Social Work, Young Migrants and the Act of Listening

Becoming an Unaccompanied Child

Marcus Herz, Philip Lalander

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367543419
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000342642
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is about 20 young unaccompanied refugees who have sought refuge in Europe and how they experience and try to navigate their new situations, including their contacts with social workers, friends and family members left behind.

The book contains stories of powerlessness and frustration from being held under suspicion, from meeting authorities and abstract people of power from "the system," or from constantly being categorized in a static category of "the unaccompanied child." It contains stories of human meetings characterized by thoughtfulness, reciprocity and listening. This book also explores the experiences of meeting social workers as a young migrant in Sweden. The narratives depict how social workers can often reproduce powerlessness and frustration among the young people, but also how there are those social workers who provide something else through the act of listening. By extension, this is a book about society, about how important it can be to reframe people and to listen to their stories, needs and wills.

Demonstrating the importance of listening to the stories of young refuges, this title will appeal to students, researchers, community workers and social workers interested in migration, race and ethnicity, youth studies, social work, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy and health.

1 Malmö Central Station is filled with life

“You are doing this for us”

Tell Philip that: I’m not doing this for you, you are doing this for us –

Farid, May 2015

In recent years, there has been a strong focus on young migrants in both the mainstream media and political debate in Sweden and the whole of Europe.

This is particularly true of those who arrive without guardians – a group that has come to be called “unaccompanied minors.” Farid is one of many who have fled from Asia without their family, moving through Europe and finally arriving in Sweden after a long and difficult journey with many stops.

At this point, he has been in Sweden for approximately four years and now has permanent residence status. Like many others whom we have met in the context of our long-running research project on the everyday life of unaccompanied minors, Farid is well aware that he belongs to a category about which a lot is being said: a category that is the subject of many – frequently negative or hostile – opinions. He knows that he and others with similar backgrounds as refugees to Europe are often described in stereotypical terms, and that their complexity as human beings is reduced to a small number of qualities that render them “the Others” (see Hall 1997).

Our project started in earnest in February 2015. Farid was one of 20 people we followed via monthly interviews, conversations and social activities over a two-year period. When Marcus met Farid at a café for the first time in May 2015, they talked about, among other things, why he wanted to participate in the research project on which this book is based. His reason – wanting to be heard – does not differ significantly from the reasons stated by many other participants in the study. They want to tell us about something else, more complex and closer to reality, than the often stereotypical portrayals seen in the media and other contexts. They want their stories to be heard.

Before the end of the conversation at the café, Farid emphasized that his participation is not about us and our research project; rather, our project is about him and other young people in the same situation who just need to be listened to. It is about something bigger than a research project. We, like Farid, hope our project may be able to help people. It is our strong ambition to listen to people’s narratives. Through repeated narratives, a trusting relationship is created, enabling us to understand both people’s individual life paths in time and space and the social and structural contexts that limit and facilitate these paths (Gubrium and Holstein 2009). In that sense, narratives or stories are not limited to the individual who shapes words into sentences and who lets the sentences gain volume and reach another person. They also provide important clues to understanding larger contexts.

This book is about the state of society in Sweden, Europe and, in a certain sense, the world. The young people’s stories make this state visible. The book responds to the question of how people who come “from the outside” are treated by Swedish society, including the welfare system and the nation-state. Stereotyping is an important part of this treatment: the words and images that are created and combined in these processes, as well as the emotions that are built up and aimed at the young people who are called unaccompanied and how they take in and handle all of this (cf. Ahmed 2006). What do “residents” do with the new arrivals, with people who are compelled to seek help? Farid’s and our desire is to create different images of those people who are exposed to the violence of stereotyping when they are held captive in the categories “unaccompanied” and “refugee.” Bridget Anderson writes “Terms like ‘asylum seeker’ are not simply descriptive of legal status, that is, formal membership, but they are value laden and negative” (2013, 4). Thus, words and categories are far from innocent in the production of differences between people. They instead help to distinguish between what is considered “dangerous” or “harmless,” “healthy” or “sick,” as well as between what is thought to “belong” or “not belong.” In this way, they can help in controlling people (Foucault 1975/1995; cf. Rose 1999) and ultimately in exercising symbolic violence (Žižek 2008). We are particularly interested in how young people experience and navigate their daily lives, but also in how everyday life is created, limited and made possible.

We need words and stories other than those that are predominant and popular in the media and politics during certain periods in order to avoid becoming an “unconscious minion of power” (Widerberg 1995, 11 [our translation]). By creating new words, a text can help appeal to thoughts and emotions different from those prevailing during a certain period. In this effort, we are inspired by Sara Ahmed, who has found new words and word combinations, allowing her to see and approach phenomena in a different way than is possible with taken-for-granted language usage. In Ahmed’s voice, for example, the phrase “migration policy” becomes “the politics of movement” (2007, 162). In this context, it is important to point out that rewording is not necessarily for the good: it can also be used to discredit or diminish. The term “anchor child,” which is discussed in Chapter 7, “‘The unaccompanied’ as a potential threat,” is one such example of a rewording that is used to discredit young asylum seekers and their parents. To avoid this, we must understand the concepts, categories and descriptions we use not as things that define a priori, but as reference points within the framework of specific social situations (cf. Oswell 2008). Reference points can be used strategically, reflexively and for specific purposes (Herz 2016a; cf. Kaul 2002; Spivak 1988). It is our hope is that the above reasoning will enable a critical examination of our own words and interpretive points of departure as well.

