In Japan, there are currently over 600,000 ethnic Koreans, or Zainichi Koreans, permanently residing, making up the largest foreign minority group. The focus of this research is the exploration of experienced and perceived discrimination against Zainichi Koreans permanently residing in Japan. It has dealt with: 1) current forms of discrimination against Zainichi Koreans, 2) the Japanese government

Internet has made information more easy to get, but also more difficult to retrieve. There is a need for information retrieval systems that assure accurate, reliable and up to date information. Quite a number of both commercial and non commercial search services has been developed on the Internet. We have made a qualitative study of one for-pay product in particular, NetS k, produced by BTJ (Bibli

The purpose of this essay is to examine the concept of competence within the social services. More specifically it aims to find out how the social workers themselves look upon their own competence in social investigations concerning children. As the study was based on focus groups the main questions were vague at the beginning and were cleared later on during the group sessions. In three focus gr

It is claimed by several Western experts that the citizens are loosing confidence in their politicians. If true, it poses a serious threat to the legitimacy of the decisions made by politicians. The answer to this claimed lack of trust could be found in the politician role, because this role is the link between the mass and the political institutions. Politicians act as the representatives of the

The concept of the dynamic region has become a more prospering thought in the era of globalisation. This concerns in particular, cross border regions ? well-integrated territorial regions crossing more than one nation. In this paper I examine the development from a critical perspective and I map the democratic pitfalls of new territorial political constructions across national borders. The empiric

I begin my thesis by linking the rise of buzz marketing in recent years to general economic, medial and social developments in society, while mainly focusing on the shift from a modern to a post-modern pattern of production and consumption. I also point out the great symbolic significance that consumption has as a signifier of a personal identity in contemporary society. I then go on to investigat

This research explores the development and use of waste to energy (WTE) technologies in Europe and in the Province of Ontario, Canada. As the quantity of waste generated has continued to increase in industrialized countries, the need for alternative waste management methods to reduce the dependency on landfill and to recover the resource in the waste has also increased. Many European countries, in

The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between adult attachment, denoted as mental representations of childhood experiences, and social relations. A secondary purpose was to examine the impact of prematurity on attachment and social relations in adult age. The study is part of a larger longitudinal study carried out by professor Karin Stjernqvist and Anne-Li Hallin, candida

Ever since Lipsky wrote about street-level bureaucrats in 1980 the main belief has been that certain characteristics of their jobs make it exceptionally difficult to severely reduce their discretion. However, discretion comes at a price and if public servants abuse their power the legitimacy of government is at risk and ultimately even the democracy. This thesis address this question by analysing

The aim with this paper is to investigate how the Social Democratic Party (SAP) deals with the question of economic migrants, or more specifically how the problem is represented by the Social Democratic Party, and how this representation has developed over time. The SAP's theory became recently contested by a competing theory that was caused by the predicted future demographic development in S

The aim of this essay is, with reference to a close study on the negotiation delegations of the Tenant Association, to examine the principals of democracy in relation to distribution of power and participation, efficiency and professionalism. This is done with the intention to understand the Tenant Association's view on its own commission as negotiator, according to democracy. The investigatio