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Objective: Previous research has shown that daily activities are crucial for mental health among older people, and that such activities declined during the COVID-19 pandemic. While previous studies have confirmed a link between stringent restrictions and an increase in mental ill-health, the role of daily activities as a mediator in this relationship remains underexplored. We analyzed whether reductions in daily activities mediated the impact of these COVID-19 restrictions on mental ill-health during the pandemic’s initial phase.

Methods: We used data from Wave 8 SHARE Corona Survey covering 41,409 respondents from 25 European countries and Israel as well as data on COVID-19 restrictions from the Oxford Government Response  Tracker  (OxCGRT).  Multilevel  regression  and  multilevel-mediation  analysis  were  used  to  examine the relationships between restrictions, daily activities and mental ill-health.

Results: Reductions in walking and shopping showed a notably stronger association with increases in mental ill-health compared to social activities. Furthermore, declines in walking could account for about  a  quarter  of  the  relationship  between  restrictions  and  increased  mental  ill-health,  but  the  mediating effects of the other activates were negligible.

Conclusions: The study highlights the essential role of maintaining daily activities, particularly walking, to  mitigate  the  negative  psychological  effects  of  pandemic-related  restrictions  among  older  populations in Europe.

This paper addresses adjustments of daily activities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic among people aged 50 years and older in Europe, and investigates the extent to which such adjustments are associated with the stringency of governmental restrictions and the overall spread of COVID-19. We use data from the SHARE Corona Survey collected during summer2020, published data on government response stringency, and reported country-specific prevalence and mortality of COVID-19. Our analyses show that older Europeans across the continent have reduced their daily activities quite substantially during the pandemic. However, we observe variation across countries and demographic groups, which may be important to highlight for policymakers. Our explanatory analysis replicates previous studies using mobility data, showing that both restrictions and infections predict a reduction in mobility. Thus, policymakers could potentially rely on both restrictions and voluntary adjustments in order to decrease the spread of the virus. However, it is noteworthy that we find relatively weaker associations with restrictions compared to previous studies using mobility data. One explanation for this discrepancy could be that our study focuses on older people, who face a higher risk of becoming severely ill and therefore have stronger incentives to adjust their behaviours independent of governmental regulations.

I dagens globaliserade värld spelar jämförelser mellan länder en allt mer framträdande roll. Inom den komparativa samhällsforskningen försöker forskare förklara och förstå likheter och skillnader mellan olika länder utifrånen mängd skilda teman och områden och den här boken ger ett smakprov på hur sådana skillnader och likheter kan beskrivas och förstås. Hur kommer det sig till exempel att människor är mer främlingsfientliga i vissa länder än i andra? Varför skiljer sig åsikter om jämställdhet inom familjen så mycket mellan länder? Stämmer det att människor blir allt mindre religiösa i takt med att länder moderniseras? Ökar eller minskar välbefinnandet över tid i Europas länder? Hur utvecklas livsvillkor och hälsa för den äldre befolkningen i Europa? Med hjälp av tre av världens främsta komparativa surveyundersökningar –European Social Survey (ESS), International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), samt The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) –försöker författarna till boken besvara dessa frågor.

In this study the focus is directed beyond the economic issues of integration. Instead, the emphasis is placed on migrants’ perceived sense of belonging in the receiving society. This is done by analysing the effect of socio-demographic characteristics, social networks and adaptation time, in terms of duration of stay, citizenship and language proficiency, on immigrants from Russia, the Baltic States and Poland in Sweden. Based on a representative questionnaire, the main finding is that there are significant gender differences in the immigrants’ sense of belonging. The analysis reveals that local ties are significant in women’s sense of belonging in Sweden, while men’s sense of belonging is mainly affected by how long the immigrant has lived in Sweden and language proficiency.

Today tourism represents an important source of income and employment for many sparsely populated municipalities in Sweden. Tourism has become a way to survive when the traditional production system has changed and an another way of earn one's living is needed. When discussing tourism and the way it can develop a region, the impacts of second homes are important to take into consideration.

This study concentrates on second home tourism in the area around Ljungdalen (Ljungdalen, Skärkdalen and Storsjö kapell) in the Swedish mountain range. The aim is to analyse the importance of second home tourism and the influence that second homes have on the local economy and environment in Ljungdalen. This study is mainly based on questionnaire that has been sent to 275 randomly selected second home owners in the area around Ljungdalen.

The outcome of the questionnaire shows that the majority of the second home owners are retired and have owned their houses for a long time. The standard of the houses is varying, but most of the housing conditions are adequate. The respondents visit their second homes mainly during the summer, spring and autumn period and the most popular activities are hiking, skiing and recreation. The second home owners contribute to the local economy by making most of their purchases of local goods and services in the area during the visit in Ljungdalen. Impact on the environment is mostly caused by the second home owners activities (e.g. littering) and by the houses standards (e.g. sewerage). The opinions about how the environment has changed during the 1990s are both positive and negative. The same goes for thoughts about an possible expand of the second homes in the area. Nearly all of the respondents consider that a further tourism development is necessary for the areas survival, but that a development also can lead to an environmental deterioration.

