To Örebro University

For young people who have migrated unaccompanied by parents or other legal guardians, it is important to feel a sense of belonging. However, belonging is not fixed to one place. This study aims to explore how young migrants in kinship care in a Swedish suburb describe what different places mean to them and what these descriptions can tell us about their sense of belonging. In this study, semi-structured interviews with 11 young migrants between 16 and 21 years of age who took part in a mentoring programme are analysed by thematic analysis. Our analysis reveals that (a) the young people described four “levels” of place as meaningful in different ways—their kinship homes, the local community, the country they currently inhabit, and the world and that (b) it was through the interrelationships between these levels that their described sense of belonging emerged. To counterbalance young migrants' uncertain future, social interventions are needed that can help them to meet other people and get wider social networks in order to gain a sense of belonging in the new country.

Young migrants defined as ‘unaccompanied’ tend to be constructed as a homogeneous group with specific vulnerabilities and strengths in social work practice. ‘Unaccompanied’ young migrants placed in kinship care in Sweden are constructed with further vulnerabilities. Such constructions of these young people and their situations may have consequences for how social support for them is designed. The aim of this study is to explore how the social workers employed at a non-governmental organisation mentoring programme construct young migrants’ situations in kinship care in a Swedish suburb, and if and how these constructions change during the course of the programme. Methods used are semi-structured interviews with the social workers at the youth centre where the mentoring work takes place and analysis of the non-governmental organisation’s policy documents. The results consist of three constructions of situations the young people are in: (1) loneliness and (a lack of) support in the kinship homes; (2) alienation in the local neighbourhood and the kinship home and (3) social, cultural and family contexts creating a sense of safety. The results show variation in how the mentors describe each situation with both vulnerabilities and strengths. This highlights a complexity in the constructions that contests the image of young migrants in kinship care as merely vulnerable. These results reveal consideration of individual differences and contexts, and are used to discuss how people’s struggles and resources can be dealt with in social work.

The aim of this article is to examine how establishment in Swedish society is interpreted and what values are considered important from the perspective of a non-governmental organisation mentoring programme, and how the non-governmental organisation’s work towards establishment among ‘unaccompanied’ young people is carried out. The results are based on analysis of the non-governmental organisation’s policy documents, conversations and semi-structured interviews with the employed mentors. Bridget Anderson’s concept of a ‘community of value’ is used to critically analyse the data. The results show how the mentoring programme supports establishment, as well as the importance of mobility within the city and of building networks and knowledge about everyday life in Swedish society, all of which highlight certain values as more important than others for establishment in Sweden. The mentoring work is intended to overcome boundaries but risks reproducing boundaries whereby the young people need to create a belonging based on an idealised notion of ‘Swedishness’.