Sweden's changing demographics, due to recent migrations in the last fifty years, have affected the Swedish educational system and Sweden's language policy. Funding for special education in Sweden regarding its minority populations is on the decline. Previous forced linguistic assimilation has occurred in Sweden among the Finnish population to the proven detriment of Finnish children. Today, Sweden faces similar value assessments regarding its immigrant language programs, bilingual education, and immigrant rights. The theoretical framework behind a "new" form of preschool education being implemented within Sweden will be explored. As the children in the Botkyrka sprakforskola undergo an immersion foreign language program, they are denied access to bilingual education. The sprakforskola's strategy, to assimilate the children into Swedish society through language training, is met with resistance among individual children, stemming from certain cultural groups, who actively determine their own language shift or language maintenance. Final recommendations in the conclusion stress the valuing of individual and cultural choice. / Graduation date: 2001

This dissertation examines how postcoloniality affects identity formation in contemporary women's immigrant literature. In order to do so, it must interrogate the critical fields that are most interested in issues of national and cultural identities, migration, and the appropriation of women by both Western and postcolonial projects. By examining the fiction of Bharati Mukherjee, Elizabeth Nunez, and Jhumpa Lahiri through the triple lens of ethnic American studies, postcolonial theory, and transnational feminism, I will argue that theorizing postcolonial women's writing in the United States involves sustained analysis of how particular socio-political experiences are translated into the context of American identity. I am particularly interested in the manner in which female subjects in these texts navigate between the various and often contradictory demands placed on them by their respective homeland cultures and their new immigrant positions in the United States. Although each of these writers depict immigrant women protagonists who adapt to these demands in their own particular ways, a study of these characters' gendered and cultural identities reveals a powerful relationship between the manner in which women are figured into the preservation of the postcolonial nation-state and the ways in which these women utilize immigration as an occasion to appropriate and subvert this role in the establishment of a new, negotiated identity. This project draws on three important and current fields of interest to both cultural and literary studies. Postcolonial studies, which has been central to the study of literature by minority writers, provides a useful foundation for understanding hybrid identities, dislocation, and the ways in which empire gave rise to nationalisms that utilized women in the formation and preservation of the nation-state. Transnational feminist theories are critical to understanding the implications of nationalism's appropriation of women and their bodies in it projects, and are especially useful in establishing feminisms that are not limited by American or European definitions and that defy homogenizing the experiences of postcolonial women. They affirm that there are many strategies for employing female agency, and that we must consider the particular circumstances (economic, cultural, racial, national, gender) that allow women of color to favor one strategy over another. Finally, U.S. Ethnic studies will inform my readings of texts that are, at their core, narratives of immigration to the United States and the seeking out of the American Dream. However, this dissertation suggests, the precarious position of immigrants in a nation whose ideals and dominating mythology are marred by a dark history of racism and exclusionary practices plays an important role in the establishment of an ethnic American identity in the United States.

This thesis aims at analysing the attitudes of youngsters in Brussels towards sociological minorities. The term “minorities” is used to refer to the main social groups that suffer from subordination and misrecognition by the wider society according to the philosophical theory of recognition: women, lesbians and gay men, and ethnic minorities. Our dataset is composed of a sample of seventy schools in the Brussels Capital Region. In total, three thousand one hundred and twenty one pupils attending in 2007 the last grade of secondary education participated in the study. About half of the sample consists of pupils with a migrant background originating from about 100 different countries. This cultural diversity, reflecting one of the main characteristics of the population of the Brussels Capital Region, is at the centre of the thesis. Because of the hierarchical structure of the sample (pupils aggregated within schools), the culturally diverse population of our sample and the multidimensionality of prejudice, multilevel multivariate linear responses models were performed. In brief, these models allowed us to interpret items regrouped according to their common variation across social (and ethnic) groups and not according to their a priori content similarities. Furthermore, these models allowed us to integrate three different research traditions on prejudice: social psychology on the dimensionality of prejudice, sociology on the impact of socio demographic characteristics on prejudice and school effectiveness research on the role schools may play in reducing pupils’ prejudice. With these models, we could demonstrate the capacity of multilevel techniques to encompass the complexity of prejudice and norms, and to provide an interdisciplinary approach of social processes. Besides the impact of gender and socio economic differences on prejudice, the association between ethnic origin and prejudice was the focus of the analysis at the individual level. Hence, the empirical literature showed that respondents of foreign descent and respondents from the receiving society do not hold similar attitudes towards minorities. This association was investigated in a twofold strategy: after having assessed ethnic differences on the different kinds of prejudice, the explanatory power of possible mediators -such as the experience of group-level institutional discrimination or the bidimensional identification- on this association was tested. The choice of these mediators was influenced by different disciplines of the social sciences. Hence, besides the empirical literature specific to the topic of prejudice, these mediators are derived from theories of political sciences, of sociology of immigration, of social psychology and of cross-cultural psychology. The results showed that these mediators could indeed explain to a large extent ethnic differences on prejudice towards minorities. On the school level, we have shown that the impact schools may have on pupils’ prejudice is a differentiated one. Hence, this impact varies according to both the targets and the dimensions of prejudice. Moreover, besides school institutional characteristics, several contextual characteristics were investigated such as the cultural and social diversity within a school. Our results showed that the impact on prejudice of social and cultural diversity within schools was non-significant. This is, however, most probably related to a masking effect by the specificities of the education landscape in Brussels: differences between schools are huge and homogeneity within schools is important, given that the educational field is highly segregated both in social and in cultural terms. The implications of these results based on an interdisciplinary approach for future research and for policymakers are discussed.

