Librarians views on public libraries as a place for integration of newly arrived children and young people : An interview study

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to develop new knowledge of how librarians view the public library as a place for integration of immigrant children and young people. Five librarians, from five different libraries were interviewed. The results were analysed through the theoretical framework ”The four spaces” developed by Jochumsen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Skot-Hansen (2012). The result of the study shows that librarians believe that public libraries in many ways can enable integration for newly arrived children and young people. The main difficulties for the libraries is to reach out and promote themselves to the target group. Public libraries can enable integration by serving as a meeting place and a safe place where newly arrived children and young people can come and meet other people and library staff. By offering different types of group activities, integration can be achieved as well as working relationship creation. According to the librarians, public libraries can contribute to integration by offering its users different types of language development activities. Promoting reading is one of the most important missions libraries have towards the target group. The ambition of libraries is, for example, to offer reading sessions in the children’s mother tongue and programs in easy Swedish language. Libraries can assist the newly arrived children and young people with literature and other media in different languages. Making this available is important to contribute to integration