This thesis explores the response of locals towards Mexico’s migration crisis. The primary objective was to determine how the local people in Tapachula responded to the new form of mass migration, known as migrant caravans, over the last 10 years, between 2014 and 2024. A qualitative method was employed, consisting of the usage of a self-developed tool of analysis for the empirical material to measure collective emotions of solidarity and rejection. The results indicated that the local response towards migrants in Tapachula has evolved from more frequent acts of solidarity to more constant responses of rejection over the last decade. The study concludes that the responses of solidarity or rejection appear to be derived from the situation people live in, and not necessarily against the individual migrant. Situations of uncertainty about what could happen with this new form of mobilization lead to mixed responses with more solidarity, while situations of frustration towards the migration crisis in Tapachula lead to a tendency of rejection responses. With these findings, this study reveals important aspects of the influence of news articles on the formation of public opinion towards vulnerable groups of newcomers and highlights areas for future research on understanding the drivers of solidarity and rejection responses.

Since 1989, there has been a period of rapid change of the economies of the former Eastern bloc. Within a few years, the majority of the formerly centrally administered economies had begun restructuring their economic systems, including the privatisation. of formerly state-owned enterprises. This process developed differently in different countries, depending among other things on their historical traditions and the momentum of their social, political and economic transformations. This doctoral dissertation examines the privatisation of large-scale industrial enterprises in Slovakia prior to 1997. In particular the thesis analyses the changing political and institutional framework governing the process and method of privatisation; and how the governance of firms was affected by the new markets and ownership- and control-structures that were established. Special attention is paid to the role played by investment funds andinvestment-companies established as a consequence of voucher privatisation. The research problem is approached both from an aggregate national level and from the enterprise level. The thesis includes a number of case studies of enterprises in Slovakia that underwent privatisation, and of investment funds that emerged to take part in the process. In addition, two panel-data sets were constructed for the sake of statistical analysis. The study points to the drastic changes in privatisation policy and its enactment, under different governments. It leads to the conclusion that privatisation is a highly political process, whose economic effects cannot be separated from its distributional effects. This politicised nature of ownership reform is shown to have some negative side-effects with regard to the development of well-functioning governance structures. It is, for example, pointed to that the capital market, as it developed during the period of study, was highly non-transparent,characterised by high transaction costs and insider-trading. The study also documents an increasingly concentrated ownership structure of the Slovak industry and relates it to the changes in privatisation policy. In the final analysis attention is drawn to a recurring theme in the study, namely the issues related to the relative stability and durability of the institutional set-up. In many cases an insecurity about "the rules of the game" led to short-term incentives and opportunism on behalf of the economic and political agents.

Since the 1980s, practically all of the western welfare states have developed social policies, which aim at shifting the responsibilities for welfare services from the state to the family, the civil society or to the market. In Sweden, this political transformation has particularly hit the public eldercare. In the last twenty years, the percentage of the population 65 years and older receiving public home help services in Sweden has decreased from 23 to 8 per cent at the same time as the number of beds in hospitalized eldercare has been heavily reduced. Moreover, during the course of the 2000s, the majority of the Swedish municipalities have reintroduced means testing of the eldercare based on whether the elderly have relatives or not that can perform the services. Parallel with these downsizes in the publicly financed and organized eldercare; privately produced eldercare services have increased, carried out by large and internationally own business corporations. Based on an theoretical framework, which combines the historical approach within the neo-institutional research tradition with a discursive method of analysis, this thesis explores if the period from the 1980s and onwards has been a formative moment in Swedish eldercare during which new ideas have become embedded in the institutional frameworks regulating the division of responsibility for eldercare services between the state, the family and the market. To examine if and how the municipalities, which are principally responsible for organizing and financing the public eldercare in Sweden, have implemented the change in ideas that have emerged in national politics since the 1980s, the thesis also examines how the eldercare has developed in two of Sweden’s municipalities since the 1980s. The results of the thesis demonstrates that the period from the 1980s and onwards has been a formative moment in the Swedish eldercare during which new ideas regarding the public responsibility for eldercare service have emerged and become institutionalized. Since the 1980s, senior citizens’ need for care has increasingly been re-interpreted from a public to a private issue with the consequence that today, their need for certain services, in particular those related to housework, are no longer regarded to be a public responsibility but a private matter that the elderly will have to solve, either by buying the services on the market, or, by asking relatives for help and assistance. The main problem connected with this reprivatization of senior citizens’ need for care is, however, that as the state has withdrawn its responsibility, women, in their role of being wives, daughters, or daughters-in-laws, have been forced to step in as informal and unpaid providers of care. Therefore, regardless of political reigns and modes of production, women have been forced to taken on an increasingly larger responsibility for their elderly relatives.

