This paper aims to provide an analysis of a project-based activation programme, called the Vista project, under the authority of the social services and run in a local community in Sweden. Research has shown that people with a migrant background, in all age groups and especially women, are overrepresented in unemployment rates. The argument presented in the paper is that an anti-racist framework is of great relevance for these provisions and would provide a strong theoretical foundation with clear implications for practice. The Vista projectâs main objective was to find new matching strategies to increase labour market integration and to increase the number of people engaged in a full-time activity, such as employment, education or field practices. The findings show that the flexibility that characterizes this kind of organization has a negative impact on clearly defining its identity and work processes, something that could undermine its legitimacy. This study exemplifies how the flexibility leads to ambiguity and struggles in mediating a clear picture of the purpose of the project. Some core values of anti-racist practice are included in the foundation of the Vista project, for example, the resources addressed to a so-called disadvantaged group. Projects such as the Vista contribute to racial oppression, just as other more traditional social work organizations do. However, the form of the post-bureaucracy may create possibilities to both make such structures visible and find ways to give the participants exposed to the program greater influence on its design and to define their own needs.

Increasing the employment rate and community establishment, as well as decreasing economic and social vulnerability, among newly-arrived migrants and foreign-born jobseekers are the objectives behind several local activation initiatives and projects around Sweden. This article is based on a study of a local activation project, primarily consisting of analyses of interviews with professional coordinators and other project actors. The aim of the article is to deepen the knowledge of the coordinated working method in local activation policy by critically analysing how different ideas about empowerment are part of the method and what significance this has in relation to newly-arrived migrants and foreign-born job seekers. The results show that the coordinating approach is based on principles that place the job-seeking individual's needs at the centre and that there is a tension in the working method between activation and labour market establishment, and social support and care. The studied activation project is based on both a liberal and radical ideology of empowerment. In practising the coordinating approach, however, a liberal ideology and understanding of empowerment dominate through its strong individual focus. The radical empowerment ideology with its structure-changing ambitions regarding the participants’ increased self-sufficiency, independence and empowerment are to a limited extent enforced within the project. The authors argue for the difficulties of using the concept of empowerment and its far-reaching liberation ambitions within the context of activation policy. Nevertheless, disciplining requirements and rules around self-sufficiency, individualised responsibility takeover and requirements for reciprocity within the activation of activities rather risk consolidating conditions of disempowerment for already vulnerable groups of job seekers.

People with co-occurring mental illness and addiction tend to be a vulnerable group in society, often in need of extensive and collaborative care. From a social work perspective, it is crucial to gain more knowledge about these persons’ everyday lives and living conditions. The aim of this article is to explore how people with co-occurring mental illness and addiction experience their everyday lives and develop knowledge about how everyday life is structured by these co-occurring illnesses. Using a narrative method, 12 persons were interviewed, sharing their experiences. The analysis was performed using the theory of the everyday life, the normative and structural aspect. The findings suggest that participants’ understanding of the co-occurring mental illness and addiction is described as a continuous interaction between the two illnesses and experienced as a unity. The narratives imply that dysfunctional family relationships in everyday life during childhood, losing employment and financial problems are shared experiences. The narratives also include loss of everyday routines due to co-occurring illnesses, unemployment and homelessness. Therefore, several routines, such as sleep, food and household routines are negatively affected. The conclusion is that the persons’ everyday life experiences starting as early as childhood have consequences for how their adulthood is structured, where the co-occurring mental illness and addiction play a central role in everyday life, affecting various aspects of it. The implications for practice are to view and treat the co-occurring illnesses as the persons understand them, namely as a unity that affects several everyday life arenas, and offer help to create and maintain routines, economic support and participation in activities.

I denna bok undersöks olika aspekter av rasism och antirasism samt dess påverkan på det sociala arbetets brukare, yrkesverksamma och frivilliga aktörer i olika välfärdssammanhang. Vår ambition med denna bok är att främja reflektion och stimulera till en debatt om rasism och antirasism i socialt arbete. De olika kapitelbidragen visar på en mångfald sätt som huvudtemat rasism och antirasism i socialt arbete kan studeras utifrån val av empiriska fall och teman, liksom avseende teoretiska och metodologiska ingångar. Bidragen befinner sig på olika nivåer och inom olika områden empiriskt och teoretiskt: socialpolitik, migrations- och integrationspolitik, offentligt socialt arbete, organisation, civilsamhälle, brukar- eller klientnära arbete med och för olika individer och grupper av människor, människors livsvillkor och erfarenheter. Rasism, antirasism och socialt arbete i spåren av migration vänder sig till studerande på socionomprogrammet och mastersprogrammet i socialt arbete, men är av intresse även för forskare och lärare inom socialt arbete och närliggande discipliner samt för yrkesverksamma socialarbetare och andra välfärdsprofessionella.

Based on young Afghans' experiences of multiple rejections in Sweden, this paper will discuss “administrative violence” as a form a neo-colonial power performance to exclude unwanted and “othered” people from the Swedish welfare state. The paper will address experiences of different acts of administrative violence, from asylum rejections and loss of residential care accommodation to rejections on applications for economic support performed by the social services. For some project participants, having escaped from violence and deaths by weapons in the country they once left, the signature of a Swedish administrator’s pen becomes just as violent and life-threatening as the situation they left behind. For Swedish society, the administrative signatures become a means to neutralise and legitimise politics of exclusion and turn racist discourses into bureaucratic practice.

This paper draws on two ethnographic research projects in asylum reception contexts. One project focuses on the social dimensions of hope among people who wait to have their cases assessed while the other addresses the significance of local civil networks for coping with and resisting ongoing politics of exclusion. Twenty youngsters, initially having sought asylum in Sweden, have been followed through participant observations and recurrent interviews for more than two years. While some of them remain in Sweden, others have opted for re-escaping to the migrant ‘quarantines’ of Europe, joining a growing ‘deportspora’ of people having been made ‘deportable’ through signatures and pen strokes.

In Sweden, unaccompanied youths are placed within residential care units. However, to settle in a foreign country and feel emotional belonging is more complex than access to a physical building. The aim of this study is to critically discuss the concept of 'home' as experienced by the youths, narrated in nine focus group interviews. These interviews occurred in the aftermath of a turbulent migration time (2015), when over 35,000 unaccompanied youths arrived in Sweden. A transnational theoretical perspective stretches the meaning across national borders, when home links to people, processes and other geographical places. It is difficult to create an environment that mirrors the emotional attachment described in analysis. Earlier research has shown that residential care workers refer to the institutional setting as home, yet the results of this study show that the young people relate to the concept differently. Staff utilisation of the concept of home rather emphasises the lack of home-like aspects for the youths, creating a frustration in the current institutional conditions. Staff in residential care units must therefore be aware of the different interpretations and reactions that their actions and communications generate, in order to respond to various needs.