Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Institutionen för sociologi och arbetsvetenskap

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://gupea-staging.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/28369

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 49

A Mechanism Approach to the Sociology of Teachers’ and Students’ Actions: Teaching Practice, Student Disengagement and Instructional Materials
(2017-04-21) Reichenberg, Olof
The overall purpose of this dissertation is to describe and explain teachers’ and students’ actions related to instruction in compulsory education classrooms in Sweden. In order to approach these issues, I will focus on social mechanisms (processes) that can explain teachers’ and students’ actions in the classroom. I argue that such mechanisms and actions in schools have been sparsely studied in previous research. Study I deals with the research question, Why does the teaching practice of individual work and class teaching occur in Swedish classrooms? Study II deals with the research question, Why does usage of instructional materials (whiteboards, laptops, paper-based materials, textbooks) vary across Swedish classrooms? Study III deals with the research question, Why does student behavioral disengagement occur and reoccur in Swedish classrooms? Study IV deals with the research question, Why and how do students’ expectations about school, teacher–student relations, students’ commitment to school, and truancy mediate the effects of student social background on mathematics achievement across Swedish schools? For the first three studies, I used video data that I analyzed using multiple methods such as descriptive statistics, cox regression, field notes, transcripts, and pictures. In Study IV, I used secondary data from Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development analyzed with structural equation modelling (SEM). In Studies I and II, the school class was the unit of analysis. In Studies III and IV, the individual student was the unit of analysis. Study I indicates the increasing individualization of teaching. Furthermore, Study I indicates that subject area predicts teaching practice. Study II indicates that teachers use text-based materials more than textbooks or laptops. The study also suggests that class size affects students’ usage of instructional materials in teaching practice, as do school subjects. Study III indicates that peer encouragement and school subject can predict student behavioral disengagement. Study IV indicates that the relationship between student background and mathematics achievement is mediated by school expectations, truancy, and commitment. Moreover, I also identify an independent indirect effect of the teacher–student relationship on the average predicted mathematics achievement.
Alienation och Arbete. Unga behovsanställdas villkor i den flexibla kapitalismen
(2020-03-04) Alfonsson, Johan
The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how flexible capitalism, drawing from the case of on-call employees, influences the ability to control life and work and affects relationships with other people, both inside and outside work; and to investigate how this can be understood in terms of alienation. A subsidiary aim that emerges from this investigation is to develop existing alienation theories in a way that enables them to be used to understand human existence under flexible capitalism. Alienation is understood as a process in which something that should be connected has lost its connection: it is a relation of relationlessness. This raises three questions: How can we decide what a relation “ought” to be? What relations are being alienated and what is causing these relations to become relationless? In the thesis I use an immanent perspective to identify the “ought” in the studied context: the capitalist mode of production. For value to exist it is required that man is, as Marx puts it in Capital, “the free proprietor of his own labour-capacity, hence of his own person”. Thus, there is a premise of self-determination in capitalism. A premise which, because of man’s need to create value and the fact that her activity must be subordinated to the value logic, cannot be realized. This applies to everyone in our society, capitalists and labourers alike, and alienates man from her activity, herself, others and her product. This is understood as abstract alienation. On a concrete and specific level the control of how to reach this value-goal and to what extent this affects the individual’s life may differ depending on how value production takes place and the individual’s position in production. I call this concrete alienation and it can be understood as the concrete expression of the abstract alienation. In this way, alienation is neither a purely structural nor a purely subjective phenomenon. It can be both. Following changes in the accumulation regime the concrete alienation has transformed during the last decades, which is expressed in the on-call employees’ situation. Based on an analysis of 17 in-depth interviews I conclude that that their subjective motifs of being in the employment differ and their employment is objectively shaped differently. The objective and subjective dimensions are the basis for understanding on-call employees’ alienation at a concrete level. Drawing from Jaeggi’s qualified subjectivism I argue that since a premise of capitalism is self-determination, the individual must have a say in their situation and experience. If an individual feels that she can’t control her life she is thus alienated from the premise of self-determination. If she feels that she can control her life but this feeling is not realised, meaning that there is no objective possibility to control or steer her life, there is no self-determination and thus alienation persists even though it is not perceived. The result tells us that on-call employment can be used both as a way to increase the freedom and self-determination over one’s life and hinder it, it can instrumentalise life and work in a specific way, and it can hinder the control over social relations, both in and outside of work. As a result, even though they all experience abstract alienation, their level of concrete alienation differs.
Att översätta idéer om hållbarhet till praktik
(2024-08-12) Ärleskog, Caroline
This thesis is about sustainability work, which is a highly topical issue in social and political arenas. It is associated with many challenges and contradictions, partly because the vagueness of the concept opens up to a variety of interpretations. The overall aim of the thesis is to increase our knowledge of how ideas about sustainable development are translated into local practices. More specifically, the aim is to increase knowledge about the sustainability work conducted within municipal housing companies that struggle with the conditions that exist in rural areas. I examine how sustainability work is incorporated into one particular housing company’s various local practices, but also how sustainability work has been characterised by being conducted in rural areas. This is an ethnographic case study, based on meeting observations and field studies. The empirical material includes practices enacted at two organisational levels: the governance practices of management and the daily work practices of employees. Through the theoretical lens of translation theory, this thesis investigates how the company’s managers understand sustainability work and explores the governance that takes shape when sustainability work is introduced into companies’ operations. The thesis also investigates how employees react (and act) when management delegates responsibility to engage in sustainability work. The results show how the housing company’s management conceptualised the sustainability work as something that requires balance between continuity in existing operations and development of the company’s sustainability work. The idea of continuous sustainability work was characterised by an economic logic, stemming from an increasingly depopulated countryside. The management found it difficult to deviate from this logic, which ultimately meant that they largely devoted themselves to maintaining established ways of thinking and acting. The results show how the economic logic has contributed to the centralisation of operations over time. By referring to strengthened profitability, management continued to have an ambition to concentrate operations in the municipality’s central location. As part of developing the company’s sustainability work, employees were delegated responsibility for engaging in the development of various operational activities. The results show how sustainability work was translated in various ways, as employees adapted sustainability work to their daily work practices. Accordingly, this study also identifies how they engage in several different modes of subject formation, characterised by different rural areas and their different conditions. The variations reflect tensions between the centre of the municipality and the lower priority peripheries (implying the impact of local urbanization). The results also show how greater community involvement (described as a communitarian citizenship) and responsibility for the locality have emerged in more peripheral areas that lack the stable prosperity of the central town.
