With the long-term goal to create a screening tool with code sets for children’s everyday life situations (ELS), the purpose of the present study was to identify ELS for children and youth aged 0-17 years. The views of professionals and parents in Sweden, South Africa, and US were integrated based on linkages to ICF-CY. The chapters Self-care and Major life areas seemed most obvious include ELS. At 2^nd ICF-CY level, eleven categories emerged as ELS with Hygiene (d510-d530) and Recreation and leisure (d920) as the most obvious. Two sets of ELS were identified for infants/preschoolers and school aged children/adolescents. Professionals and parents agreed on ELS for the older age-group. Findings suggested that ELS differ in context specificity depending on maturity and growing autonomy. The study have implications for the future tool intending to support children with disabilities in describing what matters most for them in intervention planning.

Four studies were included in this doctoral dissertation aiming to investigatehow habilitation professionals perceive the ICF-CY in clinical work and to identify everyday life situations specific for children and youth aged 0-17 years. The ICF-CY was the conceptual framework and since the research was conducted on as well as with the ICF-CY, the use of the classification runs like a thread through all the work. The design was primarily qualitative and included descriptive and comparative content analyses. Study I was longitudinal, aiming to explore how an implementation of the ICF-CY in Swedish habilitation services was perceived. Studies II-IV were interrelated, aiming to explore children’s most common everyday life situations. Content in measures of participation, professionals’ perspectives, and external data on parents’ perspectives were linked to the ICF-CY and compared. Mixed methods design bridged the Studies III-IV.

Results in Study I indicated that knowledge on the ICF-CY enhanced professionals’ awareness of families’ views of child functioning and pointed to the need for ICF-CY based assessment and intervention methods focusing on child participation in life situations. A first important issue in this respect was to identify everyday life situations. Two sets of ten everyday life situations related to the ICF-CY component Activities and Participation, chapters d3-d9, were compiled and adopted for younger and older children respectively, establishing a difference in context specificity depending on maturity and growing autonomy. Furthermore, key constructs in the ICFCY model were discussed, additional ICF-CY linking rules were presented and suggestions for revisions of the ICF linking rules and the ICF-CY were listed. As the sample of everyday life situations reflects the perspectives of adults, further research has to add the perspective of children and youth. The identified everyday life situations will be the basis for the development of code sets included in a screening tool intended for self- or proxy- report of participation from early childhood through adolescence.

Purpose: The aim was to determine professionals’ views of everyday life situations (ELS) of importance for children and to explore how ELS correlate with the construct ‘Participation’. This study was part of a larger work to develop a structured tool with code sets to identify child participation and support children with disabilities to describe what matters most for them in intervention planning.

Method: The study had a concurrent mixed methods design. Information from one open-ended question and questionnaires were linked to the ICF-CY component Activities and Participation. Two concurrent data sets were compared.

Results: Proposed ELS were distributed across ICF-CY categories from low to high level of complexity and context specificity. The correlation with participation became stronger for the later chapters of the component (d7-d9). Differences between respondents due to working field, country, and children’s ages were explored. Acts and tasks seemed most important for the youngest children whereas ELS shifted towards societal involvement for adolescents.

Conclusion: Eleven categories related to ICF-CY chapters d3-d9 emerged as ELS. Two age groups (infants/preschoolers and adolescents) are required to develop code sets for the new tool. The results need triangulation with other concurrent studies to provide corroborating evidence and add a family perspective.

Purpose. This study was part of a larger work to develop an authentic measure consisting of code sets for self- or proxy-report of child participation. The aim was to identify common everyday life situations of children and youth based on measures of participation.

Method. The study was descriptive in nature and involved several stages: systematic search of literature to find articles presenting measures for children and youth with disabilities, identifying measures in selected articles, linking items in included measures to the ICF-CY, analysing content in measures presented as performance and participation and identifying aggregations of ICF-CY codes across these measures.

