Moses Deyegbe Kuvoame
Moses Deyegbe Kuvoame
In Search of Care
How marginalised street-involved Black and minority ethnic youths tackle
the psychoaffective injuries of multiple and prolonged marginality in a White
workfare state
Moses Deyegbe Kuvoame
In Search of Care
How marginalised street-involved Black and minority ethnic
youths tackle the psychoaffective injuries of multiple and
prolonged marginality in a White workfare state
In Search of Care
Dissertation for the Degree of PhD 2015
Faculty of Law
2015
ISSN 1890-2375/ Nr. 87
Faculty of Law
2015
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(Criminology without the tools to grasp the significance of the internal and emotional
worlds of individuals has reached a dead end” (Jones 2008: xi).
…“tears and sighs” are likely to exist under young Black males’ hypermasculine
facades; yet, sadly, those signs of hypervulnerability are often overlooked, minimized,
or misinterpreted by the general public, as evidenced by the persistence of negative
stereotypes that dismiss the vulnerable aspects these youth may possess. By
appreciating how these boys may have feelings and reactions that run contrary to
popular assumptions about them, it seems likely that the public may learn to view
these boys with greater accuracy and less bias if they accept the possibility that they
may simultaneously act in both hypermasculine and hypervulnerable ways” (Cassidy
& Stevenson Jr. 2005: 70).
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior – Viktor E. Frankl,
Man’s Search for Meaning.
Acknowledgements
As a cooperative effort, scholarship assumes an even more important political, ethical
and moral dimension when it involves the voices of the disenfranchised and downtrodden in
society regarding their lived experiences and who they really are.
My heartfelt gratitude goes to all my study participants for giving me the rare
opportunity to enter their inner psychic and emotional worlds. I thank them for trusting me
and for understanding the purpose of my study: to centre their oppressed inner voices. I
admire them for speaking out so eloquently. Your voices kept me company and goaded me on
during the writing of this thesis. I hope you will accept my sincere apologies for not
disclosing your identities as you wanted me to. I also thank all the professionals I interviewed.
The funding for this doctoral research project was provided by the Norwegian
ExtraFoundation for Health and Rehabilitation (ExtraStiftelsen) through Center for African
Mental Health Promotion and Cultural Competence (CAMPCOM). My warm gratitude goes
to the foundation for making the research project possible, and to my colleagues at
CAMPCOM.
I could not have had a better substantive supervisor than professor em. Kjersti
Ericsson. She was patient with me and gave me abundant access to her wisdom and
intellectual prowess. She also gave me the much-needed emotional and moral support during
the tragic events that occurred in course of this work Kjersti, thank you!
My adulation also goes to professor em. Michael Seltzer, my friend and second
supervisor. I am always entranced by the breadth and depth of your knowledge about the
existential conditions of oppressed social groups in society. I am inspired by your progressive
drive and intellect. Thank you again for the excellent books informed by context-driven
ethnographic fieldwork on vulnerable street-involved youths you bought for me. I found them
invaluable. Thank you, Mike, for believing in me.
To Ketil Eide, I say thank you for the many reflections we had, and for your critical
comments and invaluable suggestions. I found them very useful.
I had the privilege to carry out this research project at the Department of Criminology
and Sociology of Law amidst learned and famous colleagues whose progressive research
projects continue to impact many lives in a positive way. I draw inspiration from your critical
works. My special thanks go to Ida Nafstad for her pieces of advice. I am grateful to Turid
Eikvam for her emotional support Appreciation to Marte Rua, Thomas Mathiesen, Leif Petter
Olaussen, Frode Lyshaugen, Rune Ellefsen, Trond-Erik Welstad, Per Jørgen Ystehede,
Monica Lindbekk, Knut-Erich Papendorf and Hedda Giertsen for their kind words of
encouragement.
My unqualified gratitude goes to Kwesi Kassah. Kwesi, your kind and calming words
of encouragement were instrumental in my successful completion of this work. My heartfelt
appreciation to Ingrid Hilde Andresen, Marlon Anipa, Frank Bafy, Lilly Appoh, Rosemary
Stella Donkor, Nicholas Ahiable, Sylvester Dzokoto, Leoul Mekonen, Bridget Yerwontache
Dery, and Raphael Adorbor for their steadfast friendship
To my lovely son, Elikem, I say thank you for your love and for putting your computer
skills at my disposal. Selasie, you are a lovely and discerning daughter. I also thank my
brothers, Michael, Fred and Francis, for their love. My warmest gratitude goes to my beautiful
and beloved wife, Yayra, for her patience and loving care
I am solely responsible for any shortcomings, marginal or substantial, which may be
found in this work.
Moses Deyegbe Kuvoame.
