Background: Previous studies have consistently identified an association between higher levels of education and lower levels of anti-immigrant sentiment, but the underlying reasons for this relationship remain unclear. Therefore, this research aims to help explain why education matters for attitudes toward immigrants. This thesis consists of two studies, where in I examine the role of two features of education, specifically the aquistition of knowledge and social relationships. In the first study, I analyze how two aspects of teaching in schools are associated with anti-immigrant sentiment. I examine education as a means to knowledge by investigating whether the content of education, such as critical thinking and multicultural education, is inversely related to students' prejudice. I also look into the certification of teachers and whether this has a similar effect. In the second study, I investigate the school as an arena for social interaction and examine the relationship between outgroup contact and prejudiced attitudes. Previous research has found that outgroup contact, especially contact in the form of outgroup friendship, is effective in reducing prejudice. Based on these previous findings, I study how the Secondary Transfer Effect (STE) of friendship with a specific outgroup member is associated with attitudes towards other ethnic or racial groups. Method: The two studies rely on a cross-sectional survey of Swedish high school students (aged 16-18) administered by 'Forum för levande historia' (Forum for living history) and Statistics Sweden during the 2009-2010 academic year. Additionally, survey participants' responses are matched to registry data. This thesis also uses multilevel (MLM) and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models. Results: Results show that both aspects of education are correlated with lower levels of anti-immigrant sentiment. The first study, in which education is a means to knowledge, demonstrates that education focused on critical thinking and multiculturalism are negatively correlated with anti-immigrant sentiment. Furthermore, results show that more exposure to teachings about xenophobia and racism is associated with less prejudice. However, when controlling for exposure to critical thinking, as well as learning about religions and cultures, the results show that exposure to learning about xenophobia and racism are no longer significant. Moreover, there is a negative association between exposure to teachers with a teaching certification or teaching degree and prejudice. Results from the second study, in which the school functions as an arena for social interaction, shows that positive attitudes associated with intergroup friendship not only generalize to the ethnic outgroup of that friend but, more importantly, also to other secondary outgroups. STEs are most frequently found where boundaries between ingroups and outgroups are perceived to be the thickest. Thus, the presence of STEs appears to be group-specific. Previous research on perceived social distance in Sweden and other countries help shed light on these findings. In summary, the results of this thesis provide evidence of two different complimentary accounts of the negative relationship between education and prejudice.

This study deals with the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation on the living conditions of aged men and women. By studying labour force participation, savings and pensions, the role of the family, and the extent of dependency of aged men and women from a gender and class perspective, continuities and changes between pre-industrial and industrial times are examined. The main focus is placed on the situation of elderly persons living in the town of Sundsvall between 1830 and 1930. This town became the commercial centre of one of the largest saw-mill districts in the world at the end of the nineteenth century. The residence patterns of old men and women in Sundsvall are also compared with those in two other Swedish industrialised urban areas; the capital Stockholm and the textile centre Norrköping. According to modernisation theorists, industrialisation and urbanisation led to an increase in dependency in old age, due to weakening family ties and unemployment. This study shows the complexity of the issue. It is true that some sources reveal a declining proportion of men participating in the labour force at the very end of the period of observation, but this was primarily due to the introduction of the national pension system in 1914. On the other hand, other records show a stability or even an increasing proportion of elderly men and women in the labour market. By contrast with previous studies of the residence patterns of aged persons, this dissertation shows a very high percentage of elderly women living alone in all three urban areas selected for study. However, this was not solely a sign of isolation, since the vast majority of those elderly living in households of their own had children residing in the vicinity. Furthermore, many old men and women shared households with their children, although this pattern was less common among the working class. The role of off-spring appears to have been important both in pre-industrial and industrial times. The residence patterns of the urban elderly were probably influenced by traditional rural living arrangements, to the extent that old couples and their married children often lived close to each other but usually maintained households of their own. Old parents and their adult children might have preferred to live in separate households instead of crowding in with each other. The unmarried elderly were probably most affected by the transformations taking place at the end of the nineteenth century. A considerable number of them migrated late in life, leaving all their relatives behind. Therefore, they became highly vulnerable. Unmarried men tended to be more exposed to the dangers of urban life. They probably experienced tougher working conditions, had weaker social networks, and could not manage on their own to the same extent as women. Therefore, a larger propor-tion of men than women ended up in the workhouse. / digitalisering@umu

