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INEQUALITIES AND MIGRATION Challenges for the Swedish welfare state

Editors S V E N T RYG G E D ERICA RIGHARD

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Art. No 39470 ISBN 978-91-44-11694-5 First edition 1:1 © The authors and Studentlitteratur 2019 studentlitteratur.se Studentlitteratur AB, Lund Cover design: Francisco Ortega Cover illustration: Martina Castoriano (photo) and Shutterstock Printed by GraphyCems, Spain 2019

CONTENTS

Preface 9 Authors 11

1 A promised land or a paradise lost? Contemporary challenges for the Swedish welfare state 15 Sv e n T ryg ge d Growing inequalities in times of globalisation 15 International migration 16 The Swedish welfare state 17 Political governance 17 Civil society 18 The labour market in Sweden 20 Men and women at work 21 Insider/outsider position 21 Migration and the Swedish welfare state – a dilemma between solidarity and cost? 22 What are the challenges? A contemporary picture 24 Challenges for social work 25 Book contents 26 References 28

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2 Is migration bad for welfare? Reconfigurations of welfare, labour and citizenship in Sweden 31 Si mon e S c a r pa, C a r l-U l r i k S c h i e ru p & M agn us Da h l st e d t Towards the end of an era? 31 Decommodification and social citizenship 34 Three pillars 36 Crisis and the rise of the consolidation state 37 Public revenue and expenditure 39 Increasing inequality 41 Migration and the politics of austerity 42 Employment 43 Residential segregation 45 Concluding discussion 47 References 48 3 Social work and ethno-cultural diversity – historical development in Sweden 53 E r ic a R igh a r d & Eva W i k st röm Introduction 53 Social work and diversity in a theoretical perspective 54 Social work and diversity in the Swedish context 56 An analysis of Swedish social-work practice in diversity contexts as represented in Socionomen 58 1970s: Immigrant clients as a new burden 59 1980s: Cultural problems and cultural competence 60 1990s: Refugees, family conflicts and ethnic segregation 62 2000s: Cultural deviation as social problem 65 Concluding discussion 67 References 68

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4 Universal children’s rights – conflicting norms in social-work practice 71 Sv e n T ryg ge d Children’s rights: part of human rights 71 Different concepts of rights 72 Minority rights 73 Modes of adapting children’s rights 74 Conflicting values – a global perspective 75 Links between human rights and social-work values 77 The right to life, survival and development 80 Concluding discussion 82 References 85 5 Child migration: historical and contemporary perspectives 89 Nor m a Mon t e si no & M e rc e de s G. J i m é n e z A lva r e z Why a historical perspective? 89 Children of the nation 90 Child migration: Accompanied and unaccompanied children 92 Forced child migration 94 Contemporary child migration in Europe and the US 98 Child Migrant vs Migrant Children 99 Social work, social responsibility in a global context 102 Concluding discussion 104 References 104 6 Combining choice and equality? Challenges for social-work practice with older immigrants in an era of diversity and marketisation 109 H e l e n e Brodi n Transformations of publicly funded eldercare services 109 The case of Swedish homecare services 110 The Swedish eldercare system: national trends and local variations 112

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Representations of older immigrants in Swedish eldercare policies 113 From difference to sameness? 115 Employment as a family caregiver in Stockholm: a multi-layered practice 116 An overview of employed family caregivers in Stockholm 117 Making a profit 119 Responding to special-care needs 120 Earning an income 121 Implications for social-work practice 122 Concluding discussion 125 References 127 7 Social work meets the European Union – the case of vulnerable EU citizens in European cities 131 R e nat e M i na s & N ick l a s E n ro t h Introduction 131 The directive of free movement 134 Vulnerable EU citizens: Who are they and what do we know? 135 Actors, problems and solutions: vulnerable EU citizens in eight European cities 138 Actors 138 The debate and the description of the situation 140 A general picture of local solutions 142 Local services provided by NGOs 144 Target groups 147 Support activities offered 147 Some answers to a fairly new issue 149 References 150

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8 ‘Different children or a case of any other child?’ Constructions of unaccompanied children in welfare service provision 153 L i v e St r etmo Unaccompanied minors in Sweden 153 Constructing meaning in talk 155 The unaccompanied minor as a positive exception, as a traumatised sufferer, a youth with shortcomings or a case of ‘any other child’ 156 Risk and uncertainty 158 Loss of control 159 Disadvantaged children 160 Any other child 161 Working with unaccompanied children and youngsters 162 Concluding discussion 169 References 171 Index 175

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CHAPTER 3

Social work and ethno-cultural diversity – historical development in Sweden E r ic a R igh a r d & Eva W i k st röm

So-called ‘ethnic clients’ is a contested field in both social work practice and research. We approach the issue from a critical and historical viewpoint, asking: What is the problem represented to be? Based on an analysis of Socionomen, a journal core to professional social work in Sweden, the chapter shows how the approach to ‘ethnic’ and ‘immigrant’ clients has shifted over time. Significantly, the ‘white position’ of social work has remained unconcealed.

