To be or not to be: invandrarungdomars tankar om grupptillhörighet, identitet och framtid.

Sweden is divided according to an ethnic boundary, which divides people in "we" and "the others", "Swedes" and "immigrants" (Ålund, 2002). We believe this is due to the fact that society categorises immigrants all the time as a homogeneous group with fixed and static qualities, resulting in a situation where you cannot represent yourself as a person. Instead you are represented on the basis of your ethnic belonging. Young immigrants often grow up under other conditions and find themselves in more vulnerable situations than Swedish youths. The purpose with this paper was to investigate young people with different ethnic backgrounds, their thoughts and feelings about their identity, group belongingness and future. We also wanted to compare if there are gender differences in the youths' answers regarding their identity, group belongingness and future prospects. We have chosen to make use of the qualitative method, where we interviewed four young men and four young women. The theory is based on the symbolic interactionism. The interviews revealed that Swedes have a more or less negative view of immigrants as a group, as well as the youths also had typical ideas about Swedes. Another fact that was brought to light was that the youths value the possibility of taking part of the better of two worlds, at the same time as this cause a feeling of indecisiveness and alienation. All of the youths believed that education is significant to access the labour market. Although many of the youths felt anxiety towards the future due to their group belongingness, they still had positive future prospects