In Sweden, children and adolescents with two foreign-born parents constitute 17% of all children in the Swedish population. AIMS: The aims of this thesiswere to collect knowledge of the prevalence of gingivitis, caries and caries associated variables, in the 3-, 5-, 10- and 15-year age groups with two foreign born parents compared with their counterparts with Swedish-born parents in a ten-year perspective (Study I). To investigate the prevalence of caries and caries-associated variables in 15-year-olds in relation to foreign backgrounds and to examine differences in the prevalence of caries in adolescents with foreign backgrounds according to their length of residence in Sweden (StudyII). MATERIAL AND METHODS: In 1993 and 2003, cross-sectional studies with random samples of individuals in the age groups of 3, 5, 10 and 15 years were performed in Jönköping, Sweden. The oral health status of all individuals was examined clinically and radiographically. The children or their parents also answered a questionnaire about their attitudes to, and knowledge of, teeth and oral health care habits. The final study sample comprised 739 children and adolescents, 154 with two foreign-born parents (F cohort) and 585 with two Swedish-born parents (S cohort) (Study I). In Study II, all 15-year-olds(n=143) at one school in the city of Jönköping were asked to participate in the study. The final sample comprised 117 individuals, 51 with foreign-born parents and 66 with Swedish-born parents. All the individuals were interviewed using a structured questionnaire with visualisation e.g. food packages, sweets and snacks. Information about DFS was collected from case records at the Public Dental Service. RESULTS: In both 1993 and 2003, more 3- and 5-yearolds in the S cohort were caries free compared with the F cohort. In 1993, dfs was higher among 3- and 5-year-olds in the F cohort (p<0.01) compared with the S cohort. In 2003, dfs/DFS was statistically significantly higher in all age groups among children and adolescents in the F cohort compared with the S cohort. In 2003, the odds ratio of being exposed to dental caries among 10- and 15-year-olds in the F cohort, adjusted for gender and age, was more than six times higher (OR=6.3, 95% CI:2.51-15.61; p<0.001) compared with the S cohort (Study I). Fifteen-year-olds born in Sweden with foreign-born parents, or who had arrived before one year of age, had a caries prevalence similar to that of adolescents with Swedish-born parents, whereas children who had immigrated to Sweden after seven years of age had a caries prevalence that was two to three times higher (p <0.06) (Study II). Both in 1993 and 2003, the mean of the percentage of tooth sites with plaque and gingivitis was numerically higher in all age groups in individuals with foreign backgrounds compared with Swedish background, except between the 15-year-olds (Study I). CONCLUSIONS: The decrease in caries prevalence, in a ten-year perspective, was less among children and adolescents with foreign-born parents compared with children and adolescents with Swedish-born parents. In 2003, there was statistically significantly more caries in all age groups among children and adolescents with foreign-born parents compared with children and adolescents with Swedish-born parents. Children who immigrated to Sweden at age seven or later had a two to three times higher caries prevalence compared with their Swedish counterparts. The odds ratio for being exposed to dental caries was almost six times higher for 10- and 15-year olds with foreign-born parents compared with their Swedish counterparts. The intake of carbohydrate-rich food was higher among 15-year olds with foreign backgrounds compared to those with Swedish background. There is an obvious need to improve the promotion of oral health care programmes among children and adolescents with foreign-born parents.

With  the development of Chinese  economy  and market,  the Chinese brand  is going out  of China, more  and more  overseas Chinese  enterprises  have  attracted  attention outside of China. Among all these overseas Chinese, a group of people called Wenzhounese, famous for Wenzhou Model they created in China, bought back the dynamic industry cluster in regions in Italy. Blooming Chinese  brands  are  increasing  in  the corner  of  streets  and  their  industrial  clusters  range  from  leather  shoes  and  bags  to electric parts, apparel and so on. The purpose of this study is to explore whether the Chinese Wenzhounese immigrant companies in Italy perceive that they have particular common problems and/or benefits in branding themselves in Italy. Through analysis of the role of the brand management in these companies under the context of European/developed market, we aim to find which internal and external factors influence these obstacles and opportunities.