Introduction Social work operates in societal contexts increasingly marked by immigration and ethno-cultural diversity. It is not just that the share of the foreignborn in the population has grown. The many countries of origin, like the number of spoken languages, are more diversified. Cultural traditions and religious practices are more diversified. The migration experiences and the legal statuses of migrants are also more diversified, as are the transnational ties between places. It is against this background that the concept of superdiversity is sometimes found to be relevant (Vertovec 2007). Super-diversity refers to the diversity within diversity and questions diversity as a matter of binaries. This chapter asks how social-work practice responds and adapts to this diversification.

This is not a new question, of course. It has been debated and studied since at least the 1960s. Yet, it is still acutely relevant. National and immigrated minority clients are generally over-represented among social-work clients and a minority background is commonly perceived as a challenge to social© T h e au t h ors an d S t u d e ntlitt e rat u r

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work practice. The inconvenient question on the bottom line asks to what extent social work helps to hinder or sustain this.

In order to understand how social work responds to ethno-cultural diversity today, we need to look at how it has responded to and treated national and immigrated minority clients historically, how issues came to be rather than assuming the existence of a fixed essence (see Bacchi 2012).

Yoosun Park (2006) has traced the ways in which immigrant identities have historically been constructed in social-work practice in the US. She shows how the social-work profession, historically, has categorised immigrants as a particular client group, requiring particular solutions and the necessity for the social worker to ‘learn’ about the behaviour of the immigrant, with the aim of intervening with the required assimilation measures. Park concludes that social work has, in this way, contributed to the conservation of social problems among minority clients. In this chapter, we look at the development of these dynamics in the Swedish context.

We examine how social work as a field of practice in Sweden has responded to ethno-cultural diversity and how this response has varied over time. The analysis is based on the examination of over fifty year’s worth of issues of Socionomen, a journal central to professional social work in Sweden and which offers insights into the development of social work as a field of practice. Below we first present some parts of the theoretical debate on social work and ethno-cultural diversity that are of relevance to this chapter. Since many of these debates originate in countries like the US and the UK, we then position social work and diversity in the Swedish societal context before briefly presenting the empirical material and our analytical approach. The analysis is structured in time sequences, one section for each of the decades from the 1970s to the 2000s. This is followed by a concluding discussion.

Social work and diversity in a theoretical perspective The criticism that social work is based on majority-culture assumptions, also in relation to non-majority populations, began in the 1960s (for a more extended review of this development, see Righard 2018). The development was nurtured by the black civil rights and women’s movements in the US and beyond, and critiqued the Western hegemony in social work. As a 54

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theoretical development, this vein of criticism emerged within the field of international social work, as this was extended to embrace not only social work in foreign countries but national and immigrated minority clients in a given country (Righard 2013). Over time, this has led to the development of concepts such as ‘cultural competence’, ‘culturally sensitive social work’ and more. Kohli, Huber & Faul (2010) have shown how terminology and theoretical understandings have evolved over time in the US and beyond.

The assimilation and melting-pot paradigm that was initially assumed was followed by the emergence of national and immigrant-minority perspectives in the 1960s and 1970s, cultural pluralism in the 1980s and 1990s, and constructivist ethno-cultural frameworks from the early 2000s onwards.

Both terminology and meanings have now shifted and are contested (see, e.g., Azzopardi & McNeill 2016; Ben-Ari & Stier 2010; Dean 2001; Iglehart & Becerra 2007).

In early articulations of cultural competence, the focus is on the knowledge that social workers need about clients’ cultures in order that they can intervene in relevant ways. Culture is here understood as something that a social worker can become an expert in and be knowledgeable about. This way of conceptualising cultural competence assumes that social workers need it in relation to clients belonging to minority cultures and that social workers themselves neutrally belong to the (white) majority culture. This blindness of the majority culture position is referred to as ‘white blindness’.

