Peter Håkansson

Det sociala sammanhanget : om Finsam MittSkånes arbete mot utanförskap

Finsam MittSkane (dar kommunerna Eslov, Horby och Hoor ingar) har mellan aren 2012–2017 initierat och drivit ett flertal stora samverkansinsatser. I denna bok beskrivs tre av dessa insatser. Det som dessa tre insatser haft gemensamt ar dels att de syftat till att oka graden av sjalvforsorjning bland deltagarna, dels att de alla utgatt fran ett salutogent perspektiv. I detta perspektiv har det sociala sammanhanget och kanslan av sammanhang haft sarskilt stor betydelse. Malmo universitet har under flera ar haft olika uppdrag for Finsam MittSkane att studera, kartlagga och folja upp dessa insatser. Denna bok sammanfattar de erfarenheter som de olika rapporterna beskriver, men den ger aven en djupare teoretisk bakgrund som inte beskrivits i rapporterna.

Networks and labor market entry – a historical perspective

Abstract This paper discusses how recruitment practices have changed over time. Networks and contacts are more important today for labor market entry than was the case in the latter half of the twentieth century. There may be two explanations for this: the short-run explanation and the long-run explanation. The short-run explanation derives from fluctuations in unemployment. When unemployment is high, competition for every vacancy is tougher and networks become more important for the job seeker. This has been the case in Sweden since 1991, when unemployment increased to new levels not experienced since the 1930s. In the long run, there has been a change in recruitment practices due to institutional change. A clear pattern is that the importance of social networks has increased, while the significance of public institutions (i.e. the Public Employment Service) has decreased.

Missing voices on meaningful relationships in time and space

During the 10 years of existence, the Community, Work and Family Journal and the associated six conferences enabled researchers from diverse academic backgrounds and diverse horizons to share, collaborate and disseminate critical knowledge in the broad field of work-life research. Since the journal’s foundation, knowledge and understanding about the complexity of the interconnections between individual’s three major life domains, i.e. family life, work life and community life, has been enriched. This complexity has been addressed by focussing on the changing nature of each domain but also on the changing nature and roles of its actors. For example, work has been understood as shifts from industrial to service and from employed to self-employed to name few so that research ought to understand how these shifts affect worklife balance, conflict and/or enrichment. Actor-based research mainly explored women’s and employees’ voices but is starting to get interested in fathers and children as well as in social actors in the community. All things considered, there is no doubt that the work-life research field has developed and that theories and models have been developed and empirically researched to describe, understand and explain the interactions and/or interfaces between community work and family. But as Susan Lewis and Carolyn Kagan reminded us during the conference, even after 19 volumes of the Community Work and Family Journal, we are not yet done and we are not yet to be satisfied. As a matter of fact, Susan Lewis and Carolyn Kagan pointed out several crises, among those economic, demographic, gender, environmental, but also the crises of care and violence in our modern societies creating tensions in the interface between community work and family. The 6th International Community, Work and Family conference somehow aimed at capturing part of these tensions as we coined the theme ‘towards meaningful relationships in space and time’. The 65 papers and the 8 symposiums presented by the 169 authors/co-authors during the conference are surely a sign that countless discussions about these new tensions took place. The engagement of the conference participants made us, the editors of this special issue, realise that even if progress and development in research has been made, some voices are still missing in regard to the crises above. As a matter of fact, current research still focuses largely on high-income countries rather than on people working in substance and informal economies, on employees and less often on managers, on heteronormative families and to a lesser extent on alternative families, on large businesses and rarely on small businesses and on flexible work arrangements but hardly ever on overall HR processes, on traditional employees and on the odd occasion on expatriates or global managers. The list could be made longer. During the conference, some of these voices were represented, the aim of this special issue is thus to raise these hidden voices in the community, work and family research in time and