Time, or rather lack of time, is currently an issue to many involved in social work, in Sweden and elsewhere. Stress at work is presently one of the most common reasons social workers state for leaving their profession or their workplace. This article examines how time is perceived in relation to work and private life by employees in the social services. The investigation was conducted as a qualitative interview study with six social workers. An abductive approach was adopted in the analysis. The results indicate a general experience of lack of time and an individual perception of time among the interviewees. What they say about time indicates that they have a monochronic perspective on time. It is also shown that the respondents use different curbing strategies to recuperate. At work, strategies take the form of creating recovery arenas allowing for micropauses such as eating an apple or having a cup of coffee. After work, exercising or strolling in the woods are common strategies. In relation to the employer and the organisation individuals also assume responsibility for organisational shortcomings that they cannot influence. © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

The purpose of the study was to analyse how cross-border commuting differed from intranational commuting in Sweden, and how cross-border mobilities affected spatial integration. The authors analysed patterns and spatial flows of cross-border commuting by comparing them with characteristics of intranational commuting. In the article, they explore the assumption that the border constitutes an ‘engine’ for work-related mobility, which affects processes of spatial integration in cross-border areas. The empirical material comprised data from surveys of commuting from the Swedish county of Värmland to Norway and commuting within Värmland. The findings showed that cross-border commuting shared common features with intranational commuting, including how the frequency of commuting was dependent on distance. The motives for commuting differed, and the reasons for working in Norway were economic rather than professional. In terms of spatial integration, cross-border commuting was mainly one-directional, from Sweden to Norway, while leisure mobility and migration tended to be in the opposite direction. The authors conclude that the border region is characterised by integration through specialisation, which involves a permanent state of ‘transient’ mobility. Thus, a win-win situation can be distinguished, in which the border serves as a resource and an ‘engine’ for cross-border integration, mobility and economic activities.

The purpose of this article is to study emotion management by focusing on emotion labour in relation to organisational resistance in psychiatry. Drawing on focus group interviews and individual interviews with 11 therapists in psychiatry, and on theories of emotion management and harbouring work (i.e. managing emotion work and renewing energy in a team), we argue that individual workers in psychiatry have to create strategies on their own. The main findings show that emotions are harboured alone and resistance strategies created in solitude can be characterised as everyday resistance and organisational misbehaviour, performed in deep backstage spaces such as the bathroom.

Against the background of population aging, older peoples dance has attracted attention in research and its health promoting effects and social meanings have been brought to the fore. In this article we focus on the context and power dimensions of dance with an emphasis on the organizing of dance among older adults in terms of social discourses and age relationships. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 33 older dancers and 11 dance providers in Sweden, the study illustrates how dance is organized through social discourses on healthism and on the increasing group of older people as a powerful consumer group. The study highlights that older people and their social dance contexts are marked and subordinated in relation to younger age groups through non-verbal practices such as choreography and temporal codes. In short, dancing among older adults is not only a common health promoting and social activity, but also an arena in which age and age normality are negotiated and constructed.

Time, or rather lack of time, is currently an issue to many involved in social work, in Sweden and elsewhere. Stress at work is presently one of the most common reasons social workers state for leaving their profession or their workplace. This article examines how time is perceived in relation to work and private life by employees in the social services. The investigation was conducted as a qualitative interview study with six social workers. An abductive approach was adopted in the analysis. The results indicate a general experience of lack of time and an individual perception of time among the interviewees. What they say about time indicates that they have a monochronic perspective on time. It is also shown that the respondents use different curbing strategies to recuperate. At work, strategies take the form of creating recovery arenas allowing for micropauses such as eating an apple or having a cup of coffee. After work, exercising or strolling in the woods are common strategies. In relation to the employer and the organisation individuals also assume responsibility for organisational shortcomings that they cannot influence.

Närheten till Norge skapar specifika förutsättningar i en region som Värmland. Närheten anses på regional strategisk nivå generera tillväxt, dvs skapa möjligheter. Vi har i tidigare forskning identifierat möjligheter men även utmaningar som exempelvis gränshinder som skapar svårigheter för invånare och företagare. I detta kapitel skall vi fokusera på närheten till Norge och på värmlänningarnas syn på denna närhet till broderlandet. I relation till detta analyserar vi hur medborgarna upplever sin boendemiljö, service på orten och allmänt sett hur bra de tycker att det är att bo där de bor. Vi ställer oss frågan hur nöjda medborgarna är med livet och relaterar det till landsbygdsperspektiv kontra stad. I kapitlet gör vi jämförelser mellan medborgarna i Värmland och boende i västra Värmland, det vill säga gränskommunerna Årjäng, Torsby, Eda och Arvika. Syftet med det är att jämföra de olika medborgargrupperna, alltså boende i gränsregionen kontra boende i övriga kommuner i Värmland, mot en tydlig strategi mot Norge. Frågan är om, och i så fall hur, Norge har betydelse för värmlänningarna? 

