Intresset för föreliggande uppsatsarbete har varit att analysera synen på unga lagöverträdare som döms till frihetsberövande påföljder. Avstamp har gjorts i propositionen som 1998 föreslog att sluten ungdomsvård skulle införas i påföljdssystemet i en ambition att undvika fängelsestraff för unga (Prop. 1997/98:96) samt i betänkandet som 2023 föreslår att unga lagöverträdare återigen ska verkställa fängelsestraff (SOU 2023:44). Utifrån en diskursanalytisk ansats var syftet att synliggöra hur påföljdssystemet för unga framställs som ett ’problem’, hur dessa problemrepresentationer motiverar respektive förslag om frihetsberövande påföljd samt hur det kan förstås i ljuset av en ’straffande vändning’. Resultatet visar att påföljdssystemet i propositionen framställs som ett rättssäkerhetsproblem där en framträdande juridisk diskurs har ökat såväl samhällets rättsmedvetande som det enskilda barnets rättsstatus. I betänkandet framställs påföljdssystemet i stället som ett trygghetsproblem, baserat på en alarmistisk bild av ökad och grövre brottslighet bland unga vilka samhället behöver skyddas från. En utveckling har skett från att unga lagöverträdare betraktas vara i fara, offer för en social utsatthet, till att de betraktas som farliga barn som skapar otrygghet i samhället. Det är den senaste kategorin av ‘farliga barn’ som betänkandets förslag vilar på. Ett förslag som förväntas bidra till ökade samhällsklyftor och ökad stigmatisering av en redan utsatt grupp unga lagöverträdare. Ett förslag som också får direkta konsekvenser, i huvudsak för de barn som underrepresenteras i betänkandet: De barn som är flickor, och de barn som är i särskilt behov av stöd, vård och behandling. / The interest in the present study has been to analyze the way juvenile offenders, who are sentenced to a custodial sanction, are portrayed. The study draws from the proposition that 1998 suggested the new sanction of youth custody in an aspiration to replace prison for juvenile offenders (Prop. 1997/98:96) and in the deliberation that 2023 suggested that juvenile offenders once again should be sentenced to prison (SOU 2023:44). Drawing from a discourse analysis, this study aims to uncover the way the youth penal system is produced as a ‘problem’, how this problem representation justifies the different suggestions about custodial sanctions and how it could be understood in the light of a ‘punitive turn’. The results show that the penal system in the first document is produced as a problem regarding penal certainty, whereas a prominent juridical discourse has raised a general legal awareness as well as the legal status for the individual child. In the second document the penal policy is produced as a problem regarding public safety, based on the view of an increased and rougher crime scene among youngsters whom society needs to be protected from. A development can be identified from where juvenile offenders are portrayed as being in danger, victims of social circumstances, to that they are portrayed as dangerous kids that constitutes a threat to the society. It is the latter category of ‘dangerous kids’ that the suggestions in the second document lays upon. Suggestions that are expected to contribute to increased stigmatization of an already exposed group of juvenile offenders. Suggestions that also have direct consequences, especially for those who are underrepresented in the second document: Kids who are girls, and kids who need care, treatment, and protection.

Internationally recognized for and culturally self-identifying as a gender equality advocate, Sweden has seen a recent uptick in popular support among women voters for its far-right nationalist political party, the Sweden Democrats (SD). While nationalist movements are primarily distinguished by their nativist political rhetoric, academic study has consistently shown that nationalism also consistently promotes a traditional gender duality while denouncing feminism and gender equality practices. Likewise, SD also consistently opposes feminist and gender equality practices in stark contrast with mainstream Swedish political parties. This qualitative discourse analysis collected, categorized, and analyzed recent Facebook posts circulated by the Sweden Democrat Women's Association (Sverigedemokraterna kvinnoförbund) leadership to identify why women (ostensibly) served by Swedish state feminism vote for and even join SD in a leadership capacity. By utilizing constructivist theoretical frameworks of social and cultural identity with a post-structural analytical methodology focusing on problem conception, representation and dissemination, the resulting analysis shows that the dominating discursive theme is practically summarized as: "(in)security." In short, SD women perceive Sweden's (equality) feminism as unrelatable, irrelevant and/or intrusive in an "everyday" existence framed by a rapidly changing Swedish society due to record immigration, increased economic insecurity, and a weakening welfare state. In closing, three prime research areas are identified for future study: image-based content analysis of SD's political messaging, increased incorporation of security frameworks in investigative writing, as well as broadened research into how Swedish equality feminism can best include two consistently detached societal clusters: native-Swedish conservative and non-Western immigrant women.

