This Master's thesis concerns the public library as a public meeting place. Our aim has been to find out why and how the library as a social meeting place has been discussed within the Swedish library community and if there has been a constant core in the discussions from the mid 70's and up to the present day. In order to do this we apply a place and space-perspective. The result of the study is that the core of the said discussions concerning the library as a meeting place is to create belongingness. This is the reason why the library community has an interest in the public library's function as a meeting place with the idea that people, by using the public library in that aspect, may experience a feeling of belonging to the society.

SummaryThe purpose with this study is to give a view of how employees understand their belonging and role in a temporary work agency and its clients. This study describes the employees´ relation towards the temporary work agency and the client. The study should be interesting for temporary work agencies and those who have considered of working in the temporary work agency business.The agency in this study is Manpower AB and has existed in Skövde for five years and has appreciated 200 employees. The company offers fast, worth its prizes and flexible employment agency solutions no matter if it affects a few persons or more complicated solutions. You can find specialists and generalists within the most fields, for example administration, sales, market, telemarketing, technology, and logistics.

Place as a concept, and memory as a phenomenon is researched through literature studies. The essay investigates how we think about place and how we experience and relate to it. Memory is discussed both as personal memory and collective memory. Place is a strong source of memory. When we return to a place, we recognize not only the place itself, but also the things we did there, the people we met and the thoughts passing through our mind when we last were there. Pieces of ourselves are stored in the memories awaken when we revisit a place.

The study seeks to investigate and understand how individuals create their identity from the perspective of two countries and cultures, and how these affect their current lives today. The focus of the study is aimed at young adults who have mostly or entirely grown up in Sweden to parents that have migrated. The material is based on seven qualitative, semi-structured interviews. The result is then divided into three themes; ethnic and cultural belonging, life impact, and the preservation and passing on of culture. The derivation of the first theme is that there are mixed views regarding the cultural association of the persons interviewed.

The aim of this master's thesis is to study how the design of the music library space affects how it is used and its role as an arena for culture. This is done in form of a case study of Library 10 in Helsinki, a public library branch that specializes in music and information technology. The backdrop to the study is the changing context for cultural activity in the information society and the role of public libraries as public space and meeting place. By analyzing the distribution of space in the library, the distribution of functions and artefacts and the spatial use of the room, I interpret the ways in which this distributional logic produces a unique place for music and culture. I discuss the music library design in a space and place perspective, utilizing theoretical tools from cultural geography and the space theories of Henri Lefebvre.

The aim of this study is to investigate the meaning of the librarycafé for its visitors as a place. By this study we want to see howimportant the library café is as a place. Our theoretical departurepoint is an adaption of the space and place-theory, by Fisher,Saxton, Edwards & Mai. By adapting the theory to a libraryperspective it helps us to understand how library users look uponthe library café as place.Using a qualitative approach the empirical material has beencollected through observations and interviews. We observed andcarried out interviews with six library café visitors at threedifferent library cafés.Our findings are that the library café is used in many differentways and by many different peoples.

This study is about the significance of dual citizenship and the feeling of belonging people experience. Descriptions about the problems with being a citizen in a state, but not being accepted as one, is also discussed in the thesis. The juristic aspects, what it means to be possessed of dual citizenship and the consequences when the negative aspects of dual citizenship arise, is also discribed. The reasons for having dual citizenship is very analogous but at the same time different. The common denominator is however pragmatics.

The aim with this essay is to emphasize the problems that ethnical belonging causes at schools today. We have chosen to examine and compare two schools with each other, one school is called ?the new school? situated in Stockholms kommun and the other school is called ?the old school? belonging to Huddinge kommun. We have had contact with these two schools for a longer period as substitutes and students. This essay is based on how these two schools prominently differ from each other.