Results. A large number of measures for children and youth with disabilities were identified but only 12 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. A slight distinction in content and age appropriateness appeared. Measures presented as performance covered all the ICF-CY Activities and Participation chapters, whereas measures presented as participation covered five of nine chapters. Three common everyday life situations emerged from the measures: Moving around, Engagement in play and Recreation and leisure.

Conclusion. Only a small number of life situations for children and youth emerged from items in selected measures, thus, other sources are needed to identify more everyday life situations.

This study investigated present and future everyday life situations (ELS) in home, school, work, and leisure environments for a group of school-aged children with severe disabilities, including complex disorders and a combination of disabilities. The purpose was to explore universal ELS; clarify how the children can be supported in their development of autonomy; and to gather information on potential overall goals for interventions. To make data comparable, all reported ELS were linked to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Child and Youth version (ICF-CY) and listed along with information on the setting. Both today, and in the future, recreational activities and participation in school or work were of highest importance, but few reported ELS involved directly interacting with other children. More ELS were predicted to occur outside the home and with a higher degree of autonomy. Therefore, interventions would be focused on the overall goal that children with severe disabilities take initiatives to become independent and to form relationships with others.

På senare år har ett antal program som t.ex. Community Parent Education Program (COPE) initierats för att främja barns hälsa och psykosociala utveckling. COPE är ett manualbaserat program som ofta används som del i de föräldrautbildningar som ges i invandrartäta områden. COPE utvecklades i Kanada och vid användningen i Sverige översätts materialet. Program erbjuds på språk som t.ex. arabiska och somaliska och när dessa kurser ges översätts materialet ytterligare. I artikeln undersöks vad som händer när ett manualbaserat program översätts och implementeras i svensk kontext. Studien visar att de samtalsledare som leder programmen strävar efter manualtrogenhet, men att översättningar och kulturella anpassningar sker för att de utrikesfödda deltagarna ska förstå programmet. Många föräldrar är dock nöjda med och känner sig stärkta i sitt föräldraskap efter att ha genomgått COPE programmen.

In a seminal article in education and neo-institutionalist theory, Meyer and Rowan (1977) proposed that organisations are subject to institutional constraints. These constraints must be met for organizations to be seen as legitimate and thereby secure resources, but meeting them may get in the way of the efficient execution of their core activities. Organizations solve it by “loose coupling”, i.e. they purportedly meet the formal requirements, yet go about their business as they see fit. In this study we follow a number of state-sponsored projects carried out by Swedish civil society organizations aimed at integrating refugees after the massive refugee wave in 2015. We interviewed churches, voluntary associations, social enterprises, immigrant associations and municipal projects. With the exception of immigrant associations, the regular, core activities of the interviewed organizations were not related to integration. We hypothesized that the organizations might turn to loose coupling – do whatever they found best, and report to the government what the government wanted to hear, and in so doing secure long terms funds and institutionalize integration activities in their organizations.

We found, however, that after a few years, most activities were discontinued. First, they were not only loosely coupled, but rather decoupled from the organization’s core activities. Projects were started by engaged individuals whose prior experience determined the content. Teachers arranged language training cafés, nurses initiated health projects, and those with industry experience arranged job interview training and internships. The documentation and reporting requirements from the government were difficult to meet, as they measured other things than what volunteers and participants valued as important. Continued funds could therefore not be secured. In lieu of funds, the activities were too decoupled form the organizations core activities to be integrated in their regular programs. So, instead of “efficient loose coupling” there was “inefficient decoupling”, and integration was not institutionalized.

There were two exceptions: One was the immigrant associations who did not rely on external funds and where integration was already a core activity. The other exception was a social enterprise who upon not securing continued funding started a new, independent company. It was financed by selling cleaning services provided by immigrant women who also received language training and other support. In so doing, the formal framework of the organization became perfectly aligned to the integration activities.