This thesis explores the bilateral shipping and trade between Finland and Sweden during the post-war period. It comprises five articles and one introductory chapter for which the common point of departure is the growth and transformation of bilateral trade and shipping. The first two articles analyse the structural change of bilateral trade from a national and regional perspective. The three following articles provide an overview and analysis of the ferry shipping. By integrating the perspective in these articles in the introductory chapter and by providing a long historical record, the change of economic relations between Finland and Sweden in the post-war period is discerned. This thesis applies an economic historical approach and is founded on various fields of social science. The issue of trade is analysed within the framework of conventional and new trade theory, and the analysis of ferry shipping is governed by economic and geographic theories. The studies on trade shows that the transformation of production seen in Finland and Sweden meant that the trade increasingly became dependent on an exchange of products arising from matching industries. In turn the foreign trade arising from the Northern part of Finland and Sweden was still dominated by so called inter-industry trade. In addition to these results, the studies of ferry services shows that the growth of vehicles and passengers conveyance, together with the expanded onboard services, also intensified the commercial exchange. Due of the multi-output structure, the ferry service efficiently met the growing demand of travel and trade. The main conclusion of this thesis is that the convergence of incomes and economic structure had a significant impact on bilateral trade and ferry shipping. In addition the process of economic integration, technological advances together with specific policies issued on shipping also contributed to strengthen the economic ties between Finland and Sweden.

In this dissertation the question of why people want to stay in the county-side has been analysed from an economic-historic perspective. The specific research question has been: Using which formal economic means of sustenance could those who remained in Ängersjö parish ensure their survival in the years 1950 to 1990? A number of different types of sources have been used, including income tax registers, data on migration, agricultural statistics, parish registers, interviews, and printed public statistics. The population of Ängersjö parish decreased through the entire period of investigation. In the early 1950s the population pyramid in Ängersjö resembled Sweden’s quite considerably. After this point, the tendencies towards depopulation grew stronger. By the early 1990s, the population had returned to the levels of the early 1800s, i.e. before the forest became valuable. This time, however, the proportion of older inhabitants was much larger. Most of the remaining households supported themselves through wage labour in the forestry sector, which essentially was a male preoccupation. At the margin, supplementary incomes, such as the renting of cottages and capital revenues, could add to household earnings, and contributions by women probably played an important part in that context. In addition, informal economic activities, such as berry-picking and the exchange of labour, could expand the means of support by a maximum of 20 percent. In spite of all these efforts, most of the remaining households earned less than an average Swedish industrial worker. The income differences could to some degree be compensated by lower housing and living costs, but many households probably enjoyed a lower material standard of living. Demonstrably, most of the remaining inhabitants of Ängersjö were willing to pay the economic price associated with the “feelings of freedom” or the upkeep of their ancestral home of which many inhabitants spoke. / Flexibilitet som tradition