The message conveyed by Farid in the few words “I don’t do this for you, you do this for us” causes listening and ethical responsibility to become one and the same. It becomes our responsibility to hold in trust and convey people’s stories. In this sense, our research is in part different from mere data collection and analysis. It obliges us to assume the responsibility of listening, especially to people who are rarely given the chance to speak and who are often misunderstood (see Back 2007). We take this responsibility very seriously. In the next section, we want to describe rather briefly the context in which the project took place, in which the view of those who are called “the unaccompanied” was polarized in the form of strong solidarity stretching beyond national borders, on the one hand, and hostility probably stemming from a strong fear of those who are “approaching from the outside,” on the other (see Ahmed 2011: 74ff).

This polarization and change of course in migration policy could not have been anticipated in 2014, the year we were granted research funding. At present, a while after that highly dramatic period, we feel that we – through our strong involvement with Farid and others we have been in contact with and got to know – served as contemporary witnesses. Every day we looked out the window of our workplace in a building overlooking Malmö Central Station.¹ There, we saw all the people moving around, fleeing from their countries of origin. The station was filled with people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Somalia – the same countries once left by the individuals we have come to know during the present study.

“My Europe does not build walls”

When Marcus met Farid in the spring of 2015, about 1000 unaccompanied young migrants had arrived in Sweden that year. For example, between 2007 and 2013, 1200–3800 children applied for asylum in Sweden annually. Sweden was one of the European countries that most unaccompanied minors chose to come to during this period. In 2014, the number increased slightly, reaching approximately 7000 children. But the really big increase took place in the fall of 2015 (Migrationsverket 2018a).

That was when Malmö Central Station was transformed into a gathering place for people who had fled their homes, people looking for a country that wanted to receive them and where they could be safe and build their futures. The Central Station stood out as a living document of the time, a symbolic place in the sense that so many got off the train at this location for the first time in Sweden, and that the migration and border policy landscape at that time looked very different compared to the one that would soon emerge. If we could recall this time of great vulnerability and searching for somewhere safe, we would hear any number of stories about grievable people – people who, through the public debate and political decisions, would soon be transformed into ungrievable objects or threatening strangers who had penetrated “Swedish” territory.

Volunteers gathered and mobilized solidarity movements and humanitarian actions across all kinds of borders. Actors such as Kontrapunkt, Refugees Welcome, No One is Illegal, Church of Sweden and a great number of other organizations and civil society groups made major humanitarian and solidarity efforts during this period. They gave out food and clothing, and feelings of human dignity, solidarity and grievability. Those who arrived were greeted by posters bearing the text Refugees Welcome surrounded by hearts, which could be seen in several cities across Europe at this time. Refugees Welcome and similar organizations increased their number of volunteers drastically. In this way, the central station had become a symbol of solidarity that stretched across national as well as supranational borders.

At the beginning of the study, we could clearly see people’s great commitment to supporting and helping the young people who were applying for asylum in Sweden. At the same time, it was becoming apparent that the war in Syria, among other things, would force a large number of people to flee in 2015, and that some of those would come to Sweden. Therefore, Sweden’s then prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party, gave a speech in 2014 in which he encouraged the Swedish people to “open their hearts.” There are differing opinions as to the actual result of the speech: whether it led to more commitment to people on the run or whether many moderates instead turned to the Swedish Democrats, a party on the far-right with roots in the Swedish extreme right (Fekete 2018). Regardless of its ultimate contribution, the speech symbolized the great popular commitment that existed at this time. It was a different era of migration policies than the one that would soon develop, with tightened borders that were more difficult to cross.

One particularly memorable event occurred during this period. It was a photograph of a little boy who had drowned fleeing the Syrian war in September 2015. The photograph was widely disseminated and, on its own, came to change public opinion in Sweden, at least temporarily. Studies assessing attitudes before and after this event suggest that Swedes’ attitudes toward refugee reception suddenly became more positive and that more people started getting involved and donating money (TT 2016). The image of the little boy’s dead body on the shore humanized refugees. For many people, the “refugee,” especially the “refugee child,” became grievable (Butler 2016). This reminder of humanity and the recognition of a small child on a Mediterranean beach – a child who could perhaps have been your own – caused more people to go to Malmö Central Station to offer their support. In combination with the large number of refugees who came to Sweden during this period, and with the parallel fear that was produced and created, this example demonstrates the complex tangle of emotions and ambivalence that characterized this period (cf. Ahmed 2006).

Three days after the small child’s death, the Social Democrat prime minister, Stefan Löfvén, who had succeeded Reinfeld, held a speech intended to demonstrate his and the Social Democrats’ grief and solidarity. Among other things, he said “My Europe does not build walls. We help in times of great distress.” However, it did not take long for this attitude to change radically. September and October of 2015 beat the record for the number of asylum seekers. In total, 35,369 children came to Sweden in 2015 (Swedish Migration Board 2018). This high number led to even greater public attention, and, if possible, even more media and political focus being directed at the young “unaccompanied” people. Owing to the high number, the rhetoric could now, with greater legitimacy, include expressions such as “wave of refugees” and “refugee crisis.” This rhetoric was based on and reinforced by fear, but it also included an expectation that people would come together to parry that fear, acting together to repel the threat. According to Ahmed (2004, 124), “the narrative of asylum seekers ‘swamping’ the nat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Malmö Central Station is filled with life
• Chapter 2: Those who come from the outside
• Chapter 3: Landing, traveling and being stopped
• Chapter 4: Dancing alone or together
• Chapter 5: Trying to maintain proximity at a distance
• Chapter 6: Planning for and getting to the future
• Chapter 7: “The unaccompanied” as a potential threat
• Chapter 8: Social work and the creation of distance
• Chapter 9: From framing to reframing in encounters with “unaccompanied” minors
• Conclusion: Between recognition and unrecognition
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index