Helena Johansson
Biographic Data
| ID | 210884 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helena Johansson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helena |
| FAMILY NAME | Johansson |
| SIGNATURE | JOHANSSON H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lund University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1523-3088 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 217 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
What have future generations ever done for us?” Future expectations and present dispositions for social-ecological transformations
The concept of ‘sustainable welfare’ conceptualizes welfare and wellbeing within planetary limits. Yet there is a lack of knowledge about possible social and political carriers of corresponding social-ecological transformations. For the promotion of the changes of societal core institutions that climate scientists deem necessary in the nearer future knowledge of which parts of the population are most likely to support these and which would resist…
Varieties of Economic Elites? Preliminary Results From the World Elite Database (WED)
The strategies, decisions and beliefs of those who occupy prominent positions of economic power have influence on very large corporations and the markets they dominate, on vast amounts of economic resources, and on the rules of the game. However, the sociology of elites faces a dual challenge: divergent conceptualisations of what can be considered as a position of economic power and internationally incompatible sources of information hinder compa…
Civil Society Elites and State Consecration
Elites are often offered prestigious state prizes and awards. Although most elites accept, prestigious prizes constitute a challenge for others since institutional symbolic capital cannot be merely accepted, but requires careful negotiation and management. This article investigates the dilemma of being consecrated by the state by studying civil society elites' reception and use of royal honours, the UK's most prestigious voluntary and charity wor…
Early work experiences, social inclusion and transition to adulthood
It is widely recognised that young people in out-of-home care are often involved in a complex process of culminating disadvantage and exclusion. Investing in the core ingredients of social inclusion (participation and interpersonal relationships) while still in care can counterbalance ongoing exclusion processes. In this article, we explore how early work experiences (before the age of 18) can play a role in this. Findings A thematic analysis was…
Moving away from, moving towards and moving against others
In the face of extreme and enduring stressors, a self-protection coping mode can be entered to conserve resources (Conservation of Resources (COR) theory principle 4). Self-protection coping is underexplored in COR theory yet may offer insights about how people deal with the significant challenges posed by work today. We investigate this using a large-group collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE) with 15 academic workers during a period when resourc…
Structural barriers to sufficiency
‘Sufficiency’ has become a key term within sustainability science. The satisfaction of basic human needs for all and for multiple generations is only possible if coupled to the implementation of ecological ceilings that prevent wealthy groups from disproportionate production and consumption patterns and energy use. While much sufficiency research has focused on the poor and how to provide corresponding social floors (i.e. an adequate level of suf…
Civil society elites
The article takes the first steps towards a general theory of civil society elites, a concept not fully developed in either elite or civil society research. This conceptual gap hampers academic and public understanding of the dynamics at the top of civil society. To address this, the authors rely on the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu to build a theory of civil society elites as managers of civic capital. This role is illustrated through…
Digital resource abundance
This article explores how and why some online protests manage to gain digital resource abundance, that is, mobilising large numbers of people and attracting wide interest and support in a short space of time. The study focuses on the case of the Swedish Petrol Uprising 2.0 which after a few months managed to mobilise 630,000 members on Facebook. The article expands established theories on online mobilisation by stressing the structural elements o…
Exploring care leavers' agency in achieving entry into the world of work
This article draws attention to the relevance of young care leavers' exercise of agency as one possible key ingredient in overcoming barriers to engagement in work. Several previous studies show difficulties in entering adult life, both in relation to higher and further education as well as entrance into work life. The article analyses interviews with young adults from six countries, who have spent at least part of their childhood and youth in ou…
Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context
Social policy developed as a research field and academic discipline to ensure protection from social risks in the era of emerging capitalism and industrialization. While welfare states have successfully increased their citizens' wellbeing, they have also contributed to the ecological crisis, while the shared scientific understanding of exceeded planetary boundaries and worsening climate change scenarios has not (yet) reshaped mainstream social po…
Ecological ceiling and social floor
