This thesis presents the implementation of the digitalization in the Swedish Public Administration by exploring if traces of democratic values and New Public Management can be shown in two official government documents. The purpose of this thesis is to study the traces in relation to how the citizens role changes and how it affects the society in the development of the digitalization. The results of this thesis show that elements of democratic values and New Public Management can be found. Which consequently creates a conflict for the citizen when New Public Management is increasingly adopted in the public adminstration which also affects the democratic principles.

The aim of this thesis is to explore and discover how an immigrant ‘finds home’ inSweden through homeownership and to document first-hand experiences on their journey tohomeownership. Thirteen questions were sent via e-mail to twelve (12) participants whowere self-identified immigrants within Sweden. This deductive research rests on thetheoretical framework of the Theory of Finding Home (ToFH) and research on the meaningof ‘home’ that supports the hypothesis that homeownership contributes to an immigrant‘finding home’ in Sweden. The twelve (12) immigrants in Sweden of various backgroundsprovide the foundation for the analysis by elaborating on the relationship between owning ahome and the feeling of being at ‘home’ in Sweden. Home is found to be closely associatedwith feelings of belonging, comfort, safety, and financial well-being. The respondents’answers strongly suggest that owning a house/apartment in Sweden is a tremendousaccomplishment for an immigrant and serves as a major factor in finding the feeling of being‘at home.’

This thesis conducts a comparative study of two big, international civil society organisations, La Via Campesina and WWF, and their work with climate change. The purpose is to investigate why they have such different perspectives toward solving the climate crisis, and whether the explanation can be found by looking at the different positions they have in relation to the global hegemonic system. Two supplementary approaches of discourse analysis, Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis and Bacchi’s What’s The Problem Represented to Be-approach, are utilised to analyse the organisations’ framing of climate change. Gramsci’s theoretical framework of hegemony is applied in order to inform the analysis and to shed light on how this framing interrelates to the hegemonic system of neoliberalism. In the case of La Via Campesina, the conclusion is that they are a counter-hegemonic movement, fighting in a war of position over the common sense. This spills over into their work on climate change, which is aimed at bringing transformative change. WWF has a more reformist agenda and is effectively enabling the perseverance of the current hegemony, but it cannot be confirmed within the scope if this thesis whether this is a direct consequence of co-optation or not. 

Albanians are known for their long legacy in migrating worldwide for economic reasons, especially in Europe. Yet, return programs and policies are falling behind to meet the needs of those migrants who decides to return to their home country. The aim of this study is to explore the topic of return migration and reintegration in the context of Albanian migrants. To this end, this thesis answers three research questions: 1) What are the forces driving Albanians to emigrate from their country of origin? 2) What are reasons that Albanians return to their country of origin? 3) What are the challenges that Albanian returnees face during the reintegration process in Albania? The main theoretical lenses adapted by this study are the social network theory, the theory of reintegration, and push-pull factors. Through a qualitative research, based on semi-structured interviews, this study identifies as pull factors of migration higher paying jobs and employment opportunities, while recognising educational systems and labour laws as push factors. Furthermore, discrimination and unsuccessful acculturation resulted as key drivers of return. Finally, this study investigates dysfunctional systems, unresponsive public institutions, and economic difficulties as significant challenges throughout returnees’ reintegration. 

Vietnam has a long tradition of social engineering through which the ordering of urban space haseffectively been used to enforce the state’s vision of political and social order. With the country currently in tran-sition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy, the ordering of urban spaces is currently all themore important. This is prominently manifested in the numerous beautification projects that are being implemen-ted in Vietnamese cities. This article explores recent ordering endeavours and considers the way they are legiti-mated and contested in Vietnam’s new socio-political context. Three beautification projects in Hanoi areexamined using materials from policy documents, professional journals and media coverage. The article arguesthat state ordering actions and the ‘exemplary’ urban spaces they seek to create are embodiments of a complexsystem of orders of powers in transitional Vietnam, in which political visions of modernist socialism and the newmarket-oriented agenda are sometimes in alignment and sometimes clash. Overall, the state’s failure in sustain-ing these ‘exemplary’ urban spaces is emblematic of this hybrid system.

