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In Sweden, Muslims have increasingly become accused of being a threat to liberal, gender equal values and Muslim women constructed as victims and often excluded from Feminist discourses. Therefore, this study aimed to explore how Feminist Muslim women construct and navigate their Feminist beliefs in Sweden. Qualitative data was collected through opend-structured interviews with five foreign-born women, residing in Sweden. The thematic analysis showed that overall, the interviewees were navigating the complexities of intersecting identities - as Muslim, women, migrants and living in Swedish society. Main contributions included how intersectionality helped to communicate their beliefs and expereinces against percieved stereotypes of Muslim women and how experiences of othering reinforced how they understood obstacles they faced in their everyday lives. Postcolonial Feminist theory and the concept of "othering" were applied to help explain the findings.

This thesis is a qualitative case study that explores bisexual migrants’ experiences of belonging in Sweden. The study employs semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of the importance of bisexual migrants’ different identities in facilitating belonging both in the context of a new country and within the wider LGBT community. Supported by theoretical concepts such as outside belonging, passing and monosexism, this thesis servers to highlight the complexities of belonging at the intersection of being bisexual and a migrant. The results of this study find that sexual identity is something more fixed than migrant identity which evokes feelings of outside belonging. The perceived LGBT-friendliness of Sweden however, proves significant in allowing participants to live out their bisexuality compared to their respective home countries, but navigating belonging within the LGBT community being bisexual can remain challenging, even in Sweden.

This paper is a qualitative study with the aim of investigating how immigrants who have an academic  education from their home country experience their situation in the Swedish labor market. The study  aims to find out immigrants' own experiences regarding the obstacles they encounter in the pursuit of a  job that matches their level of education and work experience. Six Arabic-speaking immigrants have  participated in this study through the interviews I have conducted with them, which have been the  empirical material for this study. In this study and on the basis of what my interviewees have told me,  I have been able to identify various obstacles that make it difficult for them to get a job that corresponds  with the education they have. The assessment of the foreign degree, language skills, and lack of social  networks seemed to be obstacles for immigrant academics to find the right job. Most of the interviewees  felt that it is important to work, but what is also equally important is that they put their skills and  knowledge to use. Therefore, they have expressed different wishes regarding different forms of support  that they think can enable them to have the chance to show what they can and what knowledge and  competence they have. Support that they think can benefit their situation in the labor market is a clear  guide, better language teaching and a guide to internships that are linked to their education and work  experience.

This thesis examines the media representation of refugees in the Finnish national news companyYLE by comparing media discourses from two different refugee situations. The cases comparedare the 2015 refugee crisis and the inflow of Ukrainian refugees in 2022. The material of theanalysis consists of YLE’s news articles about the two refugee situations. The articles areanalyzed with the help of tools from critical discourse analysis, and the results are theorizedthrough the concepts of securitization and victim-pariah nexus. The findings suggest that in themedia discourse of 2015 refugees were portrayed more as a threat, but the differences were not sosignificant as what could be assumed from the previous research concerning the topic. Thefindings, together with the theoretical framework, show that the 2015 media discourse representsmore clearly the traditional victim-pariah nexus found in previous research, while the 2022discourse represents a new discourse normalizing refugees.