The natural capital approach (NCA) has increasingly become mainstream in environmental governance. This approach involves highlighting the economic value of the natural environment in order to make better informed decisions. Despite its mainstreaming and growing appeal, critical voices endure. These critiques frame natural capital in the context of global neoliberalisation, primarily focusing on its adverse implications for the Global South. By contrast, this thesis examines the role NCA has in a national, developed, Western setting – where the issues created by global power imbalances and neo-colonialism are less pertinent. The UK is at the forefront of NCA, with its 25 Year Environment Plan outlining its ambition to embed the approach into environmental decision-making. This thesis adopts a poststructural approach in order to examine the underlying assumptions, constructions, and moral framework of the UK’s NCA. It constitutes a policy analysis that employs the tools of the ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ approach to three distinct sites of analysis - nature, instrumentation, and justice. Findings point to how NCA rests on a number of contingent assumptions, produces specific problematisations, subjects and objects, and ultimately derives from a presentism ethic.

Den 1 januari 2016 trädde en revidering av föräldraförsäkringen i kraft, där 90 dagar istället för 60 av de totalt 480 dagarna av föräldrapenning öronmärktes för respektive förälder som har gemensam vårdnad. Jämställdhet i kombination med föräldraledighet har varit ett ständigt aktualiserat ämne och jämställdhet i kombination med ett barnperspektiv är starkt betonat i den nuvarande upplagan av föräldraförsäkringen. Ett argument till att öronmärka fler dagar är att främja jämställdhet genom att öka manligt uttag av föräldrapenning, som trots en utjämning fortfarande domineras av kvinnor. Flera positiva effekter förutspås av en jämnare fördelning av uttag av föräldrapenning. Genom att män ökar sin närvaro i hemmet, frigörs kvinnors tid som kan ägnas åt arbete, vilket bidrar till ökad löneutveckling, karriärmöjligheter och pensionsstorlek. Studier indikerar dessutom ett samband mellan fäders föräldraledighet och en jämlikare fördelning av hushållssysslor. Denna logik förutsätts av att en kvinna delar sitt hushåll med någon, helst en man. År 2016 levde 12,4 procent av alla barn under 3 år med separerade biologiska föräldrar. Ensamstående mödrars tid i hemmet kan inte frigöras av någon på samma premisser som sammanboende par, därför kan uppdelningen av föräldraledighet bli problematisk. Denna uppsats syftar till att genom en WPR-analys av den senaste revideringen av föräldraförsäkringsreformen undersöka hur ensamstående mödrars situation reflekteras i jämställdhetsdiskursen. Studiens teoretiska ramverk inkluderar diskursiv institutionalism med syfte att studera hur jämställdhet som idé opererar inom institutionen – samt socialkonstruktivism som gör det möjligt att studera normers betydelse i produktionen av problem. Överlag är begreppet jämställdhet etablerat på premissen att kvinnor och män lever ihop i en tvåsamhet. Det finns kännedom om problematik kring föräldraledighet bland separerade föräldrar med gemensam vårdnad – en problematik som vidrörs men lämnas utan djupare analys. Frånvaron av ensamstående mödrars perspektiv i den nuvarande jämställdhetsstrategin i föräldraförsäkringen riskerar att ge allvarliga konsekvenser på ensamstående mödrars liv. Vad jämställdhetskonceptet i föräldraförsäkringen saknar är en fler dimensioner av analysnivåer däribland kvinnor som lever utan män. Att enbart utgå ifrån relationen mellan kvinnor och män är en för tunn grund att basera hållbara jämställdhetsåtgärder på.

