Project information
Project manager
Torun Elsrud
Financier
Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
Timetable
1 Aug 2017-31 Dec 2019
Subject
Social Work (Department of Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences)
More about the project
The study focuses on moral and ethical concerns in a nationwide as well as local volunteer network consisting of asylum seeking, unaccompanied young people and professionals from social services and teaching environments. These professional actors, or activists, devote their free time to supporting unaccompanied young people in different ways and to acting politically to prevent further expulsions and relocations of these young people in Sweden. At times, their commitment can be seen as civil disobedience (demonstrations without permissions) or may come with the risk of being laid off (due to "too strong" dedication). Common to a majority of the "professional" participants is that they are middle-aged, Swedish women, while the majority of the unaccompanied are boys from Afghanistan.
The project seeks knowledge about moral and ethical incentives (to act), resistance strategies (against authorities) and repair strategies (in interaction between volunteer professionals and young asylum seekers), in a time characterized by both social polarization and silence in relation to the processes of expulsion that recent research has assessed as legally dubious. The approach sees an intersectionality analysis as fundamental for understanding conflict and migration, and the resistance and social repair work that often follow in the wake of conflict. The project focuses on volunteer "professional" voices, as well as the voices of young migrants, through qualitative interviews and observations.
The project is part of the research in the Social work and migration research group and in Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.
