To Örebro University

Guided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approaches of symbolic capital and symbolic violence, this article examines the everyday mechanisms of ‘otherising’ language practices in schools that reinforce racism against marginalised youths in Sweden. The empirical material is based on focus group discussions and individual in-depth interviews with youths with migrant backgrounds in Sweden. The stories told by the participants in this study indicate how young people with immigrant backgrounds are discursively racialised and otherised as a group that does not belong to Swedish society, through the articulation of negative opinions, attitudes, and ideologies as part of established colonial discourses. It is argued that the marginalisation of migrants in Sweden, which is a consequence of social policy, has even resulted in utilisation of a marginalised language — one that deviates from the majority language in several different ways.

Covid-19 pandemin förändrade förutsättningarna för människobehandlande organisationer och även för att bedriva socialt arbete inom socialtjänsten. Villkoren och förutsättningarna för interaktion och relationsarbetet såväl med medarbetare som med sårbara människor i behov av hjälp och stöd av socialtjänsten är i fokus för denna studie, som bygger på intervjuer med nio socialarbetare. Intervjuresultatet och analysen pekar på att den snabba omställningen till att arbeta på fysisk distans via tekniska lösningar bidrog till att arbetet kunde genomföras men att interaktionsritualer förändrades på ett sätt som i många fall påverkade socialarbetarna i negativ riktning – det gällde såväl interaktionen medarbetare emellan såväl som arbetet med klienter och brukare. Dessutom pekar resultatet på att det sociala arbetet med socialt utsatta människor i vissa situationer inte är möjligt eller lämpligt att genomföra genom fysisk distans eller genom tekniska lösningar, utan behöver ske i direkt interaktion mellan socialarbetare och klienter.

The forest setting, gardens and lake of Bergsjön in north Gothenburg, give it much appeal, and yet it is notorious across Sweden for gang violence, crime and disadvantage, and is rated ‘most vulnerable’ in the Swedish police’ neighbourhood list. These neighbourhoods, many of which were developed through the Million Homes programme of the 60’s, to provide good housing for workers, are now the fixation of the media and as such dominate political discourse in Sweden where they are decried as ‘no go zones’ that exist out with the law, and as such threaten orderly Swedish civil society. The shift toward the right by Sweden’s widely recognised tolerant social democracy is in large part due to a Swedish public anxious about the suburbs (Schierup, Ålund and Kings, 2014; Dahlstedt and Neergaard, 2019). Bergsjön is a distinctive and unique place, yet the conflict around migrant settlement is expressed across different national contexts. The agreement generated by the enlightenment social contract no longer holds and according to French philosopher Michel Serres, there is a need to consider a new basis for relations, one that includes the material relations of the more-than-human world on which humanity depends. This, he argues, resets relations of exploitation, precipitated by the social contract, to relations of mutuality found in a ‘Natural Contract’ (Serres, 1995).

We draw on a field philosophical study (Buchanan, Bastian and Chrulew, 2018) of Bergsjön in 2022 to discuss the potential of Serres’ natural contract to critique the dominant views from both left and right, of how to address the challenges that Bergsjön presents. Thinking with Serres’ Natural Contract includes the more-than-human environment of Bergsjön and affords contemplation of what one contributor calls its ‘big, big gift’ and at the same time raises questions that challenge the limits of human ethical thought.

Several scientific discourses influenced by ‘colonial discourses’ are reproducing discriminatory categories of human societies and are therefore incapable of deconstructing the ‘coloniality of power’, and grasping the complexity and interconnectivity of human societies. This makes decolonising of knowledge – including the knowledge base of international social work studies aiming to fight global inequalities – an urgent task of any critical research. Such a position urges the researcher to carefully choose research questions, methods and theoretical perspectives. Based on the authors’ own studies of global inequalities and critical reflection processes, this chapter explores that by using established scientific concepts and discourses in international social work, research runs the risk of legitimising and reinforcing global inequalities. It is argued that critical reflection as a decolonising research methodology can be helpful for finding alternative ways of doing research and collecting data when practising postcolonial intersectionality in international, national and local contexts. The chapter also discusses the importance of methodological concerns in international social work research, and how critical reflection guided by postcolonial perspectives can be used as part of a research methodology for studying social problems and global inequalities beyond South/North divides.

This article explores global social work ethics and international field training based on the experiences and practice dilemmas of Norwegian and Swedish social work students. It employs a postcolonial perspective to answer 'What are key ethical challenges for the students?' and 'How can social work educators promote ethical awareness in international field training?' based on focus group interviews and field reports. The results show that international field training contributes to both deepening some students' critical knowledge and reinforcing others their colonial discourses. It is argued that social work educators play an important role for students' critical positioning and knowledge.