The purpose of this essay is to increase knowledge about how latinamerican women are potrayed in American popular films. We examine whether ther are apparent sterotypes in relation to gender, ethnicity and class. With the support of an intersectionality approach and with the use of conceptual explanations of ''latino'' represantations in films, we aim to analyze three Hollywood films over the time period of 2003 to 2011. These films are ''Chasing papi'' (2003), ''Ask the dust'' (2006) and ''Without men'' (2011). The used method to enable us to further analyze the material is a qualitative content analysis. The crucial aspect of a qualitative content analysis is to work with themes, which we have done. These themes are (1) sexual discourse (2) rasified discourse (3) class marked femeninities.  Through our analysis we have found that the latinamerican female character is stereotyped in relation to her gender, ethnicity and class in the sense that she is portrayed different and exotic in contrast to other actors in the films.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities in tuberculosis (TB) mortality by level of education in male, female, urban and rural populations in several European countries. DESIGN: Data were obtained from the Eurothine Project, covering 16 populations between 1990 and 2003. Age- and sex-standardised mortality rates, the relative index of inequality and the slope index of inequality were used to assess educational inequalities. RESULTS: The number of TB deaths reported was 8530, with a death rate of 3 per 100000 per year, of which 73% were males. Educational inequalities in TB mortality were present in all European populations. Inequalities in TB mortality were greater than in total mortality. Relative and absolute inequalities were large in Eastern European and Baltic countries but relatively small in Southern European countries and in Norway, Finland and Sweden. Inequalities in mortality were observed among both men and women, and in both rural and urban populations. CONCLUSIONS: Socio-economic inequalities in TB mortality exist in all European countries. Firm political commitment is required to reduce inequalities in the social determinants of TB incidence. Targeted public health measures are called for to improve access to treatment of vulnerable groups and thereby reduce TB mortality.

OBJECTIVES: A considerable increase in social inequalities in mortality was observed in Eastern Europe during the post-communist transition. This study evaluated the contribution of avoidable causes of death to the difference in life expectancy between Estonians and non-Estonians in Estonia.

STUDY DESIGN: Descriptive study.

METHODS: Temporary life expectancy (TLE) was calculated for Estonian and non-Estonian men and women aged 0-74 years in 2005-2007. The ethnic TLE gap was decomposed by age and cause of death (classified as preventable or treatable).

RESULTS: The TLE of non-Estonian men was 3.53 years less than that of Estonian men, and the TLE of non-Estonian women was 1.36 years less than that of Estonian women. Preventable causes of death contributed 2.19 years to the gap for men and 0.78 years to the gap for women, while treatable causes contributed 0.67 and 0.33 years, respectively. Cardiorespiratory conditions were the major treatable causes of death, with ischaemic heart disease alone contributing 0.29 and 0.08 years to the gap for men and women, respectively. Conditions related to alcohol and substance use represented the largest proportion of preventable causes of death.

CONCLUSIONS: Inequalities in health behaviours underlie the ethnic TLE gap in Estonia, rather than inequalities in access to health care or the quality of health care. Public health interventions should prioritize primary prevention aimed at alcohol and substance use, and should be implemented in conjunction with wider social policy measures.

OBJECTIVES: Little research has focused on the relation of immigration and suicidal behaviour in youth. Nevertheless, the impact of migration on the mental health of youth is an issue of increasing societal importance. This review aimed to present studies on the prevalence of suicidal behaviour in immigrant youth in various countries and to provide possible explanations for suicidal behaviour in immigrant youth, especially regarding acculturation.

METHODS: The review included a literature search to locate articles on the subject of suicidal behaviour in immigrant youth in the context of acculturation.

RESULTS: Studies on suicidal behaviour in culturally diverse youth are few and most of the existing research does not differentiate ethnic minorities from immigrants. Studies on epidemiology and on specific risk factors were found regarding various immigrant youth including Hispanics in the United States, Asians in North America and Europe, as well as comparative studies between different immigrant groups in specific countries.

CONCLUSIONS: The relation between immigration status and suicidal behaviours in youth appears to vary by ethnicity and country of settlement. Time spent in the new country as well as intergenerational communication and conflicts with parents have, in many of the studies, been related to suicidality in immigrant youth. Summing up, there is a clear and urgent need to further pursue the work in this field, to develop targeted public health interventions as well as psychosocial treatment for preventing suicide in these youth.

In Europe, educational attainment and diabetes are inversely related, in terms of both morbidity and mortality rates. This underlines the importance of targeting interventions towards low SEP groups. Access and use of healthcare services by people with diabetes also need to be improved.

Countries of the Baltic Sea region differ strongly with regard to the magnitude and pattern of the educational inequalities in cancer mortality.