This research project explores arms trade from a power perspective and arms trade

as a political phenomenon on a global level. The U.S. is the centre of this

attention. The thesis has one main objective: to trace and unpack the different

geographical, historical, social, and political arrangements when U.S. lawmakers

speak of reality within arms trade during the 20th century from power

perspectives such as biopower and Western liberal apparatuses.

This research utilises Foucauldian discourse analysis with an

archaeological/genealogical approach situated within power perspectives of

Western liberal apparatuses and biopower (Foucault, 2009). Further, the research

will take upon a constructivist qualitative research along with discourse analysis

that necessitates an interwoven relationship between theory and method, exploring

the fundamental philosophical grounds underlying discourse analysis and its

application as an empirical research method.

When we critically explore the dimensions of autonomy, generalisation,

universality, institutionalism, and normalisation, a complex fabric of discourse

emerges. This web of discourse surrounding arms trade carries inherent political

implications, guided by underlying ideological and strategic drivers that influence

the United States' capacity to exert influence on the global stage.

This thesis aims to explore the concept of educational inclusion for newly arrived migrant students in Sweden. Educational inclusion is examined through the theoretical perspectives of Human Rights and Multiculturalism. Moreover, the research uses text analysis on the educational inclusive policies on the national, and the local level. The effects of those policies are examined through interviewing the participants who have experienced the implementations of these policies on the local level in Skövde city. The findings show that the policy of Swedish language teaching is not properly implemented in Skövde, resulting in newly arrived migrant students not being successfully included, due to them lacking the needed Swedish language skills required of them. This research argues that learning the Swedish language is the main factor behind the successful inclusion of the newly arrived migrant students in the Swedish educational system.

This research paper investigated how AI can shift the balance of power between China and the U.S. in the military domain by comparing the respective countries' power through Waltz’s five capabilities from two points in time to identify how the power dynamics have shifted in the last two decades. Neorealism and realist hegemonic stability theory were applied to explain why China might be challenging the U.S.'s role as the number one superpower and how this can be achieved as the country aims for AI domination by 2030. Based on the results, China has had surprising growth over the past two decades which indicates that the country is aiming for hegemony in the AI domain as it has the capacity and capability to shift the balance of power in the military domain. However, different attempts from the U.S. and its allies to halt China’s rise in tech have led to tension in the international system. Therefore, how AI technology can be used to shift the balance of power depends entirely on how China deals with these attempts and if it can keep up with its development in the field. 

This thesis analysed the representation of the migration topic within the two widely read newspapers in the UK, The Daily Mail and The Telegraph during the Brexit transition period lasting from 01.01.2020 until 31.12.2020. Using thematic analysis, the study investigated 53 articles across this period, the research has concluded that the representation of migration remained negative throughout the timespan, the ambiguity of the different terms was as prevalent, which led to the newspapers discussing and articulating migration as an economic and national security threat to the country. Grounded within the Security Theory of Copenhagen School, this thesis argued that the government has been conveying and securitising migration, which was then depicted by the media editorial board. The labels prominent in the media depiction were “illegal”, “criminal”, and “low-skilled” contributed to the establishment of the security threats.  Additionally, this research attempted to answer the question of how migration was securitised, which was largely uncovered by the thematic analysis. The study has revealed that migration is largely presented in terms of societal threat, which is followed by an argument on increased border control and a threat to British identity and sovereignty. It has been established the securitisation was influenced by the contextual background of the state rather than by migration

