This book is about 20 young unaccompanied refugees who have sought
refuge in Europe and how they experience and try to navigate their new
situations, including their contacts with social workers, friends and
family members left behind.
The book contains stories of powerlessness and frustration from being
held under suspicion, from meeting authorities and abstract people of
power from "the system," or from constantly being categorized in a
static category of "the unaccompanied child." It contains stories of
human meetings characterized by thoughtfulness, reciprocity and
listening. This book also explores the experiences of meeting social
workers as a young migrant in Sweden. The narratives depict how social
workers can often reproduce powerlessness and frustration among the
young people, but also how there are those social workers who provide
something else through the act of listening. By extension, this is a
book about society, about how important it can be to reframe people and
to listen to their stories, needs and wills.
Demonstrating the importance of listening to the stories of young
refuges, this title will appeal to students, researchers, community
workers and social workers interested in migration, race and ethnicity,
youth studies, social work, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy and
health.