Att stanna kvar: arbete, plats och mobilitet i småstaden
(2021-03-04) Uddbäck, Hanna
The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to a deeper understanding of how young adults in an industrial small town in Sweden perceive and negotiate their work opportunities and their position in the local labour market. The study is theoretically informed by a relational understanding of place, mobility and immobility in addition to concepts such as capital, habitus and field. Empirically drawing on qualitative interviews with young adults, as well as local actors, the study makes visible the different negotiations and tensions dealing with a changing labour market and dominant notions and norms on mobility. The main findings suggest that those who have mainly social capital are oriented towards staying in the local area. In contrast, those who have educational capital have a more ambiguous spatial horizon and are not convinced that they will be able to fulfil their career aspirations locally. Dominant notions and norms on mobility are challenged by local values such as place-loyalty and work-ethics. The young adults find themselves in-between value systems where mobility, place and work have different meanings causing them to reflexively relate to sometimes contradictory norms and values. The study makes visible the local structural conditions in terms of access to labour market and housing that make it more beneficial and desirable for some young adults to stay locally, rather than to move to bigger cities. However, this is not an advantage that is equally accessible to all. The young adults’ different spatial horizons, strategies and perceived opportunities have been conceptualized as having different place-specific habitus: identified as adaptable habitus, cleft habitus, marginalized habitus and disoriented habitus. Through the theoretical frames of the study, the analysis contributes to a complex understanding of labour market negotiations among young adults and how these negotiations are shaped by access to different resources and the local structural conditions in the industrial small town.
Bortom scenen - en sociologisk studie av frilansande skådespelares villkor
(2014-09-23) Miscevic, Danka
Caring (in) Diaspora: Aging and Caring Experiences of Older Turkish Migrants in a Swedish Context
(2013-11-25) Naldemirci, Öncel
This thesis investigates Turkish migrants’ aging experiences and their understandings about care by concentrating on the accounts of a group of first-generation Turkish immigrants who settled in Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The aim is to explore how older immigrants’ lives have been marked by the experience of migration and re-establishment in another country, how the impact of having once lost caring relations affected their decisions and desires about care in old age. This study examines some common patterns about aging in a host country, ideals of care in old age, encounters with medical institutions, interpretations of formal care facilities, and identity and community construction processes. Rather than generalizing and categorizing cultural, ethnic, or even religious expectations in the case of elderly care, it seeks to grasp the complexity of the migrants’ ideals of care and caring relations by focusing on the positions they take in diaspora space. This study is based on ethnographic research which extended over two years (2011–2013). The empirical material consisted of observations and semi-structured in-depth interviews with 20 older Turkish people, 10 women and 10 men, who live in Sweden. By focusing on medical care stories, the study highlights the importance of looking at previous experiences of being cared about and cared for in the deliberation of future care needs and expectations. By elucidating how older Turkish people understand formal care facilities such as home-help services and elderly care homes, the study underlines ambivalent attitudes towards these options. This ambivalence is anchored in ways of perceiving “the Swedish” as modern but uncaring as well as in their understandings of family members as caring others. The study also shows how the Turkish family is imagined and done through three emotions: merhamet (compassion/pity), vefa (loyalty/ faithfulness), and şefkat (concern/affection). Emotionalization of the family is not about reinforcing, but, rather, about negotiating the filial duty towards older parents. Of note is also that these emotions circulate inside and outside the family and that a caring diasporic community is imagined. By exploring older Turkish migrants’ experiences and understandings, this study contributes to the growing research field of care for people with a migration background. It critically assesses older Turkish immigrants’ aging experiences, and their understandings about care options, not through cultural differences that are supposed to be unchanging and homogeneous, but based on the positions that they take in diaspora space. This study contributes by showing that, in order to understand the possible expectations of older migrants when it comes to decisions about and needs for care, it is crucial to consider their experience of having lived and aged in diaspora space. Designing, deliberating on, and deconstructing particular ideals of care become possible only if we take these experiential, mnemonic, and relational meaning-making processes into account.
