Ill health and social conditions amongst migrants and refugees—the case of Sweden

The present article delineates the state of health and socioeconomic situation of migrants and refugees in Sweden. Special attention is given to refugees. Migrants appear to have more extensive health problems and a shorter longevity span than native Swedes. The refugees constitute an especially exposed group of migrants. Experiences in the home country that relate to organised violence is a specific problem for this group. It has been estimated that 20 to 25 per cent of all adult refugees who have arrived to Sweden during the recent years have experienced torture in their native countries. Swedish migrant and refugee policy operates according to a model of decentralisation, aiming to avoid ethnic segregation in the big city areas. However, the integration policy seems, in many instances, to have had a negative affect on the situation of the refugees. During the period of time, in which the refugees wait for a residence permit, they are not permitted to work. The long period of forced inactivity—in some instances up to a couple of years—seems frequently to have aggravated the health of the refugees. In addition it appears to contribute to the ever increasing animosity towards them.     

Ambiguous position of the child in supervised meetings

The paper addresses the ambiguous nature of supervised meetings between children and their non‐residential parent(s) which, according to the current legal idea, should serve the best interest of the child. In Finland the meetings between the child and the non‐residential parent can be ordered supervised if there are justified grounds for assuming that they constitute a risk for the child's safety. In many parts of Europe the need for such kinds of meetings controlled by outsiders has increased. The aim of the paper is to consider the child's position and the closely related issue of the child's interest in supervised meetings, based on the daily experiences of the supervisors. Data are gathered by focus group interviews and analysed qualitatively in terms of categorization analysis. As a result, the child's position is an ambiguous phenomenon with multiple interests. Obviously the child's interests will be met in some cases, although paradoxically it is mostly the interests of the parents and most often the fathers, which seem to demand more attention. Thus adult‐centredness, meanings of gender, time together with both the positive and possible detrimental outcomes for the child need further reflection.     

Ideology in Management Studies

Ideology is a core and contested concept in the social sciences, but also long deployed in management research to highlight the political, embedded and/or obscuring nature of ideas. Indeed, many would argue that management itself is inherently ideological in legitimating or privileging managerial interests and concealing other groups and ways of organizing. In the first systematic review of how ideology has been conceptualized in management studies, this paper explores its diverse and changing meanings in order to develop and sustain the concept. It is based on a heuristic review of 175 articles and 41 books published between 1956 and 2018. Further developing categories used in the social sciences around its role, we found views of ideology as: (1) domination; (2) legitimation; (3) interpretation; (4) integration; and (5) normative logic. In addition, emerging perspectives were identified where ideology was (6) an object of critique or (7) fantasy structuring social reality. We describe, illustrate and evaluate these often internally diverse and interrelated perspectives, as well as comparing them with sometimes competing notions within the management field, such as discourse, culture and legitimation. We also bring together the different approaches and argue for a pluralist, but not infinitely flexible, approach to the concept. In doing so, we identify research agendas for ideology within management and organization studies.     

Voices in discourses: Dialogism, Critical Discourse Analysis and ethnic identity

In this article we attempt to combine the Bakhtinian, dialogical philosophy of language and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with our analysis of ethnic identity. The data we discuss are an interview with a Sami journalist who works in the Sami media. We analyse the interview from the points of view of dialogism and CDA to illustrate how identity must be understood as something which is both individual and social in nature. We reject the earlier essentialist interpretations of identity which see it as purely individual and psychological in nature. At the same time, we argue that those views of identity that see it as exclusively socially constructed can be misleading as well. We aim to illustrate our individual‐cum‐social viewpoint by discussing how identity is represented through a variety of voices and a variety of discourses. We discuss ethnic identity as related both to social level discourses that our subject drew on – such as the discourses of the journalistic profession or ethnicity and to 'voices' that bear witness to his experiences as an individual and his individual life course.     

Organization of work in interaction between the paramedics and the patient

The paper analyzes the ways in which the two paramedics organize their work activities in the courses of interaction with the patient. The paramedic-patient -interaction is generally based on question-answer -sequences where one paramedic asks a question to which the patient answers. The paper examines the organization of paramedics' institutional roles and responsibilities within these particular sequences of talk by conversation analytic means. Instead of leaning on any personal or psychological explanations, the paper aims to demonstrate how particular breaches or problems in the organization of division of labour become explainable and understandable through the detailed analysis of preceding interaction. The main research data consist of the videorecordings of naturally occurring interactions between paramedics and patient.     

Health promotional education: differences between school nurses' health counselling and teachers' health instruction in the finnish ENHPS

The purpose of the study was to describe school nurses' (N=24) and teachers' (N=25) opinions of how the health‐related goals in their counselling and instruction were attained and to find out the possible differences between the two groups in the Finnish European Network of Health Promoting Schools. The data were collected by a questionnaire and analysed statistically. Some significant differences existed. School nurses ranked non‐intoxicant use, human growth and development and life control highest in their health counselling, whereas teachers underlined health maintenance and well‐being, respect for other people and non‐intoxicant use. School nurses' health counselling covered disease prevention and treatment better compared to teachers' health instruction, whereas health maintenance and well‐being, environmental health, first aid and safety and respect for other people were covered better in teachers' health instruction. Teachers were more promotional and community‐oriented, while school nurses emphasised a more preventive and individually oriented approach.     

Showing friendship,fighting back,and getting even: resisting bullying victimization within adolescent girls’ friendships

Research suggests that about a quarter of bullying incidences occur within friendships. Yet little attention is given to the underlying social processes and wider macro-system forces that shape friendship victimization experiences. Guided by constructivist grounded theory and Wade's work on resistance, this research explored the phenomenon of victimization within adolescent girls’ friendships. Canadian women reflecting on their school-based victimization experiences were interviewed for this study. Results suggest that participants resisted victimization in important ways but that their resistance strategies were negotiated within gender expectations and ambient discursive constructions of resistance and victimization. Our findings illuminate the ways that discourses concealing women's resistance and privileging overt responses to bullying run counter to gendered expectations for resistance, leaving women in a double bind. Consequently, we found that retaliatory relational aggression allowed girls to deny their victim status while complying with gendered expectations for resistance but led to their bullying experiences being normalized and overlooked.     

Gender dimensions in women’s networking for social innovation

Even if the number of research studies on social innovation has increased the last years, due to its perceived potential to address complex societal challenges, there still remains several relevant aspects to be explored, such as the impact of gendered norms and patterns on the transition from social inclusion to social exclusion strived for in social innovation processes. In order to further expand the dawning scientific field of social innovation, this article presents a case study of a Swedish network promoting women’s employment, entrepreneurship and innovation, exploring the complex and multiple gender aspects of social innovation. The potentials and delimitations of the network to address gender on various levels of social innovation is scrutinized by means of previous research on social and gender dimensions of innovation and organizational/societal change, exposing that further development of social innovation as a scientific field requires a comprehensive approach to the identification and analysis of the gendered norms, subordination and empowerment that affect the aspired transition from social exclusion to social inclusion in social innovation processes.