The purpose with this study is to examine and analyze the eldercare staffs conceptions and perceptions about the construction of ethnicity and aging, in Swedish eldercare, to illustrate the process of othering. The authors interviewed eight people who work in the eldercare by using a vignette. We have analyzed our result from the interviews through several theories and earlier research pertinent to the subject. The study has shown that eldercare staff through their conceptions and perceptions unconscious been conducive to make and recompose constructions of ethnicity and elder. The constructions of ethnicity and elder can be conductive to processes of othering.

This report is an ethnographic exploration of othering and belonging in Albania . In the past twenty years there has been a significant amount of scholarship addressing the construction of difference and collective identity in the Balkans. Much of that research has focused on processes of Orientalism, historical analyses ethnic conflict, and nationalism. The work presented here has been shaped by these discussions but is also an attempt to further deconstruct identity and nationalism vis-à-vis the ethnographic examination of belonging. Specifically, this paper addresses my positionality in the field and the ways that this positionality allows for a particular inquiry of belonging. In this report I address how my identification as a Black American female shapes my day-to-day interactions with Albanian informants, and how these encounters can be used to probe representations of what I term “Albanianess”. In doing so, I reveal the ways in which the ethnographic encounter allows for an interrogation of meaning, public intimacy, difference, and local attachments to identity. / text

The thesis analyses the discursive construction of migrants’ identities through their native language communications, using Russian-speaking migration in the UK as the case study. Material from internet forums these migrants were engaged in the years 2002-2005 forms the basis of this research. The project is concerned with the question of how Russian-speaking migrants, faced with the process of accustoming themselves to a new place of residence (UK), re-negotiate the Self, their homeland (in both real geographical terms and metaphorically through their cultural affiliations) and the Other. This study draws on theories from a range of research perspectives including hermeneutics, discourse analysis, cultural studies, and ethnography. The theoretical framework developed in this thesis combines Foucault’s analysis of discourse with Lotman’s model of dialogue between cultures. The thesis also develops sampling techniques for virtual data. By examining how the dichotomy Russia vs. Europe/the West is imagined in the researched data, this study argues that the concept of Europeanism obtains positive associations, while the concept of the West retains its ambiguity for Russian-speaking migrants. The thesis identifies Europeanism as a discursive object of knowledge and examines its categorizations. The study identifies kul`tura and tsivilizatsia as grids of specifications of Europeanism, and investigates Self/Other dialectics attached to the object of knowledge. Finally, the thesis analyses the dynamics of cultural appropriation under influences of the host context, and elaborates on semiotic “translation” of new phenomena.

This essay has examined the social-democratic parties in both Sweden and Denmark and their political development regarding immigration policy during the period 2014-2018. This period saw a large number of refugees who came to Europe, which led to stricter immigration policy across Europe. The Danish migration policy has been stricter than the Swedish migration policy. Denmark is therefore interesting to compare with Sweden because they are a country similar to Sweden in many ways. The questions in this essay is following: - How has the Social Democrats migration policy evolved in Sweden compared to Denmark from 2014 to 2018? - How can these parties' migration policy be explained? The questions are answered by comparing the Social Democrats in Sweden and the Social Democrats in Denmark, which has been done according to the model Most Similar System Design (MSSD) with the control variables historical background, ideological, financial situation and political system. The explanatory variable is political culture and the dependent variable is a migration policy. The empirical material has then been compared in accordance with MSSD and opposed the theory othering. The conclusions of this essay are based on the fact that migration policy is different due to political culture.

This thesis critically examines constructions of cultural diversity and intercultural education in Greek-Cypriot primary schools. Since 2008 the Cyprus Ministry of Education has officially adopted the Europeanized rhetoric of intercultural education and inclusion as the most effective approach to the increasing diversity in schools. As part of the wider reform of the education system aiming at the creation of the ‘democratic’ and ‘humane’ school, a new curriculum was introduced in 2010 to promote equality of opportunity for access, participation and attainment. Drawing on relevant key theoretical ideas, this study has developed a theoretical framework of intercultural education to assist the critical examination of constructions of intercultural education in Greek-Cypriot primary schools. For the purposes of this study, three-month long critical ethnographic case studies of intercultural education were constructed in three urban Greek-Cypriot primary schools with different profiles. Rich data was generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with head teachers, teachers and teachers of Greek as an additional language. The study also engaged in non-participant lesson and school observations, developed participatory methods with children, and undertook semi-participant observations of pupils’ play during breaks and of extra-curricular activities. Relevant policy and school documents were also analysed. The findings of this study reveal that constructions of cultural diversity and intercultural education in Greek-Cypriot primary schools are characterized by contradictions, inconsistencies and a lack of theoretical understanding of issues related to cultural diversity and intercultural education. Different cultures and identities were constructed in different, though mainly, essentialist ways by teachers from the dominant cultural group. This study argues that the concept of cultural diversity needs to be treated with some caution, as it tends to homogenise non-dominant cultures and thus, it may obscure the complexities involved in engagement with and recognition of different Others. Key differences between the two mainstream schools and the ZEP (Zone of Educational Priority) school which participated in this study in terms of the degree of autonomy and financial support officially granted by the Ministry; the school leadership style and the head teacher’s construction of diversity and intercultural education; the composition of the pupil population; and the dominant institutional discourses about diversity affected the extent to which and the ways in which teachers exercised their agency in relation to intercultural education. Moreover, the teachers’ positioning in the Greek Cypriot society and the extent to which they had developed a political literacy and critical consciousness through their life and professional histories also affected their constructions of cultural diversity and intercultural education and the extent to which they perceived and exercised their role as agents of change. In turn, the ways in which cultural diversity and intercultural education were constructed in each class influenced the extent to which and the ways in which bilingual and/or bicultural children used their agency and negotiated their cultural positionings. The findings carry implications for policy and practice. The study highlights the need for a coherent theoretical framework of intercultural education to enable schools and teachers to develop a theoretically-grounded understanding of intercultural education and move beyond fragmented practices that leave structural inequalities and barriers to educational achievement unacknowledged and unaddressed.

