Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur Europeiska socialfondens (ESF) horisontella principer översätts i region Sydsveriges projektägares skriftliga ansökningar, med hjälp av ett konstruktivistiskt och nyinstitutionellt perspektiv. Genom en beskrivande idéanalys tillsammans med Carol Lee Bacchis ansats om problemrepresentation ämnar uppsatsen besvara frågeställningar som berör hur de horisontella principerna i ESF:s policydokument beskrivs, vilka effekter denna beskrivning får samt hur de rekonstrueras i lokala projektansökningarna. Uppsatsens resultat hävdar att det finns en rekonstruering av policydokumentet i projektansökningarna, där de horisontella principerna inte fullständigt bäddas in i den lokala kontexten, det vill säga särkopplas. Projekten måste anpassa sig till de strukturer som finns i dess omgivning, bland annat ESF:s riktlinjer och krav. Det sker på så sätt en institutionalisering av, i detta fall, EU:s strukturer i svensk offentlig organisering. / The aim with this thesis is to study how the horizontal principles of the European social fund translates in Swedish project applications. The perspectives used to study how the horizontal principles of the European social fund are described, what effects the descriptions have and how they are reconstructed in the project applications are social constructivism and neo institutional theory. To study translation this thesis uses descriptive idea analysis and Carol Lee Bacchi ́s method What ́s the problem represented to be?. The results of the analysis show that the project applications reconstruct the horizontal principles of the European social fund, but they are not fully embedded in the local context, hence decoupling. The projects have to adapt to the dominating structures of the European social fund, thus that the public administration in Sweden will institutionalize the structures of the European social fund.

This study aim’s to examine how conceptions regarding culture and ethnicity influence the daily work of personnel in integration projects financed by the European Social Fund (ESF). The method of this study was individual semi-structured interviews with nine persons working in three different projects. The reason why we have chosen these specific projects was because of their work with immigrant participants. Concepts that our study is based on was culture and ethnicity, but also the theory considering in-groups and out-groups. The result of our study shows that the personnel acknowledge the importance of individual adaptation in the work with the participants, but with awareness considering cultural expressions based on their origin. The answers of the personnel also reveal a cultural hierarchy in the Swedish society. We found out that discrimination from employers is mainly based on the immigrant’s lack of Swedish linguistics. The personnel consider the knowledge of language to be one of the most important factors for immigrants when integrating into a new society. Some of the personnel mentioned that cultural prejudices affect their refutation in the meeting with immigrant participants.