This thesis will focus on the pervasive issue of child marriage, which continues to affectnumerous regions globally, presenting significant obstacles to the well-being and rights ofcountless children, especially that of young girls. To deepen the research, I have chosenNiger as a case study due to its alarming prevalence of child marriages. Estimated as oneof the world's poorest countries, Niger struggles with the prevalence of child marriages,which is a complex phenomenon linked with gender inequality. Despite ongoing efforts tocombat this issue, the occurrence of child marriages in Niger remains disturbingly high,with a profound impact on the agency, health, education, and socio-economic prospects ofyoung girls. The primary goal of my thesis is to analyze and explain how young girls'agency is affected. At the same time I will delve deeper into the factors that contribute tothe rise of child marriages and gender inequality in Niger and also the consequences of thispractice, specifically education and health. I will conduct a secondary data analysis,integrating secondary interviews in the discussion/analysis section. I will utilize both theFeminist Theory to explain gender inequality and the Capability Approach Theory toexplore how the agency of young girls is affected.

The Greek island of Lesvos has a centuries-old history as a site of departure, arrival, coexistence and resistance for the forcibly displaced. This migratory chronology, however, was overwritten by the unprecedented attention that Lesvos attracted during the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’. This paper examines vernacular aspects of bordering, specifically the practice of border crossers and other groups standing in solidarity with—or against—them, to inscribe messages on walls in and around carceral and public spaces, viewed as a process of constructing and contesting borders from below. Closely reading numerous inscriptions collected around Lesvos reveals how borders are constructed, enacted and contested from below through borderlanders’ discursive practices on some of the very walls that constitute the EU frontier’s material infrastructure. This study aims to advance understandings of the historical continuity of the Aegean borderscape as a complex landscape of border effects and affects that exceed borders’ legal, infrastructural and political dimensions, while also highlighting the persistence and importance of personal agency, self-authorship and identity reclamation by border populations even in the direst of circumstances.

The paper examines how the increasing datafication of society and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) offer new empirical opportunities to better understand the Minimum Content of Nationality (MCN). Despite the critical importance of the MCN in statelessness, it has largely been ignored in academic and policy circles. The ambiguity that results from this lack of engagement greatly complicates efforts to identify and protect people affected by statelessness. I argue that there is growing potential to draw on the massive increase in data on the everyday lived experiences of individuals, along with advances in AI technologies, to help narrow in on the MCN. The article sets out a future research agenda as well as highlighting the limitations, ethical considerations and potential risks associated with using AI in this context.

This short playful piece is a result of my participation in the Collaborative Foresight Cycle on the Futures of AI and Sustainability. Hosted by Media Evolution in Malmö between May and June 2022, the Cycle brought together a broad range of actors to co-create and explore the future possibilities of AI in relation to sustainability. This piece is a response to the hopelessness which has arisen due to the limited and often dystopian future(s) of planetary health with which we are faced. To counter this, it is posited that AI can be used as an imaginative tool and act as a catalyst for the creation of different and disruptive possible futures of planetary health. By doing so, possibilities such as utopianism and collection action can be put back on the table. 

This piece is a comparative analysis of major parties’ manifesto pledges on AI for the 2024 UK general election.

This chapter explores the impact of being statelessness on individuals and communities who are displaced. It starts with an overview of statelessness, the numbers those people affected, the major stateless populations around the world, how statelessness is created and perpetuated and the presentation of two case studies of displaced stateless populations.  Following this, it covers the challenges that statelessness poses to those affected by it, as well as to social work practitioners working with them are presented. These are broken down to macro, meso and micro challenges. To assist the readers in overcoming these challenges key knowledge, capabilities and approaches for social workers supporting stateless persons are set out. The chapter concludes with discussion points for students and pedagogy suggestions for those leading courses on statelessness and displacement.  