In this article, we investigate public support for eco-social policies combining goals of social justice and ecological sustainability. Eco-social policies contribute both to providing a social floor or redistributing resources to where they are needed and to respecting an ecological ceiling by keeping human activities within ecological limits. We discuss five such policies and highlight arguments for and against defining them as eco-social polic…
Personalisation at the top of civil societies? Legitimation claims on civil society elites in Europe
Top civil society organisations (CSOs) face a particular legitimacy dilemma as they need to have leaders who are seen as legitimate by the elite groups they interact with, and by those they represent. This article investigates how they handle this dilemma by studying legitimation practices of newly appointed leaders. Based on Weber’s theory of authority and Pitkin’s theory of representation, the article investigates 114 public announcements of go…
Shaping Civil Society Leaders
Civil society leadership training programmes are a new phenomenon, and they are often overlooked by civil society scholarship despite being linked to the professionalisation of the sector. In this article, we examine 14 Swedish leadership programmes in order to identify leadership ideals in the sector. Drawing on the notion of ‘symbolic boundaries’, we argue that leadership programmes produce horizontal boundaries in relation to other societal se…
Practising empty talk
This article draws on theories of normative control and critical management studies to investigate caseworkers’ strategies in correspondence to a new leadership philosophy in the Swedish Public Employment Service called self-leadership. Based on 43 interviews and observations at two local offices, we find that managerial models are arbitrary and cause uncertainty at the local level as caseworkers both comply and resist managerial talk of self-lea…
Capital and Closure in the EU Field. Advancement in the European Economic and Social Committee
This article explores what it takes to advance to the top of an EU institution (European Economic and Social Committee). The article combines Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital with Weber’s theory of social closure to study the interplay between required forms of capital and closure practices during three ideal‐typical phases of upward mobility: ‘getting in’, ‘fitting in’ and ‘moving on’. Drawing on 26 semi‐structured interviews, the articl…
The Phoenix syndrome
The development of social media challenges the established conceptualizations of resources in social movements. While previous theories largely illustrated social movements as constantly searching for new and more resources, the development of social media has allowed some actors to gather and mobilize extensive resources rapidly, calling for an analysis of resource abundance. The aim of this article is to analyse how netroots organizations strat…
Habitus and climate change
We explore peoples' dispositions and practices with regard to social-ecological transformations based on a sustainable welfare policy strategy in Sweden. We draw on Bourdieu's concept of habitus to highlight the relations between social positions, dispositions, and position-takings. Using data from an own survey, we identify habitus types and place these in the space of social positions. We apply principal component analysis to a large set of que…
Civil Society Elites
This editorial introduces the thematic issue on ‘civil society elites,’ a topic that has been neglected in elite research as well as civil society studies. It elaborates on the concept of ‘civil society elites’ and explains why this is an important emerging research field. By highlighting different methodological approaches and key findings in the contributions to the thematic issue, this article aims at formulating an agenda for future research …
Strengths and Resilience of Migrant Women in Transit
This study departed from the idea that all people, including those hardest hit by adversity, have strengths and resiliencies. It posed the question on how a particularly vulnerable group, Central American migrant women in irregular transit through Mexico, used their strengths and resilience to reach the border with the USA. Past research has failed to address the issue of strengths and resilience in Central American migrant women, instead, much a…
The logics of digital advocacy
A growing body of research highlights how the Internet and social media offer new platforms for advocacy. This article contributes to the debates on digital advocacy by combining interest group and social media studies and present the notions of digital access politics, digital information politics, and digital protest politics for a comprehensive analysis of digital advocacy. Based on a netnographic study of two highly different advocacy groups …
The importance of discretion for welfare services to minorities
Migration influx in Western countries resulting in increasingly diverse societies results in more complex situations for bureaucrats in their client interactions in welfare organizations. The role of discretion for services to clients has received much attention in the public administration research and therefore this study explores the relation among perceived workload, anti‐immigration attitudes, perceived discretion, and perceived difficulty i…
Local civil society regimes
Academic debates on the role and position of civil society organisations (CSOs) in welfare states largely refer to policies and practices outlined at the national level. They therefore fail to recognise variations within nations. Based on a comparative case study of three Swedish metropolitan cities, this article illustrates the importance of local, contextualised analyses. Through the concept of local civil society regimes, the study identifies …
