This edited collection investigates, from a sociological perspective, what it means to create an autonomous individual through a novel exploration of three central fields of sociology: education, mental health care, and parenting. By linking these three aspects through their contribution to the building of an autonomous child, the volume analyses the intersecting roles of parent, teacher, and caregiver as well as the transformations in identities of child, pupil, and patient to understand the construction and repair of autonomy. Using a comparison of various case studies across Scandinavian, English-speaking, and French-speaking countries, chapters explore why personal autonomy is so important in many societies and demonstrate the conceptual and practical challenges the idea brings. Ultimately, the book provides an innovative contribution to the fields of educational sociology and the philosophy of education, as well as parenting studies and the sociology of mental health by making the case for taking autonomy, and its paradoxes, seriously.

This book explores the lived experience of unemployment from a critical social psychological perspective. It connects the condition of unemployment to governance structures and wider societal issues, such as the labor market tendencies of precarity and enterprise culture. Based on qualitative data collected in Denmark and America, the book gives voice to unemployed people to critically discuss both the intended and unintended consequences of active labor market measures, as well as the frequent moral evaluations that surround unemployment. The author explores how unemployed people make sense of and deal with the demands and activities required by activation policies or ALMPs, which tend to make the job seekers responsible for finding a solution to their condition. Building from the subjective experience of unemployment, it maps the complex emotional demands on jobseekers who should feel shame and self-blame but also display motivation and passion on the labor market. Presenting emotions and feelings as pivotal instruments of the governmentality of worklessness, this book addresses the lack of critical discussion and research into the unemployment experience and offers a useful, provocative perspective for students, scholars, and practitioners alike in social psychology, social policy, economic policy, and related disciplines.    

This book explores the use of evidence in different government ministries, and how it affects policy success and failure in Denmark. It analyses the ways in which public administrators collect and link evidence to policy-making in the areas of public budgeting employment and primary education, highlighting how ministers in the three policy areas utilise evidence in varying ways. Denmark makes a particularly interesting case study, characterised by a strong administrative capacity for evidence use. The book also offers important insights into evidence-based policymaking in a non-Anglophone context.

This book assesses the quality of self-government in four northern European regions with strong autonomy rights. Examining the experiences of Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Åland Islands, it considers how these regions have developed their own political and administrative systems within the larger states they form part of. The book looks to understand the key democratic and administrative qualities of a functioning self-government, and how geographic size and economic and human resources can impact the ways in which partially independent territories govern. It also assesses the emotional dimensions of regional nationalism, and how this impacts the concept and public perception of partially independent nation-territories. By focusing on the quality of self-government within these nation-territories, the book considers whether strong autonomy contributes to peaceful co-existence within established national borders, or provides new munition for secessionist movements.

This book examines the language policies in the constitutions, legal statutes, and regulations of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. In these countries and territories, modern descendants of Old Norse (North Germanic) are spoken today: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. In addition, there are regions of Scandinavia where speakers of minority languages were conquered or incorporated, with their languages suppressed or neglected, as well as recent developments in the status and use of English, and immigrant populations who do not speak a Scandinavian language as their native language.

This book seeks to provide a deeper understanding of Muslim migrant fathers' experiences of home-school cooperation in Danish schools by identifying and contradicting a phenomenon of "mistrusted masculinity." This term refers to a negative stereotype of Muslim migrant men that figures in political and media rhetoric where they are portrayed as controlling and patriarchal. Throughout the ethnography, migrant fathers confront this stereotype and express how they must navigate around this negative image in their struggle to be acknowledged as good fathers by their children's schools. Jørgensen uses Geertzian "thick description" of micro-interaction between fathers and Danish teachers to explore the complex interplay of often-untested assumptions, misunderstandings, and untoward effects. 

This is the first book to develop a postmigrant analytical perspective for the study of art, concentrating on how postmigration reopens the study of contemporary art and migration. The book introduces art historians and other scholars with a methodological interest in cultural analysis to the innovative concept of postmigration, offering a comprehensive introduction to the various meanings and uses of the term as well as translating it methodologically to an art historical context. The book analyses art projects from Denmark, Germany and Great Britain, which address some of the current challenges to European societies of immigration, and by drawing on theory from fields such as migration studies, transcultural studies and feminist, postcolonial and political theory, as well as re-engaging established concepts such as imagination, commemoration, belonging, identity, racialization, community, public space and participation.

The Routledge Handbook of Local Elections and Voting in Europe represents the standard reference text and practical resource for everybody who analyzes issues such as local electoral systems, voting behavior, or political representation in Europe. It provides comprehensive and expert coverage of 40 European countries - organized along the respective local state traditions - and in addressing a wide range of important questions related to local elections and voting, it broadens the scope of existing analyses quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Finally, it affords a more theoretically grounded typology of local elections and voting. Each country chapter is written by a leading expert and follows a rigorous conceptual framework for cross-national comparisons, providing an overview of the local government system, details on the place of local elections within the multilevel political system, specific features of the electoral system, analysis of the main electoral outcomes in recent decades, and, finally, reflective discussion. Representative democracy is as widespread at the local as at the national level, and as the significance of local authorities in Europe has increased in recent decades, local elections represent a crucial area of study. The Routledge Handbook of Local Elections and Voting in Europe is an authoritative and essential reference text for scholars and students interested in local electoral politics and, more broadly, European studies, public administration, and political science.

This book is a socio-legal interdisciplinary study on gender and diversity in multicultural societies of Europe. It uses secondary data to discuss the broad experiences of migrant single mothers/women in Europe. Second, it includes narratives of experiences across the life course of single Danish-Pakistani women, starting from their pre-migration background to their elderly lives. The author uses an analytical framework used of relational collectivism and individualism, the former referring to the understanding of oneself as connected and interdependent to the family, and the latter referring to values of independence, personal interest and achievements. She uses the term "mélange familism" to explain a new family type that combines both relational-collectivist and individualist elements. A major part of this work is its deliberation of mélange familism and processes of social and legal practices in the everyday lives of single mothers. Crucially, the book demonstrates that social and legal traditions are not static, but are a product of improvisation.