This approach has been critiqued for its holistic and essentialist conceptualisation of culture, which assumes that each ethno-cultural group shares a homogeneous, timeless, traditional culture. The reliance on this conceptualisation of culture in social work has, for instance, involved guidelines on how to intervene in specific ways with certain minority families such as African-Americans, Asians or Native-Americans. Such guidelines have been criticised for their reductionist approach and stereotypical overgeneralisations (Azzopardi & McNeill 2016; Ben-Ari & Stier 2010; Johnson & Munch 2009). Moreover, it has included an assumption that the majority culture is also homogeneous, so that working with families from the majority culture does not require any ‘special’ competence from the social worker, who is assumed to be from the same culture. This unidirectional focus on cultural competence with a dividing line of cultural difference between majority and minority culture contributes to the reproduction of © T h e au t h ors an d S t u d e ntlitt e rat u r

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the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Harrison & Turner 2011). Although the concept of diversity has later been broadened to include, among other aspects, gender, class, sexuality and age, often by way of introducing the concept of intersectionality (Yuval-Davis 2006), this has not necessarily brought practitioners beyond essentialist and totalised notions of group identities (Ben-Ari & Stier 2010).

As constructivist conceptualisations of culture have entered the debate on diversity in social-work practice, it has been questioned how social workers can learn about something that is constantly changing (Dean 2001). As a response to this, several writers have proposed a focus on the knowledge which the clients have about themselves, accepting that social workers cannot have a priori knowledge of clients and their cultural contexts (BenAri 2010; Dean 2010; Harrison & Turner 2011; Johnson & Munch 2009). The issue which is the focus of this chapter is how these debates have developed in the context of Swedish immigration and diversity history.

Social work and diversity in the Swedish context The literature on social work with national and immigrated minority clients originates primarily from countries like the US and the UK. These are ‘old’ immigration countries with a diversity context that is markedly divergent from that of Sweden. The countries differ not only as countries of immigration but also in the development of social work. For instance, a study showed that, while social work in the UK accounts for ethno-cultural diversity, in Sweden this is not the case (Williams & Soydan 2005). The nonrecognition of cultural diversity in Sweden can be traced to the fact that any focus on diversity aspects is in opposition to the strong discourse of universalism of the Swedish welfare state model. This implies that the AngloSaxon social-work literature in the field cannot automatically be transferred to the Swedish context, and raises questions about developments in Sweden.

Sweden has a prominent history as an emigration country. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, approximately one quarter of the population emigrated – primarily to the US. Hence, many people have family memories of emigration and, even though this was a long time ago, Sweden’s identity as a country of emigration prevails. Immigration has exceeded emigration since 1931 though, at that time, most immigration consisted of 56

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former emigrants who returned to Sweden. With the economic boom after the Second World War, immigration to Sweden grew in volume. The early postwar period is generally depicted as one of labour immigration – which was, in practice, free. It was only in the mid-1960s that immigration began to be problematised. The borders were gradually closed to it, with a definitive stop for non-Nordic labour immigration in the early 1970s.

The 1980s is generally depicted as the decade when immigration to Sweden evinced a new character – one of refugee immigration and family reunification. This development also meant that the countries of origin became more diversified. Even though labour immigration was opened up again by law in December 2008, immigration is still dominated by refugees and family reunification.

In 2017, the foreign-born population in Sweden amounted to almost 19 per cent of the population although, in certain places such as Malmö, it represented approximately 30 per cent of the population. Among the most common countries of birth outside Sweden are the neighbouring Scandinavian countries, the Balkans, Iran and Iraq (Statistics Sweden 2018).

As immigration became problematised from the mid-1960s, the government responded not only by tightening up its immigration policy but also by establishing a policy to support the integration of immigrants.

This approach was implemented in practice before it was introduced as formal policy. The first interventions included, for instance, information about Swedish society (in 1965), Swedish language training (1965), support for immigrant organisations (1966) and adult education (1967). Several of the integration services introduced at this early stage still function, though new interventions have been added to the list (Dahlström 2004). The first immigrant policy, now more often referred to as an integration policy, was introduced in 1968 and has changed several times since then. It was first characterised by universal policy objectives in 1968–1974, by multicultural policy objectives in 1975–1985, by selective policy objectives in 1986–1996 and, since 1997, by universal policy objectives. These shifts are more visible in the political rhetoric than at the level of implementation; in fact the interventions have remained quite constant (Dahlström 2004). In international comparison, Swedish integration policy is depicted as extensive. The Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) top-ranks Sweden due to its inclusive integration policy towards immigrants. This is not, however, reflected in its © T h e au t h ors an d S t u d e ntlitt e rat u r

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effect. Instead, Sweden scores comparatively poorly as regards its labourmarket integration of the foreign born (Brochmann & Hagelund 2011).