Oslo, 20.02.2015
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Part 1 THEORY AND METHODS ..................................................10
Chapter 1.0 | Introduction................................................................................. 10
+-51<9?8. +<138+63=/.=><//>38@96@/.+8.7?6>38//.=C9?>2= &>+>/7/8>90>2/</=/+<-2:<9,6/7 98>/B>?+63=381>2/=>?.C *9?>2><+8=3>398=386+>/79./<83>C &C89:=3=90-2+:>/<= Chapter 2.0 | Representations of marginalised and street-involved Black and
minority ethnic youths...................................................................................... 21
/.3+</:</=/8>+>398=907+<138+63=/.6+-5+8.7389<3>C/>283-C9?>2=38!9<A+C &><//>38@96@/.6+-5+8.7389<3>C/>283-C9?>2=38+-+./73-</=/+<-2 /6:=//5381+7981@?68/<+,6/C9?>2= Chapter 3.0 | Researching marginalised and street-involved Black and
minority ethnic youths...................................................................................... 46
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79>398=?6>?<+6-<37389691C+8.:=C-29=9-3+6-<37389691C +=3-2?7+88//.=?62+8E=8//.=:9A/<+::<9+-2 +381E=-98-/:>9098>96913-+638=/-?<3>C 9?-+?6>98:9A/<</6+>398=+8.19@/<87/8>+63>C 98-/:>90#+>2A+C= ?6>?<+6 3=><?=>+8.8>/<<+-3+63==98+8-/ 8=>3>?>398+6%+-3=7 &>317+ ":/<+>398+63=+>398909>2/<-98-/:>= Part 2
TRAJECTORIES OF SUFFERING ......................................95
Chapter 5.0 | Four life histories from the streets.............................................. 95
/63B +7/= 63 92+7/. Chapter 6.0 | The vicious cycle of marginality and strains............................ 122
+736C</6+>/.=><+38=+8.+.@/<=3>C 9?=381D</6+>/.=><+38=+8.297/6/==8/== &-2996</6+>/.=><+38= '2/=><+38=90?8/7:69C7/8> #//<+8.=><//>=><+38= Chapter 7.0 | The psychoaffective injuries of multiple and prolonged
marginality ..................................................................................................... 168
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IN SEARCH OF CARE...................................................206
Chapter 8.0 | Seeking informal help............................................................... 206
>>3>?./=>9=//53812/6: /-3.381>9=//52/6:'2/8>/<8+698@/<=+>398 +736C+8.7+>/<8+62/6: <3/8.=+8.>2/79<+6/-9897C90>2/=><//> 977?83>C</=9?<-/= Chapter 9.0 | Seeking formal Care and Help ................................................. 221
8-+</90>2/236.)/60+</&/<@3-/)& 8-+</90>2/!9<A/13+8+,9?<+8.)/60+</&/<@3-/!+@ &//5381#<37+<C/+6>2+</ (=/90</1?6+</8/<+6#<+->3>398/<<# B:/<3/8-/=A3>2-+=?+6>C-6383-= 98>+->A3>27/8>+62/+6>2=/<@3-/= B:/<3/8-/=A3>2.<?1></+>7/8> Chapter 10 | Contact with municipal youth services...................................... 270
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References..........................................................................................307
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The main theme taken up in this thesis is how marginalised and street-involved Black and
minority ethnic youths (hereafter BME youths) in Oslo tackle the everyday existential strains,
stresses and emotional pains of multiple and prolonged marginality. How these
disenfranchised youths feel about their precarious life conditions, their efforts in seeking
informal and formal social supports in order to go ahead in life, and the factors that may
influence such efforts are described and analysed. In centring their voices regarding their
efforts to go ahead in life, I transcend their compensatory antisocial public behaviour or selfdestructive street agency that has preoccupied many researchers. Instead, they are portrayed
as active and virtuosic social agents who struggle through thick and thin in order to satisfy the
basic human social, emotional and psychic needs they share with the rest of humanity.
Following Snell, help-seeking is conceptualised as “those actions aimed at problem solving
through requesting advice and/or material and emotional assistance from formal and informal
resources” (Snell 1995: 2). Informal sources of help include the family, friends, priests and
acquaintances while formal sources of help include the social, welfare and health services, the
police, lawyers etc. As an adjunct to the help-seeking behaviours of these youths, the views of
professional service providers regarding work with them and the factors these professionals
consider as impinging on their work with these vulnerable youths are described and analysed.
)+3/:7=6,
In recent years, social and youth workers as well as other professionals in the field of youth
crime and drug abuse prevention in Oslo have registered an increasing use of the city center
by marginalised BME youths as their main recreational arena. Some of these youths frequent
open spaces in downtown Oslo that are organised around the sale and use of illicit drugs and
other criminal activities. During the summer of 2007, the Youth Outreach Agency
(Uteseksjonen) of the then Alcohol and Drug Addiction Service (Rusmiddeletaten) in Oslo
registered, for the first time, a preponderance of BME youths in the then two largest street
drug markets in Oslo called “Plata” and “Akerselva” or The Aker River (Aftenposten
19.6.2008). The number of marginalised BME youths aged 17-25 who frequented the open
street drug markets at Akerselva increased from about 20-25 in 2003 to about 50-60 in 2005
(Kuvoame 2005). During the summer of 2006, the Youth Outreach Agency registered 100
new BME youths aged 17-24 in this street drug market (Klassekampen 25.11. 2006). The
open street drug scenes around Akerselva have undergone important changes since 2007 due
to the onset of drug dealing by asylum seekers and other undocumented persons without any
prior ties to Norway. Moreover, intensified police and private security activities in the area
since the summer of 2008 have led to a considerable reduction in drug dealing at open street
drug markets along the river and its immediate vicinity and the number of BME youths who
frequent these drug scenes. However, many marginalised BME youths with ties to Norway
still frequent these open street drug markets. Majority of my study participants participated in
these open street drug markets in one way or the other.
It is important to point out at the outset that marginalised street-involved BME youths who
frequent open street drug markets in downtown Oslo are not representative of the general
BME youth population in Oslo or Norway. Studies in Norway have shown that BME youths
have a considerably lower use of all types of illegal drugs than ethnic majority or white
youths. BME youths tend to have more restrictive attitudes to illegal drugs and a smaller
number of them use illegal drugs than majority ethnic youths. However, a small group of
marginalised and vulnerable BME youths has use patterns similar to other youths, especially
in relation to hard drugs (Øia 2001, Schultz 2007, and Bergengen & Larsen 2008).
Observations made in the field indicate that this small group may be expanding.
):/16)41;-,;<:--<16>74>-,)6,5=4<16--,;A7=<0;
Based on my extensive experience in the field of youth outreach work and qualitative
interviews with some of the BME youths who were key players at the street market scene at
Akerselva in Oslo in 2002, I described in an earlier work (Kuvoame 2005) the existential
situation and the indicators of marginality associated with many street-involved BME youths
in Oslo (see also Sandberg & Pedersen 2006, 2011, Nørbech & Farshbaf 2007, and Kwarteng
2008). Some of them were born, bred and grew up in Norway. Many of them came to Norway
either as unaccompanied minor asylum seekers/refugees or through family reunification. They
share the aspirations, hopes, dreams and conventional cultural values, identity markers or
status symbols typical of other youths in modern consumerist societies. Most of them have
resources and talents and would like to cultivate their human potential and harvest it to the
fullest, live a normal life and make less traumatic transitions to adulthood in Norway. They do
not constitute a homogeneous group in terms of nationality or social trajectory. Nevertheless,
they share certain common characteristics of marginality. As will be shown later in Chapter 5,
many find themselves at the margins of important social and institutional spheres that are
crucial for the smooth transitions of young people to adulthood in Norway. A constellation of
psychosocial and emotional needs and a deep sense of anger, resignation and resentment seem
to characterise the everyday experiences of most of them. The question therefore arises as to
how these youths tackle these challenges and what social supports or resources they marshal
in order to alleviate their existential crises?