The lesson learned is that if the government wants to draw on the engagement of voluntary associations in the long term, programs and projects need to be aligned to the core activities of the associations, and evaluation criteria must be aligned to what volunteers and participants find meaningful. Theoretically, the study shows that there is a limit to loose coupling – the activities must be at least somewhat aligned to the formal organizational framework to be legitimate in the long term. We add the concept of “inefficient decoupling” to institutional theory. It explains when and why loose coupling does not work, and why inefficient decoupling, because of its inefficiency, may lead to the creation of a new formal organization which is able to house the desired activities.

This paper proposes a new theory of Conditional Social Equality (CSE) which in some ways challenges the theory of cumulative advantage/disadvantage (CAD), which postulates that inequalities and social divisions necessarily increase over time. Using evidence from informal learning groups in Men’s Sheds in three countries, we conclude that some social divisions between homosocial groups, in this case groups of older men, may actually decrease – but only under certain conditions. Male-gendered learning groups that were relatively homogeneous by age helped erase class divisions and softened gender stereotypes. Our theory of conditional social equality (CSE) predicts the following: i) in-group homogeneity can enable the acceptance of some aspects of heterogeneity, ii) some other aspects of in-group heterogeneity may not be tolerated, thus maintaining in-group cohesion, and iii), in-group homogeneity and boundary setting towards out-groups may be prerequisites for the acceptance of (some) aspects of in-group heterogeneity. All of this has important implications for adult learning in both heterogeneous and homogenous groups.

A global land rush developed during the last decade, spared primiarly by the sharp rise inglobal food prices between 2007 and 2008. The inceased international food prices resulted inincreased interest from foreign actors to invest in agricultural land in developing countries inthe global south. The “global land rush” or “land grabs” is driven by the increased demandfor primarily food and biofuels. The phenomenon refers to foreign direct investment inagricultural land in developing countries that has escalated in recent years, with Sub-SaharanAfrica as the most targeted. This study examines foreign land investment in Ghana focusingon the regions of Brong-Ahafo, Ashanti and Volta through a qualitative literature study. Thepurpose of the study is to analyze to what extent these investments can be explained asneo-colonial or as development opportunities. Based on analyzing economic, political,cultural and power relations, the study concludes that all cases are in line with neo-colonialtheory according to Nkrumah. The economic effects show temporary job creation and loss oflivelihood, which indicates economic exploitation. The cultural effects include disruption oftraditional practices and loss of cultural identity, suggesting cultural imperialism. The aspectof political power shows the marginalization of local interests and political dominance. Noneof the three cases fulfills the principles of a win-win situation and therefore can't beconsidered development opportunities either. The legal frameworks in the regions prioritizeforeign actors over the rights and welfare of affected communities, leading to an unbalanceddistribution of power. The job opportunities that the projects bring often hide the long-termeffects and loss of livelihoods for the local population. In conclusion, this study contributes tothe understanding of Land Grabbing in Ghana as a neo-colonial phenomenon rather than adevelopment opportunity. 

