Faderskap i ett nytt land. En kvalitativ studie om förändrade förutsättningar för faderskap

This thesis focuses on immigrant fathers and the specific situation they face arriving in Sweden. The purpose of this study is to examine various systemic obstacles and eventual possibilities these fathers may encounter in the new country and how they affect their fatherhood. The paper is based on four interviews, with three men and one woman, who work with immigrant fathers partly in parenting educational programs. The informants’ professional background varies. Two of them work within the medical services, one of them works within the social services and one is an educated COPE (a parental educational program) group leader. The study is based on information achieved from these professionals and previous research that has been published in this area. The results of the study have been categorized into four main themes that have been discussed throughout the thesis. These include the changing of fathering roles as a result of structural barriers such as unemployment and segregation. Many immigrant fathers feel that they loose their traditional role of a father as breadwinner and head of the family. In my ambition to understand this phenomenon I have used social constructivist theories. These theories point out that the meaning assigned to fatherhood is socially and culturally constructed. A second theme is about the fear that their children will be taken away from them that many immigrant fathers experience. These feelings are also explained by structural barriers such as segregation. The loss of meaningful encounters between immigrant fathers and native Swedish fathers result in distances between different groups of people which might lead to stereotypic images of each other. The loss of encounters between different groups of people is a third theme that has been discussed in this thesis