This paper explores the law and policy related to the identification, assessment, and recording of the statelessness of refugees in the Swedish asylum procedure. It considers the gaps in law and policy that can lead to a stateless refugee remaining in a prolonged, or potentially, indefinite stateless situation and the impacts of the temporary asylum law introduced in 2016. The temporary law can be seen to undermine useful legislation that saw many stateless refugees receiving citizenship after four years. However, the new State discourse introduced full-time employment or completion of education as a requirement to acquire permanent residence, a prerequisite for citizenship. Therefore, these can be seen as new naturalisation criteria for certain migrants, which could mark a shift from Sweden’s previous trend towards increasingly liberal access to citizenship since the 1950s.

Given the current hype around artificial intelligence (AI) in health, it is not surprising that we are seeing the well-established role and power of future visions being played out by a range of actors in the area. One example is the surge in the adoption of national AI strategies (NASs). NASs have a structuring function, justifying current political decisions as well as (re)framing the conditions of possibility of AI in society. This paper explores the sociotechnical imaginaries (SIs) of AI in health in the NASs of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The findings reveal that a shared common future vision can be identified, though some variations in the justification of how and why this should be realised exist between the states. This common future vision is of the inevitable and ever-increasing scale and scope of AI in health. This is a process driven and implemented by the private sector, a future which is normalised and legitimised through the promise of greater efficiency and progress. However, a tension between the role of states as simply reacting to, as well as being essential facilitators of, the realisation of this shared vision is identified, a tension that results from technological promises.

This chapter critically engages with a central policy norm developed by key international actors working on statelessness and refugeeness over the last three decades. This is the norm that for stateless refugees their refugeeness effectively trumps their statelessness. I term this norm, which arbitrarily separates and ranks statelessness and refugeeness, the “protection hierarchy”. This norm is increasingly being called into question by a range of actors due to growth of research on stateless refugees which shows that statelessness is both very impactful and highly intertwined with refugeeness.The chapter empirically interrogates this normative policy position, showing that the “protection hierarchy” not only fails to protect stateless refugees, but actually increases the populations’ vulnerability. Due to this, the chapter argues for the use of evidenced based policies on stateless refugees and the dismantling of the ”protection hierarchy”.

This article is a reflection piece on the use of the futures cone and an expanded futures cone (which draws on queer theory) as a tool for dialogue and planning between the supervisor and the doctoral student. I do so by situating the use of this tool in relation to three supervision typologies: the product-orientated,process-orientatedand doctoral student-orientated approaches. I claim that it is an underused and highly versatile tool for doctoral supervision.

The future role of AI in healthcare is largely seen as positive, inevitable, necessary, and driven by the private sector. These dominant narratives obscure decision-making about these future applications, with little room for political scrutiny, or public participation. Public, and private resources, are being funnelled to support various AI health technologies. By prioritising some and not others, we are being set on a path that will greatly impact our future health, lives, and societies. My research sheds light on these processes and provides tools to expand the scope for inclusive public participation in the debate on future role of AI in healthcare. 

This paper presents the findings of 33 interviews, carried out in 2017, examining the factors influencing Palestinian refugees from Syria (PRS) in choosing Germany or Sweden as asylum destinations. The findings showed that there was a very high degree of destination specificity towards Sweden for nearly all of the participants. This was based on their desire to reach Sweden due to its accessible citizenship as compared to other European or Arab states. This paper details how most of the refugees had conducted research, drawing on information from social networks and other sources, in order to establish in which European country they could most easily and quickly acquire citizenship. As a consequence of the prioritisation of resolving their and their families’ statelessness as quickly as possible, the interviewees often devalued social and human capital. Considerations related to economic or educational opportunities played only a marginal role in the decision making. This research finds that in order to better understand the migration of stateless refugees, their desire to resolve their statelessness should be considered as a potentially significant aspect of their choice of asylum destination.

This article explores the relationship between statelessness and refugeeness over time and space. It does so by drawing on how Palestinian refugees from Syria in Sweden navigate the various stateless and refugee labels imposed upon them before, during and after their flight from Syria to Sweden. Standpoint theory was deployed as the basis for understanding how this group of stateless refugees related to these labels. While the research found that, even though the labelling process was largely non-participatory, both as a manifestation for epistemic agency and a vehicle for epistemic justice in statelessness and refugee research, standpoint theory has offered an indispensable lens through which we have accessed the multiple strategies that the interviewees adopted to accept, reject, resist or negotiate their re/de-labelling throughout their journey.