What is a family? Constructions of family and parenting after a custody transfer from birth parents to foster parents
The subject of stability for children in long‐term foster care is an emerging field within social work with vulnerable children. In Sweden, the adoption of foster children is not a common occurrence. Instead, when a child has been placed in foster care for 3 years, the local social welfare committee will consider whether the custody of the child should be transferred to the foster parents regardless of the circumstances of the birth parents, in o…
Transferring custody from birth parents to foster parents – an ambiguous matter
In this study, we analyse 32 district court decisions regarding custody transfers from the birth parents to the foster parents in Sweden. When a child has been in foster care for three years, in order to enhance stability for child, the local social welfare committee considers a transferral of custody to the foster parents following an application to the district court. Although all but one of the decisions in our study favoured a custody transfe…
Recognition of education and schooling in case files for children and young people placed in out-of-home care
Habitus and climate change
We explore peoples' dispositions and practices with regard to social-ecological transformations based on a sustainable welfare policy strategy in Sweden. We draw on Bourdieu's concept of habitus to highlight the relations between social positions, dispositions, and position-takings. Using data from an own survey, we identify habitus types and place these in the space of social positions. We apply principal component analysis to a large set of que…
Advocacy Compromised
Key functions of civil society organizations (CSOs) are to criticize governments and to hold them to account. Recent trends of privatization and contracting out challenge CSOs’ opportunities to voice such criticism. The purpose of this article is to analyse whether and why CSOs ‘hold back their criticism’ of public authorities, and how a compromised advocacy can be linked to financial, organizational and institutional factors. The article draws o…
The logics of digital advocacy
A growing body of research highlights how the Internet and social media offer new platforms for advocacy. This article contributes to the debates on digital advocacy by combining interest group and social media studies and present the notions of digital access politics, digital information politics, and digital protest politics for a comprehensive analysis of digital advocacy. Based on a netnographic study of two highly different advocacy groups …
Welfare Mix as a Contested Terrain
As welfare states are increasingly challenged and replaced by welfare mix models, new ideas about the functions of non-profit and voluntary organisations (NPVOs) provoke political conflicts that should be reflected in research. This paper explores the significance of political and ideological dimensions to present changes in the Swedish welfare state regarding NPVOs as welfare services providers. Investigating both national and local level, the s…
Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context
Social policy developed as a research field and academic discipline to ensure protection from social risks in the era of emerging capitalism and industrialization. While welfare states have successfully increased their citizens' wellbeing, they have also contributed to the ecological crisis, while the shared scientific understanding of exceeded planetary boundaries and worsening climate change scenarios has not (yet) reshaped mainstream social po…
School as an opportunity and resilience factor for young people placed in care
The aim of this article is to describe and discuss how school can constitute a life opportunity and a resilience factor for young people at risk, as well as for those placed in care. Thirty-three young people were interviewed on two separate occasions. The results showed that school could provide a place of structure and safety, in contrast to a chaotic family life. When it was impossible to bring friends home, due to parents' problems, school al…
Education for disadvantaged groups — Structural and individual challenges
Export processing zones as catalysts
Bridging the Gap
In recent decades, the emergence and development of pan-European civil society organisations have been prominent, including those representing interests of marginalised groups and raising related social issues. Typically composed of national and European level umbrella organisations, some of these organisations have grown as important interlocutors between EU institutions and civil society, and derive legitimacy for their advocacy and lobbying ac…
Re‐activating the Nordic welfare states
Purpose To clarify the core characteristics of Nordic activation policies in the context of typologies of European activation governance. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyses activation governance in the light of the basic values and beliefs behind the formation of the Nordic social protection systems in the mid‐20th century. Recent model‐building efforts see the Nordic countries as being close to a “universalistic” and egalitarian type…
Varieties of Economic Elites? Preliminary Results From the World Elite Database (WED)
The strategies, decisions and beliefs of those who occupy prominent positions of economic power have influence on very large corporations and the markets they dominate, on vast amounts of economic resources, and on the rules of the game. However, the sociology of elites faces a dual challenge: divergent conceptualisations of what can be considered as a position of economic power and internationally incompatible sources of information hinder compa…
