| 1. |
- Philipson Isaac, Sarah, 1990
(författare)
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Temporal Dispossession: The Politics of Asylum and the Remaking of Racial Capitalism in and Beyond the Borders of the Swedish Welfare State
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis sets out from the post-2015 Swedish asylum legislation, which made Sweden’s asylum policy among the most restrictive in the EU. The most decisive changes were the shift from permanent to temporary residence permits as the standard protection provided, along with the increasingly blurred lines between migration regimes and labour market policies. With temporary residence permits as the new norm, time and labour market productivity are central to the distribution of vulnerability and life chances, as labour market participation functions as the only means of qualifying for permanent residence. The policy shift can be seen as an institutionalization of temporality and deportability, as it carries the inherent risk of deportation if residence permits are not reissued upon renewal. Against this background, this thesis draws on temporal enactments of dispossession and racial capitalism as a theoretical framework to analyse how the control of time results in different forms of dispossession – a feature that is closely tied to the selection logics of late racial capitalism, namely: differentiation, devaluation, and competition. Although dispossession has been conceptualized as a mechanism of authoritative control over the spatial, emotional, and relational aspects of (neo)colonized subjects’ lives, research often fails to recognize the significance of time and temporality in understanding this process. Here, I seek to bridge this gap. Furthermore, where migration studies have been critiqued for perpetuating methodological nationalism, temporal dispossession foregrounds time as central to the distribution of rights to make visible how the control of time is an experience shared across multiple positions – citizens and non-citizens alike. While this directs our attention to the continuum of temporal control, those positioned as migrants are often experiencing the most acute effects of the temporal restrictions that affect access to rights. The thesis builds on four years of ethnographical engagements with interlocutors who sought asylum between 2015 and 2017, and interviews with street-level bureaucrats, from the Swedish Migration Agency, NGOs, asylum lawyers, to the Swedish Public Employment Service. Consequently, engaging with the interlocutors’ experiences through the theoretical lens of temporal dispossession is a means of centring time not only within the workings of racial capitalism, but also on how border regimes work to sustain racial capitalism and how labour market exploitation is exacerbated by the legal liminality the interlocutors inhabit. Chapter 5, on temporal dispossession through migration bureaucracy, examines the temporal dimensions of the Migration Agency’s New Public Management (NPM) procedures as they assess asylum applications. It traces the enforced deceleration, interrupted by pockets of acceleration, that obscures the interlocutors from frames of intelligibility in the asylum process. Here, temporal dispossession consists of preventing those seeking asylum from making progress in their cases, using temporal means of discarding their need for protection and relegating them to a different pace of time as compared to the surrounding society, effectively positioning them as untrustworthy and thus as undeserving asylum subjects. Chapter 6 investigates ‘islands of dispossession’ where time and space merge in the analysis of the body as the most intimate scale of such islands, asylum camps and make-shift camps as the national scale, and enforcement archipelagos as the global scale. Together, these tease out the role of temporal dispossession in carceral geographies and the role of border regimes in sustaining racial capitalism. The chapter also engages with how interlocutors redefine and resist the spaces of the camp through community formations. The final analytical chapter on the workings of temporal dispossession in the labour market (Chapter 7) examines the productivity of time in the production of surplus, cheap, and disposable labour forces, where labour market participation constitutes the only means of securing permanent protection. This is examined through the interlocutors’ experiences navigating the informal labour market, ‘fast track’ labour market programmes, and their attempts to ‘switch’ tracks from asylum to labour market migration to secure their futures and reduce the pervasive threat of deportability. Taken together, the thesis seeks to contribute to research on how dispossession operates in and through the border regime, specifically through its temporal configurations, and how the latter is weaponised to dispossess people of their life chances. The thesis further seeks to contribute to research on the political economy of borders in the Nordic context by examining the operation of racial capitalism through the welfare state, where labour market exploitation is exacerbated by the precarity produced through its migration bureaucracies.