Conditional Progress: Technical Rationality and Wicked Problems in Nuclear Waste Management
(2023-05-09) Lagerlöf, Hannes
While various states and enterprises have produced nuclear power for decades, that is, demonstrated the functionality of the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to power production, the waste that is simultaneously produced has been provisionally stored awaiting a safe solution. Still, no country has implemented such a solution. Nuclear waste is both dangerous and notoriously controversial, implying a range of social and technical problems. However, according to prevailing assertions in nuclear waste management (NWM), lingering concerns have now been addressed and definitive solutions are ready to be implemented. In this thesis, I problematize these claims. By asserting that NWM constitutes a ‘wicked problem’ – that is, a problem to which there is no ‘silver bullet’ solution, only a set of suboptimal options to choose from – my ambition is to produce knowledge of that which has remained unsolved, de-emphasized, sacrificed, or even suppressed as NWM has progressed. Rather than understanding NWM as progressing because it has solved remaining problems, I ask how progression is possible in spite of the insolubility of these problems. Points of departure like my own are marginal in previous research. Albeit sometimes critical, research has far from exhausted critical perspectives readily available for social scientists. I argue that such concepts are a viable future research route. To contribute to formulating a more critical research path, I turn to science and technology studies (STS) because this field contemplates a broader range of sociotechnical issues than does most NWM research. However, STS has increasingly come to elaborate theoretically on instances in which sociotechnical configurations are made unstable, change occurs, and actors challenge taken-for-granted scientific facts and technologies. My core observation is that such a focus downplays the significance of stability and inertia, which I hold to be far more prevalent phenomena in NWM. With a few caveats, I propose that these aspects of NWM can be understood using ‘critical constructivism’, that is, an alloy of the Frankfurt School’s critical procedure and STS. By emphasizing the critical legacy of critical constructivism – primarily by borrowing the concept of ‘technical rationality’ – I argue that NWM’s progress can be understood in new ways. Empirically – by means of participant observation and textual analysis – I engage with four NWM sites, both locally and internationally. In Study I, we study how contradictory social interests in NWM were concealed by means of technical consensus and the production of technicaliv standards at the European policy level. In Study II, I seek to understand why a scientific controversy over copper corrosion remained the main issue in a Swedish court of law for technical and nontechnical actors alike, and why the broader implications of nuclear power and NWM were not made explicit. In Study III, I analyse the Swedish nuclear industry’s tactics to secure consent in order to prevent opposition in a local community where a final repository for spent nuclear fuel will be built. In Study IV, we analyse how internationally influential implementers conceive of public emotions, and how implementers foresee the transformation of public emotions to facilitate the implementation of repositories. On an aggregate level, the individual studies together show the ways in which NWM – in order to implement geological disposal – depresses and excludes reasonable objections that could challenge NWM’s biases or expose its historical contingencies and preconditions. In the prevailing culture of NWM and its technical rationality, one of the few areas in which critique is still seen as legitimate is in strictly technical domains. The scrutiny of scientific and technical detail is recognized as viable because of its association with technical rationality, taking precedence over other forms of critical procedures based on, for example, the lived experience of technology and/or ethical concerns. A core conclusion that I draw, and that is enabled through the deployment of critical constructivism – is that the material nature of nuclear waste has rendered irreversible damage to the prospects of achieving change in the field.
Contextualizing managerial work in local government organizations
(2013-11-21) Björk, Lisa
This thesis is about managerial work in local government organizations. The purpose is to explain important aspects of managerial work with the help of a contextual perspective. The focus is on managers at the operational level of education, health and social care services, and technical services. Two research questions are raised. The first question considers the relationship between context and managerial work: how does organizational context influence managerial work, and how does managerial work influence organizational context? The second question is about contextual variations within the municipal sector: does the organizational context for lower-level managerial work vary between differently gendered municipal services, and, if so, how can this variation be explained? In order to answer these questions, I have used a cross-level and comparative research design. The design is cross-level in the sense that I consider how factors at different analytical levels interact. The design is comparative in the sense that the services have been strategically selected to represent differently gendered municipal contexts. The theoretical framework evolved mainly from management, organization, and gender theory. With the help of Gary Johns’ (2006) framework of organizational context, I outlined a model of how to understand the relationship between context at different levels and managerial work practice. Other central concepts in the thesis are Yvonne Hirdman’s (1988) idea of an omnipresent gender system and Joan Acker’s (1990) notion of gendered organizations. The empirical work of the thesis consists of three quantitative studies (Study I, II and IV) that are based on a two-wave survey of over 400 operations managers in five different types of services, and one qualitative study (Study III) based on eight interviews with managers, politicians and controllers in two different organizations. In the first study, the impact of organizational traits on the unnecessary and unreasonable tasks in managerial work is investigated, using multilevel regression analysis. The aim of the second study was to provide a measure that can be used in order to evaluate and compare organizational conditions for managers in different types of services. The third study is an investigation into how the generic traits of the New Public Management have been implemented in differently gendered local government organizations. Lastly, the fourth study explores variations in organizational conditions in differently gendered services. The first overall conclusion of the thesis is that the relationship between managerial work and context is recursive. Organizations are arenas of conflict in which different stakeholders try to turn their ideas into governing formalities. Managerial work practice is to a large extent governed by the formalities that constitute the organizational context, which would in turn cease to exist if not for the daily work practices of managers and other organizational actors. The second conclusion is that there are systematic differences in organizational conditions between differently gendered services, and therefore a structural approach to gender is an important complement to more individualistic views on differences in male and female managerial behaviour.
Criminal Records in Sweden. Regulation of Access to Criminal Records and the use of Criminal Background Checks by Employers.
(2012-03-05) Backman, Christel
This thesis examines the regulation of access to criminal records in Sweden and the actual and potential use of criminal background checks by employers in hiring processes. In recent years, more and more Swedish employers have been required by law to check their job applicants’ criminal records. In a parallel process, also the number of enforced subject access requests has increased considerably in that same period. The aim of this thesis is to analyse and explain these two trends and consider their implications for future use of criminal records in Sweden and elsewhere. The analysis draws upon government documents, newspaper articles, interviews with employers using enforced subject access, and interviews with union and employer organization representatives, with the aim of capturing the vocabularies of motive that were evoked and put to use in attempts to justify and legitimize either access restrictions or the extended use of criminal records data in hiring decisions. In Paper I, I examine how subject access, indirect employer access, and the notion of privacy have been understood and defined throughout the history of the Swedish Criminal Records Registry, and how practices and policies in the area have evolved over time. In Paper II, I investigate how employers who use individuals’ right to subject access as a means for obtaining copies of their criminal record account for their practice, and how unions and employer associations have responded to the adoption of it. In Paper III, I challenge the ‘governmentality’ tradition in criminology and the way the use of criminal record checks is interpreted within it. As an alternative way of formulating and understanding the issue, I propose that it be looked at from a symbolic perspective. In Paper IV, my analysis utilizes the perspective of the sociology of scandals to help develop a better understanding of function creep in the area of data protection. This I do through an examination of the process leading, first, to the introduction of mandatory vetting of childcare workers and teachers in Sweden in 2001, and, then, to the inclusion later on of also other employer categories in the scope of the relevant legislation. Based on these analyses, I argue that the changes in the access to individuals’ criminal records reflect the state’s way of governing the interpretation of the criminal records database. Whether actors are denied or allowed access to information contained in the criminal history record database depends on the prevailing cultural representations regarding notions such as ‘privacy’, ‘data protection’, ‘databases’, ‘sensitive information’, and ‘power’. Moreover, I argue that the function creep in the use of criminal history data in Sweden can be initially explained by the occurrence and publicity of scandals that highlight the vulnerability of a group of dependents, making it defensible to resort to privacy-intrusive methods such as criminal record checks, with the continuing function creep then being made possible by a changing moral landscape that, following the initial amendment, renders the method morally more defensible among the policy makers and the public at large.
