Michael Lipsky states through his theory of street-level bureaucracy that teachers, among other street-level occupations, often work under a heavy workload due to parameters built into their occupations characteristics and limited resources. Lipsky says that street-level bureaucrats therefor under the influence of their works natural discretion tend to use client-processing strategies to lighten the pressure to make their work situation bearable. Teachers in Sweden is an occupational group that has an important societal function in educating children, teenagers and young adults for their future social lives. At the same time as they work under a heavy workload. This essay aims to see if teachers in Sweden uses the three client-processing strategies tension between capability and objectives, private goal definition and defense against discretion to modify their work and students, to make their work situation more bearable. This is tested quantitively through Pearsons chi2 test of independence and regression analysis. The conclusion is that even though a tendency towards the use of client-processing strategies can be seen in the results, one cannot conclude that this is actually the case and that further studies has to be done to be able to give a more accurate response to the question.

The aim of this study is to investigate the dossier and delegation selections’ pros and cons and examine how the Swedish Migration Agency, in collaboration with UNHCR, work to ensure impartiality and efficiency. The study is based on two theories: the main one is Lennart Lundquist’s theory of democratic and economic values, which we combine with Michael Lipsky’s theory of “street-level bureaucrats” with the bottom-up perspective. By interviewing six people, differently involved in the selection of quota refugees - experts as well as administrators and managers - we arrive at the result that there are both positive and negative parts of the selections and both methods are needed. Democratic and economic values make the foremost sense and we have found that the Swedish Migration Agency works in a way to find a balance between them. This study provides practical knowledge concerning challenges the people working within this area might meet and how they work to solve them. Hopefully, it will inspire people to do more research within this area of interests for a more effective, democratic and equitable selection of quota refugees in the future.

This paper explores the curriculum of the Swedish social science course Samhällskunskap 1 b. This is done by analyzing the curriculum in question combined with semi-structural interviews of five teachers, exploring their experiences in teaching the course. The paper applies theories associated with street-level bureaucracy, originally from Michael Lipsky. The premise of the study is that teachers are bureaucrats who must follow a specific curriculum. The study concludes that the theories of street-level bureaucrats are applicable to the situation of social science teachers in their relation to the curriculum. The study also concludes that the interviewed teachers all interpret the curriculum in slightly different manners. This could in turn be seen as a possibility for the individual teacher to adapt the course to suit a range of students, as well as something that potentially threatens the fundamental reasons of a curriculum.

The school has an anti-racist mission where teachers, especially social studies teachers, have a central role. Previous research shows, however, that the school often lacks in counteracting racism, which raises questions about how teachers see racism as a phenomenon and school as an anti-racist place. There is a lack of knowledge about how social studies teachers perceive the anti-racist work and whether and, in such cases, how they implement anti-racism within the framework of social science teaching. The purpose of this study was therefore to investigate social studies teachers' perceptions of and implementation of an anti-racist mission in upper secondary school. This was done through five semi-structured interviews which were analyzed with Michael Lipsky's (2010) theory of grassroots bureaucracy which is supplemented by Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson's (2015) theory of cultural and structural factors, Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill & Brian Turners (2006) definitions of individual and structural racism and Emma Arnebacks (2012) identified courses of action against racism. The results show that no teacher has an explicit anti-racist attitude, but they perceive the task as aimed at counteracting students 'tendencies to express "problematic" thoughts or opinions, which is a description of purpose that is influenced by teachers' understanding of racism as an individual phenomenon. The attitude to the assignment is positive, but it is perceived to be fraught with challenges that arise partly because of a perceived limited scope for action, and partly because of the teachers believing that there is a measure of anti-racism in the teaching. The teachers also perceive the social studies teacher's special role in an anti-racist assignment partly negatively as it is described as becoming a workload. Criticism is directed at a deficient teacher education that structurally limits the anti-racist work as they feel that it has to a low degree equipped them with competence in racism despite the subject's special relevance, and partly because the entire teacher education was not characterized by this which could even the workload. The teachers believe that they implement the anti-racist mission, and the courses of action are mediating, democratizing, and partly relationally characterized where concrete strategies in social studies are to provide knowledge and practice critical reflection in the students. Important knowledge is mainly about democracy and human rights, and an important skill is critical thinking. The study's conclusions are that social studies teachers do not perceive the school as an explicit anti-racist place, but rather in an implicit way. The fact that the mission is not explicitly carried out can mean that anti-racism is lacking when knowledge of racism is limited, especially when a structural reflexivity is lacking. Although teachers may neglect different expressions of racism in school, the implementation is still often consistent with the curricula's formulations of the anti-racist mission.

<p>Based on different integration policies, we aim to examine how five municipalities in Stockholm County are working to promote integration at a local level with focus on voter participation and to some extent, representativeness among foreign-born. Statistics provided by SCB shows that foreign-born tends to vote to a lesser extent than those born in Sweden. Further, we aim to examine the implementation of two policy documents established at a national level concerning integration in contrast to policy documents established at a local level in each different municipality. Further, we aim to examine summaries of actions taken in response to the local integration programs, as well as personal interviews. Each municipality will be considered separately, but we thus seek to make a comparative study. The study will be based on a qualitative approach. The implementation process of both central and local policy decisions concerning the promotion of integration will also be discussed in terms of two existing theories of implementation, based on two different perspectives. The result shows that interaction between different participants, such as local officials and politicians, is of importance for the implementation process. All of the studied municipalities have taken some actions in order to implement their goals concerning integration.</p>

Based on different integration policies, we aim to examine how five municipalities in Stockholm County are working to promote integration at a local level with focus on voter participation and to some extent, representativeness among foreign-born. Statistics provided by SCB shows that foreign-born tends to vote to a lesser extent than those born in Sweden. Further, we aim to examine the implementation of two policy documents established at a national level concerning integration in contrast to policy documents established at a local level in each different municipality. Further, we aim to examine summaries of actions taken in response to the local integration programs, as well as personal interviews. Each municipality will be considered separately, but we thus seek to make a comparative study. The study will be based on a qualitative approach. The implementation process of both central and local policy decisions concerning the promotion of integration will also be discussed in terms of two existing theories of implementation, based on two different perspectives. The result shows that interaction between different participants, such as local officials and politicians, is of importance for the implementation process. All of the studied municipalities have taken some actions in order to implement their goals concerning integration.