In the beginning of the 1990's Swedish immigration policy, which bad been considered liberal and generous, became increasingly restrictive. A number of domestic as well as international factors led to new restrictions that particularly affected Bosnians with Croatian passports who applied for asylum. They were the first refugee group subject to new policy regulations and practices called 'temporary protection' (TUT). They also became the object of experimentation with diverse ideas concerning the development of a new immigration policy that emphasized the notion of 'repatriation' as opposed to 'integration'. This study consists of five articles that analyse these complex social processes from different methodological angles, trying to connect micro issues with macro ones, global issues with national issues, and local phenomena with practices affecting the individual. The introductory article deals with the experience of leaving one's country though the narrative of a single woman. During her period of immigration, she had been exposed to different national interests, discriminatory legislation and a variety of refugee experiences. These experiences included persecution, flight and emigration that were related to conditions of immigration, refuge and exclusion. The second article shows how the refugees coped with the labyrinth of temporality caused by the new Swedish refugee and immigration policy. This policy had been developed against the backdrop of EU harmonisation and insisted on temporary protection and repatriation. The third article is a comparative analysis of immigration processes in two different munici­palities: Malmö and Karlskrona. This article shows that such different institutional contexts create different coping strategies among refugees. For example, Malmö as a large munici­pality with a long history of immigration is different from Karlskrona, which is a smaller town without such experiences with foreigners. Also, in Malmö there was no specific refugee camp whereas there was one in Karlskrona. The fourth article deals with the impact of the Swedish welfare state's austerity policy on the reception of local refugees. As a consequence of these changes, special relationships among refugees developed. These included both friendship and animosity as well as conflict and solidarity. Such relationships challenge the conventional wisdom that assumes that differences in ethnicity will only lead to conflicts among different groups. The fifth article examines the limits of this conventional wisdom. For example, while conflicts among different ethnic groups from the former Yugoslavia persist, solidarity among these groups has also developed as they respond to the difficulties of immigration and social exclusion. In order to analyse the complexity of a process that includes the global, local and individual levels, I developed a multifaceted theoretical approach. This thesis addresses four aspects of a refugee's status: essentialization, thera- peutization, 'problem' that refugees cause for international state system and exclusion. In this connection, my main conclusion is that the social position of being a refugee in particular, as well as processes of social inclusion in general, can only be understood if we move beyond essential and biological explanations and beyond culturalization and therapeutization. Instead, we must focus on social and structural explanations. / digitalisering@umu

The aim of this thesis is to identify how a social citizenship for people with disabilities is shaped bythe normative structures in the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian law governing their right to transportin everyday life. The thesis deals with three types of transport provided by the public to private individuals: transport services, car allowances, and cash benefits for reimbursing transport costs forpeople with disabilities. For each provision, the focus of the study is directed by the followingquestions: – Is there a rights/duties relationship between the public and the individual? Who is eligible forprovision? How does public funding impact entitlement? Who is obliged to provide? What are thelegal guarantees for entitlement? Despite objectives within Nordic law and policy that people with disabilities should be compensated for their impairments, and allowed to lead independent and autonomous lives, the results from the thesis show that the various transport provisions do not fully realize this. The legal relations between the public and those with needs for transport in their everyday lives are characterized by control, scrutiny and questioning. In order to protect the public budgets from costs, the eligibility criteria in the law are so constructed as to ensure that only certain needs for transport, and only some impairments, can meet them. The national, regional and municipal governments, and the administrative courts, subject people with disabilities to intrusive inquiries regarding personal details and other circumstances in their lives, in order to be able to judge which needs for transport are to be considered legitimate and which are not. The thesis shows that the individual rights to, especially, Swedish and Norwegian transport provisions are poorly protected against political decisions to cut funding. Local and regional self-governance isan interest that always competes with individual legal rights and make them weaker, irrespective of whether these rights can be appealed in administrative courts. The conclusion in the thesis highlights how a social citizenship is shaped in the law governing the right to transport for people with disabilities, and that this social citizenship does not reinforce independence and individual autonomy for those who are dependent on the various provisions tomeet their needs for transport in their everyday lives.