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the concept of social capital and to distinguish its different forms, focusing on their potential effects on health. According to many scholars, social capital comprises social networks, norms of reciprocity or social support and social trust. In this article the core element, the social network, has been further distinguished by the direction of ties and levels of formality, strength and diversity. In the past few years there has been increased interest in social capital in the health field and a great deal of research has suggested that social capital is generally positively related to health. However, little research has been conducted into how different forms of social capital or social networks influence health. What is the difference, for instance, between bonding and bridging social capital in terms of health outcomes? It is important to distinguish the different forms because they imply different resources, support and obligations. More research needs to be conducted into the different forms of social capital and their effects on health. A special focus should be placed on the health impacts of cross-cutting - or bridging and linking - forms of social capital.

The state of public health in Russia is undoubtedly poor compared with other European countries. The health crisis that has characterised the transition period has been attributed to a number of factors, with an increasing interest being focused on the impact of social capital - or the lack of it. However, there have been relatively few studies of the relation between social capital and health in Russia, and especially in Moscow. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between social capital and self-rated health in Greater Moscow. The study draws on data from the Moscow Health Survey 2004, where 1190 Muscovites were interviewed. Our results indicate that among women, there is no relationship between any form of social capital and self-rated health. However, an association was detected between social capital outside the family and men’s self-rated health. Men who rarely or never visit friends and acquaintances are significantly more likely to report less than good health than those who visit more often. Likewise, men who are not members of any voluntary associations have significantly higher odds of reporting poorer health than those who are, while social capital in the family does not seem to be of importance at all. We suggest that these findings might be due to the different gender roles in Russia, and the different socializing patterns and values embedded in them. In addition, different forms of social capital provide access to different forms of resources, influence, and support. They also imply different obligations. These differences are highly relevant for health outcomes, both in Moscow and elsewhere.

The rapid diffusion of the Internet has considerable potential for enhancing the way people connect with each other, the root of social capital. However, the more the Internet is used for building social capital the greater will the impact be on those whose access and/or usage is curtailed. It is therefore important to investigate the impacts of Internet on groups at risk of digital and social exclusion. The aim of this article is to examine how the use of the Internet influences social capital and community building in a disadvantaged area. Quantitative and qualitative data from a case study in a suburban area of Stockholm are used to evaluate the social impacts of two community-based Internet projects: a Local Net and an IT-Cafe. Each of the projects was aimed at enhancing digital inclusion and social capital in a disadvantaged local community. The paper examines the extent to which use of the Internet is associated with an enhancement of social participation, social trust and local identity in the area. The Local Net appears to have had limited success in meeting its goals; the IT-Cafe was more successful. Visitors to the IT-Cafe had more local friends, expressed less social distrust, perceived less tension between different groups in the area and felt a much stronger sense of local identity than non-visitors. Visitors praised the IT-Cafe as providing a meeting-place both online and offline. The Internet was used for networking, exchange of support and information seeking. Although it is difficult to establish causal priorities, the evidence suggests that an IT-Cafe, combining physical with virtual and the local with the global, may be especially well suited to build social capital and a sense of local community in a disadvantaged area. The importance of social, rather than solely technological, factors in determining the impact of the Internet on social capital and community in marginal areas is stressed.

This article examines state - civil society relationships in contemporary Russia. Its objective is to assess opportunity structures of Russian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that are intertwined with the state. The article presents qualitative data from fieldwork in the Russian cities of Moscow, St Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Perm in 2009 and 2010. The focus of NGOs in the field of disability was chosen because of their roles as social service providers and as advocates for the rights of the disabled. The findings indicate that despite the Soviet legacy of an occupying state, Russian NGOs widen their opportunities by maintaining close relationships with state structures. Thus, litigation strategies seem to be an effective instrument for fostering social change for the benefit of the disabled.

The article examines the organisational production and distribution of normatively charged ideas for governing transnational business. Based on the United Nations Global Compact Initiative, it is argued that the UN version of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) builds on a metanarrative of rationality, involving ideals of transparency and legibility combined with an emphasis on consensus and harmony. The strong accent on partnership, agreement and dialogue leaves little space for the involved parties to articulate and defend diverging interests. By transforming what are basically political conflicts of interest into win–win terms, CSR standards and the technologies of transparency, legibility, and accountability foreclose conflictual space, and emerge as an instance of ‘post-political global ethics’.

Labor migration from the less to the more affluent cities and regions is a defining trait of the patterns of population redistribution in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in the former Soviet Union, where international disparities in income and living standards are particularly manifest. While these macro-trends are well portrayed in the literature, their outcome at the household level seldom figures in the literature. In Ukraine, labor out-migration to Russia is a frequently chosen strategy, not least because of the Russophone background of eastern Ukraine and of many of the major cities, including Kiev and Odessa. This out-migration contributes to urban decline. Using multivariate methods, we analyze the characteristics of population subgroups with and without the experience of working abroad. We also use descriptive statistics to assess the impact of migration events within households on the standard of living of the latter. Our data source is the city of Stakhanov Health Interview Survey 2009 (n = 3,000).

