This is a case study with purpose to examine the implementation of the European Union Youth Strategy and the action of reducing early school leavers, which was put in force with the youth field of the European Union in 2010. The strategy contains of eight action fields, onwards only the field within education & training will be examined further in line with the strategy’s main objective to provide equal opportunities for young people in education. The theory of Normalization Process Theory focuses on policy implementation and how it becomes fully embedded within the intended society. Throughout the examination will be of how the implementation is supposed to work and how it actually is put into action within the two member states selected for this study, Sweden and Cyprus. The question to examine is to what degree has ‘the EU Youth Strategy’, and the fact of it being implemented within the member states, influenced the reduction of early school leavers. Through the method of comparative case study approach, materials were gattered throughout a variety of forms such as legislations, policies, evaluations, reports and many more. The analysis consists of the implementations of the action into the states, through what institutions and national legislations, as well as analysing the received grant from the European Union and what it has produced within the states. In conclusion, presenting the results of Sweden and Cyprus, both succeeding to reduce early school leavers, nevertheless, through different actions and interpretations of the strategy.

This study examines the childhood emigration, cultural and linguistic transitions and adaptation pathways of Eastern European immigrant students on an urban university campus. Although Eastern Europeans and immigrant children represent a substantial segment of the immigrant population in the U.S. they are understudied groups. After the collapse of the Soviet Union large numbers of migrants emigrated from the former Soviet Republics, but less is known about their experiences compared to other immigrant groups. Immigrant children have historically come to the U.S. since its inception but compared to the adult experience their status has been rendered ambiguous and their experiences marginalized to such an extent that they have largely been invisible in the literature. Commonly children are referred to as "children of immigrants" rather than assigned their own category of "immigrant children." While it is generally acknowledged that primary socialization of children influence their secondary socialization, the influences of child migrants' inculcation in the first culture, migration, acculturation and integration experiences with associated emotions have not been sufficiently considered. There is a general assumption in much of the immigrant scholarships that the cultural influences of the first country on child migrants are essentially negated by the acculturation process in the U.S., and this conjecture leads scholars to construct various generational categories that collapse immigrant children with the second generation native-born youth in their analysis thereby potentially skewing or obscuring critical outcome information. Since immigrant children's voices have largely been missing in the research process, through 34 in-depth interviews with Eastern European immigrant college students, we examined the extent to which the child migrants experienced the migration dislocation and incorporation as well as the possible lasting consequences in their adaptation pathways, self-identifications, social interaction, and standpoints on societal issues associated with emotional acculturation. Collectively, the Russian and Ukrainian immigrant students' narratives about their college experience indicated that they were meeting with success academically, were focused on individual goals, expressed appreciation for diversity, and were integrated into the social and professional organization on the university campus. However, most of the participants who emigrated during childhood reported that they had difficult or traumatic migration transitions in their first U.S. schools and neighborhoods, and often they recounted emotionally the memories of these profound events associated with their acculturation during the interviews. As a group, the Eastern European students expressed that both positive and negative immigration and transitional experiences, perspectives gained from the shared struggle with their parents, openness to diversity, achievement orientation, and work ethic are some of the differentiating characteristics that set them apart from their native-born American siblings, and the second-generation Russian and Ukrainian children of immigrants. Most of the Russian and Ukrainian immigrant students on campus socialized with other immigrants of diverse backgrounds, mainstream American students, least often with co-ethnics and rarely with second-generation co-ethnics or native minorities. When we conceptualize the social interaction boundary to include all immigrants, then the participants in this study may be considered "immigrant in-groupers" following in a modified form some of the findings of Grasmuck and Kim (2010) that investigated the social mixing patterns of four ethno-racial groups on the same campus. Although most of the participants had reported overall positive high school experiences, those who contended with social development issues, understanding the American culture, and the English language on the campus disproportionately represented those who had reported overall traumatic childhood integrations. As a group they embraced the ideology of meritocracy, and those who had reported traumatic childhood acculturation experiences more often adhered to the standpoint that white people were not more privileged and that equal opportunity exists for all. When we considered identity formation we found substantial complexity