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| 2. |
- Svensson, Malin, 1976
(författare)
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Hoppet om en framtidsplats. Asylsökande barn i den svenska skolan
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis explores how accompanied refugee and asylum-seeking children experience everyday life in Sweden. During the asylum process, as part of a policy for promoting ‘normal life’, these children have the same right to education as permanently resident children. An ethnographic approach brought out data from combining interviews with participant observation and visual material produced by children. Methodological inspiration was sought in the new sociology of childhood and in its potential to make an eclectic analysis of the empirical data. Study I explores how spatial and temporal dimensions theoretically may guide dialogue with refugee children and interpretation of their visual material. The findings point to how children negotiate opportunities for the future where everyday life takes place, and how conditions for education are perceived in relation to their future prospects. Inquiring into the meaning of school, Study II explores the sense of possibility as perceived by asylum-seeking children, and shows how school is a social place that provides structure, a sense of belonging and a learning environment. Paradoxically, schools’ limited attention to the children’s predicament risked accentuating the ambivalent social position of being an asylum seeker and thus weakening the benefits of their right to education. Study III examines the challenges teachers face, as street-level bureaucrats, in catering to the needs of asylumseeking pupils and demonstrates how conflicting goals of education policy and asylum policy conditioned teachers’ work and risked undermining the compensatory pedagogical task. In sum, through analyses that encompass how an unsecured residence permit does not prevent children aspiring to their futures, as envisioned in the present, creating a home can be understood in terms of hope. While the asylum process conditions ideas of the future, the thesis contributes to an understanding of how it also shapes how children and teachers, as social actors, construct what is considered to be ‘normal life’ during the asylum process.
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| 3. |
- Dafgård, Lena, 1958
(författare)
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Digital Distance Education – A Longitudinal Exploration of Video Technology
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The context of this thesis is digital distance education. Distance education has developed from correspondence courses, based on letters sent by mail between student and teacher, to digital distance education with interactive video classes from anywhere, as long as a computer/tablet/smartphone and an Internet connection are available. The development of technology, particularly with the introduction of the Internet, has completely changed the possibilities for teaching, learning, interaction, and communication at a distance. Many technologies can be used in distance education, but this thesis aims to: Better understand the possibilities and limitations of video in digital distance higher education. The research has three elements of analysis: 1) video technology, 2) distance courses, and 3) distance teachers. Each allows a focus on how distance courses with video are designed and on teachers’ perspectives on the use of video in distance education. The first focus on course design is examined through two research questions. RQ1 asks, How is digital video used in distance higher education? When teachers design distance courses with digital video; a) which categories of video are used or not used? b) how much are these categories used? c) why are they used or not used? And d) how are they used? Complementing RQ1, RQ2 asks, How do course designers respond to the possibilities and limitations of video for distance higher education? Addressing the second focus of the thesis on teacher perspectives, RQ3 asks, What are the teacher’s attitudes and perceptions about the use of digital video in distance higher education? With a comprehensive literature review as a foundation, the results of this thesis include a classification system with two main categories; recorded and live video that is developed and used to orient an empirical investigation. The data for this investigation was collected through a national web-based questionnaire. Then, based on the survey, a specific higher education institution was selected for an interview study with teachers using video conferencing in distance courses in Teacher education. Interaction and communication are central concepts in this thesis, and the analytical lens combines the socio-cultural perspective and the theory of affordances. The results indicate that across types, video is mostly used as a supplement to other resources. Further, a correspondence is found concerning, on the one hand, teachers’ experience of distance education and participation in in-service training, and on the other hand, their use of video in teaching. In general, the most reported reasons why teachers do not use video are that it does not bring anything and takes too much time. Many of the constraints that teachers perceive are related to time; e.g. competition between an ambition to teach according to a student-centred approach but also a strong feeling of responsibility of delivering content to students. The technology of video has the affordances of mediating a teaching and learning environment similar to the one in the classroom, but conditions such as large groups or many students and the difficulty of perceiving non-verbal signals through video, affect the communication situation negatively and reduce possibilities of interaction. As a systematic study investigating the mainstream use of technology and media, this thesis contrasts with many other studies, which are often relatively small and local in nature, conducted by enthusiastic teachers investigating the use of one specific technology. The results show how the mainstream use of technologies such as video change conditions for distance teaching and influence how we think and interact with others and our environment.
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| 4. |
- Wikström, Hanna, 1970
(författare)
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(O)möjliga positioner. Familjer från Iran & postkoloniala reflektioner.
