AbstractIn this essay I discuss narrative in the reconstruction of national identity. I discuss exclusion as a side effect in thick identities. That means that thick national identities always exclude another part. From this I´ve discussed the Swedish identity and its effects in the European co-operation. Identity is a discourse that reconstructs linguistically.

National identity, multiculturalism and invisible norms are three conceptions focused on in this essay. They are discussed and analysed with the purpose of deepening deepen the understanding of their meaning. Further on they become instruments in a study of the Liberal Party's proposal for new politics of integration. My ambition is to distinguish signs of a Swedish national identity in this proposal and to interpret the party's relation to multiculturalism.The method of this essay comprises partly a literature study and partly a qualitative analysis of text.My discussion and analysis ended in an understanding of national identity and multiculturalism as complex and interrelated conceptions. I found parts of a Swedish national identity in the value of working, in the fear of the cultural unknown and of eventual anti Swedish culture, in the idea of Sweden as the best country in the world considering gender equality and in the strong defence for the Swedish language.

On December 20, 2001, the Swedish citizen Mehdi Ghezali was captured on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ghezali spent the following 930 days in U.S. captivity, without being charged with any crime. My aim in this essay is to analyze how Ghezali was portrayed in three Swedish newspapers under and after his captivity, two nationwide and one local newspaper based in Ghezali's hometown. My purpose is to see whether Ghezali's identity is constructed differently in the three newspapers, as regards The Other, Stereotypization, etc.

When discussing nation branding, there are three perspectives that correlate with each other: National Identity, Nation Brand Identity and Nation Brand Image. This thesis explores the nation branding of Sweden, and describe the three perspectives with a focus on Sweden. When comparing how the perspectives are comported with each other, there is the possibility of gaps existing when one perspective does not comport with another. We have compared our empirical material on the different perspectives and looked for possible gaps..

After the fall of the Iron Curtain the European Union was challenged partly by an institutionalized organization of the union, as well as by a socio-psychology awareness concerning the meaning of the European Union. The increase in European integration has generated a political collaboration where national understandings in identities are constantly being exposed for reconstruction. This results in a collective European identity where states are united in diversity.National identities are created when boundaries are set up in a relation to other states. In these identity constructions there are thoughts and questions raised such as who we are and who we are not. Ukraine and the European Union has, during a long time, had diversified preconceptions concerning who has been the others.

Taiwan's recent democratization seem to have rallied a wider support of the notion of a national identity amongst its citizens which in the year 2000 led to the election of the pro-independence party DPP and President Chen Shui-bian. Meanwhile, China insists on the "one country, two systems" formula, regarding Taiwan as merely a Chinese province, and continues to fight any Taiwanese initiative towards sovereignty. Through a narrative perspective, this essay analyzes the self-conscious national identity-building quest embarked upon by DPP and President Chen Shui-bian. The analysis consists of three parts. Firstly, a text-analysis of President Chen Shui-bian's speeches is conducted to examine in what way he enforces and legitimizes the identity-building-process through narratives.

??Masada shall never fall again!? A study about Masada as an Israeli national myth during the 20th century? by Sara Tibblin. This essay is about the Israeli national myth of Masada, a cliff in the Negev desert that was the setting of a collective suicide in 73 AD, at the end of the Jewish uprising against the Romans. This story has later been rediscovered and has during the 20th century become a national myth in Israel. This essay will examine how the national myth of Masada has been used in different contexts in Israel during the 20th century and which part it has played when it comes to the national identity of Israel. My findings have afterwards been explained with help of Eriksens theory regarding national myths from the book Historia, myth och identitet (History, myth and identity) (1996).   .

The aim of this paper is to describe the position of the Swedish welfare state within the shaping of a Swedish national identity. This is done through the study of Mångkulturåret 2006, and its rhetorical context. The point of departure is that history is formed continuously in current speech and a text analytical method has been used. Mångkulturåret was issued by the Department of Culture as an extended perspective of Cultural politics. The rhetoric used in the official document Agenda för Mångkultur is analyzed through a comparison with earlier official documents on the field of multiculturalism and integration.