This study explores the portrayal of the climate-conflict nexus in global and national communications on climate change response. It utilizes a qualitative inductive approach and the IPCC AR5 (2014) was chosen to represent global communication documents, while two Afghan communications, the Initial as well as Second National Communication, on climate change and response were used to represent the national level. Through a content analysis, several themes were discerned through which the climate-conflict nexus is portrayed. It can be concluded that there are several differences between the global versus Afghan communication documents, as well as between the Initial National Communication (2012) and the Second National Communication (2017). The Second National Communication overall attempts to mirror the communication used by the IPCC by using the same themes but in a more indirect way. The analysis finds that the climate-conflict nexus is often portrayed through indirect communication and that this leads to a lack of conflict-sensitivity in the Afghan national documents, concluding by making suggestions on how to improve conflict-sensitivity in these documents.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, public sector organizations (PSOs) face communication challenges that can impact the public. These challenges depend on the organization’s and its employees’ use, understanding, and knowledge of the purpose of communication and communication platforms. This is particularly true when PSOs use social media to communicate about complex societal issues strategically. In this case, strategic communication about public safety can do good by opening up interaction, further information sharing, and community engagement. On the other hand, it can harm the public by instilling fear, for instance, by using the wrong digital media or steering a narrative that benefits the organization but not society. This is where the friction (disorder and potential) around PSOs’ use of social media lies. This study focuses on the Swedish police as a specific PSO due to their work to create public safety, besides preventing and investigating crimes according to Swedish law. Another reason is due to their extensive use of Facebook and Instagram lately. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how PSO employees, in this case, Swedish police employees, make sense of their use of social media to contribute to public safety. The empirical material is based on 20 qualitative interviews and four critical making workshops with Swedish police officers from one police region in Sweden. The material is analyzed with a hermeneutic approach to understand how employees make sense of their social media communication to contribute to public safety. The results of this study show that employees find it useful to use social media as a strategic communication tool to inform their community, to control the narrative, or to avoid criticism for doing nothing or ignoring it. Police social media links to presence as a strategic communication counterpoint to the difficulty of being present in the non-digital realm. However, the findings also highlight the friction between what needs to be communicated, how, by whom, and across which media channels. This increases the aspect of communication disorder, which has implications for the content of public safety. Furthermore, this stems from avoiding popular social media platforms, inhibiting creativity, and causing communication challenges for employees trying to fulfill their digital communication roles in promoting public safety to diverse audiences. This study adds to the literature on PSO communication, strategic communication, and policing regarding the challenge of communicating complex societal issues in a rapidly changing world.

This study explores adolescent reasoning behind the use of alcohol at different types of parties, often house parties, and about the strategies to achieve maturity and prevent losing control. The data consist of semi-structured interviews with 23 adolescents aged 16–18 years (16 males and seven females). The interview transcripts were analysed using an inductive, thematic approach. All informants had personal experience with drinking at parties in different social settings. Our results suggest that the process of learning how to drink, often through failure in terms of being intoxicated, is important for adolescents’ who strive to control their alcohol intake resulted in a good time and a break from everyday life. Furthermore, the results indicate that different social settings and party types engender different drinking patterns. Maturity and controlled conduct come across as desired ideals that provide a person with symbolic capital and thus, social status.

Att leva med tiden handlar om vad ålder och åldrande kan betyda i olika sammanhang och hur betydelsen förändras över tid och rum. I boken diskuteras olika samhälls- och kulturvetenskapliga perspektiv på ålder och åldrande. Boken belyser vilka konsekvenser vetenskapliga sätt att se på åldrande kan få i analys av, och relation till, vardagsliv, vetenskaplig verksamhet och i det offentliga livet. Förutom historiska tillbakablickar presenteras också teorier om ålder, normalitet och identitet samt ålder ur ett intersektionellt perspektiv.

During recent years the issue of integration has gained increased attention in the public, as well as the political, debate. Integration is described as a two-way process that emphasises mutual responsibility between newcomers and established swedes. Therefore, social integration can be seen as a precondition for the integration process of newcomers, as the social aspect involves knowledge of the Swedish language and access to a social network, as well as interaction with the residents of the majority society. However, when it comes to the individual integration process women tend to have less personal freedom than men. This study will focus on an integration project aimed at favouring newly arrived women on parental leave as a part of their integration and will research experiences of social integration and its importance among the project participants. Six semi structured interviews, including two interviews with newly arrived women and four with established swedes, will lay the ground for the empirical materialof this study. The collected material will then be analysed through Diaz’s integration model thatemphasises the social aspect of integration, and Berry’s acculturation model, as well as theirunderstanding of the concept of integration. The theoretical concepts of this study are thought to help us gain a more nuanced understanding of the experiences and views of the participants. The result shows that the language is of crucial importance for the integration process of newcomers, whereas the interplay with established swedes constitutes both a principal precondition in order to learn the language, as well a main challenge to their integration process. Based on the results we acknowledge the importance of a mutual recognition and openness as prerequisites for successful integration.

