This study explores the impact family separation had on both the child and the parent after reunification. Semi-Structured qualitative interviews were conducted. One participant was left behind by parents while they immigrated without proper documentation and eventually reunited with them. There was one mother who immigrated to reunite with her children. There were also four parent participants who left their children behind while immigrating into the United States. This study provides a glimpse of what an undocumented family reunification looks like

This thesis analyzes the infamous Mara Salvatruchas (MS-13) in Central America, an international gang that has become increasingly powerful and violent. I will examine the cycle of violence perpetuated by the urban structure in Central America, which is characterized by economic and social segregation and sometimes violent oppression, resulting in part from neoliberal economic policies. I will critically review a variety of current MS-13 interventions in El Salvador and elsewhere, and examine how policies have impacted the growth of this international threat. Successful examples of community-based gang interventions, specifically targeted to reach youth, will be examined to determine important components of effective, bottom-up gang interventions that may be applied in El Salvador. / text

This bachelor thesis examines how Swedish Television frames news about gang violence and explains which actors that appear in news articles on this field. News about this societal problem have started to appear more frequently in media publications during the last years which motivates the implementation of the study.   The analysis reveals that news about gang violence to a large extent is being framed as a question for politics. This is demonstrated in articles where the problem is framed as a conflict between political parties which proposes different solutions. Gang violence is also framed as something that the government should take responsibility for and therefore not a societal problem that individuals can solve themselves. Most of the articles are framed in a thematic, more general than specifik, perspective and episodic frames do not get that much coverage. There are mostly politicians that occur in articles about gang violence and thus the actors who have the opportunity to set the media agenda.  News articles published on the online edition of Swedish Television in September 2020 have been used as study material. This was a period during the year of 2020 where most news articles about gang violence were published. The method applied was a combined quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The theoretical framework consists of McCombs & Shaws agenda setting theory and also three framing theories formed by Entman, Iyengar and Semetko & Valkenburg. The frames used in the study are the conflict frame, human-interest frame, economic consequences frame, responsibility frame, morality frame, thematic frame and episodic frame.

This research investigated the strategies used by school administrators in selected high schools to prevent or reduce gang-related activity and violence. Interviews were conducted with six high school principals, six assistant principals, fifteen staff members and eleven students. All of the students were gang members. The results of the study showed that there are gang members in all schools, but that their gang activity at school is curtailed by some specific strategies.

Gun violence has increased significantly in Sweden in the past years. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate whether the number of shootings has an impact on the residents' sense of perceived security in Sweden's metropolitan areas, with the control variables of the socio-demographic characteristics gender, age and education level. Previous research has investigated the relationship between perceived security and general crime, where the results show higher insecurity in relation to crime. In addition, individuals living in a socially vulnerable area characterized by low informal control experience higher insecurity than those who do not live in these areas. The study is based on the theories of social disorganization theory and the theory of ontological security. A multiple regression analysis was used where the data consisted of statistics on the number of shootings in Sweden and data from the Samhälle, Opinion and Media (SOM) survey from the year 2021. The result showed, in the full model, that there is an association between the number of shootings and perceived security, when shootings increase, so does insecurity. Regarding the geographical classification, residents in the metropolitan areas showed lower perceived insecurity in comparison to the rest of Sweden in relation to the number of shootings. Women and the low educated experienced higher insecurity than men and the highly educated respectively, while older age only had a small impact on the insecurity in relation to crime. A conclusion that can be drawn based on the study's results is that the number of shootings affects the perceived security negatively when several explanatory variables are examined together. Moreover, there are socio-demographic characteristics that affect the experience of security. Thus, future research should continue to investigate how the number of shootings can affect perceived security.

This project investigates how youth in San Salvador, El Salvador define and participate in the co-creation of safety in their neighborhoods. For many years, El Salvador topped the rankings of most dangerous countries because of street gang violence and homicides. As the homicide rates have fallen in recent years, due to mass incarceration of street gang members, trust in state authority to effectively participate in the co-creation of safety has empowered young Salvadorans to also participate in that co-creation through reclaiming space. By painting over gang graffiti, the youth are participating in discourse in a public sphere, making claims to safety in their communities. Feelings and understanding of safety are also influenced by the representation and reputation of a place, thus this project included the creation of a participatory documentary for the youth to be a part of the representation of their country and communities. The documentary shows the painting over of gang graffiti and includes participant responses to questions about safety and representation. The video along with the interview responses show that the youth’s feelings of safety are tied to their physical environment, including the presence of gang graffiti, and that they are eager for their country to overcome the historical representation of being a dangerous place.