Recent research in classrooms has often had its focus on the pupil, the individual, and not on the different groups of students that exist. In a classroom there are normally several different groupings, each one having its own personal attitude towards the current lesson. If there had been more research we would find it easier to understand why pupils sometimes behave the way they do.The purpose of this essay is to analyze how pupils` social relations create groupings. Furthermore I intend to investigate how and why pupils show their belonging to a certain group.The two questions of the essay are:1. How pupils? social relations appear in a classroom?2.

Place is on the one hand a commonsense everyday word with diversely connotative meanings, and on the other a contested concept with different interpretations across a broad range of academic disciplines and discourses. This thesis researches theories of place and their implications for the theory and design practice of landscape architecture. Responding to problems of insufficient theoretical grounding and inconsistent use of the concept of place within the discipline presently, it argues the need for a theory of place better articulated in relation to landscape architecture. It seeks to contribute to such theory formation by drawing on ideas from related disciplines ? tracing diverse understandings of place beyond the commonsense meanings of the word and into the deeper reaches of place theory as tools to explain physical, social and spiritual aspects of the environment, and human relationships with it.

I am interested in humans, bodies, movements, directions and how they affect each other. How we move towards each other or away from each other, inside a home or outside. How we relate to each other and to what people say and do. Co-operations between people that occasionally, possibly, do not work; how certain relationships, like certain materials, can have various breaking-points; that materials can be laden with numerous preconceptions, for instance what they should be used for.Beginning from the perspective of a feminist commune, I have explored the concepts of family, belonging, and loneliness. I have interviewed, observed, photographed, and through living in the commune during shorter periods of time, I have taken part in their every-day life.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the majorities view on the minority can affect the minorities view on themselves.The study focuses on the research questions; what does the Roma identity look like? Is there a connecting between the week feeling of belonging to the majority ? Slovaks - that the Roma people feel and the widespread racism, stereotypes and scapegoat view towards Roma that the majority in the Slovak society have? Is the view Roma have on themselves effected by how other see them? Has the situation for the Roma gotten better since Slovakia entered the European Union?An empirical research study has been conducted in Slovakia during the period of April 2006 and interviews with Roma and NGO representatives where done.The Roma people's situation in Slovakia is bad and the discrimination towards them is widespread, both in the working life, healthcare, education system and housing. A lot has happened the last years, before Slovakia entered the EU the country adapted many new laws that strengthen the Roma people place in the society and gave them as a minority more support and rights.According to my findings it is found, and what most of the interview Roma expressed themselves, was that today they have a very low feeling of belonging and being a part of the Slovak society. They also expressed that they are very much affected by the poor view that the majority of Slovak have of them and in many cases they did not even want to try to be part of the society. The NGOs expressed that the situation for Roma in Slovakia is bad and even if it has been improved since the country entered the EU, the NGOs said that there are only a lot of new laws and in reality not much has changed..

To be able to feel a sense of belonging, people need to have the possibility to take part of the information from the society. Hearing-impaired don?t have the same possibility as hearing people when they want to take part of the information, therefore they don?t get the same benefit. This contributes to a feeling of not belonging and a sense of limitation in different social occasions. Therefore the society needs to be accessible to everyone regardless disability.

The Somali community is relatively new in the UK and the majority of Somalis in Bristol are living under poor conditions in deprived areas. According to literature and research relevant for this study ethnic identity seems to be of more importance when threatened by environmental or social changes, such as experiences of migration. Young people are more exposed to such a process of identity construction. The aim for this study was to get a more profound understanding for the significance of migration for young Somali people?s identity formation in Bristol.

This thesis examines how library employees experience the library as a meeting place. Our questions are: What effect has the concept of a "library as a meeting-place" for library staff?How do they see the library as a meeting place? How do they see their workplace as a venue for meetings? The respondents interviewed work in public libraries. We were inspired by a cultural geographic theory that we re-designed. The following divisions were made in order to give the work a definitive structure:The "mental space"The library as a meeting place on a global and universal level;The "conceived space"Librarians and planners' thinking on the specific library as a meeting place;The "living space"How library staff perceive that the library is used as a meeting place in reality.In our analysis, we use a phenomenographic qualitative interpretive methodology.