The existing literature suggests a tense relationship between ethnic minority clients and the
Norwegian social, health and welfare services. Studies have shown that professionals within
the social, health and public services in Norway perceive work with various ethnic minority
service users as difficult and challenging and that specific discourses inform their interactions
with minority ethnic clients (see Holm 2000, Ylvisaker 2004, and Pihl 2005). This perception
was the main thrust of a study which specifically focused on the views of a national sample of
public professionals. According to a report based on this research (Bu et al. 2005), 62 % of
professionals working within labour offices, the national social insurance service and social
services (known together now as Nav) reported that they lacked the requisite competence that
they thought they needed in order to render an effective service to their ethnic minority
service users. These professionals registered their need for further training in communication,
coaching and counselling techniques, conflict management and multicultural understanding,
among others.
For many marginalised street-involved BME youths, however, the social and health services
may come to play a crucial role over a period of time, in addition to other sources of help, in
their transitions to adulthood in Norway. Social and health service providers have a crucial
role to play in this regard. In addition to the help seeking efforts of these street-involved
youths it is, therefore, necessary to unravel the views of social and health service providers
regarding work with these youths, especially how these professionals define the needs of
these youths. Understanding the views of service providers is important because, as noted by
Lien (1986), an important element in social work is the definition of clients’ need for help.
The way and manner in which the social worker conceptualises problems presented by clients
determine the kind of evaluations and decisions he or she can make in relation to the client’s
needs (Kuvoame 2005).
Moreover, social workers operate within specific organisational or institutional confines that
are dictated by laws and regulations. This often circumscribes their actions. Budgetary
constraints and management targets can also constrain social workers. As suggested by Drury
and Dennison (1999: 173), “benefit staff might sometimes find communication with young
people difficult, both because of the demands of the situation (targets, legal limits on benefits,
etc.) and perhaps because of the reactions of young people to their inability to help”. Hence,
social workers can easily be trapped between legal bureaucratic requirements and the needs of
clients (Nilsen and Qureshi 1991). Understanding how organisational and institutional
parameters impact on social and health service providers is therefore crucial in understanding
the formal social supports marginalised street-involved BME youths can marshal for
managing their lives and transitions.
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Marginalisation is characterised by disordered social relationships and may bring in its wake
deleterious social, psychological and emotional consequences for young people. If not dealt
with adequately, experiences of multidimensional marginalisation and deprivation over an
extended period of time can lead to cumulative existential crises that may in turn result in
physical, social and psychological death. The key research questions are therefore how streetinvolved BME youths feel about and tackle the psychoaffective injuries of multiple and
prolonged marginality, and what factors promote or hinder their care or help-seeking efforts?
Thus, the study on which this dissertation is based sought to explore, describe and analyse the
care or help-seeking pathways of marginalised and street-involved BME youths regarding
their aspirations and psychosocial and emotional needs, their familiarity with, attitudes to and
patterns of utilisation of available services and other sources of assistance. As a corollary to
the key research question, the study explored how service providers viewed work with this
group of young people. The aims and objectives of the study were therefore to:
1. understand how marginalised street-involved BME youths frame their aspirations and
feel about their existential condition, and the psychosocial and emotional challenges
for which they think they need help;
2. find out whether they are likely to seek help for their psychosocial and emotional
needs and examine what factors influence their decision to seek or not to seek help;
3. find out where they go for help when they decide to seek help and what kind of help
they do seek;
4. gain insights into how they evaluate the help they are provided with in relation to their
needs;
5. examine how service providers define the needs of these youths, the main challenges
they perceive as characterising their work with them and the organisational and
institutional parameters they consider as impinging upon their work with these group
of young people;
6. outline the practice implications for improving services targeted at marginalised
street-involved BME youths, their access to these services, and for changing any
negative perceptions and attitudes about help-seeking they might harbour;
76<-@<=)41;16/ <0-;<=,A
By focusing on how marginalised street-involved BME youths feel about their existential
situation and the resources and supports they marshal in order to go ahead in life, I hope to
contribute to filling what I consider to be two main gaping holes in the literature on such
youths.
As will be shown later in the literature review, most studies on marginalised and streetinvolved BME youths and the deviant street cultures they may participate in tend to elide the
painful emotional worlds of these youths when accounting for their self-destructive
behaviours (see, however, Nightingale 1993, and Liebow 1967). There has been an excessive
‘Othering’ and essentialising focus on their risk-taking public behaviours such as criminality,
use of illegal substances and violence. Central in the literature has also been an emphasis on
what is conceptualised as their criminal dispositions, and the internalisation and articulation of
an alternative tough masculine street culture. Following Jones (2008), I argue that a
psychosocial approach that enables us to understand the psychic and emotional worlds of
these disenfranchised youths, how they try to deal with their inner emotional turmoil or needs,
and how successful they are in doing so, may help shed more light on the nihilistic behaviours
associated with many of them. Jones asserts that (Criminology without the tools to grasp the
significance of the internal and emotional worlds of individuals has reached a dead end” (Ibid:
xi). This assertion has an important relevance in relation to the disenfranchised youths who
are described in this thesis, and have important implications for policy and practical
interventions targeted at them.
Understanding the resources and social supports marginalised and street-involved BME
youths draw upon to go ahead in life is also crucial in the light of the gradual deregulation of
the welfare state and its transformation into a punitive workfare state under a neoliberal
political, economic and managerial climate. As important pillars of the Welfare State, the
social and welfare services can play an important role in promoting the social inclusion of
disadvantaged individuals and social groups in society, so that they do not become completely
excluded from the Norwegian society. This role is even more crucial in relation to young
people who experience marginalisation in the social and institutional spheres that are crucial
for their smooth transitions to adulthood in the Norwegian society.