| The present study is part of a microsociological research conducted between 2016 and 2019 in the context of the emergence of new social movements triggered in post-dictatorship Chile. Specifically, it deals with the emergence of the sociopolitical discourses of people labeled as disabled. The intention is to present the construction of the political discourses of dissident disability activists living in Chile. For this purpose, we value these discourses as counter-hegemonic or from the margins; that is, they do not follow the approaches of dominant medical and citizen interpretations. We used a qualitative and feminist methodological approach on the bodily itineraries of eleven activists. This allowed us to further explore the group's life trajectories, social discourses, and political praxis. The political discourses of dissident disability activists living in Chile are part of the claims of non-standard corporealities to access the public and cultural scene. It is imperative to generate counter-hegemonic discourses incor-porating diverse knowledge in order to advocate for the rights of people who relate to difference and to make visible the structural inequalities that affect subaltern collec-tives. The article incorporates a situated, feminist, and Latin American perspective to address a phenomenon of growing interest in the social sciences, and presents reflec-tions that contribute to both academia and activism.

The current efforts to address global sustainability issues are failing. To avoid the consequences of transgressing the planetary boundaries and simultaneously provide people with the basic needs for human prosperity, we have to overcome a profound challenge. We have to produce economic and social well-being while, at the same time, resolving long-standing environmental problems that threaten our very own existence. To overcome this challenge, new types of values-driven enterprises and innovations that aim to regenerate Earth have to guide global development and decision making.

Therefore, this study investigates a new approach to entrepreneurship called regenerative entrepreneurship, an approach that aims to reframe the meaning and purpose of sustainability by building flourishing socio-ecological systems through innovations and business practices that are regenerative by design. By conducting a multiple case study of regenerative organizations, we have delved into the personal stories of entrepreneurs who, on a daily basis, enact their values to regenerate Earth. Through this, we have answered the question of how regenerative entrepreneurs enact their values to build and maintain regenerative organizations.

The findings suggest that regenerative entrepreneurs enact their values in two ways, proactively and reactively, by constantly aligning and calibrating their values, personally, internally, and externally, making sure that they themselves and all their stakeholders work towards the same vision of regenerating Earth.

The study describes findings from a community-based participatory and challenge-driven research programme, that aimed to improve health equity through a health promotion platform in an ethnically diverse low-income neighbourhood of Malmo, Sweden. Local residents, together with lay health promoters living in the area, were actively involved in the planning phase and decided on the structure and content of the programme. Academic, public sector and commercial actors were involved, as well as NGOs. In this study, empowerment was used as a lens to analyse focus group interviews with participants (n=322) in six co-creative health-promoting labs on three occasions in the period 2017-2019. The CBPR interview guide focused on the dimensions of participation, collaboration, and experience of the activities. The CBPR approach driven by community members contributed to empowerment processes within the health promotion labs. Findings indicate that health promotors were able to build trust in social places for integration; participants motivated each other by social support, and that the programme design enabled them to act for community health in a wider circle. To understand the processes of change and empowerment on the community level, the CBPR Health promotion programme should be followed up longitudinally with community participants.

The purpose of this study is to examine if there is a relation between granted asylum and

expectation of gratitude in individuals who have been granted asylum in Sweden, and whether

expectation of gratitude has an impact on an individual’s process of social integration. This is

examined through seven semi-structured interviews with respondents who have all been granted

asylum in Sweden and hold Swedish citizenship. The theory of hospitality from a refugee

context has been used to analyze and discuss collected data. In order to analyze and discuss

collected data, a thematic analysis has been applied to the material. The results of this study

show that there is a connection between granted asylum and expected gratitude, though the

connection is affected by various factors. The reason why an individual has to leave their home

country as well as knowledge of how colonialism has an impact on an individual’s displacement

are two decisive factors for how expected gratitude is experienced. Furthermore, the study

shows that gratitude can be experienced as either expected or automatic, but both affect an

individual’s process of social integration and tend to create a feeling of being obliged to give

back to Sweden as a gesture of gratitude for being granted asylum. However, it is not

specifically the feeling of expected gratitude that influences an individual’s process of social

integration. It is rather the feeling of gratitude, whether it is expected or automatic, that has the

definite impact on the process of social integration.