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis is based on narratives by families originating from Iran, now residing in Sweden, Göteborg. The focus is the accounts of family, gender, relations, belongings (and class).Point of departure is a representation of “immigrant families” as problematic in the media and public debate. The overall aim is to deconstruct this image through the narratives of the families, and to suggest and present other and more complex accounts of families from Iran in Sweden. To reach the objectives of the study postcolonial theory, feminist post structuralism, deconstruction and discourse analysis are used as theoretical and methodological tools. Analytical focus are on doing family, gender, belongings and place. The empirical material consists of 31 interviews with 19 parents and young adults in seven families. The parents all have grown up in Iran before migrating to Sweden. The narratives are looked upon as accounts of discursive experience. The use of discourse in the narratives, in order to do oneself, family, gender, belongings and place, is presented as positions of the subjects. To inhabit a position is to “do identity”. Each family member uses a number of positions depending on theme, and how the narrative is situated. This is related to the theoretical notion of multiple subjects. The findings show that possibilities of differentiated positions and complex expressions, accounted for as an immigrant family, are severely restrained. However the narratives also show a large amount of creative, opposing, and radical expressions. The latter are considered as counter histories and becomes subversive manifestations. The positions occupied by the family members arrived at in accordance with a hegemonic discursive formation containing, on the one hand, “Swedishness”, modernity and democracy, and, on the other, “Iranianess”, tradition and oppression. This suggests that the family members position themselves and their families in relation to a notion of the Swedish, heterosexual, nuclear family as considered normal – and/or a notion of the Iranian, troubled family as subordinated. In a first position the family members do themselves and their families as “Swedish”, modern and democratic, while “Iranianess” is considered undesirable. This suggests being forced to choose either “Swedishness” or “Iranianess”. A second position implies that the family members position themselves and their families as both “Swedish”, democratic and modern and Iranian. The third position suggests rejecting the hegemonic discourse and placing oneself and ones family, as well as generalized notions of family, as neither “Swedish” nor “Iranian” and thus joining the struggle of defining discursive reality. The findings distorts the conception of “immigrant families” as victims of “cultural conflicts”. And thus, refutes the representation of families from Iran as “different” in comparison to “Swedish families” on the basis of national and “cultural” origins. In this discussion the perception of Iran is crucial. That is, if the concept of modernity is restricted to Western societies/practices, the notion of families from Iran in Sweden (or in Iran) will continue to be excluding and exclusive. This in turn implies being able to comprehend Iranian society, and families from Iran, as complex, and as a ground of differentiated expressions.
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| 5. |
- Bankel, Robin, 1983
(författare)
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Responsibilisering - en studie av assistanssektorns kvasimarknad
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- De senaste decenniernas valfrihetsreformer i välfärden har föregåtts av argument om att valfrihet frigör brukare genom att kontrollen över välfärdstjänster överlåts åt de som utnyttjar dem. Denna avhandling behandlar en relaterad fråga som ofta har förbisetts i såväl forskning som den allmänna debatten, nämligen vilket ansvarsförhållande som har åtföljt dessa reformer. Under termen ”responsibilisering” har utvecklingen mot en alltmer marknadsanpassad välfärd tidigare konceptualiserats som en process där ansvar överförs från staten till individen. I litteraturen är denna form av responsibilisering intimt förknippad med idén om regerandekomplex (governmentality). Avhandlingen gör gällande att detta har begränsat förståelsen för hur brukare förmås att ta ansvar genom en marknadsanpassad välfärd. Som ett alternativ till responsibilisering som regerandekomplex introduceras konceptet inbäddad responsibilisering. Detta bidrag till responsibiliseringsteori betonar å ena sidan att institutionella (marknads)förhållanden ställer konsumenter inför såväl upplevda som faktiska krav som stimulerar självansvar. Å andra sidan betonas de begränsningar som individuella handlingars kognitiva, sociala och institutionella inbäddning innebär för möjligheten till sådant ansvarstagande. Utifrån vad som sannolikt är en av världens mest marknadsanpassade välfärdssektorer––den svenska kvasimarknaden för personlig assistans––undersöker avhandlingen frågan om hur marknadsanpassning av välfärden kan förstås som en process av inbäddad responsibilisering. 29 informanter på brukarsidan deltog i semi-strukturerade intervjuer med uppföljande korrespondens. Grundad teorimetod (GTM) tillämpades med Strauss och Corbins axiala och selektiva kodning, huvudsakligen i kodningsprogrammet NVivo. Resultatet av intervjustudien visade att brukare och deras proxys i assistanssektorn ofta ställs inför överväldigande, om inte oöverstigliga, krav för att uppfylla en assistans av god kvalitet. Baserat på kravbilden identifierades tre övergripande ansvarstyper som brukarna måste förhålla sig till på olika sätt: kvalifikationsansvar, valansvar och utföraransvar. Informanternas hantering av de tre ansvarstyperna belyser bristande institutionella möjligheter att leva upp till de förväntningar som valfrihetssystemet ställer på konsumenter, framför allt att uppfylla sina behov genom att internalisera en valfrihetslogik och välja rätt anordnare. Avhandlingen visar hur detta tillkortakommande, som leder välfärdskonsumenter inom sektorn mot att ta ansvar genom att själva arbeta och vi investera kraft, tid och pengar, kan förklaras av responsibiliseringens institutionella, sociala och kognitiva inbäddning. Implikationer för responsibiliseringsteori och konceptet ”arbetande konsumenter” i marknadsföringsteori diskuteras. Likaså tentativa policyimplikationer för assistanssektorn och andra valfrihetssystem.
