East-Pasila Social Youth Work influence on their youth clients cultural identity

The objective of this thesis was to research the influence that youth work has on the youths cultural identity. This thesis was done in co-operation with East-Pasila Social Youth Work, which holds boy and girl group activities and the majority of the youth clients have parents of immigrant-background. The purposes of this research were to give a voice to the youths considered as ‘’immigrant-background’’ and as ‘’multicultural’’ and to initiate a conversation on those terms, and try to understand how such youths experience their cultural identity and how they identify as they are born and raised in Finland but raised in their parent(s) home culture(s). The writers of this thesis wrote it from the insider(s) point of view, as they shared similarities with the target group they researched on. To do this thesis, the writes used theories on identity, acculturation, culture, multicultural identity, third culture kid and code-switching to understand what forms a cultural identity for youths who grew up between Finnish culture and their parent(s) home culture and the writers also researched on youth work in Finland. This thesis is a qualitative research done with half- structured theme interviews. The writers held interviews with four different themes, terms, identity, boy and girl group and multicultural and representation, which helped them analyse their findings. The main findings of the thesis showed that the interviewed youths experienced challenges on how to identify culturally because of their cultural connection to the their parents home culture and Finnishness being linked to being white. East-Pasila Social Youth Work was found to be a place of common ground for the youths to develop their cultural identity. The writers of this thesis hope that professionals working with the youth would use a cultural sensitive approach and treat the youths as individuals. The writers hope to see more insiders doing research in social work and youth work