The main purpose of this thesis is to discuss what exile writing is and who can be seen as an exile writer. If the word “exile” is related to forced dislocation, like Paul Tabori and Sopia A. McClennen describes it, who can be viewed as an exile writer? Is Anders Olsson’s definition of an exile writer acceptable or not? Could the The Escape, a future story about exiled Northern Europeans in Myanmar, be classified as exile literature? Another purpose with this text is to describe how a story about exile can be made realistic and tangible to a reader who has not experienced exile. How can the exile experience be shown in a text? The third major aim with this thesis is to discuss how an ethnographic study differs from a fictive novel about another culture. Is an academic text more close to reality than fiction and what is reality anyway? Is it possible to make a mix of an academic study and a fictive novel?

Huvudsyftet med avhandlingen är att förstå hur människor tänker om och hanterar kärlek, sexualitet och hälsa i sina vardagliga liv på landsbygden i nordöstra KwaZulu Natal i Sydafrika. Målet är att förstå vad kärlek innebär för dem, men också hur större samhälleliga processer påverkar erfarenheter av kärlek, hälsa och relationer. Studien baserar sig på sex månaders etnografiska fältstudier bland framförallt åtta familjer. Data samlades in genom deltagande observationer och öppna intervjuer. Vid sidan om familjerna intervjuades tio örtdoktorer. Materialet består av 60 bandade intervjuer och cirka 340 sidor fältanteckningar. Analysen visar att man talar mer om kärlek i termer av respektfulla handlingar och en social ordning än om kärlek som en känsla. Kärleken är visserligen känslofull, men talet om respektfulla handlingar som kännetecknet på kärlek visar att invånarna ser sig som djupt beroende av varandra. Individen definieras av en väv av relationer där även förfäderna, både levande och döda, ingår. Kärlek mellan två individer hänger därför intimt samman med släkten och relationer i närsamhället, vilket skapar tillhörighet men också utsatthet. Kärleksmediciner tillverkade av örter utgör en möjlig väg att stärka ett förhållande eller att vinna någons kärlek. Berättelser om kärleksmediciner visar emellertid vad människor drabbas av och vad som anses vara ett omoraliskt agerande, vilket ger förklaring och lindring i svåra situationer men också lyfter fram att strukturella omständigheter under vilka människor lever behöver förändras. Kolonisation, apartheid och under senare år demokratisering har inneburit radikala förändringar för kärleks- och familjerelationer. Män, och fler och fler kvinnor, försörjer sig som migrantarbetare, vilket har lett till en uppsplittring av familjen mellan stad och landsbygd och skapat nya slags försörjningsnätverk. Förändringarna har lett till svårigheter med att visa kärlek i handling och till efterfrågan på nya sorters handlingar som bevis på kärlek. Arbetslöshet och sjukdomar utgör dock det allvarligaste hotet mot kärleken. I brist på effektiva åtgärder mot aids åberopar människor en tydligare moralisk ordning och försöker finna alternativa vägar att skydda sig. För att lyfta fram både det individuella och det gemensamma ansvaret för sexuella relationer och för att stärka flickors position har invånarna skapat en ritual för att kontrollera flickors oskuld, som en preventiv snarare än en diagnostisk åtgärd. En välkänd historisk ritual som lyfter fram oskuldens och kollektivets betydelse används i en modern strategi för att försöka hejda spridningen av aids och göra kärleken möjlig. Studien lyfter fram hur både inomstatliga och västerländska projekt som syftar till att förbättra zulufolkets situation grundar sig i perspektiv och föreställningar som är främmande för dem, och ibland krockar med deras sätt att uppfatta kärlek, relationer och sexualitet. Invånarna ser ömsom nya möjligheter, ömsom försöker de bevara sin tidigare moraliska ordning, men framförallt transformerar de sin specifika förståelse av hur samlevnad fungerar till dagens behov och villkor. / The main purpose of this study is to investigate how people think about and manage love, sexuality and health in their daily lives in northeastern rural KwaZulu Natal. The goal is to understand what love means to them, as well as how bigger social processes influence experiences of love, health and relationships. The thesis is based on six months of ethnographic field studies concentrated around eight families. Data were gathered through participant observations and open-ended interviews. Ten traditional healers were also interviewed. Data comprises 60 tape-recorded interviews and about 340 pages of fieldnotes. The analysis shows that people speak about love in terms of respectful actions and a social order rather than in terms of love as an emotion. Certainly love is about feelings, but the view that respectful actions are the primary signs of love reflects the way in which people see themselves as deeply dependent on one another. The individual is woven into a web of relationships where even the ancestors are an integral part. Thus love between two individuals is intimately connected to the family and to wider social relations in a way that creates a sense of belonging but also vulnerability. Love medicines made from herbs offer one way to strengthen a relationship or win somebody’s love. However, stories about love medicines reveal what trials people face, what they see as amoral actions, and in addition provide explanations and comfort as well as point out that structural circumstances under which people live need to be changed. Colonisation, apartheid policies, and more recently democratization have all led to radical changes for love and family relations. Men and increasingly women have been drawn into migrant labor, dividing families between rural and urban areas and creating new types of support networks. These changes have obstructed individuals’ ability to show love through actions and also led to individuals expecting new types of actions as proof of love. The most serious threats to love, however, are unemployment and sickness. In the absence of effective measures against aids people refer to a more distinct moral order to find alternative ways to protect young people. To emphasize both the individual’s and the community’s responsibility for sexual relations, and to strengthen girls’ position, Zulu have created virginity testing as a preventive ritual more than a diagnostic measure. An old tradition that emphasizes the status of virgin girls and the significance of the collective is used in a modern strategy to try to combat the spread of aids and to make love possible. The study emphasizes how both South African and Western projects that aim to improve the situation for the Zulus are grounded in perspectives and ideas that are unfamiliar to them, and sometimes collide with how they perceive love, relationships and sexuality. The interviewees sometimes see new possibilities, sometimes try to preserve their old moral order, but most of all work to transform their specific understandings of love and life to meet today’s needs and conditions.