Educational arenas are important sites for understanding how diversity and democracy become operationalised since they constitute and at the same time must attend to students' different needs. This article focuses on diversity from two specific angles: how research activities allow for particular ways of understanding human differences and how human pluralism is conceptualised in the organisation of education. These discussions emerge from the position that our use of language itself shapes human realities. The organisation of the segregated Swedish special schools for the deaf and research that focuses on this specific “human category” are used to illustrate and discuss issues pertaining to diversity and democracy. Pupils in special schools are conceptualised both as “handicapped” as well as belonging to a “linguistic-minority” group. Democratic tensions related to maintaining a separate school and conducting research on the human category defined on the basis of “deafness” are discussed and alternatives raised. Implications regarding (the lack of) pluralism in research perspectives and agendas are also discussed and the need for integrating studies of marginalisation into mainstream academia is highlighted.

The essay presented in this paper constitutes a reflection based on my explorations of transcending siloed academic areas from Southern or Decolonial frameworks generally and on my reading of the 572-page, 2023 volume Decolonizing The Mind. A guide to decolonial theory and practice by Sandew Hira published by Amrit Publishers more specifically. Aligning with emerging discussions regarding the need to trouble the colonially framed ways of mainstream academia and academic writing itself, I - like an increasing number of scholars, including Sandew Hira - attempt to present these reflections in what may appear as unconventional writing. This paper is organized in six sections that talk to the human condition across the territories of the contemporary planet based on situating and historicizing its narrative as a response to emerging decolonial waves that have so far marked academic settings differently across the global North and the global South, including my open-ended reading of Sandew Hira's 2023 volume. In lieu of a standard summary, this reflective paper functions as an expanded teaser to the volumes rich and troubling offerings.

This chapter draws attention to salient tensions between the increasing recognition accorded to the heterogeneity and complexities of human communication in Northern places on the one hand and the naming traditions regarding what is glossed as language in the language scholarship (broadly conceptualized) in these spaces on the other hand. It spells out analytical tenets that constitute a Second Wave of Southern Perspectives, SWaSP framing that emerges in conversations with and at the cross-roads of multiple overlapping theoretical positions. A SWaSP framing highlights the need to go beyond programmatic hegemonic tendencies in the mainstream scholarship with the intent to create a global-centric multiversal or pluriversal agenda. The chapter presents four illustrations regarding naming traditions from across time and physical territories glossed as the North and the South to engage with SWaSP tenets and highlights tensions when attention is focused on naming traditions. Systematically drawing attention to these tensions constitutes dimensions of justice and solidarity where the agenda is to de-center naturalized hegemonies when language is loose in institutional settings.

This chapter expands language policy analytical engagements by drawing attention to the need for using cross-sectorial, multi-scalar materials from across digital-analogue spaces. It analytically explores dimensions of democracy and social justice that get framed as equity in contemporary timespaces by engaging with materials where languaging plays different roles. Bringing together a two-fronted conceptual framing that aligns with ongoing epistemological shifts of relevance to equity-related language policies, it illuminates how the mundane-ness of social practices related to texts, peoples, and institutions accounts, and the flow of everyday life gets implicated in knowledge creation. Its key point of departure is that all policies are languaged. This chapter interrogates promises of equity as these play out in contemporary north-centric settings like Sweden that are framed as democracies.

This paper presents critical reflections regarding entangled relationships between access, communication and inclusion and illustrates how these play out across multiple analytical scales, ranging from interactional data analysis to engagement with policy data. The study draws on our ethnographic fieldwork from two large projects where roughly 45 18-50+ year-old people have been shadowed across settings. The study aims to illuminate dimensions of analyst’s participation in terms of the flow of the everyday lives of people they track within and across physical-online spaces and within and across education, workplaces, cultural settings, homes, leisure-time, governmental agencies, health services, social media, etc. Such a stance acknowledges the mobile yet situated, partial and limited nature of contemporary existence and that of knowledge generation within the research enterprise.