In recent times, however, the capacity of the welfare and social services to assist
disadvantaged groups has been challenged by financial constraints and increasing demands
from the central authorities for more effective balance between costs and outcomes, at the
same time that they are being charged with new responsibilities (see Haukelien & Vike 2001,
Vike 2004, and Lislerud 2010). These financial constrains have resulted in the stipulation of
strict conditionalities for eligibility for welfare provisions, increasingly transforming welfare
into workfare and accentuating the Welfare State as a veritable field of struggles and
contestation. Djuve (2011) suggests, for example, that the activation and conditionality
principles that have characterised Norwegian social policy toward immigrants in recent times
have been underpinned by changes in the interests, ideas and discourses of powerful political
actors in the social democratic camp within the current anti-immigration climate inspired by
the right-wing Progress Party. As she suggests further, the ideology and discourses that
undergird activation and conditionality impact questions related to social citizenship, more so
when there is evidence that there is more tendency to implement activation when the target
group is foreign born.
According to Attas and De-Shalit (2004: 309), the essence of workfare is the “policy of
qualifying need-based welfare benefits on the condition of work”. White (2004) and Standing
(2011) have observed that the shift toward workfare-style policies involving greater levels of
conditionality is characteristic of many governments in the advanced capitalist world, where
eligibility for public assistance is conditional on meeting specific behavioural requirements
often related to searching and preparing for employment. Nilssen and Kildal (2009) have
examined the “New Contractualism” evident in the Norwegian social policy on poverty and
social exclusion and have concluded that the principle of a welfare contract imposes more
demands on welfare recipients and is paternalistic in that it is aimed at behaviour
modification.
This paternalistic inclination toward behaviour modification is inextricably linked to an
increasing criminalisation and punitive response to marginalised groups, especially young
people perceived as troubled or troubling. As observed by Smith (2011), there has been a
highly politicised “seismic shift” with international proportions regarding how young people
whose nonconforming behaviour are regarded as posing a ‘risk’ are dealt with by the criminal
justice system resulting in the increasing demonisation, criminalisation and incarceration of
such youths. As he notes,
…there has been a parallel increase in the determination of the ‘normal’ institutions of society
to find sure and certain means of quantifying and controlling the ‘problem’. This
preoccupation with the ‘risk’ posed by young people who do not conform with conventional
norms …has resulted in a range of highly programmatic and controlling forms of intervention
which seek to anticipate and/or prevent further manifestations of unacceptable behaviour.
(Smith 2011: 1).
Interventions targeted at such youths, as Smiths argues further, are “geared towards
‘responsibilisation’ and imposing change, surveillance and control from without, rather than
addressing internal patterns of thought and young people’s own constructions of self, others
and the social world; hence, the contemporary popularity of behavioural models of practice
which concentrate on changing what young people do rather than who they are” (Ibid: 2).
According to Ruck et al. (2008), youth of colour (read: BME youths) attract a
disproportionate share of the watching, the catching, and the arresting and serving time. As I
shall argue in the literature review, such excessive emphasis on the behaviours of BME
youths is inextricably linked to the excessive academic focus on the compensatory public
behaviours of such youths. By so doing, such analyses bracket the young people’s emotional
worlds and aspirations as well as their efforts to go ahead in life. However, as pointed out
earlier, the social and health services may come to play a crucial role over a period of time in
helping street-involved BME youths to cope with their life situations and transitions to
adulthood in Norway. It is, therefore, important to examine the care and social supports
available for them and the opportunities that exist for their social inclusion under the present
conservative and neoliberal political and economic climate. There is a dearth of literature on
the care and help-seeking efforts of this group of young people. This study may, therefore,
contribute to filling this gab.
It is important to point out at the outset that the study reported here was predicated on the
wider view that the need for sociability or to belong is fundamental to human life and that
“social life is played out within a framework of relationships within which people seek
inclusion and belongingness” (Abrams et al. 2005: 1). The human desire for sociability and
rootedness is one of the essential human needs and human powers (Bulhan 1985). Hence, the
nature of the social relationships that young people are enmeshed in and the social supports
they can harness through these relationships have important implications for their inner-life,
self-concepts or identity development, aspirations, dreams and hopes and life chances. Such
relationships also have implications for the positive or negative choices that they can make in
their transitions to adulthood in a society experiencing rapid economic, social, political and
cultural changes due to increasing economic globalisation and international migration. It is in
this vein that the social forces and the specific social contexts that shape the choices made by
disenfranchised and street-involved BME youths become crucial in understanding their traps
of transition.
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As noted by Wyn and White (1997), as a period of transition to adulthood, youth has meaning
only in relation to the specific circumstances of social, political and economic conditions. As
suggested by them further, it is only when this is understood that it is possible to bring social
conditions into the foreground and examine the important differences that exist between
groups of young people as they engage with the processes that take them closer to adult life.
The rapid economic, social, political and cultural changes we are witnessing in contemporary
societies are impacting the choices that young people can make and the resources and
supports they can marshal for managing their lives. These changes involve the transformation
of key institutions of welfare (Cieslik & Pollock 2002) that include deregulation and roll
backs in public spending, the restructuring of the labour market, an increased demand for
educated workers, flexible specialisation in the workplace, and social policies that have
extended the period in which young people remain dependent on their families (Furlong &
Cartmel 1997).
Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990, 1991) have employed the concept of ‘risk society’ in
describing the insecurity, unpredictability and uncertainty that these major transformations in
societal institutions have brought about. They have brought about a process of
individualisation characterised by increased agency which is seen as diluting the impact of
traditional structural factors like class, race, ethnicity and gender in the lives of individuals.
The increasing strains and stresses brought about by rapid social change have increased the
sense of risk and a greater scope of agency or individualisation among young people too.
Furlong and Cartmel (1997) have observed, for example, that these changes affect young
people’s relationships with their families and friends, experiences in education and the labour
market, leisure and lifestyles and the ability of young people to become established as
independent young adults. Fauske (1996) showed, for example, that decrease in full
employment among young people makes them become dependent on other sources of income,
and limits their opportunities of making wider choices than before. Young people, however,
develop new and individualised strategies to overcome obstacles and risks that face them.
