Mentoring for Integration: "If I can do it, so can you". A study on Nightingale Malmö

Students from Malmö University (mentors) and school pupils from 8 to 12 years old (mentees) participate each year in the Nightingale Malmö mentoring programme. Using Bourdieu’s sociological perspective, this thesis aims at examining how Nightingale mentoring may strengthen the mentors’ and mentees’ social and cultural capitals. Plus, with the concepts of social and system integration, this thesis aims at examining how mentoring can integrate both mentors and mentees. To this end, the empirical data from eight mentors’ interviews and their monthly reports has been combined with observations and conversations with Nightingale staff members. The results show that mentoring has facilitated mentors’ integration into the labour market to a significant degree. Mentoring enhances a form of social integration for mentees and system integration for mentors. Concerning social capital, eight out of eight mentees’ self-confidence (display of social capital) appears to have increased through mentoring. Mentors’ and mentees’ cultural capitals — linguistic capital, know-how, and knowledge — have been exchanged and strengthened