Throughout much of the Soviet period, access to housing was a major consideration, both for individual citizens and employers intent on increasing their number of employees. Because of the heavy emphasis on industry, and despite the progress made within the area since the late 1950s, Soviet urban residential provision never managed to fully recover from the acute housing shortage that characterized the Stalin years. In this paper, we address the quantitative side of housing construction during the socialist era. Using the mid-sized diversified industrial town of Daugavpils (Latvia) as a case study, we set out to investigate the extent to which employers were involved in decisions concerning housing provision. To do this, we consult a large volume of archival records, our focus being on documents tracing entries indicating that new living quarters were ready and could be allocated to employees of sponsoring organizations and enterprises.

As a result of the absence of a land market, socialist-era cities tended to look different from their market-economy equivalents. The difference was made more pronounced by the fact that the command economy also favored industrial investment over infrastructure and housing. Yet, with an increasing appetite for additional labor, needed by production units to ensure plan fulfillment, housing became a means to recruit and retain employees. Not all employers could afford to put resources into such ononproductiveo investment, however, and the literature suggests that the notion of priorities allows for discriminating between those enterprises that enjoyed soft budget constraints, and therefore could afford to spend money on worker welfare, and those that could not. As a heuristic framework based on the economics of shortage, the priority model is compelling, but as yet it lacks empirical substantiation. Setting out to test the landscapes of priority model of urban development, this article details the developments of housing construction in Daugavpils, Latvia, during the Soviet period. Based on extensive archive and field research covering all newly constructed or converted housing projects over the period from 1951 to 1991, it yields considerable, if not unqualified, support for the model that until now has not been made subject to systematic empirical tests.

I samband med regeringssatsningen Ett kontrakt för livet fick SiS även i uppdrag att erbjuda vård i annan form jml §27 LVM till de klienter som kommunerna hade svårt att placera. Under 2005–2006 startade därför fyra behandlingshem i SiS regi för att kunna erbjuda § 27-vård; Thulegården, Brunnslöv, Villan och 27:an. Drygt 200 klienter har fått vård i annan form i SiS § 27-hem 2005–2008. En genomgång av de placerade klienternas bakgrund visar att de som vårdades i dessa enheter i vissa hänseenden mådde sämre psykiskt jämfört med andra LVM-klienter och att de hade större erfarenhet av missbruksvård sedan tidigare. Den låga efterfrågan på vårdplatser kan ha bidragit till att andra klientgrupper än den tänkta också fick möjligheter att placeras i dessa hem.

This article focuses on criminals who are also victims of crime, that is, the victim-offender overlap. The study includes men who have become victims of violent crimes, but who are also perpetrators of such crimes. Sixteen Swedish probationers have been interviewed in depth and asked to describe their victimization and their offences. The interviewees clearly distance themselves from ideas of victimhood and describe the victimhood of others as something shameful. Their own victimization, and their own violence against others, is described in a pared-down and unemotional manner. Victimhood emerges in the study as something so negative that it can be described as shaming in the same way as if the individual is labeled as a criminal. Victimhood and the role of the victim do not constitute alternatives for the interviewees. The role of the criminal, by contrast, is prominent. The interviewees describe how they can switch between two roles: the role of the criminal and that of a "John Smith," or in Swedish, a "Svensson," who is a normal, law-abiding individual with an orderly life. Receiving a positive label as a "Svensson" from their environment may contribute to the interviewees acting in line with such a law-abiding role.

There are many contributing factors to the experience of stress in modern society. These factors may among others be caused by the fast changes of society, the high demands, a person’s low rate of self-control and the that we are supposed to be available almost all the time. These factors combined with the different social roles of the individual increases the risk for the individual to experience stress. Except from the demands at work there are also demands after the working day when you have to spend time at home with the family. Focus in this thesis is to find out what may cause stress among full-time working parents. To get closer to the problem, I decided to carry out a case study and interviews with four persons at the work in which I am employed. The research wants to find out what causes stress by focusing on the conflict between the social roles that parents play in their every day life.

The thesis is assumed from the demand-control-social support model of Robert Karasek and Töres Theorell. This model describes the combination between the high rate of self-demands and low rate of self-control. Further the thesis is supported by theoretical views of Anthony Giddens perspective of modernity and the theories about multiple social roles of Mikael Nordenmark. The results of the interviews showed that it was mainly the lack of self-control and lack of structure in every day life that caused stress. All the interviews also claimed that stress is a part of modern society.