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| 6. |
- Karlsson-Tuula, Marie, 1961-
(författare)
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Rekonstruktion av företag inom insolvenslagstiftningens ramar : en jämförande studie av svensk och amerikansk insolvensrätt
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Insolvency law is the rooth of commercial and financial law because it obliges the legislator to chose. There is not enough money to go round so the law must chose who to pay. The law must always decide who is to bear the risk so there is always a winner and a loser. The insolvency law has been at the policy agenda in many countries in the last years. In France, Germany, Italy, Japan and other countries have the legal frameworks changed from liquidation procedures to reorganization business. The legal situation in Sweden has also changed from compositions to reorganization business, lagen om företagsrekonstruktion. The key issues are to encourage the formal proceeding by enlarging the debtors control of the business and by inroads creditors rights, in which case the proceeding is pro-debtor.This dissertation compares Swedish and American Bankruptcy Codes with respect to similarities and differences at macro- and micro perspectives. Chapter 11 Reorganization Business in America provides a corporate rehabilitation model, which has been used in other countries. The dissertation also compares the use of the concepts of - the purpose, - the function and - the direction of Swedish and American Bankruptcy Laws in order to establish whether the law is pro-debtor or pro-creditor. The key indicators of whether the rescue proceeding is pro-debtor or pro-creditor include; - How easy it is to enter the rescue proceeding. Debtor's incentives to commence proceeding, freeze on executions and liquidation petitions, impact on security, impact on title of finance, impact on set-off and netting, impact on contract rescissions and lease forfeitures. Disclaimer and abandonment, ability to replace the management, financing of the rescue, scope of the rehabilitation plan. It is argued that the optimal bankruptcy law can be achieved if the law purpose, the function and the law direction relate to each other in Sweden, in both reorganization business and in the liquidation code and it also compared with the American Bankruptcy Code. According to my opinion this is important both in a national and international context.The dissertation also deals with debtor's contract in an insolvency situation in reorganization business and in liquidation. Swedish Laws are compared to the American Bankruptcy Code and point out similarities and differences. In the American Bankruptcy Code there is a special section 365 § BC dealing with executory contract, this section is nearly the same for both the reorganization- and liquidationproceedings. The contracts must be unperformed which means the obligation of both the bankrupt and the other party in the contract are so far unperformed that the failure of either to complete performance would constitute a material breach excusing the performance of the other. If the contract is unperformed the debtor has the possibility to chose if the contracts shall be assumed, assumed and assigned or rejected. Section 365 § BC requires the court to consider whether assumption of the contract in question will further be needed in either rehabilitation or liquidation of the bankruptcy estate. The court reviews the financial impact of the estate and if it is benefiting becoming administratively obligated to perform. The court also review if is best to breach the contract. In Sweden we have different sections which regulate the situation. One section in our reorganization law, lagen om företagsrekonstruktion, we also have two special sections in the law of Sale of Goods, which deals with contract when a debtor became insolvent or file for reorganization business. But we don't have any section in our liquidation law, konkurslagstiftningen, which in my opinion is very strange. We also have a problem with the legislation about swaps and netting which are regulated in a special law, lagen om handel med finansiella intrument. Particular attention is given to the advantages and disadvantages of the existing rules in Swedish legal system compared with 365 § in American Bankruptcy Code. From a national point of view such section should preferably include all types of contract in only one section which is nearly the same as the American model of section 365 §.
