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The purpose of this paper is to provide knowledge on barriers to preventive action on early childhood overweight in non-western migrant families. It investigates the underlying understandings of the parental role in relation to weight control present in health-care professionals and in families.

The study is based on qualitative interviews with parents who are engaged in interventions aimed at helping them and their children to adopt a healthier life style, and on interviews with health-care professionals.

This study shows that the participating parents, all low SES and living under different forms of insecurity, perceived their parental task for the present as creating well-being for their children, and they were, therefore, reluctant to enforce dietary changes. The health-care professionals, in contrast, considered the need for change through a perspective on future risks.

The results are based on a rather small sample and the link between insecurity, family dynamics and health practice needs further research.

The participating parents represented a group that is rarely included in scientific research and the study, therefore, contributes valuable knowledge on health behavior in ethnic minority families. The empirical analysis provides new insights for health professionals regarding the suitability of the universal model of parental feeding styles. It illuminates the implications of implicitly applying this model in health interventions which involve vulnerable categories of parents such as refugees to western societies.

This chapter focusses on three young, female students from Denmark and their quiet voices in a world full of loud expectations – in this case the expectations of education. The chapter is based on a research project named Marginalization and Co-created Education (MaCE), which is constructed through indirect conversations with young students. These students were either attending an Adult Education Centre (In Danish: VUC) or a Production School (an institution for people who for a short period have to consider what to do in relation to the system of education). The aim of the study was to obtain an understanding of being a young person on an educational journey and to let the young students express their experiences through their own voices and views. The findings of this research present an overwhelmingly negative view of the school experiences by the young students, who all at some point felt neglected and not acknowledged through their school time by both teachers and classmates. These findings are illustrated through German sociologist Norbert Elias and his work on The Civilizing Process, and focusses on the unavoidable connection between civilising and distinction processes.