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Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) and microcredits are popular within the development community as poverty reduction instruments. Amartya Sen has proposed a holistic approach to development, poverty and inequality that does not see an increase in income as the aim of development. For this author, interpersonal inequality matters for the prospects to live a valuable life. Moreover, the concept of ha
The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 opened up the public space for Egyptian women from very different backgrounds. However, although women played a decisive role in revolutionary events, this did not result in the abolishment of the patriarchal bargain between Egyptian secular-oriented female feminists and the state in post-Mubarak Egypt. Even though certain conditions caused the suspension of the pat
This thesis is essentially a project in theory- and method-building. It engages the strengths of Vaughan-Williams’ alternative border imaginary under the name of the generalised biopolitical border (GBB) in accounting for the complexity of border phenomena in contemporary global politics. However, it identifies two major shortcomings related to Vaughan-Williams’ application of the GBB to various e
After the failure to respond adequately to the changing patterns of conflict and violence after the end of the Cold War, human security was popularized in the 1990s as an alternative concept to security more suitable to face threats to individual security. Ever since, the question about what human security should entail has seen much discussion. This paper examines the different discourses which i
Following five decades of isolation and ruthless military rule, Myanmar authorities started implementing various nominally democratic reforms. In response to these developments Western governments scaled back sanctions that had made the country anathema to foreign business. Writing within premises of late modernity, and the retreat of the state as primary political-geographical reference, this the
The Barents Sea has been a highly nuclearized region during the Cold War. Sunk submarines and other nuclear waste have lain down on the seafloor for decades. Since the 1990s, the Norwegian Nuclear Action Plan has developed very specific norwegian-russian cooperation in order to cleanup the Cold War “legacy waste”. The purpose of this master thesis is to analyse the long-range radioactive contamina
In the midst of a global shift in world politics induced by the rise of emerging powers, the outdated and unequal international financial institutions (IFIs) that were set up after World War II are increasingly being challenged and scrutinized. International actors can use IFIs in numerous ways to enhance their position in the world system. For instance, they can be used as a vehicle to launder st
This thesis investigates the Finnish government’s and its agents’ discursive justifications for the recently proposed civil and military intelligence legislation. In order to analyse the Finnish governmental agents’ discursive practices, this thesis engages with two additional questions; how are threats to Finnish security constructed in media, and how is the concept of exceptionalism constructed
The autumn of 2015 constituted a major break with the prior migration regime in Sweden, as the government implemented temporary migration laws in order to curb the large-scale arrival of migrants, which had taken the authorities by surprise at the time. Following this, the question of migration has gradually to a greater extent come to be framed as a threat by government officials and the politica
The idea that increasing immigration will lead to a growing Muslim presence in Western Europe and that this in turn stands in contrast to the secularity of these states frames the context of this study. Therefore, this thesis explores the experiences of religious Muslims in the secular Swedish society. Potential problems between the religious Muslim minority and secular Swedish majority have been
In today’s post-industrial cities, how urban citizenship is defined and performed have been ambiguously positioned in their relationship with the urban societal space. While the cities become more commodified and privatized with the inter-urban competition, the concept of citizenship is put into a tentative position between being participatory political subjects and passive consumers. Sexuality, i
This thesis draws upon social movement theory to explore the impact of the Ni Una Menos protest in Chile. In October 2016 thousands of people took the streets of the capital Santiago to protest the wave of recent femicides in Chile. The Ni Una Menos protest gained widespread attention and mobilized activists from all divisions in the women’s movement. The material of this case study was gathered t
There is a theoretical debate among social movement scholars around an increasing concern with the role of technology in terms of key social movement activities, including mobilization, running and engaging in campaigns and making claims on authorities. This research deals with this debate and contributes to it with this case study on the Georgian women’s movement. The research examines women’s m
This thesis investigates the relationship between Chinese aid and public expenditure in human development sectors in African nations. This is achieved through analysing the change of public expenditure in the education and health sectors of the top two African recipients of Chinese ODA – Ethiopia and Cote d’Ivoire, with an extended analysis to an additional five nations. Through a comparative anal
This thesis is a conceptual study focused on the relationship between populism and conspiracy theories to see if populism poses a totalitarian threat to democracy. Starting with a discussion on democracy and populism, this thesis examines the relations between conspiracy theories and populism as well as their respective constructions. Thereafter, departing from Hannah Arendt’s book the Origins of
Natural disasters are distressing and destructive for all who are exposed to them; however, certain populations are more vulnerable to their devastating effects than others. In the wake of the 2017 Northern California wildfire, scores of undocumented immigrants were significantly affected. Although the conflagration spread indiscriminately, the subsequent impacts were disproportionately felt by th
Currently, there are different programs based on job search assistance to provide career guidance and job match for foreign-born unemployed individuals in Sweden. Regarding job search assistance programs, this study examines the roles of mentorship programs and support & matching programs in Malmö and Lund, Sweden, where one of the program goals is to increase participation of foreign-born wom
Developing an e-government in a state has become a new trend in the world of political reform. However, e-government itself as a way of public service digitalization does not incline that political regime of the state will be democratic and inclusive. When e-government has been usually researched in the democratic setting, question marks remain of how it works in the non-democratic one. This paper
Several large, international institutes and think tanks, like Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), International IDEA, and Freedom House, among others, focus on measuring and tracking government regime types and political environments, primarily through measuring democracies. Yet for all of their sophistication and massive datasets, there are misalignments between democracy scores and human rights for
Since coming into force the International Criminal Court, has been challenged with a series of issues. Criticism, especially, from African states has forwarded the underlying anxieties that riddles this relatively new institution of international criminal justice. More specifically, African states and the regional organ, the African Union, have denounced the Courts functioning on the continent - s
