Concerning the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015 and how it affected the position of young migrants in society, researchers have underscored the value of studies challenging one-sided images of migrant youth. This study examines how migrant positions are constituted, negotiated, and related to young people’s well-being. The study was undertaken using an ethnographic approach combined with the theoretical concept of translocational positionality to acknowledge how positions are created through historical and political processes and, at the same time, are context-dependent over time and space and thus contain incongruities. Our findings show how the newly arrived youth used multiple ways to navigate the school’s everyday life and ascribed migrant positions to achieve well-being as illustrated through the distancing, adapting, defense, and the contradictory positions. Based on our findings, we understand the negotiations that occur in forming migrant positions within the school as asymmetric. At the same time, the youths’ diverse and often contradictory positionality showed in various ways the striving for increased agency and well-being.

This study explores the establishment experiences of physicians in the Swedish medical context who have been trained outside the European Union. The study used a qualitative approach with a quasi-longitudinal research design. The data were gathered via 63 semi-structured interviews with migrant physicians at three different periods. The data were analysed using qualitative thematic content analysis, adopting the theory on the context dependence of knowledge, which includes different forms of knowledge as sensitising concepts in the discussion. The MPs perceived themselves as having the medical knowledge (encoded knowledge) needed to work in Sweden. However, they perceived that they needed to develop knowledge of how to use the encoded knowledge in the Swedish medical context. The needed knowledge was thus foremost encultured, embedded, embodied, or embrained. The results are presented in the following themes: medical knowledge; knowledge of the healthcare system and its variations; knowledge of administrative routines; understanding the role as a physician, interaction and hierarchies between physicians and other healthcare staff; understanding the interaction and hierarchies between physicians and patients; and knowledge of the Swedish language. Knowledge, as described in the themes, function as gateways that needs to be unlocked for practising medicine in a new context. Embedded, embrained, embodied, and encultured knowledge interact and are interdependent, and the different forms of knowledge work as gateways to other forms of knowledge, and thus, they open for each other. However, to pass the gateways, managing the common language is important. We conclude that language is an enabler and a key to unlocking gateways to practise.

We were attending a conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was an important conference in our field; a good opportunity to present our research on highly skilled migration and to exchange ideas with other scholars. But a visit to the Old Town of Dubrovnik, a magnificent site listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List (and a filming location in the TV series Game of Thrones) was also a powerful incentive to come here. One of our research colleagues, who had previously lived in Dubrovnik, took us on her own city tour in which she presented both interesting facts and personal memories. We admired the scenic views, we noted historically important places and still visible traces of the recent war, while at the same time talking about the conference sessions we had just attended, recent turns in migration studies, and joint writing projects. The city walk became alternately sight-seeing, a social occasion and a scholarly conversa-tion, in which we performed our professions while to all intents and purposes acting as many of the other “tourists” around us.

Objective: In many countries, migrant physicians (MP) tend to fill staff shortages in medical specialties perceived as low status. The aim of this study was to explore aspects that influence MPs', with a medical degree from outside EU/EEA, choice of employment and medical specialty in Sweden, and to explore and understand a potential over-representation in general practice (family medicine), a specialty suffering from staff shortages in Sweden.

Methods: A mixed-methods approach was applied. This included questionnaire data from 101 MPs training and working as medical specialists in Sweden and semi-structured interview data from four MPs specializing in general practice.

Results: Regardless of specialty, the most influential aspects when choosing employment were the ability to combine work with family, to develop one ' s competence, and to have highly competent colleagues. Women scored higher on some aspects related to private life and the surroundings. More than half (55%) of the respondents specialized in general practice, and more women than men. The MPs in general practice scored higher on the aspect 'ability to have the same patients for a longer period' than MPs specializing in other specialties. No significant difference between MP general practitioner respondents and MPs in other medical specialties was found in relation to the item 'Was the specialty your first choice?'. Aspects identified in the interviews that influenced the choice to specialize in general practice related to job opportunities, positive experiences of primary health care, working conditions, and family conditions.

Conclusion: Labour market conditions such as high competition, and the time-consuming recertification process, can influence the choice to specialize in general practice as this reduces the time to become a medical specialist. We however did not find any results indicating that MPs' decision to specialize in general practice and to work as general practitioners was any less voluntary than that of MPs who chose other specialties.

This article analyzes strategies and practices among Swedish Humanities scholars in relation to the demands of “internationalization” and in a framework of academic capitalism. The article is based on 30 qualitative interviews with scholars in philosophy, Romance languages and history. There are signs of cognitive dissonance, with conflicting set of norms. Benefits for the academic CV, along with a discipline’s ideals, traditions and its perceived role in society are the main context in which internationalization is understood, implemented and contested, with individual variations in international practices as e.g. international mobility, networking or publication strategies.

This article addresses the relationship between highly skilled international mobility and knowledge by focussing on knowledge transfer work. Empirically, this study is based on interviews of professionals in the Swedish medical field who returned to Sweden after a period of work in other countries. The medical field harbours many transnationally valid competences and standardised lines of work, but even in this field, knowledge transfer is a process requiring effort, skills, negotiation, translation and adjustment to the specific organisational and cultural contexts. The studied professionals’ knowledge transfer work showed a spectrum, ranging from smooth, almost friction-free transfers to the ones where much translation and transformation was required, depending on the context and the professional’s status in the workplace. The professionals also developed and made use of knowledge transfer skills, such as the ability to observe, analyse and adjust to cultural differences between workplaces, healthcare systems or academic systems, as well as the ability to translate knowledge to make it relevant and viable in the specific context.

Comparison is a way to make sense of reality, e.g., by contrasting places, “cultures,” or practices. It may present different degrees of something, create a dichotomy, and imply a hierarchy of values. The article analyzes how comparison as a tool is used by highly skilled Swedish professionals when they talk about participating in international work mobility and their subsequent return to Sweden. Empirically, the analysis is based on 46 interviews with Swedish medical professionals and 30 interviews with scholars in Swedish Humanities.

Objective

To explore migrant physicians’ conceptions about working in rural and remote areas in Sweden to understand what influences their motivation to work in these areas.

Method and material

The study employed a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews with 24 migrant physicians. Transcripts were thematically analysed.

Results

Conceptions were identified about foremost work content and tasks, and about living in rural and remote areas. Work content and tasks related to the health care systems, type of health care facility, duties, specialty, resources, patient population, colleagues, and professional development. Conceptions about living concerned geographical characteristics, people living in rural and remote areas, opportunities for travelling, family, leisure activities, social life, and language skills. Conceptions seemed to be influenced by individual, professional and societal aspects from both previous countries and Sweden. Conceptions and biographical aspects both appeared to affect motivation.

Discussion

Motivation regarding working in rural and remote areas appeared to be influenced by conceptions of these areas. A specific type of place could be understood as being able to provide (or not) the external conditions needed for fulfilling needs and reaching goals, whether professional or personal, and as a tool for reaching or facilitating the achievement of these. Conceptions of an area can hence affect motivation and choices for where to work and live. However, biographical aspects also impact motivation. Our results indicate that positive rural experience in the recipient country might be a predictor for motivation.

Conclusion

Professional and personal life and are intertwined. Conceptions about an area influence willingness to work there. Willingness is also affected by, and intertwined with, other aspects such as previous experiences, age, marital status and family circumstances.