considered this as an interesting issue to examine. This study consists of seven qualitative interviews and one telephone interview with counselors.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine boys?/young men?s forming of masculinity and gender identity and how discussions around gender stereotypes and conceptions represents themselves in contemporary youth novels. Gender theory based upon R.W. Connell?s theoretical framework which discusses masculinities in plural is used.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a qualitative study with a case study research design, where we studied social workers and politicians view on honor-related problems of underage girls and boys in the age 13-17. We need knowledge about honor related violence and oppression in the political community and social services to work with honor-related problems. Political decisions affect how social work is developed around the honor problem; therefore, it is also important to highlight this direction for the work. It requires a knowledge complement of honor-related problems not to risk exposing the child to further risk from the family (Hedersförtryck, 2009). This is to live up to, for example the law of Social Services, school law and Human Rights (Hussein & Kinuka-Svedberg, 2010).

This thesis explores how Muslim youths? lifeworlds are depicted and narrated in the following two studies on Muslim youth in Sweden and Denmark: Muslima (2007) and Samtidsislam (2010). The aim of this thesis is to answer the following question: In what ways do these works treat the aspects of the lifeworlds that are being highlighted in their studies of Muslim youth in contemporary Sweden and Denmark? An underlying aim is to analyse the results within the framework of theories of socialisation, cultural emancipation and rituals and traditions.With a hermeneutic approach I analyse the texts and operationalize the research question into four themes: the effects of socialization, cultural emancipation, rituals and traditions and secularization. The texts are treated in the analysis with textual analysis and hermeneutic method.

The purpose of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine how public librarians and people engaged in sports associations think of the possibility of collaboration between their organizations regarding children and youth and furthermore how they think this collaboration and collaboration in general would or should be practiced. This is done in the light of the increasing necessity of collaboration in today?s information society as well as the view that reading and sports could make a good match. Focus is placed on the libraries? perspective and also on the respondents? perceptions and thoughts.

This study sought to explore the juvenile crime prevention in Sweden which for the purpose of this report is seen as efforts towards preventing youth criminality and all forms of anti social behaviour by young people.In the study, interviews with six social workers working directly or indirectly with young offenders were conducted. The interview results were analyzed and subjected to transnational comparison with the practice in Kenya. The report explores existing literature on situational crime prevention, restorative justice, the link between drugs and crime, attachment to parents, peers and involvement in convectional activities, gender differences in criminality, partnerships in crime prevention and the juvenile justice system. It uses control, strain, feminist and social disorganization theories to explain the causes of delinquency, analyzes the perceptions of social workers and discusses what works in juvenile crime prevention. The report identifies the causes of delinquency in Kenya and in Sweden as well as the prevention programs that social workers perceive as effective in addressing youth crime.

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 purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how young womens sexuality is described in Swedish youth novels. The analysis is based upon eight books of which four were published during the period from 1970 to 1975 and four books were published during 2000 to 2005. The theoretical framework is based on a gender theoretical perspective where Yvonne Hirdmans theories about a gender system and Ylva Elwin-Nowaks and Heléne Thomssons ideas about gender construction are crucial. Also Anthony Giddens theories about sexuality in the late modern society are used, where the plastic sexuality and the pure relationship are central ideas. The method is based upon textual analysis, and a model of analysis is constructed with its basis in the theoretical attempt.

Background/aims: Extensive studies have found an association between parent - adolescent relationships and adolescents' alcohol use. However, only a few studies have been carried out in Sweden. Also, few studies have focused on 17-19 year olds or binge drinking. The aim of this study is to examine whether there is an association between perceived parent - youth relationship and binge drinking among 17-19 year olds in Stockholm, Sweden. Theory: Social Development Model is a risk-focused prevention strategy which emphasizes the importance of social units, such as the family.

The aim of this study is to investigate wether the participatory democracy is a threat or a complement to the representative democracy. To achieve my purpose I will focus on two different lokal councils, the civil council in Hovsjö and The Youth council in Västra Skogås, which have been objects of the urban policy in 1998. The theoretical framework on which this study is based consists of the participation democratic theory, representative democratic theory and implementation theory. By problemizing these theoretical frameworks in comparison with eachother I will mapp how these two lokal councils were implemented. The research question is: In what way was the civil council and The Youth council a complement or threat to the representative democracy? In which way was it difficult to implement them?The method used for this purpose is a qualitative comparative case study.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate the experience of being young and living in Herrgården in Rosengård, Malmö, from the aspects of six adolescents, two police officers, one social worker and one youth leader; and also what the cause is according to them, of disturbances arousing like those in the spring of 2007. At this moment there were antagonisms between adolescents and policemen. The research was performed with a qualitative method based on partly structured interviews. Four kinds of main themes were notable from the interview results. Those were: Growing up in Herrgården, Other peoples' view of Herrgården, Identity and Causes of the disturbances.

Denna studie undersöker och beskriver den psykiska hälsan hos en grupp barn och ungdomar placerade i familjehem i en större stad i södra Sverige. 42 barn och ungdomar i åldrarna 11 till 20 år valdes ut från en kohort bestående av 52 som vid något tillfälle under 2005 befann sig placerade i familjehem. Till barnen administrerades Youth Self Report (YSR), till en av familjehemsföräldrarna Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) och till barnens lärare Teacher´s Report Form (TRF). Data från barnens socialakter samlades också in. Totala problemskalorna för CBCL och TRF visade att andelen barn på klinisk nivå uppgick till 23 % medan motsvarande siffra för YSR var 9 %.