What is a family? Constructions of family and parenting after a custody transfer from birth parents to foster parents
The subject of stability for children in long‐term foster care is an emerging field within social work with vulnerable children. In Sweden, the adoption of foster children is not a common occurrence. Instead, when a child has been placed in foster care for 3 years, the local social welfare committee will consider whether the custody of the child should be transferred to the foster parents regardless of the circumstances of the birth parents, in o…
Ecological ceiling and social floor
In this article, we investigate public support for eco-social policies combining goals of social justice and ecological sustainability. Eco-social policies contribute both to providing a social floor or redistributing resources to where they are needed and to respecting an ecological ceiling by keeping human activities within ecological limits. We discuss five such policies and highlight arguments for and against defining them as eco-social polic…
Strengths and Resilience of Migrant Women in Transit
This study departed from the idea that all people, including those hardest hit by adversity, have strengths and resiliencies. It posed the question on how a particularly vulnerable group, Central American migrant women in irregular transit through Mexico, used their strengths and resilience to reach the border with the USA. Past research has failed to address the issue of strengths and resilience in Central American migrant women, instead, much a…
Civil Society Elites
This editorial introduces the thematic issue on ‘civil society elites,’ a topic that has been neglected in elite research as well as civil society studies. It elaborates on the concept of ‘civil society elites’ and explains why this is an important emerging research field. By highlighting different methodological approaches and key findings in the contributions to the thematic issue, this article aims at formulating an agenda for future research …
Capital and Closure in the EU Field. Advancement in the European Economic and Social Committee
This article explores what it takes to advance to the top of an EU institution (European Economic and Social Committee). The article combines Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital with Weber’s theory of social closure to study the interplay between required forms of capital and closure practices during three ideal‐typical phases of upward mobility: ‘getting in’, ‘fitting in’ and ‘moving on’. Drawing on 26 semi‐structured interviews, the articl…
The importance of discretion for welfare services to minorities
Migration influx in Western countries resulting in increasingly diverse societies results in more complex situations for bureaucrats in their client interactions in welfare organizations. The role of discretion for services to clients has received much attention in the public administration research and therefore this study explores the relation among perceived workload, anti‐immigration attitudes, perceived discretion, and perceived difficulty i…
Patterns of institutional change in minimum income protection in Sweden and Germany
Germany is generally regarded as a case of qualitative “change” in minimum income protection (MIP) schemes, while Sweden is perceived as one of institutional “inertia”. This paper seeks to qualify this view by embedding developments in MIP in wider policy and governance trends. Empirically, it is based on document analysis and qualitative expert interviews in the two countries. Theoretically, the paper applies recent institutional approaches that…
Personalisation at the top of civil societies? Legitimation claims on civil society elites in Europe
Top civil society organisations (CSOs) face a particular legitimacy dilemma as they need to have leaders who are seen as legitimate by the elite groups they interact with, and by those they represent. This article investigates how they handle this dilemma by studying legitimation practices of newly appointed leaders. Based on Weber’s theory of authority and Pitkin’s theory of representation, the article investigates 114 public announcements of go…
Civil society elites
The article takes the first steps towards a general theory of civil society elites, a concept not fully developed in either elite or civil society research. This conceptual gap hampers academic and public understanding of the dynamics at the top of civil society. To address this, the authors rely on the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu to build a theory of civil society elites as managers of civic capital. This role is illustrated through…
What have future generations ever done for us?” Future expectations and present dispositions for social-ecological transformations
The concept of ‘sustainable welfare’ conceptualizes welfare and wellbeing within planetary limits. Yet there is a lack of knowledge about possible social and political carriers of corresponding social-ecological transformations. For the promotion of the changes of societal core institutions that climate scientists deem necessary in the nearer future knowledge of which parts of the population are most likely to support these and which would resist…
Exploring care leavers' agency in achieving entry into the world of work
This article draws attention to the relevance of young care leavers' exercise of agency as one possible key ingredient in overcoming barriers to engagement in work. Several previous studies show difficulties in entering adult life, both in relation to higher and further education as well as entrance into work life. The article analyses interviews with young adults from six countries, who have spent at least part of their childhood and youth in ou…
