scholarly journals The Nordic perspective on migration and empowerment

Author(s):  
Berit Misund Dahl ◽  
Sofie Buch Mejsner ◽  
Leena Eklund Karlsson ◽  
Catrine Kostenius ◽  
Glenn Laverack ◽  
...  

Abstract International migration is a complex phenomenon that touches on a multiplicity of economic, social and security aspects affecting our daily lives. In the Nordic countries’ migration is a contentious political topic as the number of migrants has significantly increased in recent decades. The aim of this study is to analyse governmental policy documents on migrants in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and to identify and compare how they are described within an empowerment perspective. A critical discourse analysis was undertaken of each Nordic country. The findings revealed that all four documents placed migrants in a passive position in regard to decision-making and that an empowerment perspective was lacking. Migrants are similarly treated in each Nordic country as a problem to deal with rather than as a possible resource for the society and the approach seeks to protect the welfare state and the culture of the country. The lack of empowerment perspective may be having a negative impact on the health and well-being of migrants and on their integration in the Nordic society. The article concludes by raising several questions in regard to migration and empowerment in the Nordic context.

SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824402097917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Jacobsson ◽  
Susann Backteman Erlanson ◽  
Christine Brulin ◽  
Annika Egan Sjolander

The aim of this critical discourse analysis is to identify and discuss dominant and recurrent themes in firefighter discourse that promote and hinder firefighters’ health and well-being. Using critical discourse analysis, the focus is directed toward routine work culture at the station, as well as how firefighters deal with extraordinary events. The empirical material was collected from rescue services in Sweden representing different geographical areas. In total, 28 firefighters participated in focus group discussions or individual interviews. We identified dominant themes in the discourse that promoted firefighters’ health and well-being. We also identified recurrent themes that may serve as hindrances to health and well-being. We note that themes in the latter category also relate to changes in the profession and work culture, expressing external pressures on the rescue service. One reason for resistance toward change might be the health benefits that the current order of firefighter discourse brings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 233372142110201
Author(s):  
M. Courtney Hughes ◽  
Yujun Liu ◽  
Abby Baumbach

Background: In December 2019, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), or COVID-19, raised worldwide concern. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively influenced health and wellness across the globe and caused nearly three million deaths. This study focuses on informal caregivers of people with dementia, a disease that affects about 50 million older adults worldwide and requires much caregiving support. Objective: Examine the current literature on the impact of COVID-19 on the health and well-being of informal caregivers for people with dementia. Method: This rapid review was conducted across five electronic databases for quantitative and qualitative articles published through March 15, 2021. Results: The 10 studies included in this review reported quantitative descriptive data from across the globe; however, no studies existed from the U.S. or East Asia countries. All of the studies examined the psychological rather than physical impact of COVID-19 and highlighted risk and protective factors in the areas of psychosocial (resilience, neuropsychiatric, and social isolation), sociodemographic (gender and education), and environmental (home confinement, living arrangement, and dementia stage). Conclusion: COVID-19 has had a considerable negative impact on the psychological well-being of informal caregivers of people with dementia, namely causing more depression and anxiety than pre-pandemic.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104225872110064
Author(s):  
Amanda Jasmine Williamson ◽  
J. Jeffrey Gish ◽  
Ute Stephan

Entrepreneurship is uniquely stressful. Entrepreneurs often cannot avoid entrepreneurial stressors (e.g., uncertainty, workload, resource constraints) and these stressors can deter natural recovery activities (e.g., detachment and sleep). Yet, entrepreneurs may be able to lessen the negative impact of stress on their well-being, health, and productivity by engaging in recovery. In this editorial, we outline how scholars can employ recovery interventions to ameliorate some of entrepreneurship’s ill effects and support entrepreneurs’ health, well-being, and productivity. We aim to move the focus of scholarly inquiry from documenting the health and well-being challenges of entrepreneurs, toward identifying and implementing solutions to support entrepreneurs.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 789-791
Author(s):  

The intent of this statement is to substantiate the existence of homelessness in virtually every community, illustrate the pervasive health and psychosocial problems facing the growing population of children who are homeless, and encourage practitioners to include homeless children in their health care delivery practices, social services, and advocacy efforts. The recommendations will guide practitioners in taking actions to diminish the severe negative impact that living in temporary shelters has on the health and well-being of developing children. In this statement the American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its stance that homeless children need permanent dwellings in order to thrive.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Nazari

