The shifting demographics that come with migration and globalization have changed the settings for social work education in Sweden. To promote sustainability in a diverse society, strategies for inclusion and equality are essential in the development of core competencies in social work. One essential question is how social work education has responded to the demographic changes. The study aims to contribute with knowledge about how ethnicity is conceptualized in Sweden and to describe the impact the subject has on teaching forms and strategies. More specifically, the study investigates university teachers’ expressions of their teaching practices about the concept and addresses the faculty members’ narratives about the teaching situations. The study concludes that the lack of a coherent academic context for teaching ethnicity leads to the development of individual approaches by the teachers and a personalization of the issue of ethnicity in social work education. This creates a limitation on how structural elements come into play in relation to ethnicity, and in turn, leads to a shortage of a critical analysis of the construction of social problems where ethnicity plays a fundamental role. These circumstances precede theoretical perspectives on social problems related to ethnicity, migration, transnational relations, globalization, and racism. © 2018, © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Young people, ethnicity and constructing lived citizenship in Swede

This study concerns participation in the Swedish society among young people from ethnic minorities, the opportunities open to them and the constraints they face. It addresses the issue of how they construct lived citizenship in a medium-sized Swedish town. Drawing on the empirical material from an interview study the aim is to reveal strategies for taking advantages of opportunities and for overcoming constraints in everyday life related to full membership of society. The constraints experienced in everyday life are expressed in terms of restricted social citizenship caused by ethnically minoritizing and discrimination. The main question is: What strategies do ethnically minoritized young women and men develop to construct lived citizenship? Subjective aspects of citizenship are stressed. Additionally the concepts of location, positionality and translocational positionality are used and related to the social categories of ethnicity, gender, age and period of residence in Sweden. I will argue that these aspects intersect when young people in the study construct lived citizenship. The study presented explores how young women and men from ethnic minority backgrounds experience social citizenship in terms of constraints at a structural level and at an inter-personal level due to ethnicity. They create alternative strategies to overcome these obstacles for full social citizenship.

Young people, ethnicity and constructing lived citizenship in Sweden

This study concerns participation in the Swedish society among young people from ethnic minorities, the opportunities open to them and the constraints they face. It addresses the issue of how they construct lived citizenship in a medium-sized Swedish town. Drawing on the empirical material from an interview study the aim is to reveal strategies for taking advantages of opportunities and for overcoming constraints in everyday life related to full membership of society. The constraints experienced in everyday life are expressed in terms of restricted social citizenship caused by ethnically minoritizing and discrimination. The main question is: What strategies do ethnically minoritized young women and men develop to construct lived citizenship? Subjective aspects of citizenship are stressed. Additionally the concepts of location, positionality and translocational positionality are used and related to the social categories of ethnicity, gender, age and period of residence in Sweden. I will argue that these aspects intersect when young people in the study construct lived citizenship. The study presented explores how young women and men from ethnic minority backgrounds experience social citizenship in terms of constraints at a structural level and at an inter-personal level due to ethnicity. They create alternative strategies to overcome these obstacles for full social citizenship.

This thesis concerns social participation in the Swedish welfare state among young people from ethnic minorities, the opportunities open to them and the constraints they face. It focuses on the interplay between structural social conditions related to social exclusion and subjective experiences in everyday life among these young people. The aim is to study how experiences of social citizenship are manifested in everyday life, and how young women and men from ethnic minorities create opportunities and overcome obstacles. How can experiences of social citizenship be understood through acts of citizenship? How do such experiences become driving forces in constructing lived citizenship? The theoretical framework is based on Thomas Humphrey Marshall’s (1950) understanding of social citizenship, and incorporates contemporary debate aimed at further developing his approach. Special attention is paid to substantive social citizenship, which Tom Bottomore (1992) brought to the discussion, and the subjective perspective developed and emphasized by Ruth Lister (2003, 2007). The data material used in the empirical study includes qualitative interviews with seventeen young people, eleven women and six men, from various ethnic and national backgrounds in the age range of seventeen to twenty-six years. Most research in this field focuses on metropolitan suburban municipalities and large cities, whereas this study investigates young migrants living in a medium-sized Swedish town. Subjective experiences of opportunities for and constraints on achieving equality, social inclusion and social participation in everyday life are explored. These experiences become incentives for their resistance against ethnic discrimination and claims on inclusive social citizenship. One of the main findings is that the content and boundaries of social citizenship are constantly being defined and re-defined by the young people depending on their everyday experiences and the character of their social networks, and also on their length of residence in Sweden and their gender. The main conclusion is that young people are not passive victims of structural ethnic discrimination, but are active in the process of enacting themselves as citizens.