There is increasing recognition of the role that artificial intelligence (AI) systems can play in managing health crises. One such approach, which allows for analysing the potential consequences of different policy interventions is agent-based social simulations (ABSS). Here, the actions and interactions of autonomous agents are modelled to generate virtual societies that can serve as a “testbed” for investigating and comparing different interventions and scenarios. This piece focuses on two key challenges of ABSS in collaborative policy interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic. These were defining valuable scenarios to simulate and the availability of appropriate data. This paper posits that drawing on the research on the “everyday” digital health perspective in designing ABSS before or during health crises, can overcome aspects of these challenges. The focus on digital health interventions reflects a rapid shift in the adoption of such technologies during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the new challenges this poses for policy makers. It is argued that by accounting for the everyday digital health in modelling, ABSS would be a more powerful tool in future health crisis management.

The war in Ukraine is radically changing the situation of millions of people, destroying the decade achievements of economic, political, social and humanitarian preconditions for the observance of human rights and the achievement of sustainable development goals. Both resource and institutional conditions of social life are changing, causing a complex system of consequences for the social structure, new factors of differentiation of the position of socio-demographic groups. Women and girls are at particular risk, both in terms of saving their own life and health, maintaining the level of material well-being necessary for the existence of the family, and in terms of the opportunities for full participation in social life, the effectiveness of mechanisms for realizing their human potential through participation in economic, political, humanitarian life of society. Therefore, the gender sensitivity of the state policy of social security (at the level of central and local authorities), humanitarian aid programs, promotion of stability and development, and international partnership in post-war reconstruction is a key condition for the social effectiveness of responding to the threats and damage caused by the war to the human potential of Ukraine.

It is impossible to ensure gender sensitivity of state policy and non-governmental programs and measures to respond to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Ukraine without adequate (based on gender-disaggregated indicators and taking into account gender intersectionality) information and analytical support for development and implementation of the policy (planning, organization of implementation and control of effectiveness) to respond to humanitarian threats to Ukrainian society during the war and in the period of post-war reconstruction. In fact, the current research is a pilot in the terms of testing new analytical instruments and suggestions for improving the information support of gender sensitivity in responding to the humanitarian challenges of the war in Ukraine on the basis of determining the limitations of the existing information base and systematizing the information needs of state and non-governmental bodies for the implementation of GESI analysis in decision-making justification procedures and the selection of projects and methods of their implementation.

This article is devoted to researching the complex interactions between a society’s efforts to approach best practices of social inclusion and gender equality implementation in policy development processes and the ability of such a society to maintain its commitment to liberal and human-centered values in political life. Using the methods of stylized facts and comparative politics, we ground the applicability of the two-stage model of acquiring the institutional capacity to implement the principles of gender equality and social inclusion in the activities of the authorities. The first stage of this model involves the ability to accumulate additional costs to take into account and meet the special needs of vulnerable and discriminated-against groups in the process of policy development and implementation. The second stage entails the ability to achieve the efficiency of such expenditures in order to extract social outcomes through the reduction in the number of marginalized groups and the expansion of participation in the functioning of civil society institutions, ensuring the broad representation of all socio-demographic strata of the population. The stylized facts collected in this article may be the first (and are certainly not comprehensive) evidence that Ukraine is at the stage of forming the capability within society to benefit from the implementation of the principles of gender equality and social inclusion, both at the nationwide level and the level of individual organizations.

War and its aftermath affect different groups of women and men differently. The problem of the different effects of war is reflected in the resolutions of the UN Security Council, namely, 1325 Women, Peace, Security, 1820, 1888, 1889, 2106, 2122, 2242, 1960, which call on the participating states to pay attention to the needs and problems of women in times of armed conflicts, as well as the need to increase the role and participation of women in the negotiation processes to establish peace, in actions to support peace and peace-building, the participation of women in decision-making processes at all levels.