This essay is a study about the school introduction of immigrant pupils in the Swedish compulsory school. The purpose if this study is to examine the organisation municipal school introduction for immigrant pupils in the compulsory school in Södertälje. The method I have used is qualitative research method which depends on interviews and analysis of documents. The result shows that the municipal is without a plan for the school introduction of the immigrant pupils and that the individual compulsory school has the main responsibility for the school introduction of the immigrant pupils. The result also shows that there is a need of increased teaching of mother tongue. There is also a need of competence development within intercultural pedagogy. My conclusions are that a municipal plan for the school introduction of immigrant pupils should increase the immigrant pupils’ possibility to a shorter time of introduction to the compulsory school.

The aim of this thesis is to examine children’s educational conditions in senior compulsory school. The purpose is to compare girls and boys’ conditions on the basis of ethnical background. The thesis includes four articles. The first three are based on questionnaire data from 1,193 children, 13 to 15 years old, at four Swedish municipal schools. The last article includes two studies: A study conducted among the headmasters at the four schools and a study of the compulsory school attendance law. The first article introduces a study concerning parental involvement in their children’s education. The aim is to examine the children’s experience of their parents’ assistance in their homework, participation in school meetings and interest in their education. Finally, these topics are analysed in relation to the children’s own involvement in their education. The second article introduces a study concerning schoolchildren’s involvement in their own education and factors that correlate, beside parental involvement. The implicit aim is to study the children’s experience of teacher support, their situation in school and attitudes towards university education. The third article introduces a study concerning parent’s directives regarding their child’s participation in social activities. The aim of the study is to examine how many children that are not allowed to participate in social activities and some educational elements at school, for example psychical education and school journeys. The results of the questionnaire show great complexity concerning how the children experience their conditions, where sex/gender and ethnicity correlate. The last article examines the conflicts that may arise between the educational system and the parents regarding specific elements in their child’s education. This study examines the attitude of the schools towards allowing children to refrain from compulsory attendance at the family’s request. Results show that the attitude towards the families varies between the schools. The compulsory attendance law is indistinct, but legal cases show that it is illegal to allow children to refrain from specific elements within the education to fulfil the parent’s wishes.

Finnish-born writer Susanna Alakoski’s novel Svinalängorna became a big success after being published in Sweden in April 2006. Though the novel has many themes in common with earlier literature written by and about Finnish immigrants in Sweden, little attention has been brought to this fact by reviewers and journalists. This essay examines connections between Alakoski’s novel and Finnish migrant literature in Sweden, mainly from the 1970s, and how these connections have been recognised by reviewers in Sweden and Finland. Based on the examination made here, Svinalängorna can be said to have several significant themes and features in common with other Finnish immigrant literature written in Sweden. However, in the examined material, none of the Swedish reviewers and only two of the Finnish reviewers referred to earlier literature written by and/or about Finns in Sweden. The main reference point for the Swedish reviewers was traditional Swedish working-class literature while the Finnish reviewers mainly referred to newer Finnish literature exploring similar themes: alcoholism, poverty and childhood. In general, the Finnish reviewers found the novel more familiar than the Swedish reviewers.

The issue of honour killings has become a prominent topic of discussion in the Western discourse of violence against immigrant women. In Canada, particularly, the recent high-profile cases of honour killings have drawn increased attention from the media, academics and the public. The prevalent discussion links these murders to the broader issues of immigration, multiculturalism, and violence against immigrant women. In this thesis, I examine the nature of honour killings, their components, and the discourse of honour killings in its Canadian context. In doing so, I conduct a textual analysis of the representation of three recent honour killings in two major Canadian newspapers; The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. Results suggest that honour killings touched a nerve in Canadian media leading to the use of culturalist approaches to understand and represent these killings. This culturalist approach to the debate created serious obstacles for clarifying or explaining this form of violence against women. It further hindered any constructive public debate about ending these killings. The consequences of the culturalist approach to honour killings as well as recommendations for future research and theoretical developments in this area of violence against women are suggested. / UOIT

This qualitative research is about how Swedish media constructs immigrants in articles. The focus of the study will lie on ten Swedish articles and how they stereotype immigrants, but the demarcation will be for young immigrant boys related to crimes. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how media achieves its goal to construct a group as inferior. This will be implemented with the help of articles from different newspapers that reported on immigrants who have committed crimes. We have chosen to look at different newspapers to see if there is a curtain pattern in the construction of immigrant boy. How do the media focus on offenders with immigrant backgrounds look like? How is the immigrant boy constructed in different media? By using the theory constructive discourse analysis we will try to see patterns and understand how the immigrant boy is presented in the media outlets. We will also be using the theory about established and outsiders by Norbert Elias to helps us understand peoples need of keeping a curtain group as outsiders in order to strengthening themselves. The results of our investigation were not quite what we expected. That for us was assumed about the immigrant boy was that he was portrayed in the media as something dark and dangerous, as was the case in the previous research. But it was shown in our study that in recent year the construction of immigrant boy in the media is ambivalent and not always directly negative.