In recent years, lethal gang-related gun violence has increased in Sweden. The aim of this study is to investigate how young adults perceive and manage risks in society. Additionally, the study aims to investigate the media's influence on young adults' awareness of risks, with focus on the increased deadly gang-related gun violence. Since gang-shootings are a relatively new risk in Sweden, there is a lack of previous research on the subject and it is therefore relevant to research further, from a risk sociology perspective. Previous research therefore contains studies that investigate other social contexts than young adults in Sweden. The study's theoretical frame of reference is based on Gidden's (1996) theory of the consequences of modernity, Beck's (2000) theory of the risk society, Douglas' (2002) "subjective immunity" and Kaspersons et al. (1988) theory about social amplification of risk. This study uses qualitative interviews to investigate unique and in-depth stories from a limited number of individuals. The result shows that individuals do not seem to be afraid of being exposed to the risk themselves but are concerned that others may be exposed to it. The results display that expert knowledge from politicians is needed, however, young adults lack full confidence in politicians. The individuals in this study are overwhelmed by the information that the media spreads about the risk. Furthermore, the individuals perceive the risks as less dangerous than they appear in the media. Young adults also felt that gang-related gun violence affected them more if they were geographically close to the events. / Under de senaste åren har det dödliga gängkriminella skjutvapenvåldet ökat i Sverige. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur unga vuxna uppfattar och hanterar risker i samhället. Syftet är även att undersöka hur media påverkar unga vuxnas medvetenhet om risker. Detta görs med fokus på ökningen av det dödliga gängkriminella skjutvapenvåldet. Eftersom gängkriminella skjutningar är en relativt ny risk i Sverige saknas det tidigare forskning om ämnet och är därför relevant att undersöka vidare utifrån ett risksociologiskt perspektiv. Tidigare forskning har därför byggts upp utifrån studier som undersöker andra sociala kontexter än unga vuxna i Sverige. Studiens teoretiska referensram utgår från Giddens (1996) teori om modernitetens följder, Becks (2000) teori om risksamhället, Douglas (2002) begrepp “subjektiv immunitet” och Kaspersons et al. (1988) teori om social förstärkning av risker. Denna studie använder kvalitativa intervjuer för att undersöka unika och djupgående berättelser från ett mindre antal individer. Resultatet visar att individer inte verkar vara rädda för att själva bli utsatta för risken, men känner en oro över att andra kan utsättas för den. Resultatet visar på att expertkunskaper från politiker behövs, men att unga vuxna saknar fullt förtroende för politiker. Individerna i denna studie känner sig överväldigade av informationen som media sprider gällande risken. Detta verkar leda till en viss avtrubbning och får individerna att uppfatta risken som mindre än den framstår i media. På liknande sätt hanterar individer detta, genom att skapa distans till situationen. De unga vuxna upplevde även att gängskjutningar påverkade dem mer vid geografisk närhet till händelser.

This research focuses on the provision of intrastate security and on the question how states in the global South do or do not provide security for their citizens and do or do not protect them from physical violence. This thesis argues that while institutional conditions are an important aspect of security provision in the global South, more attention needs to be paid to policy processes. Institution building as set out in the literature about Security Sector Reform and statebuilding assumes that it is possible to provide security to all citizens of a state by building democratic state security institutions. However, this is only possible if the state is the predominant force of controlling violence. Research showed that this is rarely the case in countries of the global South. This thesis contends that statehood in the global South is contested due to power struggles between multiple state and non-state elites. It argues that the analysis of security policy processes allows for an analysis of security provision in societies where no centralised control over violence exists. It contributes to a better understanding of the shortcomings of security provision in the global South because it shows the impact of societal and state actors on security policy making. Using the case of security policy making under the first FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation) government in El Salvador (2009-2014), the thesis shows that, in a contested state policy making does not result from a pact between the state and society or from a social consensus as envisaged by parts of the FMLN and other forces of the New Left in Latin America. Instead, policy making results from elite pacts and elite struggles. This is illustrated in the domination of an ad hoc decision-making mode which describes short-term decisions which are insufficiently implemented and easily reversed or replaced. Thus, security provision as a policy field remains focused on elite interests and does not include the interests of the broader population.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur svensk dagsmedia framställer mordoffer som har kopplingar till kriminella nätverk och analysera hur den framställningen skiljer sig från hur andra, utomstående mordoffer drabbade av gängrelaterat våld beskrivs. Studien genomfördesi form av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys där 26 nyhetsartiklar från Aftonbladet och Expressen analyserades. Resultatet av studien visade att media främst framställer gängkriminella mordoffer på ett negativt sätt genom att lyfta fram de kriminella delarna av offrets liv, till exempel de brott som mordoffret begått och vilka kopplingar mordoffret hade till andra kriminella. Detta skiljer sig från framställningen av utomstående, oskyldigt drabbade mordoffer där media istället främst beskriver hur mordoffret var som person och framhäver de positiva sakerna med offrets liv / The purpose of this study has been to investigate how Swedish news media portray murdervictims who have connections to criminal networks and to analyze how that representation differs from how other, "innocent" victims of murder exposed to gang-related violence are described. The study analyzed 26 news articles from the Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen by using a qualitative content analysis. The results of the study showed that the media mainly present criminal murder victims in a negative way by highlighting the criminal parts of the victim's life, such as the crimes they committed and what connections they had to other criminals. This differs from the portrayal of innocent murder victims where media mainly focuses on how the murder victim was percieved as a person and highlights the positive things about the victim's life.

Following thesis investigates the intertwined relationship between the rise of gang-violenceand right-wing populist parties, more specifically the True Finns and the Sweden Democrats. The purpose of this essay being, how the True Finns and the Sweden Democrats usegang-violence to legitimize xenophobia. Analysis are done by using a CDA-approach, the threedimensional model by Norman Fairclough. Materials used in this discourse analysis are material from the parliament, material from the parties websites and public media prior to the general elections in 2022 and 2023. The theoretical tools for analyses in this thesis rely oncombined theories from previous studies in Trygghet as issue ownership and discourses used by the Swedish Democrats and True Finns to legitimize their ideological standpoints. Through combining the theoretical framework and Fairclough’s threedimensional analysis,the empirical findings were analyzed to find which discourses are used when referring to gang violence to legitimize xenophobia. Main results of the analysis found that the parties use similar discourses when talking about gang violence, related to safety, a promised fullness to come and a feared doomsday to legitimize xenophobia. However there were also some culturally bound differences in how the parties legitimized xenophobia when discussing gangviolence. The main conclusion of the study was that some of the findings matched the theoretical framework, while some did not.