These documents are only effective if they are reflected in legislation, state policy and daily practice, both at the state and local levels. For the effective implementation in practice of the above-mentioned resolutions, an important condition is the availability of specialists of central and local executive authorities, local self-government bodies with knowledge about their main areas of activity in the implementation of the “Women, Peace, Security” Agenda.

In the conditions of martial law and the reduction of budget allocations, the significant burden on the central and local bodies of executive power, local self-government bodies, it is important to involve partners from international and non-governmental organisations for more effective implementation of the tasks of the National Action Plan for the implementation of Resolution 1325 "Women, Peace, Security".

The project "Supporting Women, Peace and Security in Ukraine during the Conflict" of the Fund and Stability Program with the support of the government of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland developed a methodology for mapping stakeholders and, in accordance with it, conducted research to determine the interests of stakeholders and their potential impact on meeting the needs of different groups of beneficiaries.

The study demonstrated that both central and local authorities, local self-government bodies do not sufficiently involve the experience of non-governmental organisations working on the topic of "Women, Peace, Security", authorities need expert support in strengthening practical skills to apply new approaches to conducting targeted consultations with various target groups at any stage of implementation of the National Action Plan for the Implementation of Resolution 1325 "Women, Peace, Security".

The purpose of this article is to clarify the position of Ukraine in relation to thedeveloped countries on the trajectory of social development according to the stagesof the formation of the gender component of the general welfare society andthe strengthening of the liberal-democratic vector of political life.Cobb-Douglas function and such methods as quantitative, graphic, visualization, and regressionwere used in the research process. The progress of gender relations in society duringthe industrialization stage is considered as a function of GDP per person – as a generalizationembodiment of progress in a range of aspects of economic and politicallife that promote equalizing opportunities for women and men. The obtained resultsevidence that Ukraine was characterized not only by lower levels of fertility but alsoby a greater potential of society to transform the structural shifts of industrialization(the growth of the industrial labor sector for hire and the share of urban population)into the impulse to expand women involvement in public life and reduce their“specialization” in activities related only to the birth and upbringing of children andhousehold’s maintenance. The model obtained according to the data of Ukraine testifiesto the greater potential of Ukrainian society to transform even modest successesof industrialization into an impetus for the evolution of gender relations and thereduction of women’s specialization only in the functions of birth and upbringing ofchildren.

Over the past six years, trust based leadership has rapidly gained popularity in municipalities all over Sweden. The upswing in popularity followed a report published by Tillitsdelegationen in 2018 and resulted in multiple municipalities leaving their old detailed oriented management for a new management style that focuses on trust in the employees and their skills. Since Tillitsdelegationen did not provide a clear, definite instruction on how to implement trust-based management in the organisations in their report, the municipalities themselves have complete freedom which lead to many different versions being implemented across the country. Even though the municipalities share the same name of their new management style, the reality of it varies a lot. The main difference between the municipalities is how they organize it, as some choose to organize it as a management philosophy, and others chose to organize it as an approach to management. However, the municipalities did more or less agree in certain parts of trust-based management, mainly regarding increased dialogue within the organization. From a new institutionalist perspective, the municipalities as organizations are slow and do not adjust to change quickly. This is made clear in how some of the municipalities adjust the reform to fit the organization, rather than adjusting the organization according to the reform. The implementation of trust-based management in the municipalities have not resulted in the extinction of result-based management but is rather seen as an add-on to the already existing management forms.