This dissertation is concerned with the making of metal making. It explores how skills, knowledge, and artefacts were circulated and grounded within the Swedish metal trades during the period ca. 1730 to 1775. It also analyses how these processes were related to different ways of organising practices of work. The metal trades are referred to as comprising various forms of state-supported metal manufacturing outside the guild system. The focus is on finer metal making (finsmide), above all cutlery making. The first chapter discusses the theoretical and methodological approaches. Critical to the analysis are the terms strategies and tactics, which are used to approach the interplay of different ways of knowing and acting in everyday metal making. This is done related to a trajectorial method. The trajectories of state official Samuel Schröder and the Stockholm cutler Eric Engberg are centred, but I also explore one broader skills-trajectory: the ‘English way’ of making cutlery. Chapters 2 to 4 examine the strategic stage for metal making, focusing on the attempts made by the eighteenth-century Swedish state to order the domestic trades in line with ideas of an all-embracing division of labour. This development is investigated by discussing regulations, spatial mapping and supervision, as well as descriptions and ‘corrections’ of workshop practices. Chapters 5 to 7 highlight the interplay of strategies and tactics within a changing manufacturing ‘system’. Artisans’ journeys, the construction of workshops in Stockholm, and the introduction of piecework at provincial knife works during the 1750s and 1760s are explored. The discussion leads up to the founding of a ‘free town’ for metal-making artisans in Eskilstuna in 1771. The results of this dissertation add to Swedish research on early-modern metal making in a number of ways. Urban space and the connections between metal-making communities are highlighted. In doing this, emphasis is placed on how practices of work were shaped over time by the movements of people, artefacts, and materials. Most notably, the circulation, imitation, and local adaption of knowledge and skills within the metal trades are accentuated. These findings also connect to recent research concerned with manufacturing and knowledge-making in pre-industrial Europe.

Den här uppsatsens syfte är att med hjälp av mantalslängder och skiftesprotokoll undersöka hur Skruvby, ett litet småländskt bysamhälle, förändrades i samband med laga skiftet som genomfördes 1827-1828. Undersökningsperioden är på 20 år, mellan 1825 och 1845, för att kunna se förändringarna på lite längre sikt. För att genomföra denna undersökning har jag tagit hjälp av följande huvudfrågeställning: Vad betydde laga skiftet för de ekonomiska,demografiska och sociala förändringarna i Skruvby mellan 1825-1845? Som sammanfattande svar på huvudfrågeställningen kan man säga att laga skiftesreformen i Skruvby medförde eller bidrog till tre tydliga effekter. Den första var en folkökning bland den obesuttna delen av befolkningen. Den andra effekten var en proletariseringsprocess, eftersom en ökning av den obesuttna delen av befolkningen måste ha inneburit att fler var tvungna att förlita sig på inkomster från andra håll än jordägande, exempelvis dagsverken. Slutligen skedde en uppsplittring av den mantalssatta jorden, förmodligen på grund av att reglerna för handel med och uppstyckning av jord mildrades i samband med skiftet. Det blev helt enkelt lättare att göra lite mer som man ville med sitt jordinnehav.

This licentiate thesis examines the development of the life insurance industry during the period 1855-1914. The aim with the study is to recognise dimensions not frequently addressed by previous research on the insurance industry, namely the impact of social dimensions, including the implicit and explicit economic importance of social movements and the diffusion of knowledge in society at large for the development of the life insurance industry. The study shows that income and price had limited importance in explaining the demand for life insurance before the 20th century and that this can be attributed to a lack of sufficient knowledge regarding financial issues and to a far too high access cost in acquiring a life insurance for a large part of society. The development of the life insurance industry must therefore be understood through improved knowledge both on the part of the life insurance companies and on part of the consumers. The licentiate further shows how diffusion of knowledge throughout society also was due to a diffusion of democratic ideas and the rise of social movements, movements that life insurance actors were a part of. These actions helped open up the financial market for the masses and probably also strengthened the trust towards the industry. It is however hard to dismiss the life insurance actors’ engagement in women’s movement as a cover-up for other disguised motives not so honourable, while a direct economic gain for the life insurance industry is hard to establish.