Distributed Leadership in Local School Organisations. Working for School Improvement?
(2015-08-27) Liljenberg, Mette
This thesis takes its point of departure from the recent increased interest in leadership, and especially distributed leadership. Educational research states that if schools are to meet future demands, leadership must rest on trust within the organisation and distributed leadership must be understood, in the frame of professional collaboration and social learning. However, distributed leadership has also been presented as a normative prescription and an officially sanctioned model for how to arrange school leadership in order to meet the increased demand for school leaders. The aim of the thesis is to generate knowledge about the construction of distributed leadership in local schools within the Swedish context and thereby contribute to the wider discussion of leadership within the educational field. The study draws on data from a qualitative case study of three schools conducted during the years 2011 and 2012, with follow-up in 2014. In the three schools observations of formal meetings and semi-structured interviews with school leaders and teachers were conducted and further analysed. The theoretical framework is based on institutional perspectives on organisations and distributed perspectives on leadership. Furthermore, capacity building in school organisations is used as a framework for identifying different areas of relevance for school improvement. Paper I, Distributing leadership to establish developing and learning school organisations in the Swedish context, examines the influence of distributed leadership and the structural and cultural prerequisites when creating a developing and learning school organisation. Paper II, Teacher leadership modes and practices in a Swedish context – A case study, elaborates on the significance of how leadership is framed in the organisation and the contribution it makes to school improvement. Paper III, Att skapa mening i lärares samarbete och gemensamma lärande. Tre skolors försök, examines how principals’ and teachers’ sensemaking about improvement initiatives influence the outcome of these initiatives and the possibility of developing teacher collaboration and common learning in the schools. Paper IV, School leaders as coupling agents – Mediating between external demands and internal values, explores how school leaders in their role as coupling agents respond to pressure from the institutional environment and how this relates to the direction of improvement in the local schools. The main findings of the thesis show that the organisation of distributed leadership at local school level is embedded in the institutional context and in the local history of each school. Of particular importance are locally embedded norms and values that set the conditions for which structures are made possible, for how leadership is understood and for how teachers and school leaders make sense of and shape their roles in distributed leadership practices. The findings also show that the relation between distributed leadership and capacity building is based on the conditions at local level. This means that it is the conditions at local level that provide the basis for the quality of the distributed leadership. Looking at the construction of distributed leadership in the three schools in relation to the transformation of the Swedish educational system, it becomes clear that the construction of distributed leadership at local level is strongly connected to a democratic vision of leadership and trust in the competence of professionals. At local school level few connections between the ideas of distributed leadership and the neoliberal policy movements were detected. Finally the findings show that formal school leaders have an important role in the construction of distributed leadership at local level if capacity building and school improvement are to take place. School leaders contribute to this by creating favourable structural conditions but most of all by influencing locally embedded norms and values so that a democratic and reflective understanding of leadership that implies ‘power-with’ rather than ‘power-over’ (Møller, 2002), as well as a high degree of openness to collaboration, shared sensemaking and trust between different actors can be created.
Educational choices of the future. A sociological inquiry into micro-politics in education
(2013-05-24) Puaca, Goran
This thesis investigates how students’ practical considerations for future choices in education and occupations correspond to policy objectives of socially productive educational choices. This is conveyed through the primary aim of analyzing the correspondence between on the one hand educational policy intentions and on the other hand students’ educational choices and the social and cultural conditions that structure them. These concerns are addressed with specific aims in four different articles. However, the following research questions have been of central guidance for framing the main issue: (1) How are economic, political and social processes brought together on a policy level for motivating and regulating individuals’ educational choices (Article I)? (2) How do students’ educational choices correspond with policy intentions and the assumptions of rational choice that the latter are founded on (Article I-II)? (3) How are students’ educational choices shaped by wants and identities (Article II-IV)? (4) What is the relationship between students’ want formation and relevant social and cultural conditions (Article II-IV)? The empirical material consisted of interviews and semi-structured questionnaires with young people in secondary education and higher education, and interviews with school staff in secondary education. Empirical inquiries were also conveyed via a semiotic content analysis on recent policy: specifically the Swedish Long-Term Surveys from 2008 and 2011. In comprehensive terms, the rationality of choices from both how choice is practiced and what is desired has been of primary interest. These concerns are addressed by the following emphases in the different investigations. In Article I the form of government that aims to shape actors’ wants and decisions in relation to productive educational choices in the Long-Term Surveys is investigated. The forms of rationality in general, and the suggested implementation of rational choices in particular, are here analyzed through a critical semiotic analysis. The result of the study lifts forward critical distinctions of ontological and epistemological assumptions in how to delineate social and economic claims for the righteousness, reasonableness and necessity of choices. Article II focuses on how students’ wants and choices are formed in a vocational (vehicle maintenance program) and a theoretical (social science program) upper secondary education. By examining students’ want-lists complemented by interviews with students and school staff the study argues that it is important to view wants in an organic totality based on individual and collective experiences. The results show a pragmatic rationality in students’ decision-making, which challenges instrumental rationality in educational choices. This is importantly about how structural support guides students’ decisions over the future under conditions of the radical uncertainty that marks decisions in open social systems. In article III the analysis of vocational and theoretical upper secondary students’ want formations are further developed in relation to their educational environment. Through analysis of interviews with students, teachers, principals and student counselors the article pays particular attention to institutional school effects and school habitus. The results showed that different forms of school habitus in the investigated programs could be empirically attributed to how students form their wants. Article IV investigates identity work via a semi-structured questionnaire and group interviews with students from a Swedish Human Resource program in higher education. What in particular was investigated was how symbolic signification of education and occupations occurred within education. The actual meaning students attributed to education rested importantly on collective sense-making. Indicated in the results is that the meaning of being a student incorporates an awareness of social status and an ability to form relatively autonomous personal projects related to social forces. The result of the thesis points to a lack of correspondence between, on the one hand, political notions of how rational and utility maximizing choices should be made based on effective matching of education and working life and, on the other hand, how young people form their paths into the future in practice through education choices. Students often make their educational choices due to a lack of better alternatives and are often uncertain about where their choices will take them in life. These results show that there is a need for concrete support in schools in order to turn students’ insecurity about the future into useful strategies for educational and occupational paths.
