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In Sweden, participatory planning projects involving teenage girls have gained attention as innovative examples of gender-aware practice. This article explores how such initiatives are carried out and negotiated in everyday planning contexts. Based on interviews with professionals involved in projects that redesigned parks, tested creative methods and developed new dialogue tools, the analysis examines how inclusion is framed, enacted and evaluated. While these projects are celebrated as ‘best practice’, they also expose tensions: between ideals of participation and institutional routines, temporary interventions and long-term ambitions, situated insights and calls for standardisation. These dynamics reveal that gender equality work in planning is not a neutral or technical task but unfolds as a relational, emotionally invested practice. Professionals describe participation as meaningful yet fragile, dependent on trust, care and flexibility rather than guaranteed by institutional structures. Positioned as exemplary, these projects risk being treated as exceptional rather than integral to planning routines. The findings highlight how gender-aware planning unfolds through everyday negotiations, revealing both the transformative potential and the precariousness of equality work within project-based governance.

Urban policies with a gender perspective in the Basque Countryhave evolved significantly over the decades, yet persistent chal-lenges remain in addressing deep-rooted spatial and genderedpower inequalities. This article investigates how gender is prob-lematized and governed through the lens of (un)safety in Basqueurban governance. Based on an in-depth analysis of municipal pol-icy documents and interviews with planning and equality profes-sionals, the study reveals how (un)safety operates as a central logicthat renders gender perspectives actionable and politically legible.While this framing enables interdepartmental collaboration andfacilitates the implementation of gender-sensitive interventions, italso risks narrowing the scope of gender equality work to technicalfixes, thereby silencing more structural and intersectionalconcerns

This article explores how civil society-based safety engagements are represented in Swedish news media, and how these representations are mediated through emotions. In a political climate where “increased safety” has become a dominant goal, we analyze how media narratives construct emotional regimes around safety and responsibility. Drawing on Stuart Halls work on representation and theories of emotions, we show how news media not only reflect but help (re)produce emotional and spatial geographies of (un)safety through personalized storytelling and emotive language. Focusing on personal portrayals of grassroots safety initiatives, such as women-led taxi services and local volunteer efforts, we demonstrate how emotions such as fear and frustration are articulated as morally productive and politically legitimate responses to unsafety. These narratives represent engagement as a matter of individual initiative and personal responsibility, often along gendered and racialized lines. Women are depicted as self-governing subjects whose emotional investments justify their civic actions, aligning with neoliberal ideals of responsibilized citizenship. Media participates in an emotional politics that valorizes agency and affective community while depoliticizing broader issues of inequality and exclusion. These representations risk obscuring the structural causes of unsafety by recasting safety as a matter of personal duty rather than collective or institutional responsibility.

Kapitlet diskuterar planering av begravningsverksamheten i Sverige, som Svenska kyrkan ansvarar för i 288 av Sveriges 290 kommuner. Trots att kyrkan saknar planmonopol är den ansvarig för att tillhandahålla begravningsmark, vilket skapar ett komplext samspel med kommunernas planeringsansvar. Urbanisering, en åldrande befolkning och kulturell mångfald påverkar behovet av kistgravar, särskilt i krissituationer där MSB rekommenderar beredskap för 5 % av befolkningen. Begravningsplatser fungerar inte bara som platser för de döda utan också som viktiga gröna och kulturella rum. En GIS-baserad analys visar att framtida efterfrågan är särskilt hög i storstäder som Stockholm och Göteborg, medan norra Sverige har lägre efterfrågan men ett betydande inflöde av avlidna från andra regioner. Strategiska rekommendationer inkluderar att integrera begravningsplanering i nationella och kommunala strategier samt att se begravningsinfrastrukturen som en del av samhällets krisberedskap.

Today, we see many different forms of separatists and what may be a safe place for some may be provocative for others. In this article, we focus on separatist spaces, by analysing complaints submitted to the Equality Ombudsman, a governmental agency that supervises compliance with the Discrimination Act in Sweden. Through these complaints, we explore expressions of resistance to separatist spaces and how exclusion from such spaces is understood and made sense of. Hence, the aim is to, through analysis of complaints about perceived discrimination, explore which spaces and contexts are perceived as discriminatory and who is argued to be discriminated against. This analysis shows a clear pattern in how the complaints are filed against three different categories of places and contexts for women (gyms/swimming baths, The Statement Festival and contexts/networks for women). It is noteworthy that only one complaint is directed against a men-only space. The discussion focuses on how the definition of what constitutes discrimination spans between spatial exclusion to missed opportunities, how the complaints differ in terms of being expressions of personal experiences or a matter of principle, and finally, how the complainants argue that separatist spaces are constructing gender in specific ways. In conclusion, the complaints frame the gender separatist strategy as inherently exclusionary to men, threatening to their masculinity, unjustly portraying them as dangerous, and with complainants often casting boys and men as victims. Some of these complaints align with anti-feminist agendas, and some intersect with racist discourses about which groups of men that are to be perceived as dangerous.

This paper explores the concept of “safe spaces” in digital learning environments, specifically in the context of gender studies educa-tion. Through a pedagogical development project called Safe Spaces Online, we collaborated with colleagues and students to address the complexities of safety in online education. Rather than reproducing the often-sensationalized portrayal of gender studies students and university settings found in mainstream media, our project examines how concerns around safe spaces are understood and realized in our courses and how these concerns influence our pedagogical practices. Drawing on our project experiences, this paper discusses how safety is understood and conceptualized in our gender studies teaching.