Opinions on what is best way to provide more people in low income countries with adequate water and sanitation services have changed over time. A recent policy paradigm suggests that private companies should be involved in WSS service provision to improve the situation for those in need. This study looks at how issues of water supply and sanitation (WSS) have been confronted by the international donor community and how strategies to improve performance in this sector have changed from the early 1970’s up until today. The evolution of ideas and strategies are linked to overall development policies in order to better understand the forces that have shaped policy redirections in the sector. In addition, the case study of Ghana gives a preliminary picture of how donor policies have been played out in a national context. The concept of problem frames is used as an analytical tool in order to highlight how ideas change and replace each other but also to illustrate how problem frames are becoming more inclusive as new knowledge and experiences are gained. The study finds that while hardware knowledge such as engineering skills were put at the forefront to begin with, software matters such as capacity building and appropriate management of the sector gained increased attention with time. As the water challenge becomes increasingly framed as a matter of managing scarcity, the economic value of water is emphasized and private sector participation is promoted on a larger scale. With time the cross sectoral nature of the WSS issue gains increased attention as its overall impact on poverty reduction and environmental sustainability is emphasized. This holistic approach also contributes to an increased emphasis on sanitation as important to sustainable WSS systems and services. The case study of Ghana shows that all in all, institutional change within the Ghanaian WSS sector during the post independence era, mirror international policy trends. Power is moving out from the state in different directions and responsibilities are gradually hived off from the central organization to local authorities or other agencies working on specific issues. Subsidies on water tariffs are abolished and at the end of the period the private sector is also invited to act in the sector. However, recent trends indicate that as democracy deepens and civil society is growing stronger this also effects policy development in the Ghanaian WSS sector.

<p>The production of meat has risen dramatically during the past decades. This process, generally referred to as the <em>Livestock Revolution</em>, particularly includes so called “developing countries”, hosting the most intensive augmentation of both production and consumption. As agricultural activities often are performed by small-scale farmers in these countries, the principal question for this study has been how family farmers are affected by the <em>Livestock Revolution</em>.</p><p>This study approaches the <em>Livestock Revolution</em> in Brazil, the world’s biggest national exporter of meats and animal feeds, from the small-scale farmer perspective. Drawing on a case study of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, it is argued that family farmers experience multi-level marginalization. Smallholders of pork and poultry face direct marginalization through vertical integration with the large-scale meat processors (the agribusiness). Other family farmers experience marginalization through the actual exclusion from ‘integration’, as the combined corporate forces of agribusiness and supermarket chains control the principal distributive channels. Small-scale farmers also face indirect marginalization as the increasing production of soybeans (used as animal feeds) and large-scale cattle raising create an unfortunate ‘competition for arable land’. Overall, the case study seems to reflect a national tendency, in which the <em>Livestock Revolution</em> intensifies the polarization of the agrarian community in Brazil, thus creating parallel patterns of prosperity for the agribusiness and marginalization for the small-scale farmers.</p><p>As the Food Regime analysis aims to approach the global political economy by analysing agri-food structures, this theoretical approach has been used to contextualize the case of <em>Livestock Revolution</em> in Brazil. From this viewpoint, the <em>Livestock Revolution</em> constitutes an explicit expression of a corporate Food Regime, increasing the power of private companies at the expense of family farmers. However, the Food Regime analysis also identifies divergent patterns of this Third Food Regime, in which the corporate discourse is being challenged by an alternative paradigm of food and agriculture. The marginalization of farmers in rural Brazil has indeed provoked emancipatory responses, including alternative patterns of production and distribution, as well as direct confrontations such as land occupations. This ‘resistance from the margins’ accentuates the conflict between contrasting visions for food and agriculture, apparently embedded in the Food Regime. The farmers’ emancipation is therefore somewhat determined by the rather uncertain progress of the Third Food Regime.</p>