In this presentation I discuss active citizenship as subjective and qualitative dimensions of social citizenship (Lister 1997, 2003, 2007). On one hand I will shed light upon young citizens’ with migrant backgrounds willingness and competence to make a social contribution in society and a wish to transform the society in the name of solidarity. On the other hand I will pay attention to the same citizens’ claims on citizenship on equal terms as the majoritized people. Distinguished from most active citizenship discourses, a willingness to participate and contribute in society is in focus. This alternative approach follows the empirical findings in a study among young women and men with migrant backgrounds conducted in a Swedish middle-sized town (Jacobson Pettersson 2008). The study focuses on individuals’ experiences of social citizenship and social participation[i] (Jacobson Pettersson 2008) discussed as active citizenship and strategies to become full member of the society. The results point at how most of the young women and men interviewed are committed to the common good simultaneously as they demand for legitimate recognition by the majoritized people and not to be discriminated. The message conveyed is that the young women and men in the study (Jacobson Pettersson 2008) are not actively part of society to the extent they wish to be, and furthermore claim they have the right to be. They describe their experience of how the processes of social divisions are more about constraints to actually have the right to and act for answerability, to play a social and political role in constructing the society they live in, than about constraints referred to formal social rights, entitlements and responsibilities. As consequences of what they experience an interest for active citizenship has showed up among them as important strategy to become full member of society through claiming for legitimate recognition by the majoritized people and to play a part in building the Swedish society. I will analyze and discuss their explored willingness and competence to make a social contribution in society and their claim making on citizenship on equal terms as strategies to become full member of society. This will be related to the theoretical perspective ‘acts of citizenship’ developed by Isin and Nielsen (Isin and Nielsen 2008).

The aim of this thesis is to explore how young adults from ethnic minority backgrounds experience social citizenship and social participation. How do they understand their social rights and duties? What are the possibilities and obstacles for their social participation? Based on the background of different studies in Sweden, that usually focus on conditions in bigger cities, this study discusses social citizenship among ethnic minority youth in the context of a middle-sized Swedish town. In contrast to research on ethnicity and youth in Sweden, that discuss social problems and social exclusion in terms of the deficient cultural, linguistic and social competence of the individuals, this study focuses on different kinds of resources and experiences of agency among young people from migrant backgrounds. Their experiences of active social citizenship and social participation fill also a gap in the contemporary research from the perspective of social inclusion. The theoretical framework is based on the concept of social citizenship as discussed by T. H. Marshall (1950), T. Bottomore (1992) and inspired by research on the subjective dimension of social citizenship conducted by R. Lister (1997, 2003, 2007). In order to grasp the subjective dimension of social citizenship, this thesis deals with differentiated expressions of universal social citizenship in terms of agency and participation in different areas of social life. Using a qualitative approach, seventeen people have been interviewed. The interviews have been analysed from an intersectional perspective where gender, age, marital status and longevity in Sweden appear to be concurrent categories. The results point towards tendencies of enclavisation among these young adults usually articulating experience of weak social bonding in relation to the Swedish majority population. Some informants refer to their expectations of living in bigger cities or a third country, and have plans to move as a strategy for better, more integrated and less discriminated conditions of future life. In sum, the central expectations of the interviewees on the improvement of their social citizenship conditions are the following: They want to be active citizens and are willing to contribute to the development of a more inclusive Swedish society. This thesis contributes to our current understanding of how young adults from ethnic minority backgrounds, experience social citizenship and social participation within the areas of: housing, education, labour-market, leisure and policy.

Denna rapport handlar om hur unga kvinnor och män med utländsk bakgrund i en medelstor svensk stad upplever social delaktighet. I fokus står vardagslivets sociala medborgarskap och hur människor förstår sina sociala rättigheter och skyldigheter och på vilket sätt detta påverkar deras medverkan i samhällslivet. Rapporten visar att de unga kvinnorna och männen har engagemang och uttrycker ansvarskänsla och vilja till social delaktighet i det svenska samhället. Samtidig upplever de inte alltid ett fullvärdigt socialt medborgarskap på grund av etnisk diskriminering. Helene Jacobson Pettersson är doktorand i socialt arbete vid Institutionen för vårdvetenskap och socialt arbete, Växjö universitet. Hon är anställd som universitetsadjunkt i socialt arbete vid Högskolan i Kalmar. Detta är hennes licentiatavhandling.