Europafacklig samverkan. Problem och möjligheter
(2014-05-26) Lovén Seldén, Kristina
The overarching aim of this thesis is to examine the conditions for cooperation among trade unions in Europe, and to identify factors making it easier or more difficult. The dissertation centers on two crucial areas: wage determination and working- time regulation. The theoretical framework combines theories of industrial relations regimes with ideas on meta-organizations, and an approach focusing on the power resources of trade unions. The empirical data was collected through a web survey sent by e-mail to all member organizations of the ETUC, all the ETUFs and trade unions just below the central level in 14 European countries. I also carried out interviews, made observations at trade union meetings and collected all kinds of documents. Trade unions in different countries and institutional settings were strategically selected for the interviews and the survey. In study I, I examine the revision of the EU Working Time Directive and how European trade unions and employer organizations have responded to this revision. Study II explores trade union attitudes towards issues of future wage setting on national and European level, and in particular, their attitudes towards statutory minimum wages. In study III I address the conditions for transnational trade union cooperation in the wake of the Laval case, and examine whether the case is perceived to have affected European trade union relations. Study IV, finally, focuses on trade union attitudes towards a European regulation of working time and whether these attitudes are related to what industrial regime the trade unions belong to. The article also compares the trade union approach to a European working time regulation with the approach to a European regulation of minimum wage. The analyses showed that comparative regime theory has quite large explanatory power as to various union attitudes towards certain regulations, strategies and cooperation in Europe. Whereas today there is increasing support among trade unions in Europe towards statutory minimum wages on European level, there is rejection of this solution among the Nordic unions who insist on keeping their system with negotiated wage-setting. The results can be understood with reference to differences in the domestic labour market and to the strength of the trade unions or, in other words, their membership and bargaining power. Trade unions in countries with high union density and strong collective bargaining power are inclined to preserve their current wage systems, whereas trade unions in countries with weak bargaining power are more likely to seek new ways to defend wages. However, as I argue based on the analyses, trade union attitudes towards transnational cooperation may also be issue-specific, which the case of a European working-time regulation illustrates. Although institutional differences between countries are important obstacles they cannot alone explain union cooperation or the lack of union cooperation in Europe.
Från miljonprogram till högskoleprogram - plats, agentskap och villkorad valfrihet.
(2013-05-16) Widigson, Mats
This is a dissertation about young people’s experiences of their journeys from a socially marginalized suburb to higher education. Many students from these areas do not continue to higher education, but some do. There is little empirical knowledge about what makes this achievable. The aim of the study is to address the question of how agency is possible and how the hindering structuring conditions associated with place can be understood and overcome. The relevancy of the study stems from a segregating urban development that puts a school system striving for social inclusion in a new situation, where the significance of place becomes of growing importance. There is, if you will, a geography of opportunity. An interview study with nineteen informants was conducted. These informants had a variety of family and ethnic backgrounds. Criteria for the selection were that they had upbringing and schooling in a marginalized suburb and sufficient qualifications to enter higher educational studies. As it turned out, in most cases they appeared to be well on their way to successful completion of studies at university level. The foremost result of the study is confirmation that young people have to deal with how their background from the marginalized suburb is perceived. For them, this is an identity-sensitive question that requires emotional work. This finding helps to understand agency and freedom of choice as structurally conditioned by class, otherization and place. In searching for mechanisms, the study contributes to specify the conditions that made agency possible. In order to address social inclusion, it is important to pay attention to what supported agency: A polycultural experience was seen by the informants as a strengthening specific form of cultural capital. Informants were active in generating groups positive to education within their schools, and these groups in turn had a positive effect on keeping up their high standards of achievement. Those informants without higher education had valued their parents’ taking an interest in learning and providing an encouraging family atmosphere, rather than demanding performance and results. The parents had also been role models due to traits such as endurance and high work ethics. The informants’ goals were not particularly cued to outside motivation and specific ends. Rather, they were characterized by self-worth, social security and perceived future freedom of choice. It was not unusual that goals were of a social character, to some extent fuelled by experiences of social class. It is evident that teacher’s commitment to their students and to learning had a formative significance for students’ concerns. This study has implications for school policy in that a segregated city calls for action to accomplish equity in quality and expectations. A greater awareness of the impact of contextual differences and the importance of place and of identity work are starting points in addressing issues of social inclusion.