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| 7. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Knowledge at play. Studies of games as members’ matters : Kunskap genom spelande. Studier av digitala spel och spelande som kunskapsdomän
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- On a general level, this thesis seeks some answers to the broad question of what one can learn from digital games. With an analytical approach informed by ethnomethodology, the main thrust of the work is an exploration of members’ matters in the area of games and gaming. In response to prevailing discussions about how, where and what gamers learn, the aim is to examine emerging forms of knowledge embedded in practices in and around digital games. The first part of the thesis addresses three themes: the question of whether leisure gaming could be understood to have transfer effects; how games are positioned in a state of restlessness and multistableness; and how the domain encompassing gaming and game development is advancing in terms of professionalization and institutionalization. The second part is comprised of three empirical studies based on two sets of video recordings: collaborative gaming in The Lord of the Rings Online, and assessment practices in game development education. The studies begin to unravel the elusive phenomena of gaming by making some gameplay practices and conventions visible. For instance, the findings suggest that there are specialized coordination practices, developed through long-term engagement with the online game. Furthermore, from the perspective of the institutional framing, it is argued that understandings from other media are not applicable in a straightforward manner, but must be carefully calibrated to matters such as game genre conventions and control over gameplay conduct. By describing the reasoning and knowledge displayed by gamers and game developers, the thesis contributes to interrelated discussions about knowledge development, currently carried out in educational science, interaction studies and game studies. In conclusion, it is suggested that digital games are establishing autonomy from other forms of entertainment media and software industries as a result of the ways games and gaming as multistable objects of knowledge have become deeply embedded in society.
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| 8. |
- Nordén, Per
(författare)
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Regnbågsungar: Familj, utbildning, fritid
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis, rainbow children’s experience in private, institutional and public spaces is examined. More specifically, the aim is to explore if and how social conflict arises on the basis on their queer kinship structure. 28 interviews were conducted with informants that share the experience of growing up in Sweden with one or more homosexual, bisexual or transgender parents. Their age varied from 15 to 37 years of age. The theoretical starting point is taken in Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985/2008) discourse theory along with the Essex colleagues Glynos and Howarth (2007). Glynos and Howarth break down Laclau and Mouffe’s articulation concepts into three elements, which they define as social, political and fantasmatic logics. In order to analyze these logics in empirical data, Glynos and Howarth state that a moment of “Theoretical and critical interventions” (s. 38) is needed. The intervention in this thesis comes from poststructuralism, feminism and queer theoretical perspectives. I specifically draw on Butler (1990; 1993; etc.), Ahmed (2006), Halberstam (2005) and Stockton (2009) in exploring how queer family structures come to matter in everyday life. The first (1) result chapter, Komma ut som regnbågsfamilj, explores the rainbow children’s stories of their parent’s coming-out process. In this chapter I show how coming-out processes affect family life and how everyday life changes through these processes. Broadly speaking, this chapter deals with negotiations that concern nonnormative positions, but also how this relates to family and kinship structures. The second (2) result chapter, Att framträda i utbildningsmiljön, concerns the experience of rainbow children in the different institutions that organize education, such as pre-school, elementary school and high school. In this chapter I show situations where heteronormativity has social implications for the rainbow children’s right to education. The third (3) and final result chapter, Skiftande fritidssammanhang, shows a span but also specific social communities the rainbow children takes part in during their leisure time activities. In this result chapter I show how the informants are stopped or appear unwanted to participate in certain environments. The conflict areas that appear show, like in the previous chapter, that rainbow children experience heterosexism and transnegativity. The interview touches on occasions and situations when the informants are separated from their previous leisure time contexts. This show that rainbow children, even in the most different contexts, always needs to relate to their queer family structure.
