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 objective of this thesis was to research and gain knowledge about people involved in organized crime in Sweden. By conducting interviews we were able to analyze what factors played a role in an individual's choice to become a member of a criminal gang, as well as to gain an overall picture of these people. The qualitative research was carried out in three different cities in Sweden. Three people, aged between 30 and 60, who are currently members of a gang, were interviewed. In these interviews they shared their life stories in terms of childhood, youth, gang involvement as well as their hopes for the future.The results were then further analyzed to explore any similarities and differences among the participating individuals.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate if there might be a possiblecorrelation between young women´s fascination with the vampire narrative andtheir search for identity in the late modern age. With the help of contemporarysociological studies in the field of the late modern man and today?s youth culture,I?ve chosen to do qualitative interviews with eight young women in order to examinehow today?s society affects their process of identification. Lately we?ve been ableto see an enormous interest for books that deal with the vampire saga, and while thereaders are mostly young females, it brought me to ask the question why the combinationof teenage drama and vampires seems to be such a winning concept.We live in a time where most young females experience a lot of pressure trying to addup to the demands of society, and as the media keep producing images of youngwomen being thin and looking like supermodels, most teenagers feel a lot of pressureand anxiety trying to live up to such unnatural ideals that in the long run might lead tovarious health issues and eating disorders.As a result of this thesis I?ve found that the vampire narrative answers to some ofthe existential needs we have as members of a late modern society.

Abstract In general, language is the key to the community, to self-sufficiency and independence. Being able to speak the Swedish language is a part of the community integration. Integration also has a practical aspect that includes everyday life and affects one's opportunities in the labor market. Therefore, we have selected in this paper to focus on the language and integration but inevitably we will also discuss the education you need on the labor market. The purpose of this study is to describe how the staffs at the Language Café Nobel works for an increased integration in Malmo, and examine the significance of Language Café Nobel have for their participants.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to investigate how seven homosexual men in the age between 18 and 26 years experience openness with their sexuality in Stockholm. We wish to investigate how these men experience and handle their everyday life in a community characterized by a heteronormative foundation. We will focus on how they handle their openness in an urban environment and if they experience any limitations dependent on the situation or surroundings they live in, and also how they handle these situations. The study is hermeneutically inspired where seven life story interviews are analyzed within the theoretical frameworks provided by Connell, Goffman, Foucault and Queer theory.The results show that the respondents? openness varies depending on a variety of factors where surroundings, situations and previous experiences are influential.

From being an exotic small religion that has existed at a fading presence in southern Iraq and Iran mandeism has moved to the West and Sweden. As more and more Mandaeans encounter a new culture and a new society in Sweden it affects not only them as individuals but also their religion mandeism. In this essay, I have begun to examine how Mandaeans think about their identity and religion. I have taken my starting point in a broad theoretical discussion of identity, religion and secularisation. Mandeism is a gnostic religion that probably has its roots in today?s Israel / Palestine and sees John the Baptist as the last prophet.

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.

This study aims to gain greater knowledge about the use of framing in local sports journalism. We did this by doing a qualitative content analysis of the local Swedish newspaper Barometern/OT and it?s coverage of the largest local football team, Kalmar FF. We randomly selected six of the team?s games during 2014 and analysed all the texts that had to do with the games, except for shorter texts and texts that are supposed to be based on personal opinions, such as chronicles.

The purpose of this thesis was to study how internal marketing affects service quality in the tourism industry. It was decided to conduct a case study on two hotels with summer seasonal employees. Pite Havsbad and Strand Hotell Borgholm were chosen as study objects. The case was based on interviews with the hotel manager at Pite Havsbad and the vice president at Strand Hotell Borgholm, who coordinates the internal marketing at the companies. The findings were that seasonal employees do not affect service quality much.

Many children in Sweden are exposed to maltreatment. Among the purposes of the Child health care (CHC) are to decrease mortality, infirmity and handicaps among mothers and their children, and to decrease hurtful strains for parents and their children. CHC-nurses get critizism for not reporting child maltreatment in high enough numbers to the Social service. The aim of this study was to chart how CHC-nurses finds their work with families suffering from maltreatment. Ten CHC-nurses were interviewed with semistructured interviews.

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 %.

A tough working climate and the lack of extrinsic motivation at workplaces within health care raise the question of what instead drives employees within this industry. A possible answer to this is Public Service Motivation (PSM) - a type of motivation that is based on the desire to do good for society and its individuals. In order to investigate this further we have performed a qualitative study consisting of ten interviews with people working with institutional care, where the purpose has been to identify the sources of motivation and determine the impact of PSM. The results show that the compassion dimension of PSM appears to be one of the most salient motivational factors. While the rest of the PSM dimensions fail to explain the level of motivation to the same extent as compassion, other factors are recognized, such as relatedness and aspects of the nature of the work itself.

This essay examines what happened to soldiers from Urshult in military service of Sweden during the diminished power of the country in the beginning of the eighteen century. Information of interest is taken from the soldiers? age, time of service and other annotations of interest that shows to be helpful when examining their fate.  First off, this study explains Sweden?s situation during this period of time. To get a grasp about the situation, allotment is explained as well as the most important events in the big Nordic war. This study is based on qualitative content analysis and GMRs are used as its main resource of information and consists of empiric analysis.The result of this paper shows that very few soldiers from Urshult were able to return home alive.

The worsening of psychical health issues among young people has widely been discussed over the last few years. Research shows for example that 9% of girls at the age of 16-24 reported anxiety problems in 1989 while 16 years later, in 2005, the same number was 30%. The purpose of this essay was to study and analyze psychiatrists', psychologists' and counselors' view on the resilience and risk factors for youth depression (age 16-24). Beside this, our aim was to study their view on the influence of family environment on treatment and recovery. Data were collected with qualitative interviews with eight informants within the psychiatric care.

AbstractA Problem to Every SolutionThe Corrymeela Community, René Girard and the ambiguous pluralismThe main purpose of this study is to examine how Girard´s ideas of society, culture andreligion have become part of the reflexion in the praxis of Corrymeela Community through the work of Roel Kaptein and how this praxis can shed light over the work with dissonances of faith and values in education in RE, Social Studies and other subjects.In earlier publications I have studied how dissonances of faith and values can beunderstood in educational settings and in connection with issues of interreligious dialogue.The extensive discussion of how differences in culture, religion and value in a pluralisticsociety are to be analysed and treated in pedagogical reflexion seems to increasingly occupyactors in different parts of the educational system. It is obvious that these issues also arebrought into focus as an important field of research. My main interest in this paper is to study how a reconciliation group in the middle of the conflict in Northern Ireland has developed a view of conflict reason and conflict resolution under the influence of the French researcher René Girard and what aspects of this study that can improve the reflection over pluralism and dissonances of faith and values in everyday praxis in education.For a period of more than a decade I have been in contact with actors in the peace process inNorthern Ireland in connection to different educational projects. The attempts to analyse the different aspects of ?The Troubles? and the efforts to find ways out of conflicts and civil war are many and the literature on subjects related to these tragic history of social, cultural and religious conflicts is difficult to survey.