Shaping Civil Society Leaders
Civil society leadership training programmes are a new phenomenon, and they are often overlooked by civil society scholarship despite being linked to the professionalisation of the sector. In this article, we examine 14 Swedish leadership programmes in order to identify leadership ideals in the sector. Drawing on the notion of ‘symbolic boundaries’, we argue that leadership programmes produce horizontal boundaries in relation to other societal se…
Recognition of education and schooling in case files for children and young people placed in out-of-home care
Structural barriers to sufficiency
‘Sufficiency’ has become a key term within sustainability science. The satisfaction of basic human needs for all and for multiple generations is only possible if coupled to the implementation of ecological ceilings that prevent wealthy groups from disproportionate production and consumption patterns and energy use. While much sufficiency research has focused on the poor and how to provide corresponding social floors (i.e. an adequate level of suf…
Export processing zones as catalysts
Activation Policies in the Nordic Countries
Re‐activating the Nordic welfare states
Purpose To clarify the core characteristics of Nordic activation policies in the context of typologies of European activation governance. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyses activation governance in the light of the basic values and beliefs behind the formation of the Nordic social protection systems in the mid‐20th century. Recent model‐building efforts see the Nordic countries as being close to a “universalistic” and egalitarian type…
Towards A Post-Marshallian Framework for the Analysis of Social Citizenship
Building on a review of recent scholarship about citizenship and an overview of major challenges for contemporary societies and welfare provision, the chapter proposes a new conceptual framework for studies of citizenship. According to this framework, citizenship is multidimensional, incorporating reciprocity of rights and duties, freedom of choice and self-responsibility, and participation in deliberation and decision making. Whereas these eleme…
From a 'Liberal' to a 'Social democratic' welfare state
England was one of the first countries to install a Compact to regulate the relationship between state and civil society and since then several other countries have followed and initiated national Agreements, Charters or Concordats. Despite a growing academic interest into such national Compact models we have insufficient knowledge of how such ideas ‘from abroad’ are adapted and molded to fit with ‘domestic’ legacies, institutions and power dispa…
School as an opportunity and resilience factor for young people placed in care
The aim of this article is to describe and discuss how school can constitute a life opportunity and a resilience factor for young people at risk, as well as for those placed in care. Thirty-three young people were interviewed on two separate occasions. The results showed that school could provide a place of structure and safety, in contrast to a chaotic family life. When it was impossible to bring friends home, due to parents' problems, school al…
Bridging the Gap
In recent decades, the emergence and development of pan-European civil society organisations have been prominent, including those representing interests of marginalised groups and raising related social issues. Typically composed of national and European level umbrella organisations, some of these organisations have grown as important interlocutors between EU institutions and civil society, and derive legitimacy for their advocacy and lobbying ac…
Education for disadvantaged groups — Structural and individual challenges
The Psychosocial Atmosphere in Community-Based Activity Centers for People with Psychiatric Disabilities
Patterns of institutional change in minimum income protection in Sweden and Germany
Germany is generally regarded as a case of qualitative “change” in minimum income protection (MIP) schemes, while Sweden is perceived as one of institutional “inertia”. This paper seeks to qualify this view by embedding developments in MIP in wider policy and governance trends. Empirically, it is based on document analysis and qualitative expert interviews in the two countries. Theoretically, the paper applies recent institutional approaches that…
Welfare Mix as a Contested Terrain
As welfare states are increasingly challenged and replaced by welfare mix models, new ideas about the functions of non-profit and voluntary organisations (NPVOs) provoke political conflicts that should be reflected in research. This paper explores the significance of political and ideological dimensions to present changes in the Swedish welfare state regarding NPVOs as welfare services providers. Investigating both national and local level, the s…
Combating Poverty in Local Welfare Systems
Advocacy Compromised
Key functions of civil society organizations (CSOs) are to criticize governments and to hold them to account. Recent trends of privatization and contracting out challenge CSOs’ opportunities to voice such criticism. The purpose of this article is to analyse whether and why CSOs ‘hold back their criticism’ of public authorities, and how a compromised advocacy can be linked to financial, organizational and institutional factors. The article draws o…
Local civil society regimes