This thesis examines the economic impacts of China's engagement in Nigeria. Various books and journals were used to help in formulating various objectives which include examination of how China’s economic activities in Nigeria perpetuate or challenge neo-colonial structure to find out the socio-political implications of China's economic engagement in Nigeria. To achieve the stated objectives, the study used a narrative literature review methodology (secondary data) in analyzing its findings. The study used Google Scholar for multidisciplinary sources as a search strategy and applying relevant keywords such as "China-Nigeria relations", "Chinese investments in Nigeria", and "economic impacts of China's engagement in Nigeria", one can retrieve a diverse range of scholarly literature spanning multiple disciplines. Thematic analysis (TA) was used to identify, examine, and report patterns found in data to highlight important concepts and ideas.The findings include that there are several economic impacts of Chinese investments in Nigeria such as GDP growth, employment creation, industrialization, and trade expansion. The thesis underscores the presence of neo-colonial elements within Nigeria, with colonial-era administrative systems and extractive economic practices continuing to shape governance frameworks and societal inequalities. China's involvement introduced alternative economic partnerships that offered opportunities for greater autonomy and development. It was also observed that Nigeria's increasing reliance on Chinese investments, loans, and trade partnerships, indicates a growing dependency that influenced policy decisions and domestic priorities. This economic dependency raised concerns about the potential for unequal trade relations and reliance on external aid and investment, echoing neo-colonial power dynamics.

In this paper we understand cities today as commodified spaces which must struggle at the intersection of cultural, ideological and historical tensions. In order to explore and problematise a contested city brand’s marketing effort, we engage in multiple rounds of in-situ introspective reflections about a racialised city’s place branding material. Based on the two authors’ separate analyses of the same marketing material deriving from two separate theoretical starting points, we engage in agonistic conversation about how visible and invisible racialised tensions are represented. We highlight how absences and (in)visibilities can be predominantly understood as either colour-blindness or ideological fantasy. We find, despite our contrasting theoretical orientations, that a city brand is inevitably fractured and ruptured into ‘a’ non-identity or – to paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari – an empty body. We argue how achieving inclusive branding becomes an oxymoron as narratives surrounding a city are themselves more or less diverse, contested and polarised. 

The thesis revolves around the transformation of liberal citizenship to a higher degree of conditionality in the face of pluralist challenges revolving around achieving a shared common good. John Rawls’ Political Liberalism serves as the theoretical foundation for the argumentative analysis conducted, utilizing specific civic integration policies of Sweden and Denmark. The normative policy analysis reveals that the “civic integrationist turn” in itself is largely compatible with Rawls’ liberal principles of justice and equality. However, the problematic component lies in the de facto implementation of those measures which can have exclusionary and discriminatory effects i.e. the formulation of citizenship test questions and the portrayal of particular comprehensive doctrines of minority groups as incompatible with national liberal values. The most substantial challenge for a liberal pluralist society remains achieving “overlapping consensus” in the political sphere and guaranteeing safeguards for citizen’s personal comprehensive doctrines in the private sphere.

In 2022 Spain recorded its highest suicide rates in history. Spanish politicians acknowledge the need for solutions but fail to agree on adequate ones that could help decrease the current upward trend in suicides. The study aims to analyse practical argumentations advanced by politicians during the 2022 Parliamentary debate where the issue of suicide was addressed, to explore the place suicide has in the decision-making process, to investigate the reasons for and against concrete ways of acting regarding the issue, and to understand how these arguments align with current political ideologies. This will deepen the understanding of the political response to the suicide crisis. To achieve this aim, the research applies Isabela and Norman Fairclough’s Political Discourse Analysis framework. The findings show that suicide is not addressed as the public health crisis it constitutes, and it is overshadowed by political power dynamics where regional nationalistic ideologies play a big role. 

