Suchergebnisse

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the German artist Gunter Demnig has been installing his Stolpersteine [Stumbling Stones] all over Europe – including Russia – to commemorate the victims of National Socialism. Today, the Stolpersteine constitute the world's second largest Holocaust monument. In this book the author addresses some of the most crucial issues raised by these memorial stones.Taking as his point of departure the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault and Martin Heidegger, the author discusses the juridico-political structure of the Third Reich in which the victims lived and perished and identifies a new paradigm for the commemoration of Third Reich victims. The subject of commemoration is in fact not the dignified subject of law, but the naked life of the Muselmann: he who can neither live nor die. This book analyses the challenge of the problem of history that the Stolpersteine testify to, and it discusses whether a unique monument such as the Stolpersteine can somehow restore what was once taken from the victims

Currently, there are 68.5 million people forcibly displaced around the world, which is the highest figure since World War II. The affected individuals have fled their homes to seek protection elsewhere, either within their own country or across national borders. Approximately 16.2 million people were newly displaced during the year 2017 as a result of conflict, persecution, generalised violence and human rights violations. Against this backdrop of increased displacement, it is worthy of note that 52 per cent of the world's refugee population is comprised of children under 18 years of age, which is the greatest number in a decade. Within this particular group, the number of unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) seeking asylum has increased significantly and has today reached its highest level since the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began collecting such systematic data in 2006 (UNHCR, 2018). Although statistics show that the number of URMs seeking asylum in Sweden has steadily increased since 2006, the sudden increase of this group in 2015 in particular was considerable and both caused a poisonous political debate concerning the country's immigration policy and created a major challenge for Swedish reception and integration policy. This study is focused on the case of unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan who immigrated to Sweden in 2015. The main objective of this study is to examine how the Swedish reception system and social work institutions meet the needs and ambitions of URMs. The study seeks to answer the following research questions: how has the increase in immigration in 2015 influenced Swedish political parties' programmes and policies?; how does the municipal receiving system for unaccompanied refugee minors in Sweden function according to the experiences of minors and their carers?; what are some of the possibilities and hindrances that exist in respect of unaccompanied refugee minors' integration into Swedish society?; and how well-informed and prepared are Swedish social workers and the 'staff from family-homes' in meeting the needs and ambitions of unaccompanied refugee minors? The methodology used in this study is qualitative content analysis based on the Swedish political debate regarding migration and integration between 2014–2018, and the result of 29 interviews with 12 URMs, nine carers, three persons from 'family-homes', three municipal social workers and two legal guardians. The theoretical framework used to analyse the data in this study is postcolonial theory and critical intersectionalism. Given the fact that Afghanistan has, during the course of its modern history, been subjected to the colonial and imperialist politics of European countries, the recent increase of Afghan URM migration to Sweden cannot be separated from this: that is, foreign direct intervention in the home country of these refugees in the form of Western countries' postcolonial political and economic policies. When used critically, an intersectional perspective helps us to avoid unqualified generalisations, which is often interwoven in the concept of 'immigrants' in general and URMs in particular. The analysis suggests that the political debate influencing Swedish migration and integration policies almost totally ignores the role of Western countries in the war and violence created in countries such Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, which is one of the major reasons behind increasing migration from those countries. It also suggests that there are many shortcomings and problems in the Swedish reception system, such as social authorities', and carers' lack of adequate knowledge about migration and integration in general and in relation to the life conditions of URMs and their personal histories and ambitions in particular. There is also evidence of a strong West-centrism in how reception staff work with URMs. Together, these factors harm URM's future integration in society. It is argued that social work needs critical knowledge in the education of social workers, and adequate training in skills for working with transnational families and new global family formations and relations. Also important for progressive social policy and social work are special individual-adjusted education programmes for URMs, and educating the teachers and carers who work with URMs, in critical knowledge and skills and socio-political mobilisation against racism and xenophobia. The topics of the study are important in a time of increasing racism and right-wing populism in mainstream politics, trends which risk negatively influencing public policy and social work research, education and practices.

A number of studies have linked citizens' involvement in user-generated content (UGC) on the internet to democratic engagement. Whereas previous research implies a view of UGC involvement as the processing of political information, this study conceptualizes and operationalizes UGC involvement in terms of a distinct audience experience based on expressivity, performance and collaboration. Analysis of survey data from Swedish adolescents in the 13–17 age range shows that UGC involvement predicts offline as well as online political participation. In contrast to informational media use, however, UGC involvement is negatively related to political knowledge. The findings are compatible with recent theories suggesting that the expressive, performative and collaborative features of UGC involvement can promote political participation. Implications of the findings for youth democratic engagement are discussed.

