The war in Ukraine has led to the displacement of millions of Ukrainians. Refugee policy hasalways been hotly debated and the Swedish political debate has been divided since Swedenhas received refugees from a lot of war-torn countries. Previous research has shown thatrefugees from different parts of the world are portrayed in different terms. Therefore thisstudy aims to compare discourses in the portrayal of Syrian refugees during the years2014-2015 and Ukrainian refugees in 2022 respectively in the Swedish political discourse.Specifically, it will be examined how the parties Sweden Democrats and the Moderates haveexpressed themselves in political statements about the Syrian refugees in the years 2014-2015compared to the Ukrainian refugees in 2022. The aim is also to critically analyze thesediscourses and how "us and them" identities are constructed. In order to carry out the study, acritical discourse analysis and Fairclough's three-dimensional model has been applied to theempirical material. The theoretical framework that has been helpful in analyzing the politicaldiscourse on refugees has been the postcolonial theory, the theory of racialization andOrientalism. The study concluded that Syrian and Ukrainian refugees are portrayeddifferently. Syrian refugees are mostly talked about in negative terms, while Ukrainianrefugees are described in positive terms. The result of the study also showed that the Syrianrefugees were mostly excluded to be described as "them" and the Ukrainian refugees wereincluded in a "us". These findings align with results from previous research in studies ofrefugee portrayal.

Background: Identity construction is the predominant developmental task in adolescence and young adulthood. Disabling hearing loss (HL) exacerbates the psychosocial challenges faced by adolescents and young adults (AYA) in their identity construction. The primary goal of this research study was to describe how AYA with disabling HL feel about and perceive their identity. Further, to understand the aspects underlying identity construction, with a focus on self-perception, navigating disability, social roles and relations, and community assimilation. Methodology: A qualitative interpretive phenomenological approach was adopted. Participants were a purposive sample of 5 Deaf and Hard-of-hearing AYA, aged 15 to 19 years. All participants were enrolled in schools for the deaf in the Western Cape and partook in semi-structured phenomenological conversations, where they narrated detailed accounts of their lived experiences with identity construction. Results: Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to formulate themes. The superordinate themes of creating a self-concept, belonging, stress and being deaf emerged from participants' narratives. Identity construction occurs concurrently at several levels. At the personal level, deaf AYA create self-conceived ideals of who they are (Creating a self-concept), at relational level identity is nurtured through person-to-person and person-to-group interactions (Belonging). At societal level deaf AYA ascertain their position as individuals within the larger society (Being deaf). Protective factors, enabling factors and barriers that threaten positive identity construction, audiological health, and the psychosocial wellbeing of deaf AYA were identified. Overall, findings from this study indicate that the experience of identity construction for AYA with HL is layered and laden with challenges. Identity formation, albeit portrayed as a process of differentiation, is a balancing act. Identity is self-defined and equally exists in a collective identity with others. Identity construction also subjected participants to stress arising from the emotional burdens of HL, stigmatisation, and resultant psychological effects. Amid unique challenges, deaf AYA consciously developed coping mechanisms, some constructive and others detrimental to their audiological health, all while negotiating their position in the larger society. Conclusion: Study findings appeal to individuals in the caring professions such as audiologists, teachers, educational psychologists, and social workers to understand the nuances of identity construction for the successful transitional care of deaf adolescents moving into adulthood. Counselling needs to be responsive to the needs of deaf AYA, identity domains should be upheld in the provision of person-centered care and possible trajectories for identity crisis should be evaluated when considering school placement. Benefits of group counselling and peer support groups should be explored. There is a need for interventions that curb negative audiological health behaviours through assertiveness training and self-advocacy. The micro implementation of employment equity policies and legislation is critical to ensure the realisation of AYA's prospective identities in the South African workforce. Findings call for the reorientation of audiological rehabilitation and strengthening of interdisciplinary collaboration to meet the psychosocial needs of AYA with disabling HL.