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| 9. |
- Allelin, Majsa
(författare)
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Skola för lönsamhet. Om elevers marknadsanpassade villkor och vardag
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is twofold: to explore the ways in which the transformation of the Swedish elementary school can be understood through Marxist theory; and, by ethnographic methods, understand the everyday lives of students and teachers in light of the transformation of the educational system. The ethnography has been conducted by observations and interviews during a total of six months at two different schools, Libera and Publica. While Libera is a charter school, owned by a private investment company, Publica is municipally administrated. The former is based in the central part of the city, while the latter is located in a more economically marginal and geographically peripheral area. At Libera, students plan their own schedules and work load and they also set their own goals. At Publica, the students are organized in a more conventional, meaning collective, structure. By discussing marketization, which includes private as well as public actors, scholars foreground the competition that exists between schools through the Swedish voucher-system as well as the transactional relationship that reshapes the relationship between students and teachers. To describe the market rationales by which the public schools must operate the already established concept of New Public Management has been used. However, still no terminology can be found to describe the private actors’ way of functioning. By returning to Marx’s concepts of formal and real subsumption, I offer new ways to conceptualize the shift in character of education and how privately-owned schools operate, meaning how surplus value is created in the everyday life of students and in their pedagogical relations. As my results show, more efficient and flexible ways to organize teaching and pedagogical practices have emerged as new scale logics are developed by private actors who are part of big investment companies. Due to the competition, both Libera and Publica adopt a strong market rationale in their organizational arrangements and pedagogical expectations. Besides conceptualizing schooling on an organizational level, I also seek to address the premises and effects of the learning situation for students in a milieu that is characterized by both flexible and standardized management. Despite the different characteristics of the schools, the market rationales, which dovetailed well with the result-based (state-arranged) management, tended to create alienating conditions for students and teachers in their daily work. Everyday school life was occupied with grade talks and very little time was given for pedagogical “detours”; the students were mostly trying to crack the code and the ones who could not manage the pace were systematically left behind (eliminated). In many cases, whether it was in more successful situations or during processes of (self)elimination, students were often left alone. The expectation of being self-propelled dominated the pedagogical relationship, which translated into the pressure of constant performance and little space to be “unskilled” or explorative. In a situation when school organizations are in competition with each other and are expected to present high numbers (in terms of grades and economic efficiency), the already motivated or skilled students appear as attractive and desirable. The results show how schooling continues to maintain, and in some ways accentuates, segregation and social reproduction.
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| 10. |
- Stretmo, Live, 1977
(författare)
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Governing the Unaccompanied Child - Media, Policy and Practice
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Through three different case studies, this thesis analyzes how unaccompanied minors are constructed and governed as a specific group of refugees in Norway and Sweden. The first study investigates the Norwegian and Swedish media debate from 2000-2008 by examining how incidences of so-called “missing unaccompanied children” were highlighted on the media agenda. Part of this has also been to analyze the specific official actions taken by Norwegian and Swedish authorities. The second study analyzes how unaccompanied minors were framed in a more broad selection of Norwegian and Swedish official policy between 2000-2010 by looking at how unaccompanied children and youngsters were singled out as subjects of knowledge, and the actions and practices that legitimized these constructions. These two case studies demonstrate that unaccompanied minors have been similarly problematized in Norway and Sweden, hence making similar changes in mode of conduct legitimate. They were sometimes singled out as vulnerable children or child victims, but concurrently also as possible strategic migrants (adults trying to pass as children, problematic youngsters, etc.). This poses different types of threats to the asylum system, thus justifying care-oriented amid control-oriented strategies in their regard. The third case study analyzes how a selection of caregivers (i.e., officials and support staff) talk about their work with unaccompanied youngsters and children, and describes how 10 youngsters give meaning to their experiences of being categorized as unaccompanied. The caregivers held a repertoire of various constructions that clearly connect to many of the official or public narrations. Sometimes unaccompanied minors are framed as respectable exceptions to other problem categories, and at other times as problematic youngsters in need of compensatory pedagogics in order to overcome specific shortcomings. These caregivers, plus the media and national policy, further frame unaccompanied minors as specific rights holders due to their position-ing as “any other child”, therefore legitimizing softer and more care-oriented strategies. The interviews with the 10 youngsters illustrate how they try to re-position themselves as positive exceptions to the official images of strategic or problematic youngsters highlighted in the media, policy and practice. This study identifies a discourse where a lot of consensus and agreement on problematizations coexist in Norwegian and Swedish policy, public narratives, and in how people in the micro context talk and make sense of unaccompanied minors.
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