En Bättre Människa : En normkritisk studie av föreställningar om kön och sexualitet i berättelsen om normbrytande ungdom

This study aims to make out, which notions and ideas about gender and sexuality that comes into expression in the description of the deviant youth. This study is a narrative analysis, based on a queer theoretical approach. The queer theory directs attention to the normative frameworks on gender and sexuality. Queer theory also illustrates the relationship between the normative and what is considered abnormal/deviant. The study's empirical basis is 8 legal texts, legal documents formed in a Swedish context, which include the welfare state´s judiciary and social services. The legal documents are concerning the social services care of deviant youth, based on the law that gives them right to force care and treatment on anti-social youth. The study aims to examine the legal documents from a narrative analysis; in the way the story of the young is portrayed and what type of norms about gender and sexuality that emerges from that story. The study’s result, although based on a content of 8 legal texts, is a finding of a one-sided story about the antisocial youth, depending on the youth´s gender. These findings are portrayed in what the study entitles: The damaged girl and The dangerous boy. These categories are used to illustrate in what way the social welfare system and judiciary constructs the way boys and girls may differ from the norm standards about gender and sexuality. The standard-setting institutions tend to retain the description of the young, despite the youngster's counter-stories, in which the young states their awareness of their normative violations. In conclusion the social welfare system and the judiciary, has the authority to construct the story about the deviant youth; a story that is constructed to legitimize the social institutions intervention in the care of antisocial youth