According to Spannring and Reinprecht (2002), however, individualisation does not imply
the disappearance of structural constrains. They cited research showing that the resources
needed by young people to master the risks and to use the opportunities that risk society
affords in a successful and satisfying way are not equally distributed among them. Economic
and cultural resources are still central to an understanding of differential life chances and
experiences (Furlong & Cartmel 1997) among young people. Prieur (2002) also argues that
the increasing individualisation and agentic reflexivity in late modernity that Giddens has
emphasised to a large extent applies to only a small layer of well-educated individuals and
that traditional structuring dimensions such as age, gender and class are still of great
importance in relation to the individual’s life projects and the choices he or she can make in
this regard. As she argues further, these bodily traits or attributes have socially established
meanings giving individuals little room to freely manipulate or negotiate them. Prieur’s
empirical analyses underscored, for example, how ethnicity can circumscribe an individual’s
life chances. In a similar vein, Crewe (2013) argues that in his conceptualisation of agency,
Giddens brackets any constraints that may impinge on the individual’s choices. Hence, as
noted by Wyn and White (1997), issues relating to youth identity and youth agency are
ultimately circumscribed, and contextualised, by the dominant social relations within which
young people are embedded. Raffo and Reeves (2000) have also suggested that young people
who grow up and live in disadvantaged areas of the city have borne the brunt of these changes
and have been more affected by their associated risks.
In other words, both the opportunities that young people have to participate in important
processes in risk society and go ahead in life and the specific risks of marginalisation that they
may face, as well as the social supports and resources they can marshal are influenced by the
institutional and structural contexts of their transitions and by class, age, gender, race and
ethnicity. I argue that it is equally important to understand the aspirations, beliefs, and
expectations of young people, the psychosocial and emotional consequences of their
fragmented lives and how they tackle these challenges in order to grasp fully the important
choices they make. This is especially the case with marginalised street-involved BME youths.
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The thesis is divided into three parts consisting of a total of ten chapters. In this first chapter, I
present the aims of the research project and contextualise it in terms of the gradual
deregulation of the welfare state, and the contribution I hope my study can make to future
research on marginalised street-involved Black and minority ethnic youths.
In chapter two, I describe the symbiotic relationship between media and some mainstream
academic representations of marginalised street-involved youths in terms of an excessive
focus on their compensatory anti-social public behaviours resulting in the reification and
stigmatisation of these youths. I argue that these representations feed into the dominant
Othering discourses on immigrants in Norway, and detract from our understanding of the
inner psychic and emotional worlds and needs of these vulnerable youths and who they really
are. I draw attention to the relevance of the work of Nightingale (1993) to my study. There is
a dearth of literature on the help-seeking efforts of marginalised street-involved youths. At the
end of the chapter, I review the existing literature and discuss its relevance to the study.
Chapter three is devoted to the qualitative research methods used in the study. I reflect upon
ethical, epistemological, philosophical and methodological issues related to activist research,
as well as the possibilities, challenges and dilemmas associated with researching marginalised
BME youths as a partial insider. I outline the analytical framework deployed in the thesis at
the end of the chapter.
Chapter four addresses the theoretical and conceptual framework used in relation to the data. I
describe the relevance of new insights in cultural and psychosocial criminology and of
existentially situated psychological concepts to understanding the psychic and emotional
consequences of lived experiences of ontological insecurity. I also present growing insights
on new forms of governing the social excluded, and the power relations and discourses that
unfold in interactions between state professionals and disadvantaged individuals in the neoliberal era. Other relevant concepts used in the thesis are operationalised at the end of the
chapter.
In chapter five, I present five life histories from the street to centre the voices of the study
participants and depict the indicators of marginality associated with them.
I describe into detail in chapter six the cumulative strains the study participants experience in
relation to various social and institutional arenas that are crucial for the smooth transitions of
young people to adulthood in Norway.
In chapter seven, I centre the voices of the study participants regarding the psychoaffective
injuries resulting from the vicious cycle of marginality and strains they are entrapped in and
how they try to cope with these.
I describe the study participants’ attitudes to seeking help and the informal sources of help
they marshal in order to tackle their challenges in chapter eight.
Chapters nine and ten are devoted to describing and analysing the interactions between the
study participants and key Norwegian social welfare and health services or institutions, and
how they perceive these in terms of their accessibility and the formal help they offer. I
conclude the chapter with suggestions as to how professionals can work with marginalised
street-involved Black and minority ethnic youths and help them to come to terms with the
psychic and emotional pains resulting from their experiences of multiple and prolonged
marginality.
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In this chapter, I focus on media and academic representations of marginalised and streetinvolved BME youths in Norway. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part dwells
on Norwegian media representations of antisocial behaviours associated with BME youths.
Such media representations are linked to the dominant Norwegian discourse on non-western
immigrants. The second part of the chapter charts how these youths are framed in mainstream
academic work done on them. I argue that there is a symbiotic relationship between media
and some mainstream academic representations of these youths in terms of an excessive focus
on their compensatory deviant public behaviours. The result is a reified, racialised,
esssentialised or caricatured representation of these youths which, in turn feed into a larger
hegemonic political discourse about the “Other”. I argue that the ‘Othering’ discourses that
proliferate in the representations of these youths detract from our understanding of their inner
emotional worlds, of who they really are, and of them as conscious and knowing subjects who
have aspirations and try to satisfy basic human needs we all share. As far as I know, there is a
dearth of literature on the help-seeking behaviours of marginalised and street-involved BME
youths with multidimensional needs. The third part of the chapter reviews the literature on
vulnerable youths and help-seeking.
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A7=<0; 167:?)A
Street-involved BME youths and risk behaviours like criminality, drug use and violence
associated with them have featured prominently in the Norwegian press and media over the
years. Such media coverages have tended to be overdramatised and sensational and often
represented such youths as a risk category that threatens to jettison the Norwegian social
order. According to Andersson (2006), groups of young immigrant youths aged 13 to 19 years
with African and Asian background who hanged about on the streets in downtown Oslo in the
1980s were depicted in the Norwegian media as “youth gangs” and, more importantly, as the
problem of “immigrant youth gangs”. According to her, following a gang fight at the end of
the 1980’s in which one young man lost his life (the so-called “Romsås-murder” case),
immigrant youth gangs have featured prominently in the public debate as a central problem in
Oslo. The same conclusions were drawn by Halvorsen (1998) in an analysis of how two of
the largest newspapers in Norway, VG and Aftenposten, reported criminal incidents involving
immigrants between 1984 and 1997. According to him, there have been scanty media reports
on other types of crimes associated with immigrants other than violent gang crimes since then.