Summary

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This article discusses three problems that need to be tackled when the climate crisis becomes 'a sustainability issue' to be taught in schools. The article highlights, first, how knowledge concerning sustainability in schools risks being reduced and made into knowledge about 'things'. Secondly, it also discusses how students in such a context risk being treated as instruments for ways of being in the world, rather than being subjects with ethical and political concerns for the world in which they live 'here and now'. Thirdly, as we explore through some empirical examples, such reduction and instrumentalism objectifies both students and nature, which makes an adequate response to the crises obsolete. As an alternative, the article develops a notion of grievability and its importance for adequately responding to all living beings within a project of sustainability. To this end, it develops suggestions for a transactive teaching approach in a time of climate crisis.

This article departures from the understanding of environmental sustainable education (ESE) as a political project that consists of dissonant and conflicting voices. The aim of the article is to understand how affection, i.e. bodily sensations, transform into political emotions in teaching and learning settings. The article offers a philosophical and empirically based model called the 'political moment model' for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension. The model was developed in response to an empirical case study where the data were somewhat confusing. In order understand the empirical data, we used parts of Mouffe's theory of the political and various scholars' work on political emotions and placed these aspects in a pragmatist standpoint of experience, emotions and meaning making. The model helped to investigate students' experiences of the political dimension in situations where they experienced affection, i.e. bodily sensation, and emotions in connection with reflections and discussions about how to handle public issues of sustainable development. The article ends with a theoretical discussion of the findings in order to understand the political dimension in teaching and learning activities and to discern possible directions for future research on political moments in ESE.

Along with the rise of a research field called digital humanities, online specific research ethics plays an especially significant role. Research on the same (Internet related) topic is usually multidisciplinary, and understanding research ethics even inside the same research community may vary essentially. It is important to recognise and pay attention to online specific contexts as well as the researcher's own disciplinary background. In this empirical research paper, we will first sum up our previous work. Currently, we are working on a model which will help in positioning multidisciplinary researchers as ethical actors based on their research topics and backgrounds. In this article, we will present this model with a demonstration of the empirical data collected as part of a Finnish research project called Citizen Mindscapes, which concerns the cultures and history of Finnish discussion forums. We argue that in Finland, and probably also worldwide, online research ethics is in a phase where the focus should be moving from defining the ethical guidelines to studying research ethics as such. We will also discuss how the model will be further developed in an in-depth empirical process.

This study examines how power relations between journalism and political actors vary across the news production process. Applying a process approach, it addresses this issue by exploring journalists' enactment of the watchdog role in two key moments of news production: the interactional phase and the news-construction phase. The study is conducted in the context of press conferences with the Swedish Government and involves data from question-and-answer sessions and published news content that was initiated by such press conferences. With a low or moderate extent of journalistic aggressiveness in the interactional phase, the results indicate that this moment is characterized by cooperativeness and can be described in accordance with an exchange model. By contrast, the analysis of the published news content demonstrates a high extent of criticism and is in line with an adversary model. Altogether, the findings contribute new evidence to suggest that the power relations between journalists and political actors vary across the moments of news production, and that journalistic autonomy increases in the later phases of the process. The differences in the extent of watchdog-role performance are discussed in terms of a strategic ritual by which news journalism promotes a favorable image of itself as a public watchdog institution.

This study focuses on interpersonal communication in the family and among peers in order to empirically examine the general idea that everyday civic talk might develop young people's civic orientation. Two questions are addressed: (1) What is the significance of civic talk in relation to key dimensions of young people's civic orientation? (2) What does civic talk in peer settings specifically contribute to young people's civic orientation? The study is based on survey data from high school students and their parents ( N = 1148). The findings offer clear support to the idea that civic talk in everyday contexts matters for young people's development of political knowledge, democratic values and different forms of civic practices. Civic talk in peer settings contributes uniquely to all dimensions of youths' civic orientation. Implications of the findings for political socialization research and theories of the democratic mechanisms of civic talk are discussed.

This study examines the effects of informational, interactional, and creative forms of Internet use on behavioral and cognitive indicators of youth democratic engagement. Data from an extensive two-wave panel survey of Swedish adolescents ( N = 1,520) were examined. Results show that the effects of informational and interactional Internet use on political participation are indirect, with online political interactions acting as an intervening variable. In addition, creative production was found to be a direct positive predictor of online and offline political participation but negatively related to political knowledge. The effects were statistically significant even when accounting for self-selection and previous levels of democratic engagement. Taken together, these findings contribute novel theoretical insights into the mechanisms by which Internet use may encourage or hinder youths' democratic engagement.