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Over the past few decades, there has been a significant increase in seasonal labour migration to the green industries in Sweden. This migration, from both within and outside the EU, has been presented as a solution to local labour shortages by the industries. Migrant workers are a group that is often in a precarious situation due to the intersection of labour market regulations and migration policies. Both the labour market and migration policies in Sweden gone through substantial changes, following a neoliberal trajectory. 

Against the backdrop of labour market neoliberalization this thesis aims to investigate seasonal labour migration in the green industries, particularly in forestry and berry picking. It explores how different actors understand, describe, and justify the use of foreign labour and analyses the structural factors driving this trend.

The thesis is comprised of four articles exploring and discussing different aspects of this subject. Collectively, they address various questions about the role of labour migration in neoliberalism, different structural actors' perspectives on migrant workers in green industries, and the connection between the inherent characteristics of green industries and labour migration. Additionally, it scrutinizes the inclusion of migrant workers in Sweden's sustainability efforts.

The conclusion demonstrates that structures like neoliberalism favour economic interests in Sweden and impact sustainability work. Labour migration is seen as part of market orientation that increases the availability of exploitable labour. Symbolic boundaries between worker groups are employed to justify the need for migrant workers, complicating labour unions' organization efforts, and reinforcing inequality in an increasingly informal labour market

Denna bok är en översatt och omarbetad version av boken Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling in Sparsely Populated Areas, utgiven på engelska av Palgrave Macmillan förlag (år 2020). Redaktörerna för den boken är Linda Lundmark, Dean B. Carson och Marco Eimermann. Boken är utformad som en samling kapitel runt tre teman: i) vilka som lever, ii) vilka som arbetar och iii) vilka som reser inom det glest befolkade norr. Inom varje tema fokuserar kapitlen på olika former av mobilitet, migration och icke mobilitet och placerar individer som lever, reser och arbetar i norr i relation till aktuella frågor för området samt inom deras historiska och samtida kontext. Boken nyanserar vanligt förekommande myter som porträtterar glest befolkade områden som att de antingen ständigt kämpar med flertalet utmaningar eller som en tidlös lantlig idyll.

Om du har plockat upp denna bok är du förmodligen en av många som ä rintresserad av Norrland. Du kanske arbetar med utveckling i norr, samhällsprojekt på lokal, regional, nationell eller annan myndighetsnivå, eller kanske inom privat näringsliv. Kanske är du en del av en grupp studenter eller akademiker som formar och bidrar till de olika debatterna kring nordlig utveckling i eller utanför Sverige. Om du är intresserad av demografi, ekonomi, geografi, historia eller statsvetenskap kommer du att se att dessa är centrala för innehållet i denna bok.

Indicators are widely used in climate variability and climate change assessments to simplify the tracking of complex processes and phenomena in the state of the environment. Apart from the climatic criteria, the snow indicators in ski tourism have been increasingly extended with elements that relate to the technical, operational, and commercial aspects of ski tourism. These non-natural influencing factors have gained in importance in comparison with the natural environmental conditions but are more difficult to comprehend in time and space, resulting in limited explanatory power of the related indicators when applied for larger/longer scale assessments. We review the existing indicator approaches to derive quantitative measures for the snow conditions in ski areas, to formulate the criteria that the indicators should fulfill, and to provide a list of indicators with their technical specifications which can be used in snow condition assessments for ski tourism. For the use of these indicators, a three-step procedure consisting of definition, application, and interpretation is suggested. We also provide recommendations for the design of indicator-based assessments of climate change effects on ski tourism. Thereby, we highlight the importance of extensive stakeholder involvement to allow for real-world relevance of the achieved results.

This chapter tells the story of a small inland village in northern Sweden. Historically this area was only home to the Sami population, but with time colonization and the extraction of raw material have changed the conditions radically. This chapter explores the circumstances that have shaped the tourism sector in Malå and discusses how tourism is integrated in the development of the local economy. The geographical location was key to creating wealth from forestry and mining in the past, but this did not create the infrastructure or layers of investments that today are important for economic development in other sectors. However, this study shows that Malå has managed to diversify its historic paths by branching into the new knowledge economy, and the direct dependence on jobs in its primary industry has decreased even though it remains one of several pillars of the local economy. Tourism is seen as a way to further decrease the historic dependence on primary sectors. Municipal officials argue that tourism is to be regarded as a complement and should not be seen as replacing what is already successfully transitioning and developing. Tourism in Malå is predominantly concentrated on the winter season, with weekend return tourists coming mainly from the coastal municipalities. Although it is a major skiing destination in Västerbotten County, second only to Hemavan-Tärnaby in terms of sold ski passes, there are indicators that identification with the traditional resource sectors remains strong among Malå's inhabitants. However, tourism seems to be a successful local development strategy, given its complementarity to other industries and the realistic expectations based on accurate appraisals of existing conditions for development.