Denna studie handlar om hur unga män med utländsk bakgrund bosatta i socioekonomisktutsatta områden upplever massmedia och dess föreställning gentemot området de bor i. Studien är kvalitativ genom fokusgruppsintervjuer och berör frågor om hur dessa unga mänmed utländsk bakgrund beskrivs, hur massmedia talar om socioekonomiskt utsatta områdensamt hur massmedia spelar en roll i rapporteringen av dessa ovanstående faktorer. Vi kom fram till att dessa unga män med utländsk bakgrund bosatta i socioekonomiskt utsattaområden upplever att massmedia målar upp och reproducerar en övervägande negativ bild avde och området de bor i. De talar mycket kring sina egna känslor och hur upplevelsernapåverkar dem samt hur de speglar sig i deras liv.

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This study investigates the influence of women’s empowerment measured via spousal educational difference and women’s completed education level on the use of maternal health services (Antenatal care and skilled birth assistance), and whether it varies by ethnicity. A theoretical framework based on Kabeer’s three dimension of empowerment combined with Zimmerman’s approach and the rational choice theory informs the analyses. Data from the 2013/2014 Zambia Demographic and Health survey are analysed focusing on women aged 15 -49 years who are married/ live with a partner and had a birth in the past five years. Multivariate logistic regression is the tool of analysis.The results indicate significant association between women’s completed education level and use of maternal health services. Spousal educational differences show no significant association with the use of MH services. For both ANC and SBA use, a relatively weak relationship is seen with ethnicity. In addition, women’s wealth level, the province they live in and region of residence type appear to be important with respect to the utilization of MH services. The findings are explained in relation to the theoretical framework as well as previous studies, concluding the study with suggestions for further research.