By engaging with what we call a “second wave of southern perspectives” (SWaSP), the access that scholars have and the identity-positionings of people they track can be understood in terms of (non)support i.e. (non)affordances of different settings for human beings’ possibilities to engage in social practices. In addition to bringing into dialogue different theoretical clusters within a SWaSP framing, the study goes beyond essentialized ways of understanding methodologies or single project reporting, and attempts to shed light on the chained entanglements, intersections and enactments of policy and practice, artefacts and humans, including the ways in which such relationships seldom present themselves in an intuitive manner for the analyst (or project participants).

A SWaSP framing is attended to as dimensions of doing multiple-scale ethnography, in terms of being positioned as scholars who are mobile across contemporary physical-online spaces, are reflexive about their mobile gaze and who follow individuals, tools and inscriptions as they emerge across online/physical/private/institutional spaces. Where someone is, how and when people meet, what such meetings offer in terms of positionality, opportunities, meaning-making and learning, are riddled with continua and disruptions that not only create analytical and methodological dissonance in mainstream scholarship but, more significantly, emerge as challenges for scientific enquiry by taking onboard the very theoretical and methodological implications of such continua and disruptions.

Built upon alternative epistemologies and going beyond straight-jacket methodologies, this study juxtaposes four cases across geopolitical time spaces with the intent to (i) discuss trans methodological framings, and through these (ii) unpack the role that boundaries and liminality play in the constitution of what is glossed as human and collective language and identity. We argue that a researcher’s mobile gaze is highly relevant in making visible and troubling processes that contribute to the re-enforcing naturalization of archaic conceptualizations pertaining to not only language, identity, nation-spaces, but also nationalism. Applying a SWaSP, Second Wave of Southern Perspective framing, the paper troubles mainstream methodologies and epistemologies and engages with peoples mobilities (including the scholars mobile gaze) and the processes of boundary creations across time and the global-North/South by including the South in the North and the North in the South. We gaze analytically at (i) Sápmi across northern Scandinavia and Russia; (ii) Nagalim in the tri-junction area of the eastern parts of India, Myanmar and China; (iii) massive displacements that ensued during the violent emergence of the nation-spaces of India and (West) Pakistan through the creation of the Radcliffe Line in 1947; and (iv) the urban to rural Pandemic induced exodus across the internal boundaries of the nation-spaces of India in post-March 2020. Conceptualizations that build upon the materiality of and the boundary-marked nature of language, identity, and nation-spaces (and their populations), salient features across these four cases, are also – we argue – etched in mainstream scholarship despite having been challenged through historical, philosophical, and empirical explorations. SWaSP’s reflexive tenets call attention to the cost of disruptions, the counter-flows related to colonially marked mobilities in disentangling analytical engagement as a trans methodological stance. This builds on the scholar’s mobile gaze at the entanglements of time-spaces, vocabularies, epistemology-methodology and positionalities.

India has witnessed a massive transformation in the development and use of information technology in the last decade. The way technology is experienced however, varies; and social class, gender, and age are prominent parameters that frame its use. The present study focuses the spaces of Mumbai Mobile Creches (MMC)[1] – a not for profit organization which works towards ensuring nutrition, health, and safety of migrant families and their children who spend their lives on construction sites in the mega-city of Mumbai. MMC operates day care centres on 25-30 construction sites where trained early childhood care givers, teachers and attached professional staff, including volunteers, deliver a large range of services including qualified crèches, preschools and educational facilities for children between birth and 14 years of age. Currently, 40% women workers at these centers are made up of members of construction workers’ communities. While these women execute a range of tasks creatively and under very challenging conditions, limited exposure and competencies in the use of English restricts their use of digital technologies, including web media. It is these women who constitute the first generation of technology users that this study focuses upon.   