This paper is an attempt to analyse one of the documents which may affect the classroom activities of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, namely teachers' guides. It also explores the context at which the document is aimed and critiques how EFL teachers are advised to teach as well as how EFL is taught. As such, the paper stands where critical discourse analysis and language policy come together in the study of language policies in education. The teachers' guide chosen and the analysis carried out here are not necessarily concerned with their representativeness and typicality but with the opportunity they provide to the researchers and teachers to learn about such language policy documents and how language and language teaching objectives are represented in them. The issues raised in this paper will have relevance to the EFL teachers' guides and EFL education in other contexts, as these issues are likely to be true of other EFL milieux.


Author(s):  
José Bringel Filho ◽  
Nazim Agoulmine

Ubiquitous Health (U-Health) smart homes are intelligent spaces capable of observing and correctly recognizing the activities and health statuses of their inhabitants (context) to provide the appropriate support to achieve an overall sense of health and well-being in their inhabitants’ daily lives. With the intrinsic heterogeneity and large number of sources of context information, aggregating and reasoning on low-quality raw sensed data may result in conflicting and erroneous evaluations of situations, affecting directly the reliability of the U-Health systems. In this environment, the evaluation and verification of Quality of Context (QoC) information plays a central role in improving the consistency and correctness of context-aware U-Health applications. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to highlight the impact of QoC on the correct behavior of U-Health systems, and introduce and analyze the existing approaches of modeling, evaluating, and using QoC to improve its context-aware decision-making support.


2020 ◽  
pp. 147402222094482
Author(s):  
Eloise Symonds

Recognising the popularity of partnership models, this article questions the current literature on partnership within the humanities and explores the possibility of effectively implementing partnership within the English discipline, through exploration of the traditional modes of learning associated with specific disciplines and the barriers that exist through the traditional teacher-learner dynamic. It considers the difficulty of breaking down both the conventional learning methods of reading English and traditional hierarchies in universities in order to foster more collaborative processes. In this article, I use Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis to explore 32 interviews, 12 observations and 12 policy documents from two post-1992 English universities. Negotiating partnership models in the humanities requires further exploration, with attention given to conventional methods of learning associated with disciplines, traditional learner-teacher hierarchies and the structural barriers these associations create for establishing collaborative learning relationships between academics and undergraduates.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amber Gazso

In this article, I undertake a critical discourse analysis of policy documents and in-depth interviews with seven caseworkers and 28 benefit recipients to explore how two discourses, ‘work first’ and ‘distance from the labour market,’ inform how persons living with addiction access and then experience social assistance in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Drawing in Foucauldian insights on power, I reveal the conceptualisation of benefit recipients’ eligibility for Ontario Works through these two discourses and how this is replete with ideological assumptions and disciplining power relations, constitutive of a subject position of ‘the recovering addict’, and suggestive of social control implications. I argue that the coercion and regulation of benefit recipients’ lives on Ontario Works has not disappeared but transmuted for Torontonians living with addiction, and conclude by considering the governance of this population as biopower.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Claude Byungura ◽  
Henrik Hansson ◽  
Kamuzinzi Masengesho ◽  
Thashmee Karunaratne

Abstract With the development of technology in the 21st Century, education systems attempt to integrate technology-based tools to improve experiences in pedagogy and administration. It is becoming increasingly prominent to build human and ICT infrastructure capacities at universities from policy to implementation level. Using a critical discourse analysis, this study investigates the articulation of ICT capacity building strategies from both national and institutional ICT policies in Rwanda, focusing on the higher education. Eleven policy documents were collected and deeply analyzed to understand which claims of ICT capacity building are made. The analysis shows that strategies for building ICT capacities are evidently observed from national level policies and only in two institutional policies (KIST and NUR). Among 25 components of ICT capacity building used, the ones related to human capacity are not plainly described. Additionally, neither national nor institutional policy documents include the creation of financial schemes for students to acquire ICT tools whilst learners are key stakeholders. Although there is some translation of ICT capacity building strategies from national to some institutional policies, planning for motivation and provision of incentives to innovators is not stated in any of the institutional policies and this is a key to effective technology integration.


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