Swedish social services rest on strong institutional legitimacy, yet levels of trust in the organization and its professionals vary across different groups. Outreach social work targeting young people aims, in the spirit of prevention, to actively seek out and engage those who would not otherwise encounter social services –”the hard to reach”. While previous research has largely examined how low trust affects service users and those under investigation, far less attention has been paid to legitimacy–an issue that is crucial in outreach work, where social workers initiate contact. Because young people may view such approaches as intrusive or illegitimate, outreach workers must negotiate situational legitimacy to gain recognition and acceptance. This study draws on participant observations and interviews with outreach workers, young people, and unit managers to analyse the conditions that shape these legitimacy-building processes and how they are managed in practice. The findings show that outreach workers navigate multiple audiences: a primary audience–the youth themselves–and a secondary audience consisting of collaboration partners, policymakers, and other actors present in public settings. Another finding highlights how outreach workers negotiate contextually, shaped by time and place, seeking acceptance that grants them the mandate to pursue broader preventive goal, a process conceptualized in terms of situational legitimacy. 

Intimate partner violence (IPV) constitutes a global societal challenge. Interventions against IPV have been implemented worldwide. However, the problem still prevails and takes new forms. Despite conceptual developments and a growing body of knowledge on economic abuse (EA) in recent years, there remains a significant lack of qualitative research on experiences of economic abuse. The study aims to expose and examine discourses on household economy, economic abuse, and the financial consequences of IPV from an intersectional perspective, thereby contributing to the theoretical development of the field. The project's theoretical framework is grounded in an interactionist and constructivist perspective. We focus on symbolic and social boundaries to explore how individuals understand and position themselves in relation to others regarding the household economy and gendered economic abuse. Using discourse analysis as a method, the project focuses on conflicts in household economies, economic abuse, and the economic consequences of IPV. The study design is qualitative, exploratory, intersectional, and comparative, and it aims to develop the theoretical field of IPV and economic abuse. Sub-study one is based on narrative and discursive psychological analysis of focus group interviews with individuals between 25 and 70 years old. In sub-study two, the focus is initially on women's narratives about experiences of economic abuse and the economic consequences of IPV that they have been subjected to. In the second part of sub-study two, a re-analysis of the collected empirical material will be conducted to discern patterns in the interviewees' narratives about experiences of power and control in relation to economics. The project is expected to contribute knowledge for professionals. It will also contribute to theoretical development, conceptual clarity, and further refinement regarding EA, including what it entails, what it means, and how it is used in relation to other concepts and forms of violence.

Outreach social work targeting young people has been conducted in Sweden since the 1950s, but its extent has varied significantly depending on the prevailing social policy ideas. Today, we observe a strong expansion, partly motivated by the need to develop preventive strategies against recruitment into gang criminality. The fundamental idea of outreach work is to reach individuals who do not themselves seek the support of social services through contact establishment and motivational work. However, it is not always clear which individuals or in which situations the detached practitioners have the legitimacy to approach the youth they wish to engage. Several factors influence how outreach workers seek out and establish contact with the target group. In this study, participant observations was used to understand what fieldwork entails in practice concerning the outreach and contact-establishing dimensions. It emerges that the location, time, and signals given by the youth themselves indicate how outreach practitioners should seek contact, and with whom. The overarching idea seems to be to establish "good meetings", which means that interactions with the youth proceed smoothly and that a meeting can be an investment that facilitates future contact attempts. This idea results in outreach workers striving to avoid confrontations and to be accepted as adults in an arena where young people are perceived to have significant influence over who is allowed in. The study highlights that the accessibility and receptivity of youth to interactions appear greater when they are in environments with already present adult supervision or control, such as youth centers or sports activities. It seems more challenging 

Economic abuse in the context of men’s violence against women have recently been “discovered” as a specific form of abuse. Yet, from historical records of divorce and church records there are evidence that it has been defined as such also in the past. In 1810, new grounds for divorce were legislated in Swedish law, for example “drunkenness, wasteful behavior and violent mind”. How this paragraph was used in the 19th century, when abused wives asked for support in the local community is the context of this paper – focusing on economic abuse, economic consequences of abuse, how it was interpreted and handled–both by women subjected to it, and church authorities trying to solve the “marital disputes”. The paper shows how women’s narratives of economic abuse (wasteful behaviours) in church-records is intertwined with other forms of men’s violence and abusive behaviors. Still, economic abuse is most often foregrounded as the largest problem, and more difficult for women to handle than men’s physical violence – also for their children. Unsurprisingly women used different strategies to resist husbands’ economic abuse, despite being under their guardian. Drawing on research on the history of family violence and research on economic abuse in the context of VAW, the paper argue that it’s fruitful to analyze women’s narratives on men’s violence in 19th century marriages with theoretical concepts such as economic control, economic exploitation and employment sabotage, in order to discuss gender, power and abuse in terms of continuity and change. The paper has the ambition to contribute to the history of men’s violence against women in marriage, but also to question present-day perceptions that economic abuse is a new phenomenon and a problem unique for our own time.

Det är hög tid att vi systematiskt tar tillvara de levda erfarenheter som gjorts under de gångna två åren, skriver forskare vid Linnéuniversitetet.

Men's violence against women (VAW) is multifaceted and complex. Besides physical, psychological, and sexual violence, women subjected to VAW often suffer from economic hardship and financial abuse. Financial abuse involves different tactics used to exercise power and gain control over partners. Experiences of financial abuse make it difficult for women to leave an abusive partner and become self-sufficient. From an intersectional perspective, applying the concept of the continuum of violence, the aim of this article is to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how women subjected to men's violence in intimate relationships experience the complexity of financial abuse in their lives, in the context of VAW. Based on 19 in-depth interviews with women surviving domestic violence, the study describes how intertwined women's experiences of financial abuse are with other forms of abuse, influencing each other, simultaneously experienced as a distinct form of abuse with severe and longstanding consequences. Women in the study describe how men's abuse affects them financially, causing poverty and affecting their ability to have a reasonable economic standard. Financial abuse also causes women ill health, and damages their self-esteem and ability to work, associate, and engage in social life. The interviewed women describe how experiences of financial abuse continue across time, from their past into their present situation and molding beliefs about the future. According to the interviews, financial abuse in private life sometimes continues into the public sphere, reproduced by social workers mimicking patterns of ex-partners' abuse. Bringing out a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamic continuum of financial abuse, our results deepen knowledge about the complexity of VAW in women's lives, and thereby are important in processes of making victims of violence survivors of violence.

Kvinnors våld har – med undantag av barnamord – inte fått någon större uppmärksamhet i forskningen, vare sig i samtiden eller historisk tid. Detta trots att kvinnors våldsutövande har varit vanligare än vad som antagits, och att kvinnor även kunnat uppträda lika aggressivt och våldsamt som män.

I Ilska, desperation och lömska försåt tar författarna ett grundligt grepp om kvinnors våldsbrottslighet på 1800-talet – en tid av omfattande samhällsförändring. Vad drev kvinnorna till att begå våldsdåd? Vilka former tog sig våldet och mot vilka riktades det? Författarna belyser bland annat allvarliga brott som mord och misshandel, men även våld mot den egna kroppen som självmord eller aborter.

Historikerna Roddy Nilsson och Marie Eriksson argumenterar här för en utvidgad och mer nyanserad förståelse av våld och kön: kvinnor som brukar våld bör inte ensidigt reduceras till objekt och offer för mäns brutalitet eller för patriarkala strukturer. Kvinnorna i studien framträder istället som historiska subjekt med avsikter, kapacitet och ansvar för sina handlingar.