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Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you where you think you are

In the growing multiculturalism of Swedish society, we see a significant amount of citizens of various heritages experience difficulty when venturing into the Swedish labor market. These difficulties have been explained earlier by either cultural or structural factors. The cultural factors state that individuals raised outside of the traditional ―Swedish‖ culture have greater difficulty in understanding the subtle idiomatic properties of the Swedish labor market. On the other hand, the structural factors state that it is the deficiency in Swedish language and education that stand as the main obstacles in finding lucrative professions on the labor market. To determine the structural and/or cultural factors, I have performed field research in restaurants of the Norrköping district. The restaurant is a setting in which several aspects are shown to have influence over the informants‘ decision to become a restaurant owner. These aspects include the labor market, food, family relations, and networks between friends and professional associates. Why have these individuals chosen restaurants? Is it out of economic necessity, or is it a family profession they feel compelled to safeguard? In this thesis, several restaurant owners will answer questions regarding their choice of profession, their prospects on the labor market, the influence of their families, the importance of cuisine as a cultural foundation, and the discrepancies behind social and financial networks among ethnic groups in Sweden.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-71521
Date January 2011
CreatorsHarbo, Kristoffer
PublisherLinköpings universitet, Institutionen för samhälls- och välfärdsstudier
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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