This academic investigation examines the intersection between International Relations (IR), data privacy laws, and social media governance. The case studies are of Tik Tok & Facebook/Meta where we begin the research by taking a comparative analysis of the US congressional hearings of Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook/Meta) in 2018 and Shou Zi Chew (CEO of Tik Tok) in 2023. In addition, a comparative analysis is made on the referenced or related data privacy laws amongst the EU, US, and China through the realist, liberalist, and new constructivist lens. Lastly, a practice theory approach follows the empirical data of penalties on these two social media companies, the similar corporate solutions from Tik Tok to both EU and the US, and the quantifiable lobbying contributions from both ByteDance (parent company to Tik Tok) and Facebook/Meta. The three research questions are (i) how do the IR theoretical lenses of realism and liberalism acknowledge the significance of social media and its need for regulations, (ii) how can data be conceptualized for social media governance and what are the implications of these dynamics within IR, and (iii) what is the efficacy of data privacy laws in protecting user rights while social media companies influence US policymakers? My conclusion is that data privacy laws are legal jargon that either power-maximize a state or act as a taxation mechanism. User rights are not secure, and there is a battle for accountability and a risk that algorithms may keep social media companies abstained from responsibility.  

Exploring the Linguistic Landscape of Old Batumi: The Case of Zviad Gamsakhurdia Street

— The linguistic signs in the public space reflect the language use in the surrounding neighborhood and society, forming the so-called linguistic landscape. As Landry & Bourhis (1997: 29) put it, “The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combine to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration.” The multitude of languages in the public space reflect a competition for visibility among dominant and minor languages. Georgian has gone through several phases of competition with Russian, emerging as the state language of independent Georgia. English, seeking the status of the main international language, is also competing with Russian in certain domains. Furthermore, globalization and migration are strong factors influencing language use and the linguistic landscape.

This study is a case study of one street, Zviad Gamsakhurdia Street in Old Batumi, exploring its linguistic landscape in detail: including all signs from official and commercial signs to private notes, signs, and graffiti. The study is based on fieldwork of language use in the public space conducted in July 2023, exploring which languages dominate in mono-, bi- and trilingual signs, whether there are any observable tendencies with respect to the choice of language(s) in certain domains, and what the characteristics are of official top-down communication, compared to non-official bottom-up communication. Against the increase of Russian-speaking migrants following February 2022, it is of particular interest to study which contexts signs involving Russian occur, and whether there are any observable patterns. 

The research site and data collection of this case study is limited to one street. The street has been chosen as a central street in the historical part of Old Batumi. The study of one street may not claim to be representative of the linguistic landscape of the city of Batumi as a whole. However, the study of different sites in the city contributes to an understanding of the complexity of multilingualism in the public space of the city. The central street of Luka Asatiani in Batumi has been studied with a similar approach (Vamling 2023), which allows for comparison of similarities and differences.

— References

Landry, R. & R. Bourhis (1997): ‘Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study’, Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16/1, 23–49. 

Vamling, K. (2023): ‘The Linguistic Landscape of Batumi: The Case of Luka Asatiani Street'. In: Digital Kartvelology, Volume II, pp. 70–81.

The paper addresses the question of when the understanding of the Caucasus region started to emerge in Europe, that is, when ‘Caucasus’ was used with respect to a region and not only referred to a mountain range. A closely related issue is the extent of the region that ‘Caucasus’ refers to, its territorial spread. My perspective is an outsider’s perspective: how the region was perceived and reported on by outsiders. It is not about how the Caucasus was perceived from the inside of the region, about what makes the Caucasus a region – its historical, linguistic and cultural common roots and identity. My starting point is to take a closer look at how the concept of the Caucasus region developed. I focus on the development in Sweden, a country on the European periphery. Studies of the Caucasus were more developed and more well-known in central European countries such as Germany, France and the UK. That is also a reason why it is interesting to explore the understanding of the Caucasus in the European periphery. It’s well-known that the Caucasus mountain range was a well-established geographical entity already in antiquity and the Middle Ages and it regularly appeared on early maps. This study is based on the use of the term ‘Caucasus’ and closely related concepts in a digital corpus of Swedish newspapers from the 18th and 19th centuries. In addition, as a wider frame of reference, a corpus of old European maps of the region from the same period was compiled and is also discussed.