From the early 1990s and well into 1999, the Norwegian media also articulated a veritable
wave of violence and mugging. Prominent in the media were criminal acts involving mostly
street-involved BME youths popularly labelled “child muggers” (barneranere). Their
criminal acts consisted in snatching money and mobile telephones from their peers, robbing
kiosks and gas stations and mugging people in the streets. According to a report prepared by
Oslo Police District (Stubberud 2000), 81 % of the 151 “child muggers” registered by the
police in 1999 had BME backgrounds and lived in Eastern suburbs of Oslo with a high
concentration of non-western immigrants. The impression created by both the serious and
tabloid press was that violent crimes and, more importantly street crimes associated with
BME youths were on the increase.
This press and media publicity triggered off a wave of hysteria among the public that resulted
in public demonstrations, heavy police presence in the streets, debates on television, and
seminars and conferences. There were strong demands from the public and the political right
for more resources to the police, reduction in the majority age, harder prison sentences,
deportation of BME youths involved in these acts, a more restrictive immigration policy and
other drastic measures in order to win back the streets. An integral part of these
representations of street-involved BME youths was the emphasis placed on their identity
crises and cultural conflict and uncaring parents who lacked command of the Norwegian
language and knowledge of how the Norwegian society functions. These themes run through
the film ‘SCHPAA’ that came out in 1998. The film, which received a huge publicity,
portrayed the everyday lives of street-involved BME youths as characterised by violence,
crime, drug trafficking, drug use, identity crises and cultural conflicts and uncaring parents.
Since 2001, the participation of marginalised street-involved BME youths aged 16-25 years in
open street drug markets at places such as “Plata”, “Eika/Akerselva”, “Vaterland”, and
“Grønland” in downtown Oslo has also attracted considerable media attention featuring
catchy headlines such as “Somali youth are lured [as drug dealers] to Oslo’s heavy drug
milieu” (Aftenposten Aften, 20.11.2001); “Young immigrants are in the majority at “Plata”
with the sub-heading “The number of young immigrant drug abusers has increased
dramatically in recent years” (Aftenposten 19.06.2003); “More and more [immigrant youths]
frequent Eika”; A young immigrant youth was reported to have sold “15,000 Norwegian
crowns [£150] worth of hashish everyday” (Aftenposten 19.07.2002). These BME youths
were depicted as “aggressive sellers” who stopped “normal” people strolling along the Aker
River and offered to sell to them hashish, heroin, amphetamine and Rohypnol. The police and
social workers were reported as worried over this development. The popular TV program
”Brennpunkt” by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) reported a network of
hitherto child muggers now selling drugs at one of the inner city schools in Oslo. School
administrators reported seizure of knives and gas pistols, and reported other problems
associated with these BME youths, such as theft, threatening behaviours, violence, and
truancy (NRK, Brennpunkt 07.12.2004).
Such bloated media representations of street-involved BME youths are in line with the general
media representations of crimes associated with non-western immigrants in Norway. In their
study on Norwegian media representations of immigrants based on content analysis of 8 large
newspapers, Linstad and Fjelstad (2005) concluded that the typical immigrant as represented
in the Norwegian media is a non-European male involved in crime or in other ways being a
burden on the Norwegian society. According to the authors, crime was the dominant theme in
media reports about immigrants and other foreigners.
It is important to emphasise here that violence and other criminal activities associated with
BME youths and other non-western immigrants are real and must be taken seriously. The
central issue is, however, how such deviant acts are overdramatised, sensationalised and
negatively represented in the media, and the hidden explanatory frameworks in which they are
often couched. Linstad and Fjelstad (2005) cited studies to the effect that media
representations of immigrants tend to be negative and negatively affect the attitudes of the
larger public to immigrants. This stems from the fact that the press and media play a crucial
role in articulating visible and destructive acts within the conventional wisdom of society
thereby sensitising the wider public to them. As Hall et al. have observed:
Problematic events breach our commonly held expectations and are therefore threatening to a
society based around the expectation of consensus, order and routine. Thus the media’s
mapping of problematic events within conventional understandings of society is crucial in two
ways. The media define for the majority of the population what significant events are taking
place, but, also, they offer powerful interpretations of how to understand these events. Implicit
in those interpretations are orientations towards the events and the people or groups involved
in them” (Hall et al. 1978: 56-57, emphasis original).
In a very important sense, therefore, both the immigrant and crime are media creations as
suggested by Johanessen (2004) because it is the media that determine how we understand the
immigrant and crime. The media amplify problematic individual events and present them as a
symptom of something much more extensive than the events themselves represent.
As
Johanessen pointed out further, how we understand something determines the way we treat it.
Moreover, minority-majority relations, especially differences in the power to define are
implicated in media representations of immigrant crime. Johanessen’s study showed how
media discourses on immigrant crimes are often couched in explanatory frameworks that
emphasise cultural differences, a failed immigration and integration policy and how
immigrants are socially constructed through this discourse as a major threat to the Norwegian
social order.
By pouring so much ink on deviant acts associated with street-involved BME youths and
offering a dominant explanatory framework that emphasises internal dispositions, gangster
street culture, norms and values and uncaring parents, such sensational media
misrepresentations objectify and stigmatise these youths as the “Other” and a threat to the
Norwegian social order. The implicit assertion in such media discourses appear to be that
there is something inherently criminal and violent about BME youths and other criminal
immigrants. This is a subjective quality that sets them apart from the ‘normal’, ‘peaceful’ and
‘law-abiding’ ethnic majority Norwegians. As suggested by Aas (2007), this perennial
distinction between the law-abiding ‘us’ and the criminal ‘them’ functions to confirm and
buttress the division between the foreigner and the national. As she argues further, “The
assumption that crimes committed by immigrants is somewhat caused by the criminogenic
traits of their cultural background, by lack of assimilation and the lack of so-called Western
values, has become a common currency of the present political and media debates” ( Ibid: 91).
The presence of the ‘Other’ signifies risk, something that is perceived as threatening the
internal social fabric of society. Popular media discourses on BME youths who present with
risk behaviours buy into these pre-existing or reified ideas about the ‘Other’ and contribute to
buttress the ‘Othering’ process. This has negative consequences for BME youths in general.
