Rasistiska praktiker i det sociala arbetet - och dess påverkan på kvinnor med invandrarstatus

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how social workers experience and understand subjects such as racism, discrimination, and similar attitudes that can exist in institutions of social work. We also want to bring to light how “race”/ethnicity, gender and class are related to uneven access to Swedish welfare. Our main questions aim to examine how structural and institutional racism forms social workers daily practices and how this in turn affects “immigrant” women. With a qualitative method based on four deep interviews we want to capture a deeper understanding of the social workers’ experiences and understandings of racism. Our theoretical framework is based on postcolonial feminist and intersectional perspectives. We focus on terms like racialization, processes of “othering” and different forms of racism such as structural/institutional, cultural, and personal/individual racism. Our main results show that racism is apparent in several different ways in the institutions of social work. “Immigrant” women are perceived through stereotypical prejudices and representations. The interviewees believe that the consequences of the existing prejudices in their workplaces are that these women feel they are not seen for who they are, and also that it affects assessments for getting welfare aid. Our main conclusions are that our results show how structural/institutional racism can interact with cultural and personal racism to allow social workers, as well as cause them to, act in racist ways without being aware of this. In having this focus we want to demonstrate how racist structures are reproduced and how they intersect with other oppressive structures. Making this correlation visible enables possibilities for stopping the reproduction of these structures, allowing people to create new anti-oppressive and anti-racist ways in their work and daily practice