After being expelled from Bhutan in the 1980s and 1990s, more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees were forced to reside in refugee camps in Nepal. Twenty years later, in 2006, a global resettlement programme was initiated to relocate them in eight different nations: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, and the UK. Since 2010, about 350 Bhutanese refugees have been resettled in Greater Manchester through the Gateway Protection Programme. This thesis is based on 14 months of ethnographic research with members of this community. This thesis analyses the complex relationship between forced migrants, social networks, and ruling, organisational entities, which facilitate refugee resettlement. This qualitative study looks at the structure, role and everyday utility of social networks amongst a small refugee community, and emphasizes that the creation of similarity and difference is an inherent part of community development. The research calls into question the assumptions of UK policy makers, service providers and academics alike, which hold that refugees are removed from their ‘original’ cultures through forced displacement, and thereafter strive to return to a state of ‘normalcy’ or ‘originality’, re-creating and re-inventing singular ‘traditions’, identities and communities. In response to these assumptions, policy makers and service providers in refugee camps and in the UK adopt a Community Development Approach (CDA). However, I argue that there is no fixed and bounded community amongst Bhutanese refugees, but that they actively reshape and adapt their interpretations, meanings and actions through their experiences of forced migration, and thus create novel communities out of old and new social networks. In the process, I juxtapose my informants’ emic understandings of community as samaj, with bureaucratized refugee community organisations (RCOs). This research shows that rather than a creating singular, formalized RCO to serve the ‘good of all’, the Bhutanese refugee community in Manchester is rife with divisions based on personal animosities and events stretching back to the refugee camps in Nepal. I conclude that RCOs may not be equipped to effectively deal with the divisive issues that arise due to refugee resettlement. The thesis is situated at the centre of anthropological investigations of forced migration, community, and policy, and uses interdisciplinary sources (such as policy documents, historical accounts) to highlight the complexities of forced migration and refugee resettlement. This critical research is also a response to the call to make qualitative, ethnographic research more relevant for policy makers and service provision, which is all the more important in this ‘century of the refugee’.

Ethno-linguistic diversities and the rights to enjoy and maintain indigenous languages and identities has been a central issue in the socio-political agenda of Turkey since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. The Lazi have taken their part in the discussions concerning minority rights through the discourses of a group of Lazi activists since the early 1990s.This study aims to examine the discursive construction of Lazi identity with close attention to its various actors and the context in which the process is carried out. To this end, selected texts by the social actors who are involved in the Lazi identity building process are studied in terms of various functions of language contributing to the communicative production of discourses. The content of written and oral commentaries by various social actors who are influential in the Lazi identity building process is studied using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).The study concludes that the construction of Lazi identity is an on-going process which is developed by influential social actors. The discourses of Lazi activists display a dilemma between the commitment to establish or re-establish a distinct Lazi identity with emphasis on a distinct language and culture rooted in ancient history and a determination to remain a component of the Republic of Turkey.

Magister Artium - MA / This thesis is a sociolinguistic exploration of the research that was conducted on the Manenberg community. It focuses on the community’s socio-economic vices such as gangsterism, drug trafficking, drug addiction, prostitution, lack of education, poverty, unemployment, domestic violence and so forth (c.f. Salo, 2004; Willenberg & September, 2008). Taking these factors into account, the research explores discourses surrounding HIVand AIDS messages and investigates whether such euphemisms are dependent on age and gender. This study also evaluates the politeness strategies employed by the youths and adults as means to de-taboo taboo talk related to HIV and AIDS

In this study we seek to understand how ordinary Chinese people perceive Westerners as the Other through examining their intercultural experiences. In contrast to the numerous studies of social elites’ Occidentalism, this study shifts the attention to ordinary people’s perceptions in a fast changing Chinese society. From an interpretive perspective, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 participants living in a coastal city in Mainland China. The key findings suggest that the Chinese public has its own way of perceiving and presenting the Western Other. Also, this Other, being defined in an on-going process of intercultural interaction, connotes a wider meaning – a unity of opposition and complementarity, exclusion and inclusion. Thus this study has deepened our understanding of the Chinese construction of the Western Other. The findings can be used in developing intercultural communication training programs to facilitate deeper contact and better dialogue between the Chinese and Westerners.

This thesis examines how integration as a category of practice or as an emic concept functions in political discourses. In doing so, this study delimit itself by focusing on the problematization of non-western immigrants in socially vulnerable residential areas in the whitepaper ‘A Denmark Without Parallel Societies – No Ghettos in 2030’ presented by the Danish Government in March 2018. By adopting a theoretical framework of Umut Özkirimli’s take on nationalism, the concept of ‘othering’ and Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach to policy analysis, this paper finds that integration as a category of practice function as a code word for differentiation in identity formation where the ‘othering’ of non-western immigrants and socially vulnerable residential areas confirm a Danish national identity. Thus, this thesis contributes to a framework addressing the discursive construction of a Danish national identity in the societal debate on integration through the analysis of policies.