The shifting immigrant policy has been contested and much debated in political, popular and academic arenas, and these debates are also reflected in the framing of social work in diversity contexts. For instance, a literature review of discourses of social-work practice with immigrant youth in Sweden during the period 1960–2005 shows how these have shifted in complex patterns (Sandberg 2010). Below we focus on such shifts by analysing a periodical that is central to social-work practice in Sweden.

An analysis of Swedish social-work practice in diversity contexts as represented in Socionomen Here, we describe and analyse the representations of migrants and ethnocultural diversity found in the principal journal for qualified social work in Sweden, namely the journal of Socionomen. The journal was established in 1957 by the social workers’ section within the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations trade union (Sveriges akademikers centralorganisation, SACO). It has changed its name several times since the first issue came out in March 1958 and, in 1986, it was split into two journals, one oriented more towards trade-union issues of common interest to several professions (SSR-tidningen, later Akademikern), and one more narrowly oriented towards qualified social work (Socionomen). For the period 1986 onwards, we have studied the latter journal.1 For the sake of convenience, we refer to the journal as Socionomen.

We have browsed through 587 printed issues in Socionomen over the period 1958–2010 (the journals have not been digitalised). This work provided us with a broad understanding of how the character of social-work debates has shifted over time. We identified 227 articles which had some kind of diversity content and made a register of them all. The advantage of this 1 The first issue came out in March 1958 and from 1987 it was divided into two journals. We have studied the following issues: No. 1958/1–5 Socionomen. Organ för socionomsektionen inom SACOs Allmänna Tjänstemannaförbund; No. 1958/6–1981/18 Socionomen. Organ för Sveriges socionomers riksförbund, SSR; No. 1981/19–1984/22 Socionomen. SSR. Sveriges socionomers, personal- och förvaltningstjänstemäns riksförbund; No. 1984/23–1986/12 SSR-tidningen. Socionomen; No. 1987/1 and onwards Nya Socionomen. Facktidning för kvalificerat socialt arbete.

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method, compared to interviewing, for instance, is that we have encountered the debates and arguments as they were formulated, instead of as they might be viewed in retrospect.

Inspired by Carol Bacchi (2012), we read the articles identifying ‘what the problem is represented to be’. This means that we have identified first what the implied problem is – that is, what it is that needs to be fixed – and then what the solution is. Such ‘problem representations’ within a defined field vary across time and space, so this kind of analysis provides a way to de-construct the production and reproduction of specific understandings of problems as well as their solutions. In this chapter, it means that we can study, over the years, the discussion of social problems that ‘need’ (or do not need) social-work attention, and examined what social-work interventions are discussed, as well as how they are labelled and framed.

We have not quantified the findings but, instead, focus the analysis on what, when and how ethno-cultural diversity is problematised in relation to social problems and social work. The analysis is presented in a sequential order according to when the different ways of problematising immigrant clients and ethno-cultural diversity emerged. The 1950s and 1960s are omitted, as there was nothing in the articles during this time period which problematised social issues related to diversity.

1970s: Immigrant clients as a new burden The very first article of Socionomen to bring up social work in relation to migration or ethno-cultural diversity was published in 1971 (1971/05). The way this article problematises ‘immigrants’ was common during the 1970s and 1980s, namely, picturing ‘immigrants’ as a specific client category.

The scope of this particular article was to raise consciousness about the work situation of school counsellors and their experiences of a heavier workload due to the rising numbers of immigrant children in schools who, according to the author, ‘have major difficulties assimilating to Swedish schools and the social environment’. Later, in 1972, there are several journal issues that contain articles debating social workers’ observations of a rise of ‘immigrant problems’ and ‘rising numbers of immigrants turning up at social services applying for social assistance’. Primarily, what is problematised is a concern for increased pressure and workloads for social© T h e au t h ors an d S t u d e ntlitt e rat u r

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work organisations and social workers, and worries about the municipal budgets’ rising costs.

Tangibly, the problematisation of issues relating to immigrants is that they are handled discursively as something separate and ‘other’ than mainstream social problems. In one of the issues (1972/18), the author provides a list of emergent social problems that social-work authorities need to respond to. The problem areas on the rise are ‘new poverty, more child-protection cases, rising number of drug-abusers and immigrant problems’ (1972/18).