Given the enormous power to define that the media wield, these youths are powerless when it
comes to projecting a picture of themselves that are contrary to media misrepresentations of
them. As pointed out by Champagne:
When marginal or disadvantaged groups attract journalistic attention, the effects of
mediatization are far from being what these social groups could expect since the journalists in
this case have a particularly significant power of construction so that the production of the
event is almost totally out of control of the people concerned” (Champagne 1998: 49)
The caricatured images of BME youths offered by the media in turn buttress and reproduce
the prejudices and attitudes of uncritical consumers of these media misrepresentations, who
may include social and health workers, teachers, welfare bureaucrats, landlords, employers
and police officers. Such media discourses also deflect attention from the social
marginalisation processes these youths may experience and the resulting emotional pains they
may carry with them. In other words, these media discourses emphasise individual pathology
instead of the pathology of societal processes and the structural and institutional violence
these youths may experience in social arenas that are crucial for their successful transitions.
As Champagne succinctly puts it:
The spectacular acts of violence that make the headlines in the media hide the small acts of
ordinary violence that constantly affect ... the young delinquents who are also victims, since
the violence they practice is only a response to the more invisible acts of violence they are
subjected to from their early childhood, at school, in the labor market, in the sexual market,
etc.” (Ibid: 59, emphasis original).
Such media misrepresentations also obscure and undermine the young people’s individuality,
agency and virtuosity even as they struggle to go ahead in life. Moreover, this selective
emphasis on individual pathology has important policy and practical implications for
prevention strategies. Often, such media misrepresentations form the basis for commissioned
governmental reports and piecemeal interventions. Because media discourses on BME youth
violence and crime attribute the risk behaviours of these youths to their internal dispositions
and psychological and cultural maladjustment, most prevention strategies targeted at them do
not address the existential issues that confront them. As we shall see later, the emphasis is
often on behavioural modification.
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In this section, I review a number of studies in Norway that have specifically focused on
street-involved BME youths and whose main thrust has been the deviant and compensatory
public behaviours such as criminality, substance use, and violence associated with these
youths. In these studies, these youths are depicted as articulating a street or gang culture
characterised by masculine and gangster ideals of respect and honour (Lien & Halland 1998,
Næss 1999, Lien 2003, and Sandberg & Pedersen 2006, 2011). This focus distinguishes these
studies from other studies carried out on street-involved BME youths in Norway (Larsen
1992, Kuvoame 2005, Nørbech & Farshbaf 2007).
For example, the main focus of the study of Lien and Halland (1998) was the group processes
and dynamics that lead to gang formation and gang violence. This study was based on a
strategic sample of 85 street-involved majority and BME youths and showed that BME youths
were overrepresented in gang crime and violence. The authors depicted the streets of Oslo as
being under siege from a new group of BME youths characterised by blunted feelings and
emotions, and inspired by masculine gangster ideals of respect, honour, and a display of
physical strength. These youths were described as involved in massive violence and weapon
use. They spread fear, using their experiences of discrimination in the labour market and weak
attachment to the Norwegian society as a pretext for their actions. This study attracted a lot of
media publicity. In another study, (Lien 2003a, see also Lien 2003b), one of the authors
explains the violence and crimes associated with street-involved BME youths with individual
factors like poor school performance, unrealistic ambitions, expensive lifestyles, and the
impatience of these youths in the face of limited opportunities resulting in status frustrations.
Also central in her explanation is weakened informal social control from parents that emanate
from traditional feudal family structures where parents coerced their children into reciting the
Quran and how these create control problems and predisposed BME youths to violence and
crime as a symbolic expression of their rebellion. Cultural themes of shame, redeeming one’s
honour and respect, and notions such as alien cultures and feudal family structures have been
central in her explanations of how BME youths resort to crime and violence.
In her recent study of inmates in 5 prisons in Norway in which BME youths featured
prominently, Lien (2011) focused on the push and pull factors that underpin recruitment to
criminal gangs or networks, and processes within these networks that make it difficult for
participants to break with them. While she addressed push factors like childhood experiences
and critical incidents that triggered off participation in crime and violence, her main emphasis
was on the pull factors. Central in her analysis is her conceptualisation of the gang or criminal
network as an autopoeitic system with its own boundaries, communication system, norms,
rules, system of justice, techniques of neutralisation and forms of cultural capital. This
autopoeitic criminal system is imbued with an expressive, instrumental and communicative
use of violence to gain respect, status and power. It is a normative criminal structure that sets
standards and rules for expression of emotions, and often blunt emotions. Lien also focused
on the emotional and psychological problems associated with her study participants only to
relate these mainly to their participation in violence, crime and street gangs.
In a similar vein, group processes and dynamics that underpin gang formation and gang crime
and violence featured prominently in a study carried out by Næss (1999) among a sample of
street-involved BME youths in Oslo aged 14 -19 years. In this study, Næss centred the voices
of these youths regarding their violent acts and crime, weapon possession and gangster ideals
of expensive lifestyles, respect, loyalty, revenge and honour. In this work in which we are
invited to partake in a pornography of violence, we are not afforded any chance to know who
really these young BME youths were, the actual marginalisation processes they experienced
in the Norwegian society, and their inner emotional worlds and motivations.
Øia (2000, 2003) did not specifically study street-involved BME youths, though majority of
BME youths in his study reported being street-involved by using the city center as a
recreational arena. His study was based on a quantitative analysis of the Oslo Youth Survey
carried out in 1996. The Survey was based on self-reports by a school sample. The main
thrust of his study too was the asocial or antisocial behaviours like violence, substance use
and criminality associated with BME youths compared with majority ethnic youths. Øia’s
study showed that BME youths (males) were overrepresented in certain kinds of antisocial
behaviour such as serious larceny, disorderly behaviour, burglary, violence, and graffiti.