Within this thesis, the diversity of environmental attitudes and their predictors among men and women in Czechia and Sweden is elaborated on based on ISSP 2010 Environment III data. Measuring the level of environmental attitudes and beliefs is quite complex, however the New Ecological Paradigm was used as a well-established measuring tool indicating the relationship and opinions of people concerning environment. Gender, or sex in this case, is one of the predictors that are often being mentioned impacting environmental attitudes. This thesis compares two similarly sized countries, Czechia and Sweden, and explores the character of the relationship subsisting between their environmental attitudes and gender in/equality with the use of statistical tools and gender lenses application. The thesis was inspired by the lack of studies connecting both mentioned countries being analysed in an intersectional manner. In the analysis, significant differences were found between both Czechia and Sweden, and men and women in what influences predictors for environmental attitude. The hypothesis assuming there would be notably lesser differences within Swedish men and women than Czech men and women was not confirmed. This study combining statistical methods and gender lenses illustrates that in understanding complex phenomena like environmental attitudes and beliefs, it is important to look at the issue from an intersectional perspective, and therefore, it should be emphasized gender (or sex in this case) explains only an infinitesimal proportion of environmental attitudes and beliefs, other variables such as country affiliation, age, education, religious affiliation, environmental knowledge, household income and in some instances also environmental behaviour seem to influence environmental attitudes and beliefs to a higher extent than gender and sex.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what family law court secretaries take into consideration in investigations regarding custody where domestic violence and possible mental illness because of the violence are present. Since it is primarily women who experience domestic violence, this study chose to focus on the mothers parenting abilities and her possible mental illness. To answer the study's research questions and purpose the approach was qualitative and the method used was semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured interviews allow a more in depth and nuanced understanding of the social problem which is being studied. The result was interpreted by using thematic analysis and then analyzed through a theoretical framework, which was Marianne Hester's "Three planet model". The theoretical framework consisted of three planets which are called domestic violence, child protection and child contact. The results of this study show that family law secretaries struggle to discern whether domestic violence has occurred or not, since there rarely are any police rapport that supports claims of domestic violence. Regarding the mother's parenting abilities, she is considered not being able to fully parent the child, due to the domestic violence she has been exposed to. Furthermore, the results show that mental illness in investigations of custody focuses on whether the mother is still capable of raising the child. The results also show that mental illness is broad and difficult to define, since the spectrum for mental illness is quite broad.

Communication is a fundamental process for organizations with meetings as the most important arena. The nonverbal language affects the transfer and the rendering of what is communicated. Digitization has changed the opportunities to communicate, where the possibility of nonverbal communication is limited. The aim of the study is to describe and analyze the technical domestication in meetings at two selected workplaces. The purpose is to contribute to research on digitizing organizations in general and workplace meetings in particular. We intend to achieve the goal and purpose of the survey by examining how the technology is handled and what it is attributed to it by the employees. This survey research the questions from a user perspective.   Data has been gathered through a qualitative research method. 15 interviews have been conducted with public sector employees. The result has been analyzed based on the theoretical framework by Gidden’s structuring theory. Further the theoretical concepts nonverbal communication, digital trust and paralinguistic and expressive linguistic have been used. The results from the study indicates that physical meetings is to prefer before digital meetings. The conclusion is that digital meetings cannot replace physical meetings. However, digital meetings are able to provide a new way of working with meetings in working life. Another conclusion is that the employee's technical domestication is a consequence of a normative approach at the workplace.