Kultur - hinder och möjlighet : En studie om ensamkommande flyktingbarns möte med en ny kultur

The aim with this essay was that on the basis of the care staff’s interpretations study how the unaccompanied refugee children consider cultural differences in the Swedish society and how it influenced the children. The study was carried out through six qualitative interviews with care workers at a municipal group accommodation for unaccompanied refugee children in the south of Sweden. The individual interviews were semi-structured and built on a list of questions with different subjects that were linked to the aim and question formulation for the essay. The analysis was carried out from Lazarus theory about coping and Antonovsky’s theory about “SOC”, sense of coherence, with focus on the three components, comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. In the conclusion it showed that the unaccompanied refugee children initially considered a lot to be difficult to understand, when meeting with the Swedish culture. Simultaneously they also considered that it meant many possibilities for them. The care staff became an important resource for the children to help them to understand and to manage the meeting with the culture differences, but also in order to motivate them furthermore. The curiosity, motivation and commitment of the children helped them furthermore to adopt a lot of the new culture, simultaneously as they also held on to a lot of their native country's culture.