Alternative perspectives on rural development and growth

Lotta Braunerhielm (lotta.braunerhielm@kau.se), Eva Olsson (eva.olsson@kau.se) and Lars Aronsson (lars.aronsson@kau.se)

What picture of Urban and rural areas that are marked are central. During the last decades  the city has been seen as the area of possibilities and rural areas as "the problem". Our thesis is that urban areas have possibilities for social and economic innovations in cooperation with the city if you take a different perspective on growth than the generally used perspective. This includes everything from resources, products, services, social entrepreneurship to aspects of living environment. How can for example experience-based competence, social relations, living areas and lifestyle-satisfaction be upgraded? How can you develop areas and use different combinations of social, economic, cultural and symbolic capital? A widened definition of growth includes robust social, economic but even ecological dimensions. Our main purpose is to study a perspective of possibilities for the growth of periphery in cooperation with the city. The purpose has a strong connection to the goals of Europe 2020 concerning development and especially the alternative way of looking at growth.

Our study focuses on Sweden and Norway. The countries have different circumstances because of different regional policies, laws and cultures etc. There is cooperation and dynamics between the continuum city - periphery, for example concerning widened labor market areas. The area of our concern is placed in the tension between the capital Oslo in Norway and the region center Karlstad in Sweden. What does this mean for the peripheral area in between? Our purpose is to identify possibilities and needs which will end up in new strategies for economic and social development which in the long run can result in better support end basis for political decisions as well as basis and support for regional political actions. We also anticipate that the use of an alternative definition of growth will give unexpected results and effects compared to the dominant definition of growth. Our goal is furthermore that our research will contribute to social innovations and social entrepreneurship which will be debated and which will feed politicians with arguments for sustainable development. The project is based on earlier research and cooperation with Cerut from Karlstad University and Ostlandsforskning from Norway and is partly based on results from earlier studies.This project will form the basis for further studies in order to utilize and strengthen border region's collective resources, and linking together urban and rural areas across the border.

This study explores gendered commuting patterns in a Swedish-Norwegian border region. In Swedish Värmland, 5462 inhabitants commuted to Norway in 2009, of which a significant share (36 percent) represented commuters from Torsby, Eda and Årjäng municipalities. Cross-border commuting is here defined as work related mobility across a national border, including daily and weekly mobility. Previous studies have shown that cross-border commuting may be beneficial for the ‘sending’ municipalities, contributing to a low unemployment rate, local tax revenues, fewer social allowances and even a healthier population. Research has described cross-border commuting as a deliberately chosen lifestyle, as well as being driven by economic motives in terms of higher Norwegian salaries. Statistics show that men are overrepresented both as ‘ordinary’ commuters on a national scale as well as cross-border commuters. Moreover, women constitute only 30 percent of cross-border commuters compared to 40 percent of commuters crossing a municipal border. Previous research has shown that men commute farther and more frequent compared to women due to women’s family obligations and everyday life puzzle strategies. Few studies have explored gendered commuting patterns in border regions and how women and men’s participation in cross-border commuting vary depending on distance, motives, experiences, possibilities and obstacles.  

The purpose of this study is to analyse the patterns of cross-border commuting with a focus on women’s and men’s motives, strategies and conditions for commuting from Sweden to Norway. The research questions include; what differences and similarities of men and women’s commuting can be distinguished in terms of age, family, income and other social factors? How do women and men experience the effects of their commuting on their everyday life, including participation in their family life, social relations and domestic responsibilities? The study is based on both quantitative and qualitative data, comprising a survey of cross-border commuters in Årjäng, Eda and Torsby municipalities as well as interviews with cross-border commuting women and men. One central question includes how women’s and men’s commuting patterns reflect existing spatial gender and intersectionality contracts. An intersectionality perspective is here used to study the interrelations between gender and other social variables such as class, ethnicity and age. These are (re)produced and negotiated in a place specific and socio-cultural context, affecting relations in the family, the local community and the labour market.   

The results of the study point to that the higher wages in Norway are of relevance for both women and men’s motives to seek employment in Norway. In the interview study, women described the higher wages as important markers of independence, both in relation to their husbands and in relation to the local community. Single mothers describe the possibility to work part-time due to higher wages, while commuting a shorter distance, which in turn improves their work-life balance. Still, the salaries have spatial and occupational variations, partly due to that women tend to work closer to the border where the salaries are lower. Partly, cross-border commuting reflect gender coded occupations between women and men, where women’s work within public services are lower paid compared to sectors such as construction work where men are overrepresented. Women spend less time on daily commuting compared to men, which can be related to their family obligations. This is evident also within weekly commuting. In the survey, men are highly overrepresented as weekly commuters, while none of the weekly commuting women have children in their household.