Gender and Emotions in Family Care – Understanding masculinity and gender equality in Sweden
(2017-05-17) Björk, Sofia
This thesis addresses care responsibilities in families as an arena for gender reproduction and change, primarily in the Swedish context, which includes a long history of gender equality policies, and broad public support for ideals of gender equality. The overall aim is to contribute to understanding of how gender continues to be given relevance in family caregiving when caregivers, in their efforts to form liveable and emotionally sustainable lives, make them-selves intelligible in relation to sometimes conflicting norms and ideals of care, work and gender equality. The analysis draws on interviews with working parents and middle-aged sons and daughters caring for their elderly parents in Sweden. The theoretical framework outlines how gender is done, both in general terms and specifically for caregivers, to become intelligible in relation to gen-dered norms. As caregiving is a gendered practice with salient moral and emotional dimensions, negotiations of intelligibility in relation to caregiving also have emotional consequences. Emotions are understood as shaped by norms, while norms simultaneously gain influence through the emotions they evoke and prescribe, thereby connecting micro-level feelings with macro-level structures. The notion of liveability is used to link the concept of intelligibility to emotions. A liveable life is understood as a life supported by norms. The thesis is based on three studies, designated Studies I-III. Study I fo-cused on fathers’ part-time work and negotiations of moral intelligibility in relation to gendered norms. In Study II, sons’ involvement in the care for their aging parents was analysed with a focus on masculinities. In study III, working parents were studied to analyse how norms of parenthood, work, and gender equality were made relevant through emotions and how these norms could be negotiated through emotion work. By examining how gender continues to be made relevant in family care ar-rangements, despite widely shared gender equality ideals, this thesis contrib-utes to the understanding of stability and change in normative structures. Although ideals of gender equality are widely shared in Sweden, conflicting norms also remain. These norms continue to have impact through the emo-tions they evoke – even for those who want to liberate themselves from them. The interviewed caregivers had to manage ambivalence between emotionally powerful norms regarding work and caregiving. The ideals of gender equality did not always reduce this ambivalence, and could even amplify it. To cope with their everyday prioritizations the caregivers needed to manage emotions when failing to live up to some norms and ideals. Transgressions of norms had to be made intelligible to make life liveable. The concept of empathic imagination was used to explore how caregivers, by managing their imagina-tions of the situations and emotions of those they cared for, could also man-age their own emotions to make their care arrangements and lives feel livea-ble. Ideals of gender equality did not herald the end of gendered expectations. Instead gendered understandings of family care could be reproduced through the doing of gender equality. The notions of doing, re-doing, and undoing gender were useful for analysing the complexity of gender accomplishment and how reproduction and change sometimes occurred at the same time. Ideals of gender equality also included gendered emotion regimes which, in combination with ideals of individualization regarding child care and career, generated different emotional situations for mothers and fathers. Since ideals of gender equality are rooted in certain normative positions, they were not as available or as relevant in all positions or contexts.
Geographies of eHealth: Studies of Healthcare at a Distance
(2014-05-16) Petersson, Jesper
This thesis examines the proliferation of healthcare services using information and communication technology to overcome spatial and temporal obstacles. These services are given such names as telemedicine and telecare, which are sometimes grouped together as telehealthcare under the umbrella term eHealth. My main argument is that a prevalent and overoptimistic rhetoric of how the possibilities of digitalization are expected to produce a homogenous and ubiquitous healthcare space conceals many of the spatiotemporal complexities involved in introducing telehealthcare and in the overall organizing of healthcare. To counteract such simplifications, I contend that we need a relational understanding of the technical and the geographical as always nested in the social and vice versa. With such an approach, it is arguably possible to begin to tease apart the many spatiotemporal entanglements of these innovations and to trace their political ramifications. This position is developed by integrating perspectives from science and technology studies with insights from human geography. The four constituent papers of this thesis pursue this argument in qualitatively grounded case studies of telehealthcare and its geographies. Paper I looks at various initiatives for fetal tele-ultrasonography, demonstrating that this practice cannot be reduced to a mere transparent relay for the speedy transmission of digital information across space and time. The paper investigates how its introduction could affect medical knowledge production, power hierarchies, and subject positions, for example, the status attributed to the fetal figure. Paper II traces Swedish transformations of telehealthcare. The use of telemedicine to reach those outside medicine’s range has arguably been accompanied by efforts to achieve intra-organizational streamlining via telemedicine. This process has continued with the emergence of telecare for personal use directed toward the overlapping groups of the elderly people and patients with chronic conditions. I contend that this shift can be understood through a geographical lens as attempts to save space and time by keeping as many patients as possible out of costly hospitalization and preventing them from engaging scarce specialist resources. Paper III compares four telemedicine projects in Sweden. In detailing how the purpose of practicing telemedicine differed between these projects in relation to, for example, the specifics of distance, care availability, and treated medical conditions, the paper demonstrates the existence of many versions of telemedicine. Whereas this fluidity could further the spread of telemedicine, it could also cause problems. To various actors wanting to use telemedicine in a homogenous and fixed way for national streamlining purposes, this diversity has generated confusion when they wished to align telemedicine in a preferred direction. The paper concludes that technology travels best when it can contain both fluid and fixed relationships. Paper IV argues that, whatever is claimed about creating a space- and time-independent healthcare by means of telehealthcare, the use of telecare to connect the standardized spaces of healthcare with the fluid everyday lives of elderly people and patients with chronic conditions actually works by unfolding new spaces of visibilities and establishing new temporalities as well. By investigating these spatiotemporalities, I demonstrate how these applications draw together discourses on individual freedom with medically derived algorithms and concerns about how to make best use of scarce healthcare resources.
