Honour-related problems : Four social workers and one politician’s views on youth subject to honour-related violence and oppression

The purpose of this study was to conduct a qualitative study with a case study research design, where we studied social workers and politicians view on honor-related problems of underage girls and boys in the age 13-17. We need knowledge about honor related violence and oppression in the political community and social services to work with honor-related problems. Political decisions affect how social work is developed around the honor problem; therefore, it is also important to highlight this direction for the work. It requires a knowledge complement of honor-related problems not to risk exposing the child to further risk from the family (Hedersförtryck, 2009). This is to live up to, for example the law of Social Services, school law and Human Rights (Hussein & Kinuka-Svedberg, 2010). We conducted semi-structured interviews with two social workers, a social worker at the women's shelter, a women's safety coordinator and a chairman of the Social Welfare Committee in the selected commune. When we analyzed the results, we made a hermeneutic analysis with interpretation from an intersectional perspective based in postmodern feminist theory. The result that we have reached as regards the design of the work with honor-related problem is that it is highly influenced by the decisions of women's safety coordinator and politicians. The respondents mentioned the concepts controlling, limiting young people, married off by the family, and that they have little autonomy. Also the patriarchal family pyramid was raised in the definition and that there may be integration problems as a result of the norm-breaking lifestyle that comes with their own culture. The viewpoints which the respondents had on the honor problem we have seen influence how they wish to work. They said that they wanted to educate and inform the newly arrived adults who immigrate to the country, about Swedish laws and regulations. Social workers said that in time they have learned to apply the youth perspective as much as the family perspective which is more than they did before when they rather applied more of a youth perspective