Obviously, immigrant problems are represented as problems in their own right; however, there is no elaboration of what constitutes an ‘immigrant problem’. From the readers’ perspective, ‘immigrant problems’ remain issues shrouded in mystery or ‘owned’ by the immigrants, as ‘their problems’.

Framed in similar ways are articles which discuss the ‘gipsy problems’ and the corresponding social-work responses. Nevertheless, any explanation of what actually constitutes the ‘gipsy problem’ remains unsaid. However, in a few articles ‘their’ cultural habits are discussed, along with whether interventions should be designed in respect to their culture or in a way that urges assimilation.

In 1974 a number of Swedish government official reports (SOU series) and government bills were issued which gradually led to a shift in immigrant policy from one based on assimilation towards one based on ideas of multiculturalism. However, in social-work practice, as discussed in the studied journal, no immediate reflection of this development can be seen, but a few attempts to raise questions about ‘their culture’. The major discourse on social problems associated with migrants and cultural diversity was still framed as ‘immigrant problems’, and the descriptions of social-work practice depicted social workers as burdened with ‘new’ issues which demanded increased resources and, to some limited extent, pointed to social workers’ shortcomings in understanding immigrants’ language and culture (1972/18).

1980s: Cultural problems and cultural competence What characterised the 1980s is how the integration of immigrants was problematised and which solution was seen as the most adequate. Identities based on cultural and religious belonging were recognised and a need for cultural competence among social workers identified. Obviously, this 60

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was influenced by the debates related to the multicultural policy that had been implemented since 1975. The bottom line of the problematisation of social-work practice was a tension between universal and particularistic interventions.

One example of how this tension was debated concerns the role of mothertongue language instruction for the integration of immigrant children. At stake was whether immigrant children would benefit more from attending Swedish-language classes or more from attending classes in which they could communicate in their mother-tongue. On the one hand, it was argued that the provision of mother-tongue language training within the Swedish mainstream school system enabled children to make individual choices of religious and cultural belonging. The argument was based on an evaluation which presented the project as ’an extraordinary and fruitful development of the children’s identity formation, resting on a mix of Finnish and Swedish culture’ (1983/31). In the very same issue, however, a counter argument was made. Here, the mother-tongue classes were referred to as an example of ’school segregation’ and that the children would gain more if they were integrated into Swedish-language classes, abandoning their mother-tongue (1983/31). This highlights the continuous ambivalence between the ideologies of cultural pluralism on the one hand and assimilation on the other.

As the role and functioning of identities of belonging were problematised as part of social problems and interventions, this created a need for cultural competence among social workers. For instance, in relation to rehabilitation programes for drug abusers, it was claimed that social workers needed to ‘support the difficult process of clients in changing from one culture to another, when trying to break up from addiction’ (1982/09). In relation to social-work interventions with disabled children in immigrant families, it was claimed that ‘this puts a demand on social workers to have or to attain knowledge of other cultures’ view of mental disability and also of understandings of family crises’ (1982/34, pp. 3–11). Moreover, the need for social workers to understand cultural differences and take this into consideration when intervening in situations of child maltreatment was underscored in several articles (1982/25; 1982/34; 1983/05; 1983/16). In one case it was claimed, in an alarming manner, that:

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… intervening in child protection cases involving immigrant families has become a total failure, because social workers and politicians lack knowledge and practical skills to intervene in families with different cultures and religious affiliations (1982/34).

In the same article, it was argued that the lack of cultural competence might involve interventions based on the prejudice of the social worker, which means interventions assuming Swedish majority culture and values as given and ’natural’.

It is noteworthy that, in spite of the then prevailing immigrant policy based on an ideology of multiculturalism, freedom of religion and goals of mutual integration, in social work, at least as framed in the Socionomen, culture was problematised as something adhering to the immigrant, to the Other. This, in turn, assumed that the social worker should acquire knowledge of immigrant cultures in order to intervene in competent ways. The position and cultural framing of social-work practices was left unproblematised.

The problematisation of social work in relation to culture was, on the one hand, framed as a case of cultural differences but, on the other, either came to the fore as a clash when social workers intervened with immigrant families of different cultures and religions or as an explanatory variable when discussing social problems among immigrants. Considering, for instance, social and psychiatric problems among immigrant youths, this was often seen as having its roots in ‘living between cultures’ and related identity conflicts as young people grew up in Swedish culture, based on values of individualism and fostering children to independence and self-reliance.

