Etnifierad övervakning och social kontroll på ungdomsvårdsinstitutioner

Abstract

In an evaluation of a juvenile-care project sponsored by the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care, ethnicity was identified as an important factor in treatment, staff practices, and relationships between juveniles. This study examined ethnic monitoring and social control in 15 Swedish juvenile institutions. I analysed notes from interviews and field observations. Discriminatory behaviours and practices were described or made evident by juveniles with non-Swedish ethnicities. In specific examples, a juvenile’s ethnicity was highlighted by drawing attention to the staff’s monitoring and control practices. These examples elucidated the victimhood that non-Swedish juveniles experienced in relation to the staff and/or Swedish juveniles. Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1993) described ethnicity as an ongoing relationship-building process between participants. The present study showed that the ’establishment’ of ethnicity was intimately associated with juvenile descriptions of discrimination and their moral criticism of juvenile care practices. When juveniles of non-Swedish ethnicity described institutional ethnic monitoring and social control, they generally distanced themselves from staff behaviour and portrayed a victim identity. In constructing their identity, juveniles sometimes used their ethnic background rhetorically when describing everyday situations in the institution. The juveniles portrayed a humiliated self through dissociation from the staff and through the perception that they were treated differently than Swedish juveniles.