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Sudan is one of the countries with a large number of people who move around the country for safety and better living conditions due to conflicts and the long lasting war. These people are referred to as Internally Displaced People (IDPs), and most of them live in rural areas. The war in Sudan has led to socio-economic deterioration, and has negatively affected social services such as health and education, particularly in the IDP camps. As a result, children's access to education and the quality of education remain a great concern. Educational challenges include poor infrastructure, lack of facilities and teaching-learning materials, over-crowding and shortage of trained teachers. Illiteracy rates are higher among women, and the drop-out rates are higher among girls. It is believed that traditional socio-cultural practices are barriers to girls' access to education in this country. In light of the above, this study investigates factors which contribute to girls' construction of educational aspirations in the IDP camps of North and South Sudan. The girls' educational aspirations are explored in relation to gender empowerment discourses in order to gain an understanding of how gender empowerment is perceived and implemented by young females as they move between the school and home environments. It analyzes the impact of socio-cultural factors on girls' educational aspirations, perceptions and self-esteem in order to understand the significance of education within a gender empowerment framework in the lives of young girls 10 disadvantaged communities of Sudan. Through the lens of the Capabilities Approach and various Feminist views, the study explores how gender discourses in education are understood, and the extent to which they contribute to building girls' opportunities and capacities in the local context. The study provides an analysis of the girls' opinions of themselves, and the influence of socio-cultural factors on their inspirational plans and expectations. This study employed a qualitative case study design. Various qualitative data collection methods which include qualitative Life History Interviews (LHJs), In-Depth Interviews (IDIs), Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and non-participant observations were used for triangulation purposes. Data were collected from two schools in IDP areas in North Sudan, Khartoum State and in Juba, South Sudan. The target groups were girls in Grades 6, 7 and 8. The teachers and girls' parents in the IDP communities were also involved in the study. The findings of this study indicate that the girls' educational aspirations are built around knowledge, agency and capabilities which appear to correspond with girls' empowerment and self efficacy. However, there a number of traditional socio-cultural practices which . seem to have a negative influence on girls' educational aspirations, and they tend to reinforce gender inequality and stereotypes in different ways. These practices are rooted in the patriarchal nature of the Sudanese society, and the manner in which children are socialized. Girls' educational aspirations in such contexts are subject to the life challenges that they experience in their environment, such as poverty and their perceived low socio-economic status at home and in school. This study concludes that girls' educational aspirations and perceptions are constructed and shaped within the gender role socialization and the traditional or patriarchal social system in Sudan. The home and school environments in disadvantaged communities of Sudan appear to reinforce gender inequality in the manner in which parents and teachers treat children. The entrenched socio-cultural practices and pressures seem to impact negatively on the school girls' educational aspirations, expectations and self-esteem. The research provides a number of recommendations which aim at bridging the gender gap in school and at home, in order to support girls' equal access to education. It recommends free gender biased school and home environments which provide equal education opportunities to both boys and girls for socio-economic empowerment.

