Youth labour remained important well into the twentieth century, although it is often elusive in traditional sources. In this article, we investigate messengers – a category of occupational titles, including errand and office boys, which is thought of as youth jobs. We sketch the long-term development of the occupation by making use of digitised Swedish daily newspapers and discuss demand-side, supply-side and institutional factors for the disappearance of the occupation. Our investigation suggests that the messenger jobs reached their peak around 1945 and thereafter decreased to low levels in the 1960s. We find that employers looking for messengers were large organisations that needed in-house help with deliveries and simple office tasks. These employers originally aimed at young men aged 15–17 years. The minimum age requirement was not loosened over time; instead, employers began to announce for older workers. We interpret this as employers’ adapting to a situation where the supply of young messengers had decreased. Employers made their ads appealing by emphasising good working conditions and career prospects, indicating that there was still a demand for messengers despite the changing times.

In Sweden, there have been a surplus of men in rural areas and a surplus of women in urban areas for decades. However, the relative difference between rural and urban areas have decreased for about 70 years between the 1930s and the new millennium. We use two approaches to understand the decreasing regional gender gaps: 1. we decompose regional gender balance changes into the main components of population growth/decline i.e international net migration, internal net migration and net births. 2. We employ individual register data, estimate multinomial regressions every year 1991–2016 and analyse how the relationship between gender and the probability of moving from rural areas develops over time. We estimate separate regressions for Swedish-born and foreign-born. After controlling for traditional explanatory variables, we interpret the dichotomous gender variable as a measure of “gender norms”. The question is if we can spot gender norm trends that can help explain the decreasing regional gender gaps over time. We find that the development of net birth rates in rural areas explains the decreased gender gap between rural and urban areas since 1968 while net immigration and net internal migration have rather contributed to increasing regional gender gaps. Despite this, the multinomial regressions do not support changing relationships between gender and the probability to out-migrate from rural areas after 1990 for the Swedish-born. For foreign-born, we find evidence of decreased gender differences regarding the probability to leave rural areas. This contributes to an increased surplus of rural men because foreign-born men have an increased probability to stay in rural municipalities in comparison to women. In sum, we do not find that changing gender norms, for Swedish-born or foreign-born, can explain the decreasing gender gaps between rural and urban areas. In fact, for the foreign-born, we find the opposite.

Systemskiftet har haft ett stort genomslag när det kommer till bostadsmarknaden och bostadspolitiken. Transformationerna har varit omfattande vad gäller den avregleringen av bostadstadssektorn och det offentligas roll, med ett närmast absolut tillbakadragande från statens sida. Det finns i dagsläget ingen vare sig offentlig eller privat instans som tar ansvar för de bostadssociala frågorna på statlig nivå, medan manöverutrymmet är begränsat för kommunerna. Samtidigt som stat och kommun kapitulerar i sitt sociala ansvar ökar bostadsojämlikheten och krisen för de som efterfrågar bostäder till rimliga priser intensifieras. Den allmännyttiga hyresrätten, som historiskt varit arbetarklassens viktigaste marknad, har försvagats och beståndet har till och med minskat i antal från systemskiftets början i tidigt 1990-tal.

Sex workers in Europe are increasingly of nonnational origin. The Schengen cooperation allows internal migration within the European Union, but many migrant sex workers originate from outside the EU. While sex workers are already in precarious positions, nonnationals risk deportation, dependent on their citizenship status, and may have debts to smugglers. Consequently, they may be more likely to work longer hours to increase short-term profits. Using a dataset of sex work advertisements from one Danish website (n = 2,594), we estimate the association between inferred citizenship status and a) advertised hours on shift using ordinary least squares regression, and b) the probability of advertising 24/7 availability using a linear probability model. Compared to Danish sex workers, we find migrants advertise almost twice as many hours on shift and are more likely to advertise 24/7 availability. These results shed light on the inequalities that persist between national and nonnational sex workers.

This article is a case study of the political economy of the Western Cape Winelands c.1900. The analysis covers three intertwined processes that were crucial for the advance of a capitalist mode of production: the making of capital, the making of a commodity market, and the making of a labouring class. The making of capital was achieved after the mid-1800s. However, even at the end of the century, the market for Cape wines and the making of a labouring class remained obstacles to the advance of capitalism. Some wealthy farm owners, though, were about to overcome these obstacles. A small group of them were of old Afrikaner origin, while others, mostly investor capitalists of British origin, were quite successful in establishing a capitalist mode of production on their wine farms. In particular, drawing on a vast array of primary sources, we discuss the many labour recruitment programmes that were organized as private and state initiatives.

Sweden is once again expected to enter a recession and there is high inflation and sharp interest rate increases. Other factors such as conflicts in Ukraine, global supply disruptions and increased energy prices also contribute to changes in the economy. For real estate companies, this means more difficult financing, increased interest rates and costs as well as restrictions on rent increases, which means they need to adapt their strategy to meet the economic changes.The purpose of the study is to investigate the strategies of Swedish private real estate companies in an upcoming recession regarding strategic planning, cost savings, diversification and investment. A qualitative method has been applied and the empirical evidence is based on six semi-structured interviews of real estate companies with rental housing. The empirical material has then been compiled and analyzed using the theories presented.The result shows that real estate companies do not adopt a specific preparatory strategy for a recession but have modified the strategy in connection with changes in economic conditions. Given the limitations in rent increases, they cannot compensate for the increased costs with the help of income, which means that cost savings are a central aspect in the making of the strategy. Cost savings are mainly made on maintenance, energy consumption and investments, and that contractors are exposed to competition. However, there are necessary investments within the various aspects, which means that the companies must prioritize. Generally speaking, the companies use a core strategy, which means that they stay in the same market regardless of the state of the economy. The companies tend to focus more on the existing stock rather than new production because of difficulties regarding loans and increased interest rates as well as construction costs. Since the real estate companies believe that the real estate market is static at the moment, the competitive risk does not weigh more than the financial risk.

What are the long-term differences in the propensity of immigrants to acquire destination country citizenship under different institutional contexts and how do these vary between migrant groups? This article draws on micro-level longitudinal data from administrative registers in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden-three countries with widely different and changing requirements for the acquisition of citizenship-to track the naturalization propensity of eight complete migrant cohorts (1994-2001) up to 21 years after migration. We find that after two decades in the destination country, cumulative naturalization rates vary remarkably with over 80 per cent of migrants in Sweden, two-thirds in the Netherlands, and only around a third in Denmark having acquired citizenship. We observe lower rates and delayed naturalization for migrants, especially among those with lower levels of education, after language requirements and integration tests were introduced in Denmark and the Netherlands. Dual citizenship acceptance in the Netherlands and Sweden, by contrast, is associated with durably higher citizenship acquisition rates, especially, among migrants from EU and highly developed countries. These findings highlight the long-term but conditional relevance of citizenship policy for immigrant naturalization.