Governing citizens in the age of financialization: A study of Swedish financial education
(2021-12-06) Pettersson, Jane
In contemporary Western capitalist societies, the state has increasingly withdrawn from its role as welfare provider, while financial institutions, actors, products, and narratives play an increasingly important part not only in global and national economies, but also in everyday life and thus for societies as a whole. This development is described by scholars as financialization and the financialization of everyday life. Contributing to this scholarly field, this dissertation examines Swedish financial education and the case of the Gilla din ekonomi (Like your personal finance) financial education network and its attempt to create financial subjects who embrace this development and its rationale. The overall aim of this dissertation is to describe and understand the different levels of problematization and practices of financial education, on a policy implementation level, by the study of educational practices, and through the study of how financial education occurs in the everyday lives of the people such initiatives are intended to govern. I do this by investigating financial education from several angles. First, I situate financial education and the problematization of Swedish consumers in the local context of time and place, i.e., in relation to contemporary and historical political discourse and practice. Second, I investigate the translation from policy to practice, showing how consumers are problematized by categorization, and by examining what role emotions play in fostering responsible and rational financial subjects. Through the theoretical lens of governmentality and sociology of emotions, I thus explore how the practices of financial education rely on emotions as a governing technique. Finally, I explore the subjects’ reactions to such governing attempts and their different problematizations, and strategies of resistance in encounters with financial education. In this way, this thesis contributes to and builds on previous research that understands financial education as governmentality in the age of financialization, i.e., the three aspects considered above constitute different methods of influencing the conduct of subjects—by conveying certain ideas, norms, and emotions—to align with and counter conduct, prevailing discourses of what constitutes “good” financial behavior. In summary, I argue that Swedish state-led financial education is a case of financialization of everyday life. Governing citizens’ financial knowledge and behavior has been a political issue since financialization took off in the 1980s. The results of the three studies in this dissertation show that the purpose of financial education is to guide and educate citizens into active, responsible financial subjects. Financial education does this by teaching course participants how to both think and emotionally relate to financial markets and products. Course attendees are taught to take care of, and take responsibility for, their financial well-being through activities such as planning for their future retirement and saving money by investing, while avoiding “bad” financial products and thus avoiding over-indebtedness. Nevertheless, the analysis showed that course attendees (re)acted by problematization, and conducted themselves counter to the encouragement to become financially savvy as they related the teachings to other life concerns that were inconsistent with the financial subjectivity they were encouraged to perform.
Governing the unaccompanied child – media, policy and practice
(2014-08-12) Stretmo, Live
Through three different case studies, this thesis analyzes how unaccompanied minors are constructed and governed as a specific group of refugees in Norway and Sweden. The first study investigates the Norwegian and Swedish media debate from 2000-2008 by examining how incidences of so-called “missing unaccompanied children” were highlighted on the media agenda. Part of this has also been to analyze the specific official actions taken by Norwegian and Swedish authorities. The second study analyzes how unaccompanied minors were framed in a more broad selection of Norwegian and Swedish official policy between 2000-2010 by looking at how unaccompanied children and youngsters were singled out as subjects of knowledge, and the actions and practices that legitimized these constructions. These two case studies demonstrate that unaccompanied minors have been similarly problematized in Norway and Sweden, hence making similar changes in mode of conduct legitimate. They were sometimes singled out as vulnerable children or child victims, but concurrently also as possible strate-gic migrants (adults trying to pass as children, problematic youngsters, etc.). This poses different types of threats to the asylum system, thus justifying care-oriented amid control-oriented strategies in their regard. The third case study analyzes how a selection of caregivers (i.e., officials and support staff) talk about their work with unaccompanied youngsters and children, and describes how 10 youngsters give meaning to their experiences of being categorized as unaccompanied. The caregivers held a repertoire of various constructions that clearly connect to many of the official or public narrations. Sometimes unaccompanied minors are framed as respectable exceptions to other problem categories, and at other times as problematic youngsters in need of compensatory pedagogics in order to overcome specific shortcomings. These caregivers, plus the media and national policy, further frame unaccompanied minors as specific rights holders due to their position-ing as “any other child”, therefore legitimizing softer and more care-oriented strategies. The interviews with the 10 youngsters illustrate how they try to re-position themselves as positive exceptions to the official images of strategic or problematic youngsters highlighted in the media, policy and practice. This study identifies a discourse where a lot of consensus and agreement on problematizations coexist in Norwegian and Swedish policy, public narratives, and in how people in the micro context talk and make sense of unaccompanied minors.
Imagined Independence. Institutional Conditions and Individual Opportunities in European Labour Markets
(2018-11-06) Wallinder, Ylva
The studies presented in this thesis examine perceived labour market opportunities and conditions for labour market mobility for European employees. The European labour market strategy has created an opportunity-oriented employability-logic that emphasises individual characteristics and individual responsibility for employment. Within this logic, individuals are active job seekers and should continuously develop their employability skills, a one-dimensional focus on employability. In contrast, this thesis argues that the current employability discourse fails to account for two further relevant and interdependent dimensions of employability, namely the institutional context and the local recognition of employees’ resources at the workplace. Thus, individual characteristics, institutional conditions and local recognition for resources are vital for employment. The institutional context influences individuals’ access to education and employment, as well as employers’ mode of recruiting employees. The resources held by individuals are also relational in the sense that they are influenced by everyday practices of recognition and workplace situations. The thesis draws on both survey data and interview data. The first part of the thesis (Paper I-II) combines individual-level data from European Social Survey (ESS 2004 and 2010) with country-level data measuring national variations in terms of employment protection legislation, labour market policies and education systems. The second part of the thesis (Paper III-IV) analyses conditions for intra-European labour market mobility by examining a rather privileged group of labour migrants, namely highly skilled Swedish migrants with a university degree from Sweden and employment in Germany or the United Kingdom, with who in-depth interviews were conducted 2014-2015. Paper I examines the influence of European countries’ specific institutional contexts, such as labour market policies, education systems and employment protection legislations, on employees’ perceived labour market opportunities. The results show that employability is a multifaceted concept. The detected inter-dependence between individual characteristics and the institutional context is further investigated in Paper II, which focuses on the effect of economic conditions on perceived employability amongst native-born and foreign-born individuals by comparing data prior to and during the aftermath of the economic crisis in 2008/09. The findings show a potential mismatch between employees’ opportunity-perceptions and their expected de facto labour market possibilities, as foreign-born employees perceive better labour market prospects than native-born employees. These patterns, however, vary depending on the applicable institutional context. The interdependence of individual characteristics and the institutional context is further examined in the final two papers, which focus on the relationship between national and transnational labour markets. Paper III and IV show that highly skilled Swedish labour migrants encounter difficulties during employment abroad, despite their high levels of recognized resources regarding their level of education and country of birth. However, the papers show that the migrants experience an inability to achieve a transnational recognition of their resources which causes a feeling of vulnerability abroad. Paper III conceptualises the collision between the self-image and the actual experiences of the migrants as imagined independence, depicturing a tension between their specific experiences and their self-image; none withstanding the experienced vulnerability, their self-image as independent employee remains unchanged. Moreover, as Paper IV shows, the privileged position given education and country of birth is an important part of their self-image and enables them to challenge norms in the society/workplace. Overall, these two papers show that local workplace conditions and recognition of resources may be decisive for the individuals’ potential labour market opportunities in the country of employment. The theoretical argument of the thesis is that labour market opportunities are primarily socially framed, which challenge the current European opportunity-oriented policy approach. The process of social framing is a consequence of the dominant institutional conditions and the local social settings which provide or limit access to important labour market resources. As such, the thesis acknowledges that employability requires recognition of individuals’ resources, and that this recognition is context-dependent.