Social policy and its associated institutions are central political arenas for societal compromise and conflict. The capacity to attract strong support from a wide constituency of citizens is, therefore, a defining feature of welfare policy legitimacy. While there is much research measuring attitudes towards state-organized welfare, the overall aim of this thesis is to incorporate attitudes towards the market into this research field. This aim is carried out through four empirical studies that add a market component to the analysis of different topics covered in current welfare state research. The articles in this thesis either compare attitudes across countries or deploy Swedish public opinion as a test case. Newly designed or previously underutilized survey measures are used that explicitly cover attitudes towards the market. Latent class analysis, structural equation modeling, and multilevel analysis are used to study how attitudes vary both within and across countries.   Citizens’ perceptions and evaluations of the market are found to be shaped by their everyday life experiences within the market structure. Moreover, citizens’ trust in the performance of market institutions is found to be important in structuring their welfare policy preferences. In addition, attitudes towards the market appear to be influenced by the institutional context: citizens living in countries with more ambitious welfare states are less inclined to support market distribution of social services, and class differences in political welfare attitudes tend to be larger in countries with more encompassing welfare states. Collected findings thus suggest that citizens living in countries with more generous welfare states are more inclined to think that the legitimate scope of the market nexus should be negotiated and calibrated via social policy.   By incorporating attitudes towards the market in relation to welfare state support, this thesis contributes to increasing our understanding of the political and moral mindset of citizens in advanced political economies. Public attitudes towards the welfare state are to a significant degree formed by perceptions and evaluations of the market and its actors. In order to further our knowledge about preferences regarding the role of the state in modern society, and to stay in tune with ongoing policy developments, future socio-political research is well advised to bring the main alternative to the state – the market and its actors – into the analytical framework.

This thesis analyses the development of the Korean welfare system since the 1960s within the institutional dynamics of Korean politics. Its aim is to contribute to the understanding of Korean politics through the analysis of the Korean welfare state. The thesis argues that the making of social policy has been determined primarily by the politics of legitimation, in particular before democratisation. This thesis identifies the confined institutional circle responsible for crucial social policy decisions. In this institutional terrain, the President and his ministers and policy experts have played the dominant roles. The democratisation since 1987 brought about institutional changes and enabled institutions such as the National Assembly to exercise effective power in social policy-making. The political rationale of social policy is deeply embedded in the structure of social policy institutions, especially the way in which the state intervenes in the financing of welfare programmes. In the mix of welfare financing, the regulator type of state intervention emerges as the dominant feature in Korea. This thesis assesses the outcomes of social policy from two perspectives: the perspectives of redistribution and of social rights. Social policy intervention has so far had little redistributive effect mainly due to the immaturity of the welfare system. In terms of social rights, the universality of rights to health care was achieved in a relatively short period of time. Rights to protection against industrial accidents have made good progress in terms of compensation and protection for the last three decades, despite the limited coverage. However, the quality of social rights that have so far been implemented is low. In two important respects, the approach of the thesis is characterised by methodological broadness. In the policy analysis, the thesis moves beyond an institutional approach to including also the substantive outcomes of institutional changes. In the analysis of outcomes, the thesis covers both the perspective of redistribution and the perspective of social rights.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the growing debate around the concept of social capital. The concept has been heralded by many as a means of uniting the social sciences, particularly economics and sociology, and of overcoming ideological divisions between left and right. However, critics argue that the concept is poorly theorised and provides little insight. More radical critics have claimed the concept may be a neo-liberal ‘Trojan horse’, a mechanism by which the atomistic thinking of neoclassical economics colonises social theory. I examine these more radical claims by exploring the origins of the concept of social capital within rational choice economics. I argue that we should differentiate between two types of potential colonisation. The first is a form of methodological colonisation, whereby overly abstract, reductionist and rationalist approaches (which I term modernist) are extended into social theory. The second is a form of ideological colonisation, whereby a normative commitment to individualism and the market is extended into social theory. I argue that the concept of social capital has been the product of a trend within rational choice economics away from the extremes of modernism. In this sense the concept represents an attempt to bring economics and social theory closer together, and a willingness on the part of rational choice theorists to take more seriously the techniques and insights of the other social sciences. However, I argue that this trend away from modernism has often been associated with a reaffirmation of rational choice theorists’ normative commitment to individualism and the market. In particular, I argue the concept of social capital has been strongly influenced by elements of the Austrian economic tradition, and forms part of a spontaneous order explanation of economic and social systems. I then apply these insights to the Australian social capital debate. I argue that initially the Australian social capital debate continued an earlier debate over economic rationalism and the merits of market-orientated economic reform. I argue that participants from both sides of the economic rationalism debate used the concept of social capital to move away from modernism, but continued to disagree over the role of individualism. Finally, I argue that confusion between moving away from modernism, and moving away from market ideology, has led some Third Way theorists to misconstrue the concept as a means to overcome ideology.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2004.

Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala universitet, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-243).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2007. / "Publication number: AAT 3295532."

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2010. / Adviser: Kerstin Hamann. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-106).