Academic debates on the role and position of civil society organisations (CSOs) in welfare states largely refer to policies and practices outlined at the national level. They therefore fail to recognise variations within nations. Based on a comparative case study of three Swedish metropolitan cities, this article illustrates the importance of local, contextualised analyses. Through the concept of local civil society regimes, the study identifies …
What is a family? Constructions of family and parenting after a custody transfer from birth parents to foster parents
The subject of stability for children in long‐term foster care is an emerging field within social work with vulnerable children. In Sweden, the adoption of foster children is not a common occurrence. Instead, when a child has been placed in foster care for 3 years, the local social welfare committee will consider whether the custody of the child should be transferred to the foster parents regardless of the circumstances of the birth parents, in o…
Transferring custody from birth parents to foster parents – an ambiguous matter
In this study, we analyse 32 district court decisions regarding custody transfers from the birth parents to the foster parents in Sweden. When a child has been in foster care for three years, in order to enhance stability for child, the local social welfare committee considers a transferral of custody to the foster parents following an application to the district court. Although all but one of the decisions in our study favoured a custody transfe…
Recognition of education and schooling in case files for children and young people placed in out-of-home care
A Swedish culture of advocacy
This article sets out to identify a culture of advocacy that has come to characterise Swedish civil society, formed around a long-standing tradition of close and cordial relations between civil society organisations, popular movements, and state and government officials. We argue that Swedish civil society organisations (CSOs) have been allowed to voice critique against public actors and policies and are expected to do so. Based on a large survey…
The logics of digital advocacy
A growing body of research highlights how the Internet and social media offer new platforms for advocacy. This article contributes to the debates on digital advocacy by combining interest group and social media studies and present the notions of digital access politics, digital information politics, and digital protest politics for a comprehensive analysis of digital advocacy. Based on a netnographic study of two highly different advocacy groups …
The importance of discretion for welfare services to minorities
Migration influx in Western countries resulting in increasingly diverse societies results in more complex situations for bureaucrats in their client interactions in welfare organizations. The role of discretion for services to clients has received much attention in the public administration research and therefore this study explores the relation among perceived workload, anti‐immigration attitudes, perceived discretion, and perceived difficulty i…
Civil Society Elites
This editorial introduces the thematic issue on ‘civil society elites,’ a topic that has been neglected in elite research as well as civil society studies. It elaborates on the concept of ‘civil society elites’ and explains why this is an important emerging research field. By highlighting different methodological approaches and key findings in the contributions to the thematic issue, this article aims at formulating an agenda for future research …
Strengths and Resilience of Migrant Women in Transit
This study departed from the idea that all people, including those hardest hit by adversity, have strengths and resiliencies. It posed the question on how a particularly vulnerable group, Central American migrant women in irregular transit through Mexico, used their strengths and resilience to reach the border with the USA. Past research has failed to address the issue of strengths and resilience in Central American migrant women, instead, much a…
The Phoenix syndrome
The development of social media challenges the established conceptualizations of resources in social movements. While previous theories largely illustrated social movements as constantly searching for new and more resources, the development of social media has allowed some actors to gather and mobilize extensive resources rapidly, calling for an analysis of resource abundance. The aim of this article is to analyse how netroots organizations strat…
Habitus and climate change
We explore peoples' dispositions and practices with regard to social-ecological transformations based on a sustainable welfare policy strategy in Sweden. We draw on Bourdieu's concept of habitus to highlight the relations between social positions, dispositions, and position-takings. Using data from an own survey, we identify habitus types and place these in the space of social positions. We apply principal component analysis to a large set of que…
Ecological ceiling and social floor
In this article, we investigate public support for eco-social policies combining goals of social justice and ecological sustainability. Eco-social policies contribute both to providing a social floor or redistributing resources to where they are needed and to respecting an ecological ceiling by keeping human activities within ecological limits. We discuss five such policies and highlight arguments for and against defining them as eco-social polic…
Political science (33 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Law (25 works) · Law (18 works) · Politics (16 works) · Economics (15 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (14 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Public Administration (11 works) · Civil society (10 works)