Our discussion reflects insights gained through dialogue with both colleagues and students, aiming to enrich and bring nuance to the polarized debates on safe spaces in higher education, particularly those concerning gender studies students. Our analysis reveals that online safe spaces in gender studies are understood in ways that significantly diverge from popular media portrayals. Contrary to narratives dominated by terms such as “trigger warnings” and “cancel culture”, students express a need for safe online spaces characterized by structure, clarity, relational engagement, and teacher presence. This paper seeks to contribute to a more balanced understanding of safe spaces by highlighting the practical and relational aspects valued by students in gender studies learning environments.

In Sweden, integration is a pressing issue particularly following the large influx of immigrants in 2015. Swedish municipalities play an important role in civic integration, with responsibility for newly arrived immigrants receiving a basic understanding of Swedish society, their rights and obligations. We analyse data from 204 applications granted funding 2016/2017 for projects improving the integration of refugees into society by co-operation between municipalities and other actors. Using thematic analysis, we identify two broad themes. One concerning the ‘what’ of integration–the Swedish values, norms and behaviours that immigrants are expected to learn in order to become ‘good’ Swedish citizens, and the other concerning the means or the ‘how’ of integration. However, although these projects are well-meaning, they may have normalizing and disciplining effects whereby the immigrant is constructed as subordinate, as the Other. Swedish gender-equality is heavily emphasized and we see how, in relation to this, the immigrant is constructed as unmodern, bound by tradition and unequal. Particularly immigrant women are produced as passive objects rather than active subjects, in need of special women’s activities and lacking as parents in comparison with the Swedish ideal.

Syftet med denna rapport är att belysa förutsättningarna, utmaningarna och möjligheterna för flyktingmottagande och integrationsarbete på mindre orter, med särskilt fokus på glesbygdskommuner i norra Sverige. Tills nyligen har Sverige haft en relativt generös migrationspolitik och de svenska kommunerna har haft en nyckelroll i mottagandet och integrationen av flyktingar. Många små, glesbefolkade landsbygdskommuner har tagit emot en hög andel individer i förhållande till sin befolkningsstorlek. Flyktingmottagande har setts som en möjlighet att utveckla kommunen. Många av de små kommuner i norra Sverige som står inför en minskande befolkning har sett mottagandet som en möjlighet till sysselsättning, genererad av de uppgifter som en tillströmning av flyktingar innebär, men också som en grund för att utveckla den kommunala verksamheten. Kommunernas flyktingmottagande är dock beroende av politiken på nationell nivå och förändringar i denna politik som påverkar antalet flyktingar som kommunerna kan ta emot. När politikerna beslutar att strama åt flyktingpolitiken och stänga ned verksamheter som kommit att utgöra ett hopp inför framtiden, utvecklas en känsla av maktlöshet. Besluten om antal och kvoter fattas någon annanstans, och detta bidrar till en process där små glesbygdskommuner hamnar ännu längre bort från maktens centrum. Att ta emot flyktingar har för dessa kommuner, åtminstone inledningsvis, varit en strategi som gett hopp för framtiden, inte bara för de flyktingar som tas emot i dessa små samhällen, utan också för de små kommunerna själva. Den lilla orten blir således perifer genom att den marginaliseras i såväl politiska som ekonomiska processer och alltså inte (enbart) på grund av sin rumsliga position.

Rapporten är organiserad utifrån forskningsprojektets tre delstudier. Delstudierna baseras på olika material och besvarar olika frågor. Den första handlar om hur integration som fenomen beskrivs i ansökningar om projektmedel från Länsstyrelserna och vilka problem som kommunerna beskriver som särskilt centrala att adressera. Den andra delstudien fokuserar på de sätt på vilka flyktingmottagande framställs i lokala och regionala nyhetsmedier i Västerbotten och Västernorrland. Den tredje och sista delstudien fokuserar på erfarenheter och vardagliga arbetsvillkor för flyktingmottagare och integrationsarbetare i två mindre orter. I en sammantagen analys av resultatet från de tre delstudierna identifieras fyra mer övergripande berättelser varigenom flyktingmottagande i glesbygd skildras 1) engagemang och frustration, 2) förutsättningarna för mottagandet och organiseringens betydelse, 3) integration och svenskhet och 4) periferiseringsprocesser.

Swedish migration policy has undergone dramatic changes and has moved from being one of the most generous policies to the minimum EU level. Traditionally refugee reception has been a policy area with a strong tradition of collaboration between national and local government with decentralized decision-making. The role of local government has, however, altered in the face of greater centralization and harder national government steering. This chapter provides a broad picture of Swedish local government’s responsibilities, the changing nature of the role it has played and is playing with regard to refugee reception and integration policies and the challenges it currently faces.

Rural communities in the inland areas of Northern Sweden have long suffered from a steady population declineas young people, particularly women, have moved to the growing urban areas for education/employment.However, in recent years, alongside strategies for survival relating to tourism/hospitality industry, refugeereception has emerged as a strategy for survival whereby these rural municipalities seek to staunch the downwardspiral of decline by accepting refugees in the hope that this will provide not only job opportunities but alsosupport for local services. Using thematic analysis, we focus on media representations of rural refugee receptionin small municipalities Northern Sweden and aim to contribute to an understanding of how spatial and socialrelations are reproduced through these representations; to understand in how ‘the rural’ is constructed in relationto power relations such as race and gender and how these interact with a more explicit spatial power dimension.We are interested in understanding rural refugee reception as a contested hope for the future – a strategy forsurvival. Our analysis shows that the media highlight the stories of how the municipalities set their hopes onrefugee reception to ‘save’ the place not only by bringing in new, younger inhabitants, but also employmentopportunities. However, it also shows that refugee reception may become merely a short-term, temporary solutionand not something that challenges or changes the more general migratory patterns in Sweden.