Based on the on the assumption that the two recent Swedish poetry collections mil by Anna Hallberg and mallamerik, mallamer, malameri, mallame, amerik, mallameka, merikka, by Lars Mikael Raattamaa, are constructed with theoretical questions about identity, national identity, language hierarchy and power in mind, this study aims to investigate the ways in which these issues come to expression. Simplified, the term language-poetry, or språkmaterialism, can be used to describe a language-philosophical poetry that aims to eliminate the hierarcic structures between writer and reader in a text and invite the reader to become the co-worker of it. The study shows that by different ways of eliminating the centre of the text, the text is made democratical. But one question that this study asks is how can a nation's conventional and standardised written  language ? the language of the centre ? be used to write itself out of this centre into the margin? Stepping from a theoretical background of postcolonial theories on identity and national identity, including reflections as those given by Benedict Anderson, Madan Sarup, Timothy Brennan, Stefan Helgesson and Mia Cuoto, the analysis points out how this poetry laborates with the terms bugging, repetition, national language identity, and space as poetic material, in order to work in line with ? and contrary to - conceptions of a unified and shared language.

Identity and immigration                                                                                                            - A qualitative study with unaccompanied refugee children Jennie Hamberg Larsson and Matthew McNeillThe main purpose of this study is to illuminate and describe how unaccompanied refugee children experience changes and reconstructions to their identity after immigration to Sweden. Using qualitative interviews this study looks at how social relationships in Sweden and a foreign background influence the reconstruction of unaccompanied refugee children´s identity. The base for our analysis is identity theory while roll concepts, social identity theory and concepts of ethnic and national identity are used to give deeper insight into the experiences of three unaccompanied refugee children. Important results found included a connection between the way that identity is formed in relationships, especially with significant others, in the country of origin and how reconstruction of identity develops in the new country with new social relationships. Furthermore the results showed how this reconstruction of identity can be linked to different acculturation strategies that incorporate the importance of an ethnic identity and a national identity.Keywords: identity, ethnic identity, unaccompanied children, immigration.

In this thesis I discuss and analyze different factors, and different circumstances, that influence identity negotiation among the north american indians. I do this mainly by using two models.The first one is Druckmans three dimensions of identity; negotiating identity, durability of identity and spread of identity. Depending on how the identity fits in these dimensions one can se if, or how, they influence the negotiability.My second model for analyzing is Reeds ?fasteing and unfastening identity?, using this model I have tried to understand during what circumstances the identity is negotiable. The identity is more or less negotiable depending on where the indians live, who they are living with and also on their inheritance.My results shows that the indian identity is changing and developing over time but the main characteristics still remains the same.

In today?s Europe nationalist movements grow stronger. The Scottish referendum is a result of the nationalistic party Scottish National Party?s aim of an independent Scotland. Using a descriptive idea analysis the essay aim to answer how the referendum arose, its main arguments and how national and state identity is affected in the arguments.

The aim of this master´s thesis is to investigate how Aftonbladet/Sportbladet is describing the Swedish national men team in football during the European Championship years 1992, 2004 and 2008. Reading over 200 articles gave me an excellent overview of the differences and similarities between the three chosen periods. The theoretical framework has three key terms which circulates around the paper. The terms are discourse, stereotype and national identity. Several results are presented and discussed; some are included in this abstract.

The purpose of this study was to discuss young immigrant's experiences of the meeting between their original culture and swedish culture. In this discussion certain emphasis is laid on the formation of identity. In a more specific manner the aim was to find out which underlying circumstances contributed to the individuals choice in considering him- or herself as swedish or not and what these circumstances depended on.The empirical material of this study consists of five lifestories based on the methodological study of narrative. I have analyzed the material with help from Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration with starting point in the conception of ontological safety. I identified four different themes that frequently recured in each lifestory: identity in migration- and integrationsprocesses, the open doors of globalization, "swedish" identity and belonging in two cultures.

Taiwan has over the past thirty years experienced a substantial political transformation. Being ruled by Chinese nationalists since World War II, Taiwan started its democratic transition in the late eighties. The new democratic system did not only provide people with freedom to vote, it also marked the beginning of a search for a new national identity. Based on the international theory of constructivism, this paper defines and studies the Taiwanese people?s progression away from a dominant Chinese national identity towards a uniquely defined Taiwanese identity.