From vulnerable to criminal A discourse analysis of unaccompanied children in Swedish newspaper editorials 2015/2016

Abstract

This master’s thesis in gender studies seeks to critically analyze and problematize the general discourse on so called unaccompanied children in the Swedish context, as it was represented in newspaper editorials during six months between the years 2015 and 2016. The epistemological standpoint of the thesis is a social constructionist one, in which reality is created and recreated in language and discourse. This standpoint is combined with a theoretical framework of theories on different kinds of Othering and the method of Foucauldian discourse analysis in order to reach the aim. The aim of the thesis is to show how processes of power/knowledge in discourse (re)produce knowledge and assumptions that are laden with stereotypical preconceptions about the Other. The interaction of assumptions about power structures such as race, gender and age leads to the representation and understanding of unaccompanied children as in every way other to the nation state Sweden and the Swedish population, and as in essence a problem that requires measures of institutionalized control. The thesis find that the othering within discourse additionally form very limited subject positions for unaccompanied children. Not only do the findings of the thesis show that unaccompanied children are not recognized as children, they are predominantly represented to be and understood as culturally other men (rather than boys) and as a threat to the imagined community that is the nation state Sweden.