1990s: Refugees, family conflicts and ethnic segregation In the 1990s refugee immigration, family conflicts and ethnic housing segregation stood out as key issues in relation to migrants and cultural diversity. The way these issues were problematised constituted in part a continuation and in part a break from earlier decades.

Following the Balkan War in the early 1990s, refugee immigration and social and psychological problems were brought to the fore in several issues (1993/05; 1994/02; 1994/03; 1995/02; 1995/03; 1997/02). Refuge in Sweden for 62

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children, young people and families was problematised along with trauma in several articles. Trauma centres, often recently established, and the work performed by social workers and therapists in them was described.

The problematisation of children in immigrant families continued in the 1990s with a particular focus on refugee families. These children were typically pictured as exposed to their parents’ post-traumatic stress and ’at risk of living in the shadow of parents traumatic experiences’. It was problematised that they were being burdened with expectations from parents to pass on cultural ways of living and sometimes to climb up the social ladder in the new country (1991/01; 1993/05). This also involved a problematisation of children entering a situation of cultural conflict or being in a ’cultural nowhere land’, being unable to adjust to or identify with both their parents’ values and lifestyles and the values of Swedish society.

In one article, the concepts of immigrant parents (invandrarföräldrar) and immigrant children (invandrarbarn) were used to describe situations where the immigrant children gained too much independence as the immigrant parents lost ground in the new country and, according to the article, ’los[t] cultural authority and connection with values which were important in the country of origin’ (1995/04). As we will show, this discussion will be continued and emphasised in the 2000s.

Ethnic housing segregation was addressed repeatedly across the whole decade. The problem was the social exclusion characterising many multistorey housing areas built in the 1960s and 1970s, often on the outskirts of urban areas. For instance, residents had high unemployment figures, high numbers of people dependent on social assistance and poor outcomes in schools. The problematisation often occurred through the perspective of the social workers, who expressed their despair at the lack of methods or skills, and/or were trying out new ways of reaching out to an increasingly culturally heterogeneous population.

This issue also occurred, in a similar way, in the 1970s (1972/09; 1973/03; 1975/04; 1975/10; 1978/23). There were, however, distinguishing features in how housing segregation was problematised in the 1970s and 1990s. In the 1970s, poverty and unequal living conditions were seen as dimensions of class cleavage but, in the 1990s, this structural dimension was omitted. Instead, housing segregation on ethnic grounds was perceived and labelled as an immigrant problem. As such this problem was understood as requiring, at © T h e au t h ors an d S t u d e ntlitt e rat u r

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least partly, a different solution (1995/01; 1996/03; 1999/04). One example was an article with the heading: ’Exhausted social workers stepped out of their office and entered the field’. Here, one social worker describes working in Rinkeby, an area on the outskirts of Stockholm: If you want to describe a place representing the bottom of Swedish living conditions, Rinkeby lies close at hand. Thirty per cent of the inhabitants are unemployed, and 74 per cent of the inhabitants are of immigrant background, which does not make things easier (1996/03).

The reference to immigrant-dense areas is not further elaborated on and it remains unclear what kind of problem immigrant background per se implied. Instead this statement relies on an implicitly shared assumption of immigrants as problems.

In the 1990s, the problematisation of social-work interventions with immigrants as a particular category was dual in nature. On the one hand, there was an urge for particularistic interventions for immigrant clients and, on the other, a questioning of the immigrant category itself. For instance, in relation to treatment for drug abuse, it was questioned to what extent existing programmes responded to the needs of immigrant clients (1991/06; 1993/04). A physician running a private health-care clinic specialised in the treatment of clients from Middle Eastern countries highlighted the difficulties which Swedish mainstream drug-treatment programmes had in adequately meeting the needs of immigrant drug-users. He even used the metaphor of a ‘time bomb’ to describe the severity and unpreparedness of mainstream drug-treatment institutions and programmes to receive immigrant clients: Despite language barriers and cultural differences, the Swedish welfare services need not only to make ends meet to treat Swedish clients, they must also meet the needs of immigrants (1991/06).

Immigrant drug abusers were problematised, both when it came to what substances they used and their cultural barriers to participating in mainstream treatment programmes. It was pointed out that immigrants used substances that were new to the Swedish treatment programmes, such as smoked heroin and Khat. Moreover, it was claimed that immigrants were 64

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not as receptive to Swedish mainstream treatment as it mostly took place in institutions.