This dissertation is about the incorporation of labor migrants from Turkey in the context of precarious U.S. labor markets. Labor market transitions and work experiences are two aspects of incorporation. This dissertation analyzes the process by which first-generation Turkish male immigrants arrive in the United States, enter low-wage jobs, and then shift to the trucking industry. This shift brings a significant upward mobility for them. This discussion explains how the socio-economic cleavages within the immigrant community both conform to and challenge the dynamics of immigrant-dominated sectors. Moreover, this study examines the work life of immigrant truckers through their conception of money, time, occupation, entrepreneurship, and labor. This dissertation addresses two sets of research questions: The first set analyzes the structural reasons of labor market transitions by looking at the limitations that immigrants face. The second set looks at the role of agent, examining the formation of family-based and community-based networks and resources. It asks the question of how migrants navigate the labor market by changing jobs and sectors as well as by forming businesses. The findings of this research draw from investigations spanning three years. The qualitative data is based on 24 in-depth interviews, as well as several hundred hours of participant observations among first-generation Turkish immigrants who work as truckers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The present study contributes to sociological knowledge in general and specifically to three areas of the discipline. First, it enriches the limited literature on Turkish immigrants in the United States, as there is a dearth of research on their labor market incorporation in the trucking industry. Second, it contributes to the theoretical discussions on the entrepreneurship of first-generation immigrants by focusing on small and understudied immigrant communities. Third, this study extends the academic knowledge about the work experiences of immigrant truckers. It examines how the varying immigrant work experiences outcomes are influenced by employment status and the structure of trucking segments. Chapter 2 develops a conceptual framework regarding the labor transitions of immigrants focused on three dimensions: the migration policies of sending and receiving countries, the structure of labor markets in the receiving context, and the characteristics of the immigrant community. Chapter 3 details the methodology and methods used in this study. Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 encompass the empirical sections of this dissertation. Chapter 4 discusses the migration patterns of truckers by focusing on the importance of social networks. Chapter 5 explores the pre-trucking period during which Turkish immigrants work in dead-end jobs and prepare to become truckers. Chapter 6 examines the work life of truckers by revealing the processes of obtaining commercial driver's licenses (CDL), choosing the segment of the industry where they will work, and their search for and selection of trucking companies and loads. Chapter 7 scrutinizes the acts of entrepreneurship in which these migrants are engaged. Chapter 8 summarizes the empirical findings while engaging with the theoretical debates within sociology on the incorporation of migrants. First, the labor demands of U.S. capitalism attract immigrants to certain low-income jobs with little promise. After the early years of settlement, nonetheless, migrants are able to mobilize networks and resources to change this early labor-intensive occupational entrapment. Such a change provides income and status increases for the migrants. I term this new concentration “creative occupational entrapment,” which can (potentially) bring migrants some economic success via entrepreneurship. However, the accessed immigrant resources are constrained by the limitations of the dynamics within the trucking industry. The segmentation within the trucking sector is not something created by immigrants, as they only fill out the existing segments depending on their resources and ties. Second, the characteristics of a migrant community heavily shape the differentiation within the trucking industry in terms of an individual’s sector segment and employment status. The way in which immigrants mobilize ties are affected by three dynamics: hometown background, class-based dispositions, and family-based resources. I define three segments of trucking in this study: (1) national tractor-trailer trucking, (2) regional tractor-trailer trucking, and (3) local dump trucking. National tractor-trailer trucking attracts a variety of immigrants who tend to leave this “tough” segment after a brief while due to opportunities in the other segments. Immigrants of relatively higher education levels from urban backgrounds are more likely to work in the “cool” regional tractor-trailer throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. These individuals have loose ties to the immigrant community and have no tight-knit community ties. Conversely, immigrants of relatively lower education levels from rural background tend to concentrate in “dirty” dump trucking in specific counties of New Jersey. They have closer ties with the immigrant community and strict ties with their tight-knit community. Within each segment, new differentiations based on employment status are formed. Through the course of this research, five categories of immigrants were identified. Such categories depend on an individual’s employment status and the number of trucks they have: pre-trucking migrant workers have nothing to sell but labor (Employment 1), company truckers (Employment 2), survivalist truckers with one truck (Employment 3), family truckers with two trucks (Employment 4), and boss truckers who have more than three trucks (Employment 5). For the regional tractor-trailer segment, having class-based dispositions (such as English proficiency and the familiarity with the economic system) enables for the transitions from Employment 2 to Employment 3. Those who have family resources are more likely to increase their position from Employment 3 to Employment 4 and 5. For the local dump trucking segment, having tight-knit community ties and resources is usually enough to jump from Employment 2 to Employment 3. Thus, class-based dispositions are not strictly required given their tight-knit community resources. Those who have family-based resources have additional likelihood to increase their position from Employment 2 to Employment 4 and Employment 5. While individual-based resources are important to be self-employed due to the lack of community resources in regional tractor-trailer trucking, an individual’s tight-knit community helps truckers in local dump trucking to be self-employed. In both segments, family-based resources are key to becoming employers. The use of labor characterizes the labor market experiences of immigrants. For my participants, such a process begins with taking commands from employers, and ends with giving commands to their own employees. Labor matters when immigrants are exploited in non-trucking as well as trucking businesses. It also matters when they exploit themselves and family members in individual or family-based trucking businesses respectively. Only those who have several trucks are exempted from getting exploited. Although entrepreneurship might be economically beneficial for some, success is not always guaranteed in the long-term. Moreover, entrepreneurship potentially brings destructive competition, long hours of work and the intensive use of family labor. / Sociology