Inequity in Mind. On the Social and Genetic Risk Factors of Dementia and Their Interactions
(2019-09-20) Hasselgren, Caroline
The present thesis seeks to further explain the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias by studying the long-term impact of class- and gender-based inequities as well as the extent to which they potentially moderate genetic risk. Central to this endeavour is the recognition of social inequity as multifaceted, and of potential intersections between different drivers of structural (dis)advantage in relation to individual health prospects. The main point of departure is that even though the causes of dementia are heterogeneous and cannot be reduced to either genetic or environmental factors, dementia is, just like many of its potential risk/protective factors, unevenly distributed in the population. Nevertheless, our knowledge of whether and how systems of structural inequity intersect and interact with individual genetic endowments in the development of disease is still scarce. The thesis encompasses four empirical studies, all of which should be considered examples of interdisciplinary efforts to incorporate theory and expertise from different fields in order to create a more holistic understanding of dementia aetiology. The analyses are based on data derived from the longitudinal Gothenburg H70 Birth Cohort Study (H70) and the Prospective Populations Study on Women (PPSW) from Gothenburg, Sweden. The baseline sample (N =1019) was first examined in 2000 and followed up in 2005 and 2009. Study I lays the foundation upon which the other studies rest. It does so by asking whether socio- economic status (SES) could in fact moderate the increased risk of dementia that carrying one or more copies of the APOE (apolipoprotein E) ε4 allele implies. Having identified that high SES seems to buffer the effect of APOE ε4 among men but not among women, Study II and III set out to explore two mechanisms that could possibly shed further light on the link between socio-economic (dis)advantage and dementia risk as well as on the previously identified sex difference: work environment exposures and access to social networks. The findings of Study II suggest that work control is the most influential aspect of the work environment, with respect to moderation of genetic endowments, but that it is only protective among men. While no significant gene-social network interactions were revealed in Study III, the results indicate that there might be important differences between men and women in the impact of social networks on dementia risk. Finally, Study IV tests the assumption that the higher lifetime risk of dementia among women could, at least in part, be the result of differences in educational attainment and/or in experiences of general psychological distress. The results confirm that education ought to be considered a ‘gendered’ dementia risk factor and propose that psychological distress constitutes a potential, and hitherto rarely acknowledged, pathway between dementia and female sex, on the one hand, and dementia and low educational attainment, on the other. In light of the findings presented in this thesis, it is evident that dementia is an emergent phenomenon that must not be reduced to the sum of its parts, especially considering the results suggesting that genetic endowments can actually be moderated by externally imposed factors. Additionally, all four studies underline that the risk/protective factors that are more proximate to the individual, such as work environment exposures, social networks or distress, must not be studied as if they were distinct from the social structures that ‘put people at risk of risks’. Consequently, I argue, class and sex/gender must be attended to as fundamental, and intersecting, causes of dementia if we are to better understand why some individuals develop the disease, while others do not.
Inhyrningens logik - konsekvenser för individ och organisation
(2012-05-23) Kantelius, Hannes
The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyse the consequences of the use of temporary agency work from an individual- and organisational perspective. The thesis is built upon a multidisciplinary theoretical framework including flexibility strategies, the organisation of work, psychosocial working environment, work-based learning, employability and flexicurity. The empirical data comes from qualitative case studies from both work agencies and user firms, encompassing some 65 interviews, and a survey study of white-collar agency workers’ perception of security (n=533). Based upon the empirical findings, some contributions are made. Firstly, the logic of using temporary agency workers has been identified. This logic may have profound consequences for both individuals and organisations. For agency workers it may lead to a lack of competence and skill development in their work. This will most likely result in a low perceived employability for agency workers. For user firm employees, a high turnover of agency worker may lead to increased levels of strain at work, if the turnover results in continuous training of newcomers. On an organisational level, the logic of using temporary agency workers has an impact on what potential for flexibility a certain staffing strategy entails. Secondly, the organisational mechanisms identified explain the risk displacement between the user firm and the work agency, and what actual forms of flexibility a certain staffing strategy entails. The risk displacement is in itself also dependent on whether the user firm is aware of the logic of using temporary agency workers. If not taken into consideration, this logic may instead lead to unforeseen and unwanted states of inflexibility and/or instability. However, when taken into consideration, the logic may be-come an incentive to the development of the staffing strategy and to organisational learning. Thirdly, the thesis has shown that the long-term strategic use of agency workers may lead to a user firm achieving a so-called double flexibility, including both numerical and functional flexibility. This strategy and its work organisational outcome may lead to the blurring of the border between core and peripheral workers. Thus, this thesis has also shown that Atkinson’s (1984) work still may be useful in understanding the consequences of agency work on both an individual and an organisational level. Fourthly, the thesis has shown how both temporary work agencies and user firms have a dual responsibility, and likely also dual gains, in providing agency workers with the security dimensions associated with flexicurity. However, employment security, or employability, seems to be the most important aspect of security in today’s labour market. Lastly, the thesis has shown the great impact user firms have on the temporary staffing industry market. The staffing strategies chosen by user firms has a major impact on the working conditions of the agency workers, with the risk of an increased segmentation either between agency workers and other forms of employment, or within the group of temporary agency workers.

Browse

Browsing Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Institutionen för sociologi och arbetsvetenskap by Title