The immigrants perceive the institution as tantamount to being imprisoned, as individuals from the Middle East have mostly experienced repressive and coercive interventions from authorities in their native countries (1991/6).

In contrast with the development of such particularistic interventions, in the latter part of the 1990s, there emerged a questioning of labels such as immigrant, culture and ethnicity. This was exemplified by an article entitled ’Who ought to be labelled an ”immigrant”?’ (1996/05). Here the label ’secondgeneration immigrant’, as a way to address children born in Sweden (to foreign-born parents), is questioned. In addition, the position from which issues related to immigration were approached was questioned. Debates conducted ’from above’ or with what was called an ’infantilising view of immigrants’ were criticised and social workers were challenged to alter their perceptions of immigrants. One example of this was a special issue entitled ’Families of foreign background’ (1999/04). Here, while the editor seemed to have avoided the epithet ‘immigrant’, several articles talked about immigrant issues. While this critique resembled that of the white position, it could not be regarded as strong in its expression.

2000s: Cultural deviation as social problem The 2000s are characterised by more frequent problematisations of ethnicity and culture in relation to social problems than to social-work practices. They are typically focused on relations and problems within immigrant families as an explanatory factor for social problems. While this is nothing new, these debates are qualitatively distinct from previous decades in the sense that they revolve around some particularly violent events, one case of street violence and one case of so called honour-killing.

The case of street violence goes back to an event in December 1994. After a quarrel with the doorman at a popular night club in central Stockholm (Sturecompagniet), three young men returned and opened fire with a machine gun at the entrance to the club. The doorman and three guests were killed, 20 guests were injured by bullets and many more by glass © T h e au t h ors an d S t u d e ntlitt e rat u r

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splinters. One of the young men was convicted of murder and several more of assisting in this in various ways. The problem was not primarily represented to be related to these particular young males but, more generally, to their immigrant background. This event was the starting point for a long-standing debate which portrayed young immigrant men as violent and aggressive. It was argued that this behaviour was rooted in a cultural system favouring aggressive masculinity as a way of restoring lost respect and honour. For example, one social worker discusses the problems of young immigrant men as being cocky, as they are raised in a different manner compared to Swedish youth; the immigrant youngsters are ‘acting out their newly won freedom in public, but are behaving well when they are at home’ (2000/07).

In parallel to this, there is a problematisation of deviant behaviour among the children of refugees; it is debated to what extent this is best understood in terms of culture or trauma. The main picture being reproduced is that social problems among immigrant children and young persons have their roots in their families, either due to shortcomings in parenting or due to a cultural clash between their family (traditional) value system and the Swedish (modern) value system based on gender equality and an individualised and independent way of living.

A second event that became the driver of a long-standing debate was a case of honour-killing. Fadime Sahindal, a young woman of Kurdish origin, was widely known for her fight against honour violence before she was killed by her father in January 2002. This murder, together with the honour murder of Pela Atroshi, also a young woman of Kurdish origin, in June 1999, shocked Sweden. Following this, honour-killing was problematised in 13 special issues of the Socionomen, often labelled ’honour-related violence’.

It is striking that a number of researchers in various disciplines, including social work, sociology, history and gender studies, argued about the labelling and interpretation of the phenomenon. The debate concerned whether these killings were grounded in particular cultures and/or traditions, or in gender hierarchies and were thus a case of gender violence. Markedly, professional social workers were absent from this discussion, a discussion which, to a lesser extent, dealt with practical social work or how to prevent the violence from occurring and, instead, dealt with the issue on a more meta-theoretical level.

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3 Social work and ethno-cultural diversity – historical …

Concluding discussion Based on an analysis of the Socionomen, a Swedish professional social work journal published by the trade-union, this chapter has shown how social-work practices in diverse ethno-cultural contexts have shifted over time. A general observation from the analysis is that social problems and social work in the context of ethno-cultural diversity are not frequently discussed. It was only in the 1970s that it became an issue and it has never been integrated as a general issue of social-work practice, like age and gender. Another general observation from the analysis is that diversity is more frequently problematised in relation to social problems than to socialwork practice. This means that it is more frequently discussed in relation to, for instance, housing segregation, gender equality and relational problems within families than in relation to solutions – what social work should do to ameliorate the situation. A third general conclusion is that ethnocultural diversity is primarily problematised in relation the immigrants as Other(s) and much less in relation to the social-work position and its practices. This means that the white position of social work is continuously assumed and not problematised. Hence it is difficult to see how the debates in the Socionomen can contribute to an inclusive practice. Instead it is our impression that the way in which social problems and social work are problematised in relation to ethno-cultural diversity contributes to the widening of the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

