To Örebro University

As societies face escalating inequalities, ecological crises, and the erosion of welfare systems, social work and psychology education must evolve to prepare future professionals for complex societal challenges. Despite comprehensive discrimination laws in Sweden, government policy requires only gender mainstreaming to permeate all levels of university work, allowing limited educational focus on broader social justice frameworks. This presentation explores how collaborative and participatory action research (PAR) can foster critical engagement, amplify student voices, and integrate social justice perspectives into social work and psychology education.

Drawing on a scoping review of Nordic social work curricula and focus groups with Swedish social work students, significant gaps are revealed in global, structural, and critical perspectives within professional training. While students recognize the importance of addressing systemic injustices, their education primarily emphasizes technical competencies at the expense of deeper engagement with power structures, marginalization, and intersectional inequalities. Similarly, an internal review of LGBTQI+themes in a Swedish psychology program further highlights the dominance of normative, individual-centered approaches. Importantly, students in both subjects describe feeling anxious about their limited knowledge and (in)capacity for critical reflection on the sociopolitical dimensions of mental health, identity, and well-being.

This study positions PAR as a model for fostering critical consciousness, student agency ,and collaborative, interdisciplinary knowledge production between social work and psychology students. By centering student experiences and voices, PAR bridges theory and practice, enabling students to co-create their education and critically examine their professional roles. This shift could equip future social workers and psychologists with theoretical and practical tools and strengthen their ability to challenge systemic injustices and drive transformative social change.

De flesta förknippar hedersrelaterad våld med människor med bakgrund i Mellanöstern och inte med vita män i sydstaterna i USA. Nyligen genomförde jag en omfattande internationell forskningsöversikt om heder, våld och kön tillsammans med Genussekretariatet vid Göteborgs universitet på uppdrag från regeringen. Vi undersökte vad forskning om hedersrelaterat våld har handlat om de senaste 30 åren.

This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of international research on honour-based violence, with a focus on understanding its various manifestations and causes, identifying exposed groups and uncovering gaps in research. As shown in the introduction, honour-based violence is described and conceptualised in different contexts. This, in combination with the consequences of honour-based violence, both as a lived reality and political concept, shows the necessity of this review. The review is guided by scoping review, which is used as a model to address open questions and allow exploration and clarification of concepts and definitions within the literature. This broad-based approach allows different disciplines, perspectives and understandings of honour-based violence to emerge, contributing to knowledge development, knowledge exchange and further exploration of honour-based violence. By focusing on important parts of the literature, this review provides a broad and unique overview for both researchers and policymakers.

This research review describes scientific discourses, conducted in English, in which the study object is presented in relation to honour. This represents a significant constraint, as important non-Western perspectives may have been excluded, potentially influencing the overall findings. It describes what English-speaking researchers’ study and publish with regard to honour-based violence, how they understand honour-based violence and how they explore the consequences and underlying factors of these kinds of violence. It does not answer the question: what is honour-based violence?

Socialsekreterares arbetsmiljö under ojämlikhetens villkor ger en bild av hur socialsekreterares arbetsvillkor försämrats sedan slutet av 1990-talet, samtidigt som de socioekonomiska klyftorna i Sverige har ökat. Dessa villkor skapar en konflikt mellan de egna drivkrafterna att hjälpa och förutsättningarna för att kunna göra det.

The working environment of social workers under conditions of widening inequality offers a stark illustration of how their professional circumstances have deteriorated since the late 1990s, precisely as socio‑economic disparities in Sweden have deepened. These shifting conditions generate a structural tension between practitioners’ intrinsic motivation to provide support and the increasingly constrained institutional parameters within which such support must be delivered.

In contrast to much previous research on culture of honour, this article focuses on sons and contributes theoretically and empirically to an enhanced understanding of boys. The article explores two indicators of culture of honour based on the boys’ perceptions of their parents’ expectations: 1) restrictions of marriage: not allowed to freely choose future marriage partner and 2) expectations of chastity: expected to remain chaste until marriage. The analysis is based on a quantitative survey of 15-year-olds in metropolitan Sweden. While both indicators are found to identify boys with attitudes and experiences relatable to honour (ancestry from regions with culture of honour, more strongly religious parents with less social and economic resources, experiences of restrictions and violence), they differ from each other. Expectations of chastity identify boys with more religious parents, fewer restrictions, less violence, and associating sex with marriage, while restrictions regarding marriage identify boys with relatively less religious parents, more experiences of restrictions and violence. These differences are discussed as different ways of practicing culture of honour, where expectations of chastity stress age-hierarchical structures relatively more, and restrictions regarding marriage instead stress patriarchal structures more.

Summary: It is widely accepted that honor-based violence is a lived reality and a serious problem. However, honor-based violence is also a contested academic and political field, characterized by a polarized debate about whether or not the violence comprises stereotyping images of immigrants. This article asks how honor-based violence can be understood in light of this polarization, and what consequences it may have for clients and social workers. It is based on interview data with 235 adults with either professional (n = 199) or personal experiences (n = 36) of honor-based violence in Sweden. The data has been thematically coded and analyzed using the concepts of culturalization and intersectionality.

Findings: Honor-based violence is simultaneously a lived reality and teeming with stereotypes that are constructed by culturalizing images of nation, gender, age, religion, and sexuality. These stereotypes constitute forms of violence themselves and decrease clients’ trust in society and its institutions. Hence, the stereotypes become obstacles to social workers’ capacity to support those exposed to violence. At a general level, the stereotypes contribute to retaining the exposed in violence. In contrast, intersectional approaches to understanding honor-based violence have the potential to capture clients’ self-perceived and complex formulations of the causes of, and the character of, their situation, and thus increase the possibilities for adequate support.

Applications: The article's findings can support social workers’ understanding of the complexity of honor-based violence and strengthen their possibilities and capacities to develop antiracist and nonviolent communicative practices and, thus, acknowledge clients’ varying experiences and individual needs.

Child participation and agency are vital elements in child protection. Ensuring child participation can contribute to successful interventions. Social workers are often the central agents in ensuring that children participate in matters concerning them and that the best interest of the child principle is adhered to in these matters. The aim of this study is thus to understand if and how social work education in South Africa and Sweden teaches child participation in child protection work. We study curricula for social work programmes in three South African and two Swedish universities. Results indicate broad themes of similar content in curricula in both countries and both indicate gaps in terms of in-depth training in child protection, as well as children to a very low degree are regarded as agents. Students are not explicitly trained to encourage child participation. Further research can show whether and how such knowledge is developed in practice and how the social work programmes can prepare the students for such development. If social workers should be able to promote child participation, regard them as active agents and support them in developing resilience, they need to have that perspective in their fundamental training.