Understanding intimate partner violence among ethnic and sexual minorities: Lived experiences of queer women in Norway

Drawing upon in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this study explored how queer women from ethnic minority backgrounds in Norway understand and experience intimate partner violence (IPV). Based on an intersectional approach, the study highlights and discusses how having multiple minority positions may inform and affect the way participants experience IPV. The analysis shows that participants’ experiences of IPV are shaped by their multiple minority statuses in Norwegian society. A discussion is provided that revolves around how being a sexual as well as an ethnic minority generates a significant power imbalance for the participants in their relationships.publishedVersio

Understanding Intimate Partner Violence Among Ethnic and Sexual Minorities: Lived Experiences of Queer Women in Norway

© The Author(s) 2022Drawing upon in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this study explored how queer women from ethnic minority backgrounds in Norway understand and experience intimate partner violence (IPV). Based on an intersectional approach, the study highlights and discusses how having multiple minority positions may inform and affect the way participants experience IPV. The analysis shows that participants’ experiences of IPV are shaped by their multiple minority statuses in Norwegian society. A discussion is provided that revolves around how being a sexual as well as an ethnic minority generates a significant power imbalance for the participants in their relationships.publishedVersio

Development of a scale of global identity

The goals of the present study were to construct a short scale of global identity that would have cross-cultural validity, and examine the latent factor structure of this scale. Four studies were conducted. Based on the literature review (Study 1) and data collected from students from several countries in open-ended questions (Study 2), an extensive item pool was produced. The item pool was then evaluated by experts (Study 3), resulting in total trial item pool of 110 Likert-type items. The questionnaire was then administered together with a social desirability scale to three different samples of students: Norwegian, Turkish, and American (Study 4). Items were ranked based on their performances on 22 psychometric criteria. The criteria were items standard deviations and item-total correlations for each sample, the length of items in word and characters for both the English and the Turkish version, items frequency of omission in each sample, items correlations with a multicultural index, social desirability, and cosmopolitan behavior in each sample. The highest 24 ranked items were subjected to item analysis, resulting in a 12 item Global Identity Scale that had high Cronbach alpha across samples. Factor analysis of the 12 item scale yielded a 2 factor orthogonal structure that was stable across the three samples of the study. One of the subscales of the Global Identity Scale represented lack of national attachment, and the other represented cosmopolitan orientation. Key words: cosmopolitanism, globalization, identity, internationalism, scale developmen

Explorations of neoliberal influence on subjectivity in Norwegian and Turkish societies

This thesis explores and details neoliberal discourses through which individuals of contemporary societies of Norway and Turkey constitute themselves and are constituted as subjects. This overall aim is achieved in four empirical papers each of which presents a discourse analysis. My co-authors and I make use of Foucault’s theoretical framework of neoliberal governmentality to make sense of and discuss discourses that are produced in each paper. From a governmentality perspective, “the conduct of conduct” or social control over citizens in advanced liberal states is achieved in a subtle way by a set of empowering techniques like autonomy, self-realization, and self-esteem. Each paper aims at revealing specific discourses in different spheres of society which may work in ways consonant to neoliberal governmentality. In each paper, we explore what subjectivities are promoted by neoliberal discourses and how these discourses may function to strengthen neoliberal practices and preserve status quo. Papers I and II investigate specific media discourses and make use of already existing data, namely newspaper articles on self-development and a TV show on debt. The two papers present and detail similarly discourses of rationality, autonomy and responsibility, entrepreneurship, and positivity and self-confidence. In both papers, we found a strong reductionist tendency to depict any problem of life as lying in the domain of the individual. Both papers also explicate the role of psy-complex as reflected in the use of psychologists and self-development gurus as experts. Discourses promoted by these so-called experts function to individualize the social, thus concealing the socio-structural elements of society, and demand individuals to be a better version of themselves to tackle any problem of life. Media discourses on self-development and debt thus instill stronger individualism. The aim of Papers III and IV was to investigate future orientation of youth in the Norwegian and Turkish societies. This was done to reveal currently dominant, neoliberal, discourses which youth draw upon to make sense of their lives and through which they constitute themselves as subjects of their respective societies. Our findings in paper III resonate with understandings of neoliberal influence in society which instills an individualistic subject who constitutes herself as independent, self-realizing, achievementoriented, and sensation-seeking. We discuss implications of these discourses on subjectivity, pitting them against more relational or collectivist/community-oriented discourses of solidarity, significant others and good citizenship. Paper IV details two frameworks of discourses relating to materialism, and education and career. Drawing upon a materialism discourse, some youth in both national contexts see happiness only accessible through material possessions, defining their subjectivities in terms of what they have. We discuss how socio-structural differences between Norway and Turkey may lead to different discourses on education and career, and hence affect youth differently. We relate these discourses to neoliberalism and discuss the extent to which youth constitute themselves as neoliberal subjects of their respective societies. Overall, each paper of the thesis contributes to our understanding of contemporary subjectivities and discusses how neoliberal discourses may lead to individualization of social and societal problems. It is discussed that when individuals understand themselves as autonomous entrepreneurial subjects (neoliberal subjects), they tend to accept personal responsibility for whatever problem they may have, for instance debt or unemployment. When individuals are made responsible for systemic failures, it may lead to preservation of the status quo of the contemporary capitalist societies

Chasing Happiness through Personal Debt: An Example of Neoliberal Influence in Norwegian Society

This chapter investigates a Norwegian TV show calledLuksusfellen (The Luxury Trap). Each episode follows an individual or a couple who are having problems with personal debt. Like many others of its ilk, it presents a variety of indebted individuals whom the hosts try to help out of their predicament. What this particular show provides is an acute example of how debt, and implicitly the debt industry, is articulated in a public arena. It also enables an analysis of how various discourses around debt are both constructed and reproduced. This analytic frame is with particular reference to sociocultural dimensions and how often complex personal circumstances are presented as simplistic financial ones. Debt, and the debtor-creditor relationship, functions in a social capacity as much as it does a financial one. Understanding how the social conditions, specifically the various discourses, around debt are constructed is of significant importance as these attempt to smuggle in various moral and political assumptions, which contribute to legitimating and reproducing the currently hegemonic neoliberal ideology

School Bullying-PTSD

The association of bullying at school with symptoms and diagnosis of PTSD: An updated systematic review and meta-analysi

Youth’s future orientation and well-being: Materialism and concerns with education and career among Norwegian and Turkish youth

Youths’ well-being and subjectivity are strongly related to prevailing political, economic, and social conditions. Neoliberalism has extensively permeated societies worldwide, changing the way individuals, especially youth, make sense of their surroundings and themselves. There is thus an increasing need to investigate how youth subjectivities are influenced in contemporary societies that are under the influence of neoliberalism. Through an analysis of the future orientation of youth, we can investigate discourses that shape youth subjectivities. In this study, we perform a Foucauldian discourse analysis of the future orientation of youth — high school students, from two national contexts, Turkey and Norway — who were asked to write an essay on their personal futures. We investigate what dominant discourses are revealed in the youths’ writings and how they may influence their subjectivities and well-being. We detail two frameworks of discourses, one pertaining to materialism and the other pertaining to education and career, that our participants drew upon in their writings. We relate these discourses to neoliberalism and discuss the extent to which youth constitute themselves as neoliberal subjects of their respective societies. We discuss how these discourses may also be related to their well-being in diverse ways