This way of problematising social problems and social work in diversity contexts compares to Park’s (2006) findings of how social work has historically sorted out immigrants as a particular client group, the reproduction of the ’problematic other’. This also applies to Sandberg’s (2010) review which showing that many different kinds of social problem, including mental health, domestic and street violence and school problems among Swedish youth with immigrant background, were explained and handled with reference to immigration background. Immigration is understood as a problem in itself, independent of mainstream understandings of social problems.

It has already been noted that Swedish integration policy stands out as inclusive in international comparisons while, at same time, scores less well as regards migrant labour-market integration (see Brochmann & Hagelund © T h e au t h ors an d S t u d e ntlitt e rat u r

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2011). There is no simple answer as to why Sweden scores poorly on this issue but most probably it has several intertwined roots, including racism in the labour market (e.g. Rooth & Agerström 2009) as well as the character of immigration (Bevelander & Pendakur 2014). In view of this, the results of our analysis might appear less surprising. Nevertheless, it is alarming that social work, which aims to strengthen vulnerable and marginalised individuals and groups in the population, seems to function in the opposite way. An important issue for the future is how we can develop the profession beyond simplified binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in order to be critical and inclusive in its practices.

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Bacchi, C. (2012) Why study problematizations? Making politics visible. Open Journal of Political Science, 2(1): 1–8.

Ben-Ari, A. & Stier, R. (2010) Rethinking cultural competence. What can we learn from Levinas? British Journal of Social Work, 40(7): 2155–2167.

Bevelander, P. & Pendakur, R. (2014) The labour market integration of refugee and family reunion immigrants. A comparison of outcomes in Canada and Sweden.

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Brochmann, G. & Hagelund, A. (2011) Migrants in the Scandinavian welfare state.

The emergence of a social policy problem. Nordic Journal of Migration Studies, 1(1): 13–24.

Dahlström, C. (2004) Nästan välkomna. Invandrarpolitikens retorik och praktik.

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Dean, R.G. (2001) The myth of cross-cultural competence. Families in Society. The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, 82(6): 623–630.

Harrison, G. & Turner, R. (2011) Being a ‘cultural competent’ social worker: making sense of a murky concept in practice. British Journal of Social Work, 41(2): 330–350.

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Kohli, H.K., Huber, R. & Faul, A.C. (2010) Historical and theoretical development of culturally competent social work practice. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 30(3): 252–271.

Park, Y. (2006) Constructing immigrants. A historical discourse analysis of the representations of immigrants in US social work, 1882–1952. Journal of Social Work, 6(2): 169–203.

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Challenges and ways ahead. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 8(4): in press.

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Arab-Muslims in Sweden. International Journal of Manpower, 30(1/2): 43–55.

Sandberg, G. (2010) Etnicitet, ungdom och social arbete. En analys av kulturbegreppet i ett komplext och kluvet forskningsfält. Lic. avh. Institutionen för social arbete.

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Sven Trygged (ed.) is a professor of Social Work at the University of Gävle. Erica Righard (ed.) is an associate professor at the Department of Social Work and a researcher at MalmÜ Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM), both at MalmÜ University. The book consists of contributions by Trygged and Righard and ten additional researchers based at universities across Sweden and beyond.

INEQUALITIES AND MIGRATION Challenges for the Swedish welfare state

Sweden is often pictured as a country with a strong welfare system and low levels of inequality. But it is also described as a country which has undergone fundamental restructurings of its welfare system since the 1990s, and where social inequality is now growing rapidly. This development is strikingly visible among people with a migration background.

Inequalities and migration sets focus on ongoing developments and debates about the Swedish welfare system in relation to migration. It introduces the international reader to current developments of inequalities and migration in Sweden in broad historical and international perspectives. The book also offers in-depth insights into how the dynamics of growing inequality unfold in regard to a range of phenomena and areas of intervention, including the role of civil society. The selected case studies focus on inequalities and hierarchies in relation to both various forms of cross-border mobility and the increased diversification of Swedish society.

The book fills a gap when it comes to English language course literature about contemporary debates regarding social policy and social work in relation to migration in Sweden. At the same time, it is well suited for a broader range of readers, including policy makers and practitioners outside of Sweden.

Art.nr 39470

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