This bachelor thesis highlights how queer women of color perceive their racial, gender and sexual identity in targeted areas in Sweden. This is achieved from a constructivist lens using a case studies design in qualitative research. By using Intersectional theory, exploring the connection between race, gender, queerness and class and the unique experience this creates. Six different queer women of color from targeted areas were interviewed and the results showcased exclusion in both targeted areas as well as general Swedish society because of their collective, unique experiences of inhabiting marginalized intersectional identities. Furthermore, the results are discussed as a consequence of oversexualizing black women’s bodies, a systemic creation of an excluding divide in Swedish society and the lack of belongingness for queer people of color.

Mobility and patterns of mobility were discussed by many scholars. Previous studies reveal that mobility helps in changing human social identities. This paper aims to understand high-skilled migrants' mobility and the activities that form their identities. These activities are self-interested to learn and gain knowledge for self-development. The focus of the study is the identity formation and modification of migrated medical doctors in the Emirates of Dubai.  Identities- self (internal) and public (external) are powerful factors potentially shaping human activities. Building on a framework of identifying schools of thought in the social sciences, the paper will initially analyze the nature of social identity through interviews. Subsequently, research attention will shift from analyzing identity per se to the identity work process through which migrant doctors’ identity is shaped and developed for identification. The identity work process will be analyzed empirically based on actors’ self-experiences in their daily routines.

The aim with this essay is to increase knowledge about female genital mutilation by using stories from circumcised women to shed light on the background of the practice's continuation and its consequences for women's quality of life. Through qualitative interviews with women and a theoretical framework that includes concepts of stigma, back stage/front stage, power, and honor, women's experiences of genital mutilation were examined. The results show that women experienced physical, mental, and social consequences of genital mutilation and that there was a strong cultural and social influence on the decision to perform the procedure. The conclusions are that more research is needed to understand and stop female genital mutilation. To combat the phenomenon, it is suggested that education, information, and societal changes be used to increase awareness of the negative consequences of genital mutilation. / Denna uppsats syftar till att öka kunskapen om kvinnlig könsstympning genom att använda könsstympade kvinnors berättelser för att sedan belysa bakgrunden till ingreppets fortlevnad och dess konsekvenser för kvinnornas livskvalitet. Studiens syfte och frågeställningar kommer att besvaras med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer med kvinnor och en teoretisk referensram som inkluderar begreppen stigma, back stage/front stage, makt och heder samt undersöktes kvinnors erfarenheter av könsstympning. Studiens resultat visar att kvinnorna upplever fysiska, psykiska och sociala konsekvenser av könsstympning samt att det finns en stark kulturell och social påverkan på beslutet att utföra ingreppet. Slutsatserna är att det behövs mer forskning för att förstå och stoppa kvinnlig könsstympning. För att bekämpa fenomenet föreslås det att man arbetar med utbildning, information och samhällsförändringar för att öka medvetenheten om de negativa konsekvenserna av könsstympning.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第25069号 / 経博第676号 / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 神事 直人, 教授 森 知也, 准教授 長谷川 誠 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DGAM