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Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations in Denmark and the United States, this chapter compares discourses and experiences of young unemployed professionals engaged in networking. Common across both sites is the kind of emotional labor perceived to be required for effective networking, with workers frequently drawing on romantic dating as a key metaphor. However, engagement in such emotional labor is more intense and pervasive for American jobseekers, while Danish jobseekers express greater concern about potential exploitation of the other party, corruption, and pressure to conform to norms of marketability. The chapter discusses possible links among networking experiences, hiring practices and political-economic contexts in the United States and Denmark.

Concerning migration on a national level, two phenomena emerge: people migrating from one region to another and people moving from the countryside to the cities. The geographical shift of the population between regions in a country is a slow process. In Sweden, only a few percent of the population migrate yearly. Nevertheless, migration has caused and still causes considerable redistribution of the population toward the metropolitan regions in Sweden. This section will emphasize general trends in population concentration through urbanization and migration in Sweden and compare these trends with changes in other countries.

The challenge of an ageing population is a major concern to policymakers and researchers all over the world. As evident in Figure 1, the percentage of people aged 60 and above will increase substantially between 2000 and 2050 in all parts of the world. Europe has the highest proportion; only Japan has a similar age structure. The already high proportion of older people in Europe is expected to rise to an even higher level by 2050, from currently 19 percent to an estimated 34 percent.

Institutional racism is usually defined in terms of the “collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture, or ethnic origin.” However, my analysis of leadership theories in the educational context, and the policies and practices in developing leaders of educational settings, as well as the management of educational provision in a locality, would evidence that “collective failure” masks the design that is present in the current educational context of England. This chapter is based on original research, which utilizes Critical Race Theory and a mixed methods approach. My research data evidences that discrimination on an individual, institutional, and structural level is prevalent in the leadership of children's learning. The extent of under-representation in leadership can only be explained in that it is designed. Policies that further deregulate and fragment the provision of education through schools and allied support structures only exacerbate this situation and therefore maintain White male supremacy in the leadership of children's learning.

Traditional visions of masculinity are inextricably linked to some tropes believed as ‘essential’ in men such as valour or strength. If a man fails in comply with these ‘essences’, then he fits into a form of deviant masculinity that transforms him into an Other.

Now, what happens with the issues of ageing in masculinity? The ageing man slowly but naturally loses all the aspects that made him ‘manly’ enough, becoming instead a double of himself. Men are doomed to fail as their bodies start to malfunction.

Two horror films highlight ageing and failed masculinity as a way to engage with these new concerns. Bubba Ho-Tep (Don Coscarelli, 2012) and Late Phases (Adrián García Bogliano, 2014) revolves around two aged heroes (Elvis Presley in the former, an ageing war veteran in the latter) who live within retirement communities. There, in the last years of their life, both men must face supernatural menaces: a walking mummy and a werewolf respectively. Facing supernatural horror, the ageing heroes must compensate their failing masculinity – a body that does not work as well as it used to do – with new forms of empathy and manliness.

Uniting film studies with investigations on masculinity and ageing, we propose to read these two films to point the ways in which both stories engage with the cultural politics of ageing masculinity.

The Swedish health care system is commonly characterized as a national health-service (or Beveridge) model (Freeman, 2000; Blank and Burau, 2004). It is certainly both financed by taxes and organized as a government responsibility, but it has developed over time as a decentralized rather than a national system (Lindgren, 1995). In Europe, only Finland seems to have a more decentralized system (Häkkinen, 2005). Most political decisions on health and health care in Sweden are made at the level of its presently 20 county councils and 290 local municipalities, which are empowered to put proportional income taxes on their citizens in order to finance their activities. Central government has a more passive role. Apart from supervising the fulfilment of the overall objectives of the health care legislation, which has a strong emphasis on equity,¹ its influence is primarily manifested through indirect measures such as general and targeted subsidies. It can also impose ceilings on county council and municipality taxes.