in the Eastern European immigrant students' self-identifications with a tendency to resist labels. Salient non ethnic (cosmopolitan/global/role) identity claims, hybrid or multi layered ethnic self-identifications that included salient non ethnic components emerged from their narratives. None of the participants identified solely as "American" but included it or referred to degree of "Americanization" as an element in their self-identification. The totality of the dominant patterns that emerged from the Eastern European immigrant students' narratives lend support for the standpoint that in research concerning outcomes for immigrant children, methodologies are warranted that take into account age at arrival, developmental stages, engendered emotions during childhood acculturation, and the standpoint of the foreign-born children. Concomitantly, the model of segmented assimilation does not theorize the potential impact of emotions on school age children who negotiate divergent peer contexts of reception without their parents. This investigation indicates that children's reaction to the nature of their acculturation may be manifested differentially when considering social psychological adjustment, adaptation, and mobility, and that the emotional legacy of childhood migration experiences ought to be considered at least equal to structural features such as governmental policies toward them, the composition of their enclaves, and labor market conditions. / Sociology

Background: Type 2 diabetes is thought to result from interactions between genetic and lifestyle factors, but few robust examples exist. The overarching aim of this thesis was to discover such interactions by studying cohorts of white youth and adults from northern Europe in which physical activity, genotypes, and diabetes-related traits or diabetes incidence had been ascertained.   Methods: The thesis includes four papers. In Paper I, we investigated associations and interactions between 35 common PPARGC1A polymorphisms and cardiovascular and metabolic disease traits in 2,101 Danish and Estonian children from the European Youth Heart Study (EYHS). Paper II used the same cohort to test associations and interactions on cardiometabolic traits for the diabetes-predisposing TCF7L2 polymorphism. In Paper III, we assessed associations for 17 type 2 diabetes gene polymorphisms on impaired glucose regulation (IGR) or incident type 2 diabetes, and tested whether these effects are modified by physical activity in a prospective cohort study of ~16,000 initially non-diabetic Swedish adults – the Malmö Preventive Project (MPP). Paper IV aimed to replicate main genetic effects and gene x physical activity interactions for an FTO polymorphism on obesity in 18,435 primarily non-diabetic Swedish (MPP) and Finnish (Prevalence, Prediction and Prevention of Diabetes in Botnia) adults. Results: In Paper I, nominally significant associations were observed for BMI (rs10018239, P=0.039), waist circumference (rs7656250, P=0.012; rs8192678 [Gly482Ser], P=0.015; rs3755863, P=0.02; rs10018239, P=0.043), systolic blood pressure (rs2970869, P=0.018) and fasting glucose concentrations (rs11724368, P=0.045). Stronger associations were observed for aerobic fitness (rs7656250, P=0.005; rs13117172, P=0.008) and fasting glucose concentrations (rs7657071, P=0.002). None remained significant after correcting for multiple statistical comparisons. We proceeded by testing for gene × physical activity interactions for the polymorphisms that showed statistical evidence of association (P<0.05) in the main effect models, but none was statistically significant. In Paper II, the minor T allele at the rs7903146 variant was associated with higher glucose levels in older (beta=–0.098 mmol/l per minor allele copy, P=0.029) but not in younger children (beta=–0.001 mmol/l per minor allele copy, P=0.972). A significant inverse association between the minor allele at rs7903146 and height was evident in boys (beta=–1.073 cm per minor allele copy, P=0.001), but not in girls. The test of interaction between the TCF7L2 rs7903146 variant and physical activity on HOMA-B was nominally statistically significant (beta=0.022, Pinteraction=0.015), whereby physical activity reduced the effect of the risk allele on estimated beta-cell function. In Paper III, tests of gene x physical activity interactions on IGR-risk for three polymorphisms were nominally statistically significant: CDKN2A/B rs10811661 (Pinteraction=0.015); HNF1B rs4430796 (Pinteraction=0.026); PPARG rs1801282 (Pinteraction=0.04). Consistent interactions were observed for the CDKN2A/B (Pinteraction=0.013) and HNF1B (Pinteraction=0.0009) variants on 2 hr glucose concentrations. Where type 2 diabetes was the outcome, only one statistically significant interaction effect was observed and this was for the HNF1B rs4430796 variant (Pinteraction=0.0004). The interaction effects for HNF1B on 2 hr glucose and incident diabetes remained significant after correction for multiple testing (Pinteraction=0.015 and 0.0068, respectively). In Paper IV, the minor A allele at rs9939609 was associated with higher BMI (P<0.0001). The tests of gene x physical activity interaction on BMI were not statistically significant in either cohort (Sweden: P=0.71, Finland: P=0.18). Conclusions: Variation at PPARGC1A is unlikely to have a major impact on cardiometabolic health in European children, but physical activity may modify the effect of the TFC7L2 variants on beta-cell function in this cohort. In Swedish adults, physical activity modifies the effects of common HNF1B and CDKN2A/B variants on risk of IGR and also modifies the effect of the HNF1B on type 2 diabetes risk. In Swedish and Finnish adults, we were unable to confirm previous reports of an interaction between FTO gene variation and physical activity on obesity predisposition.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2010. / Härtill 4 uppsatser. Även tryckt utgåva.