Many people have migrated between East and West Europe in recent decades. The daily life of these migrants is crucial not only for the migrants themselves but also for the development of future migration. The aim of this thesis is to explore the interaction between migration motives, integration, social networks and migration, and how this affects international migration processes in general. This is done using migration between Sweden on the one hand and Russia, Poland and the Baltic States on the other as a case study.

The thesis consists of three empirical studies which derive from different sources of data: the first (Paper I) draws on individual Swedish register data while the second and third are based upon a questionnaire survey. Paper I explores aspects of transnational social spaces in the context of migration from the non-Baltic former Soviet republics to Sweden before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The results of this paper show rather limited migration and a lack of a more developed transnational social space. This is partly due to weak integration on the labour market, a high degree of intermarriage, no existing migrant community and limited return migration. The following two papers (II, III) focus on migrants from Russia, Poland and the Baltic States to Sweden after 1990. Paper II analyses migration motives and the outcome of the migration decision, and reveals significant gender differences in the motives for migrating and in how men and women adapt in their new country of living. While men mainly came for economic reasons, the majority of women came for intermarriage in Sweden; however, the migration motives have changed over time towards more economic ones. The final paper (III) shows significant gender differences in the migrants’ perceived sense of belonging in Sweden. Women report a stronger sense of belonging than their male counterparts, and while men’s sense of belonging is mainly affected by duration of stay in Sweden, language proficiency and citizenship, women’s sense of belonging is shown to be mostly affected by local social networks. In sum, the results in this thesis show that migration systems and transnational social spaces between Sweden and the respective countries have not yet emerged. This is partly due to the specific migrant composition and integration that characterize this migration process. The immigrants mainly function as weak bridgeheads, and do not facilitate the development of any further migration. However, with a changing migration flow, including migrants with different motives and migration agendas, future migrants can be stronger bridgeheads and facilitate further development of migration systems and transnational social spaces.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, older people across Europe have adjusted their daily activities as personal risk avoidance and as an amendment to policy recommendations and restrictions. In this study, we use multilevel logistic regressions to examine to what extent sociodemographic factors are associated with activity reduction among the older population (50+) in Europe and whether these associations are moderated by governmental policy responses to COVID-19. By combining data for~35,000 respondents from the SHARE Corona Survey on reported changes in daily activities and stringency of restrictions at the national level, we find that older age, poorer health and being female versus male were (consistently) associated with greater activity reduction across all activities both in countries with weak and in those with strong restrictions. Associations between education, employment and living situation, on the one hand, and activity reduction, on the other, were weaker and less consistent. We conclude that differences between sociodemographic groups are rather similar for countries with weak and those with strong restrictions and hence argue that group-specific policy recommendation are relevant independent of stringency recommendations.

The focus of this paper is one of the paradoxes of international migration: the unexpectedly low level of migration between neighbouring countries with large macro-economic differentials; in this case migration from the former Soviet republics to Sweden. In line with Faist (2000), one assumption in the study is that the dynamics of international migration are strongly influenced by the emergence of a transnational social space. Based on a database (ASTRID) containing individual information about all residents in Sweden for the period 1986–2003, the study includes an analysis of migration in relation to the transnational social space -- its bridging and adaptive functions -- including labour market integration, family situation, intermarriage, population circulation and the spatial clustering of immigrants.

The study reveals an over-representation of female immigrants and a high frequency of intermarriage among women migrants. Moreover, a changing migrant composition over the past decades was found, including a growing number of students, whereas the empirical analyses indicate a rather weak labour market position among immigrants from former Soviet republics. However, the position of recently arrived migrants has been enhanced over time, and migrants who stay for longer periods attain a stronger position on the labour market. The analyses also show an increasing number of highly educated persons among immigrants from the former Soviet republics. Furthermore, migrants from the former Soviet republics who move to Sweden tend to remain rather than return. In addition, the empirical analysis shows only minor tendencies of spatial clustering among the migrants. In sum, the study indicates that the lack of a more developed transnational social space may explain the rather low level of migration but also that the changing mobility patterns could represent an initial phase of a denser transnational social space that may trigger higher migration rates between the former Soviet republics and Sweden in the near future.

En fråga som hamnat i debattens fokus berör äldres sociala nätverk och hur familjebaserat stöd och omsorg fungerar i olika länder. Måste familj och informella nätverk ta större ansvar när de äldre blir fler och försörjningsbördan i Europa blir allt tyngre? Eller är dagens sociala nätverk för glesa och för geografiskt spridda för att fungera som stöd till de äldre? Har kanske nätverk av vänner och släktingar tappat en del av sin roll när offentliga institutioner tagit över ansvar för de äldres försörjning och omsorg? Fungerar de sociala nätverken möjligen bättre för de äldre i samhällen där familjen ännu har huvudansvaret?