The study explores the access and reported experiences of women first generation digital users. It aims to understand barriers and facilitators for access to new technologies among these women, what significance these have for them, the role/s these play in shaping their sense of self and role of gender and age in technology use. The main research questions include: How does access to and engagement with new communication technologies look like in the lives of first generation women users in mega-city hubs in present times of flux? How do issues of access shape women first generation users lives? In what arenas do women from the middle and lower economic strata in a mega-city context in India have access to new communication technologies? What do their life trajectories look like and what, if anything, can we learn about development from this type of collaborative research?

The following empirical materials have been specifically used in this study. In-depth case studies with adult women first generation new technology users based upon a series of audio-recorded conversations and written daily records maintained by the women, video-documentation of Sakhi empowerment monthly meetings, minutes of the Sakhi meetings, and MMC annual reports across two decades, 2000-2014.

This paper empirically supports often sighted association between women’s entry into workforce and their empowerment. Nuances of the gender role expectations in use of technology and empowerment of women are focused. Empowerment of women emerges as a complex process wherein women transgress some aspects of traditional gender roles while continuing to be framed by others. LanDpost is concerned with intersections of language, gender, and media in an increasingly digital world. The present study illuminates the role digital media and language play in the access to and use of new technologies, including web media and how access to these shapes adult, first generation users lives.

[1]http://www.mumbaimobilecreches.org/aboutus.htm

This thesis investigates the reception of the updated directive, Energy Performance of Building Directive, from the EU. The focus of the study is to analyse eight referral responses from chosen stakeholders and investigate their perspectives on the updated directive, negative and positive, any specific interests, are there any patterns that emerge in their responses and what are their concerns regarding the possible impact on society. The intention is to map the possible outcomes in society, focusing on social sustainability, including issues such as economic impact, social justice, and community impact. 

The empirical material in this study is eight different referral responses on the updated version of the Energy Performance of Building Directive. The chosen methodical approach for this study is document analysis and thematic analysis. The findings are presented in four themes and later analysed and discussed through the lens of the chosen theoretical framework, which is environmental justice. 

The findings show a large focus on accessibility to housing, resources and cost efficiency, excessive regulation and micromanagement, and the need for financial support and incentives. The stakeholders fear that the number of details in the Energy Performance of Building Directive will sub-optimise Sweden’s production. Even though the directive states that this initiative will protect the most vulnerable groups in society, the stakeholders fear it will aggravate the situation due to increased rents and economic burdens in general for the whole society. 

This study concludes that such details should be discussed at the national level and it is important to include an environmental justice approach to avoid increasing the current inequalities and ensure that the needed transition will not be made at the expense of vulnerable segments of the population.

This study is based on 16 immigrant welfare-reliant women's discourses on motherhood in five focus groups. The women connect their mothering strategies for promoting discipline and their children's educational success with living on scarce finances: welfare dependence, children's education, and discipline are intertwined and recurrent themes that the interviews prompted. A dominant argument is that discipline diminishes the risk of school failure and deviant behaviour. Educational success is imperative for the children's chances to obtain employment and self-provision as adults; deviant behaviour must be stifled to avoid criminal activities, school failure, and future welfare dependence. The women argue that Swedish society obstructs their mothering through lax discipline in school, a disregard for parental authority, and restrictive welfare stipulations. They desire better support. This study widens our understandings of immigrant women's experiences of mothering on welfare, and informs political decision-makers and professionals in their work to develop supportive services for migrants.

Long-term unemployment with dependency on social assistance in Sweden has increased and is particularly high among foreign-born persons. The present study explored immigrant recipients' experiences of being welfare reliant. Swedish-Iraqi women's construction of exclusion and belonging in relation to policies and welfare regulations was scrutinised. The women referred to unemployment with frustration, expressing that it renders dependence on social welfare and enforces adherence to the stipulations of the social services. The individual's mobility and agency are restricted and concerted efforts to obtain employment are futile, which increase the sense of exclusion. However, the entitlement to social assistance also engenders feelings of belonging, of being connected to and cared for by the new country. More research is needed to examine the role that social assistance regulations play in forming feelings of belonging and exclusion. It appears essential that political initiatives be taken to reverse the trend of high unemployment among foreign-born persons.