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This study sets out to investigate how the roll of the teacher is constructed in the Swedish Teachers’ Unions trade publication. Based on the theory of social constructionism we have used the method of critical discourse analysis to establish dominant trends and patterns in how the roll of teacher is constructed in editorials in Swedish Lärarnas Tidning. We have established that the conflict between a modernist school tradition and a postmodern society has resulted in a dominant, traditional teacher discourse which is being simultaneously challenged by both a market-orientated discourse and a professionalization discourse. Furthermore, we attempt to highlight how these ‘ideal’ constructions can create problems in terms of identity construction for teachers. Aside from a process of professionalization, teaching has also undergone an intensification in terms of workload in a period of incessant education reform, with new tasks being handed down without any of the older tasks disappearing. According to the Swedish Teachers’ Union this has rendered teaching something of a “mission impossible”.

[pt] Este trabalho objetiva investigar a relação entre as identidades que os manifestantes das Jornadas de Junho de 2013, no Rio de Janeiro, reivindicam para si e os episódios de violência policial ocorridos durante os protestos. Tais episódios se iniciaram após o aumento da tarifa de transporte. Com a intensa repressão da polícia, as manifestações ganharam expressiva adesão popular e houve uma diversificação das reivindicações. Compreendemos essas manifestações como parte dos movimentos que se espalharam pelo mundo a partir de 2011, tendo a crise da representatividade como importante motivação para a indignação (Castells, 2013). Este estudo se alinha à Análise de Narrativa (Bastos 2005; Bastos e Biar, 2015) e à metodologia qualitativa interpretativista de pesquisa (Denzin e Lincoln, 2000), com uma dimensão autoetnográfica (Reed-Danahay, 2001). Os dados foram gerados com entrevistas em profundidade com dois manifestantes presentes nas principais atividades de ocupação do espaço público no período. Partindo do modelo laboviano, identificamos as narrativas e os elementos que os manifestantes tornam relevantes nas avaliações que fazem sobre personagens e ações narradas. Concebendo a narrativa como forma de organização da experiência (Bruner, 1973), a análise foi orientada pela visão socioconstrucionista do discurso e das identidades (Moita Lopes, 2003). Na análise, percebemos que os manifestantes constroem suas identidades partindo do sentido que atribuem à violência policial em suas narrativas. Nesse processo, reivindicam identidades que os projetam numa luz favorável. Concebemos essa violência como choque moral (Jasper, 1997) que produziu indignação para além do aumento da tarifa e levou mais indivíduos, inclusive os nossos entrevistados, a participar das manifestações em junho de 2013. / [en] This study aims to investigate the relationship between the identities of the protesters of the Jornadas de Junho in Rio de Janeiro claim for themselves and episodes of police violence that occurred during the protests. Such episodes began after the increase of the transport levy. With the intense repression of the police, the protests have gained significant popular support and the claims became diversified. We understand these protests as part of the movements that have spread across the world since 2011, taking the crisis of representation as an important motivation to indignation (Castells, 2013) This study aligns itself with the Narrative Analysis (Bastos 2005; Bastos and Biar 2015) and interpretative qualitative research methodology (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000), with a autoethnography dimension (Reed-Danahay, 2001). The data were generated from in-depth interviews with two protesters present in the occupation of public spaces in the period. Starting from the labovian model we identified the narratives and the elements that protesters made relevant in their assessments about characters and narrated actions. Conceiving the narrative as a way of organizing the experience (Bruner, 1973), the analysis was guided by social constructionist view of discourse and identities (Moita Lopes, 2003). In the analysis, we noticed that protesters construct their identities starting from the meaning attached by then to the police violence in the narratives. In the process, claim identities that show then in a favorable light. We conceive this violence as moral shock (Jasper, 1997) which produced outrage beyond the tariff increase and took more individuals, including our respondents to participate in the protests of June.

Suresh Canagarajah, John Trimbur, Bruce Horner, and others argue that U.S. scholars must begin imagining their academic institutions as part of larger global English conversations, which would involve expanding Western perceptions of "good writing" to allow for the cultural and ideological differences implied by the term "global." Horner and Trimbur, for instance, urge compositionists to take an "internationalist perspective" to writing instruction, to ask, "whose English and whose interests it serves" in relation to the "dynamics of globalization" (624). To better understand what it means to write internationally in English, I conducted ethnographic research at the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS), a self-identified "Indonesian, international, interreligious Ph.D. program," in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. My ten-month ethnographic project, which drew from teacher research, interviews with students and faculty, and student texts, suggests that English, though linked to Western cultural imperialism--and thus Western ideology-- can no longer be considered solely a Western language, useful only for Western purposes and audiences. The first section of this dissertation focuses on institutional and individual identity construction in relation to ICRS's local-global goals and what the program's language policy terms the "painful decision" to adopt English despite being "aware of the imperialism of English." By placing Indonesian language history in conversation with faculty and student interviews, this section suggests that language, whether local or global, is never entirely "authentic" or "imperialist"--that English, despite its imperialist implications, is also capable of representing Indonesian identities. The second section of this dissertation shifts from identity negotiation to frictions involved with the actual writing process, particularly in relation to culture, audience, and rhetorical choice. Drawing from Bakhtin's notion of diachronic audience, this section explores the complexity involved in determining "whose English" is appropriate given ICRS's Indonesian, yet international intentions and the multiple audiences, both local and global, suggested thereby. This section highlights cultural and material frictions students reported when moving between Indonesian and Western rhetorical traditions--and thus audiences-- while also highlighting how students re-articulate English as both local and global, Indonesian and international as they write to the multiple audiences suggested by English as an international language.

he specter of deepfakes and artificial intelligence enabled media productioncontinues to exacerbate the fear brought on by a degraded ability to discern the real from the fake, syn- thetic, or fabricated in a networked society. While these fears are well-founded especially as they pertain to issues of involuntary pornography their introduction into an already oversaturated media landscape, if anything, extended trends in mediated indeterminacy already being fostered by the universalization of social media platforms. Sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, made more explicit the contingency and per- formative nature of identity. As younger generations came of age through social media they learned how to navigate and present themselves through it in novel ways unique to each platform. Oftentimes, these strategies were harmful to people’s perception of themselves and their mental health. Other times, however, it gave them the ability to experiment with new forms of identity more in line with how they actually felt. Further, more experimentation through ubiquitous mediation extended what kinds of identities are possible in general as well. In turn, the discovery and extension of identity has led to the evolution of desire. Identities and desires hitherto not possible in a physical space precipitated the creation of new objects of desire that can be pursued and materially experienced regardless of their virtual nature. Deepfakes, and now generative AI, anticipate a further, exponentially more complicated relationship with identity and desire formation through the adoption of increasingly unreal presentations of each. / Media Studies & Production

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