The theme of this thesis is gender equality, and especially gender equality in school. The study assumes a poststructuralist position and aims to demonstrate how gender equality is problematized in the world of education. Through studies of documents and interviews with people in the school world, the representations of the gender equality problem were brought to light. A WPR-perspective helped in the process of revealing how gender equality is “made”. The material were reduced to three categories: gender roles, ethnicity, and knowledge. The research questions were based on Carol Bacchis WPR-perspective: 1) what is the problem with gender equality? 2) what assumptions underlie the problem? 3) What is left unproblematic? and 4) what are the effects? The result of the study shows that there are a lot of dichotomies in how gender equality is represented, but the primary representation is a matter of me/others. Through the problematization of boys (that is, students), culture (Swedish “equal” and non-Swedish, unequal “others”) and knowledge (unknowing, hence unequal other teachers) is the problem made someone else's and hence, ones own responsibility fails to represent the problem.

Organizations around the world increasingly publish voluntary sustainability reports. Stakeholders want more information than financial statements, and environmental and social concerns have grown in the past two decades. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework for sustainability reporting is used by most organizations today. This is an analysis of the indicators in the GRI framework used to report on gender equality and diversity. I have used Carol Bacchi's method "What Is the "Problem" Represented to Be?" to discover how the "problems" of gender equality and diversity are presented in the framework and what effects those constructions of the problem might have.

The aim with this case study was to do an intersectional, critical WPR (What’s the ‘problem’ represented to be) policy analysis of the Swedish governments preparatory work and government bill to achieve a more even distribution of parental leave between parents. In order to analyse the material, I used Carol Bacchi´s critical WPR approach to policy analysis. I critically examined how the preparatory work and government bill, that was later followed by the choice to introduce an additional reserved month for each parent, construct the ‘problem’, what presuppositions underlie the representation of the ‘problem’, what was left silenced and unproblematic and what effects and implications the representation of the ‘problem’ produces. Overall, the analysis showed that the problem is represented to be that the uneven distribution of parental leave is not gender-equal which could have negative effects for women. The underlying assumptions mainly focused on women, their participation in the labour market and other aspects that is connected to traditional gender norms and our doing of gender. Little, or non, attention has been put on intersectionality and therefore, something that is left unproblematic and silenced in the problem representation. The documents mainly talk about men and women, mothers and fathers which show that the preparatory work and the government bill did not adopt a clear intersectional approach and can, therefore, be at risk of being gendering and heteronorming in its effect.

Illicit firearms and the proliferation of them are an increasingly discussed topic worldwide. This thesis uses content analysis to analyse the 2005 EU Strategy and revised version of it, the 2018 EU Strategy, on how to combat the proliferation of illicit firearms. With a post-structuralist approach, related theoretical aspects and the use of Carol Bacchis’ six questions in the What is the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) approach, the thesis examines problem representations in the thesis, and discusses these to identify the shift of the representation of illicit firearms in the EU Strategies. By doing this, it is filling the research gap of policies on illicit firearms that are examining problem representations. The comparison between the two Strategies shows that there is a significant shift in the problem representation, and that contextual factors and norms play an important role in why this shift has taken place. The thesis has identified the political climate at the time of the implementation of the EU Strategies as a vital factor to the differences in the Strategies.

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.

Since the 1990’s, the retreat of multiculturalism has been described as an integration policy trend across European states. There is however much disagreement among scholars on how this phenomenon should be understood and whether it actually exists. As previous research suggests that the Netherlands is perceived as an extreme example of the withdrawal of multiculturalism, this thesis seeks to critically examine integration in a Dutch governmental context. This is being done by making use of a post-structural policy analysis, which is aimed at understanding the discursive construction of a policy document. More specifically, it has been chosen to utilize Bacchi’s “What is the problem represented to be?” approach, as it focuses on how problems are being represented and understood instead of solely focusing on solving problems. Thus, the theoreotical framework is based on Bacchi’s WPR methodology in combination with previous literature on multiculturalism and assimilationism. The object for analysis is the official Dutch integration policy document of 2007 “Make sure you belong”. By critically examining this document, it can be concluded that Dutch integration is indeed withdrawing from multiculturalism and showing strong features of assimilationism. It can additionally be concluded that the government has a powerful role in constructing meanings.