| Popis: |
Municipalities in Sweden have had severe difficulties with providing housing for newly arrived immigrants that have been granted permanent or temporary residency in Sweden. There is a shortage of affordable apartments and houses in Sweden, due to multiple reasons. The purpose of this essay was to study social workers’ experiences and perceptions of the housing situation for newly arrived immigrants and the tools and strategies they possess to affect the housing situation. The empirical data has been gathered through semi-structured interviews with seven social workers in three municipalities in Sweden. Our result shows that social workers in this sector have to deal with a wide range of emotions, such as stress, frustration, anger and joy. Furthermore, the result proved that current housing policies are not working in favour of newly arrived immigrants. The social workers interviewed in the study experienced that newly arrived immigrants had very limited possibilities to retain a place to reside in Sweden. We have analyzed our findings through the theoretical concepts of social capital and empowerment, and found that a person’s social capital has a large impact on his or hers housing situation. As a conclusion, we feel that further research about newly arrived immigrants and housing is needed so that unacceptable living conditions for newly arrived immigrants as well as stress and frustration for the people in this line of work can be avoided. |
