Symbolic Interaction, Power, and War: Narratives of Unaccompanied Young Refugees with War Experiences in Institutional Care in Sweden

Goran Basic
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Goran Basic: Department of Pedagogy and Learning, Faculty of Social Sciences, Linnaeus University, 351 95 Växjö, Sweden

Societies, 2022, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: This study concerns young people who have experienced war, taken shelter in Sweden, and been placed in institutions. The purpose of the study is to identify and analyze power relations that contribute to the shaping of young people’s identities and repertoires of action via stigmatizations and social comparisons with different reference groups. The study’s empirical material includes qualitatively oriented interviews with six young people from Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan who have experienced war, followed by placement in institutional care in Sweden. Analytical findings with the following themes are presented: (1) concrete—physical exercise of power, (2) blackmail as an exercise of power, and (3) anonymous—bureaucratized exercise of power. The study demonstrates that narratives about war, escaping war, and postwar life in Sweden, constructing and reconstructing an image of a series of interactive rituals that are both influenced by and influence the power dynamic between the actors. This relationship, in turn, creates and recreates an interplay among the stigmatizing experiences of the youths, their social comparisons, and definitions of inequality.

Keywords: symbolic interaction; ethnomethodology; social construction; interactive ritual; social comparison; humiliated self; stigma; disruptive peaceful interaction; disruptive non-power-based interaction; interaction involving wartime exercise of power; social pedagogical recognition; loss of identity; mortification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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