Another study based on the Oslo Youth Survey he carried out in 2006 showed similar results
(Øia 2006). The 2006 Youth Survey also revealed high levels of serious crime and violence
and drug use among young people of mixed parentage. A consistent conclusion that has run
through his studies is that “[A] greater proportion of immigrant adolescents never do anything
wrong, while a greater proportion of immigrant adolescents also display serious problem
behaviour” (Øia 2000: 135). According to him, serious problem behaviour is typical of second
generation BME youths (males) from the Third World other than Pakistan. In explaining the
marginalisation processes that might underpin his findings regarding BME youths, Øia
emphasised familial factors such as family conflicts, communication patterns within the
family and informal social control. He also placed emphasis on individual factors such as
friendship patterns, recreational issues, especially the use of downtown Oslo as a recreational
arena, adjustment problems at school, concentration problems, and identification with
countercultures, attitudes to authority and religious issues and experiences of discrimination
and racism.
Absent in these important studies are any attempts to situate the compensatory antisocial
public behaviours of BME youths in their concrete and lived social historical contexts or
actual analysis of the societal structures that impact their choices and the social supports they
marshal to go ahead in life. The main emphasis has been on their deviant public behaviours
and the shared internal logic, norms, rules and values that characterise the drug scenes and
criminal networks they participate in. Where attempts are made to explain their antisocial
behaviour, emphasis is placed on individual and familial factors. Where societal factors like
racism and discrimination are mentioned, no attempts are made to expatiate on these and
show the psychological and emotional consequences for these youths. Neither are we afforded
any insights into the emotional worlds of these youths apart from the study of Lien (2011) in
which she analysed the psychological and emotional problems associated with her study
participants in terms of their participation in violent criminal and gang activities.
Other studies have, however, implicated concrete societal processes and structures in
accounting for the participation of BME youths in deviant street cultures and the
psychological consequences of the experiences of marginalisation for these youths. For
example, Larsen (1992) explains the violent and criminal behaviours of marginalised and
street-involved BME youths in terms of the marginalisation processes they experience in the
Norwegian society in relation to school, the labour market, the family and in their contacts
with public institutions, as well as other forms of racism and discrimination. These negative
experiences detract from their future prospects in Norway and create in these youths feelings
of social, cultural and psychic homelessness characterised by loneliness, resignation, and
apathy. Such experiences detract undermine their pursuit of the good life. Larsen vividly
centres the voices of these youths regarding these feelings of not being seen in the Norwegian
society. She explains their violent and criminal activities in terms of their attempts to redeem
remnants of their sense of honour and respect that the larger society denies them. Though she
did not analyse into detail the marginalisation processes these youths experience in key
institutional settings, she managed to afford us intellectual insights into the inner emotional
worlds of these youths and the motivations for their antisocial behaviours in the context of
their precarious existence.
Nørbech and Farshbaf (2007) also showed that most of the marginalised street-involved BME
youths who frequented the open street drug market at “Akerselva” in downtown Oslo felt
neglected and rejected by the Norwegian society and for some, this rejection was made
stronger by difficulties in identifying with their culture of origin, thereby feeling that they did
not belong anywhere, a psychosocial and emotional homelessness addressed by Larsen
(1992). In the Akerselva milieu they neither needed nor acquired knowledge about the
Norwegian society. Relying on Bowlby’s attachment theory, they argued that the fact that
majority of marginalised BME youths who participated in this street drug market had
experienced prolonged separation and/or abandonment from caregivers during childhood and
as a result unable to trust anyone, made them adaptable to drug dealing at Akerselva.
Nørbech’s and Farshbaf’s work was a concrete attempt to thematise the emotional worlds of
these BME youths in order to understand their involvement in criminal activities. Such
criminal activities represent these youths’ conscious search for psychic and emotional closure.
In my own study (Kuvoame 2005) and that of Sandberg and Pedersen (2006), the social
marginalisation processes experienced by BME youths who participated in the then open
street drug market at “Akerselva” in Oslo were addressed. These two studies emphasised the
marginalisation of this group of BME youth in relation to social arenas that are crucial for the
social development of children and young people in Norway and their smooth transitions to
adulthood, such as the family, school, the youth labour market, the housing market, leisure
activities, and responsible adult role models. Both studies also emphasised the economic and
social functions of this open street drug market for these youths. In this open street drug
market, as I pointed out in my study, these youths could earn a lot of money because of the
hashish economy, engage in identity work, gain status and power, and get approval,
acceptance, and recognition for their criminal exploits and a sense of belonging through their
interactions with their peers. The psychosocial and emotional gains these street-involved
BME harvested in comradeship with their peers were thematised in other studies in Norway
(see, for example, Andersson 2000, and Azaridad 2007).
However, the main thrust of Sandberg’s and Pedersen’s (2006) study was the involvement of
these marginalised BME youths, mostly with African origin, in violence and street drug
dealing and the street competence or skills that they articulated in order to participate
effectively in the open street drug market at Akerselva. In what follows, I examine in detail
this representation of marginalised street-involved BME youths. This work is important
because it represents an attempt to impose a concrete concept on what the authors have
described as the practical rationality of street culture. As I pointed out in my own study
among these youths (Kuvoame 2005), street drug dealing demands special competence or
skills such as studying the patrol routines of the police, where to acquire the drug, how to hide
the stuff, where to stand when dealing so as to reduce the risk of arrest, and the real use or
potential use of violence. Dealing drugs involves the articulation of an alternative street
culture with shared values, rules, norms and expectations and involves the ‘search for respect’
(Bourgois 1995), influence, status and power.
In their analysis, Sandberg and Pedersen introduced the concept of ‘street capital’ to depict
this street competence. They defined ‘street capital’ as “the knowledge, skills and objects that
are given value in a street culture” which represent the “cultural capital of a violent street
culture” (2011: 33). Successful dealing in hashish in the street drug market, according to
them, demands the acquisition and articulation of this street capital. The use or potential use
of violence is central in the accumulation of street capital. Central to their conceptualisation of
street capital is Bourdieu’s dispositional concept of habitus or embodied cultural capital that
consists of dispositions, that is, mental and bodily proclivities that enable individuals to tackle
new challenges. Central to these dispositions are past experiences. They outlined three idealtypical trajectories to participation in this street drug market.
The first trajectory represented by refugees is marked by a habitus acquired through migration
and early experiences in war-torn countries. This habitus in itself did not determine their
involvement in criminality, but given their precarious social situation, it was a habitus they
were readily able to convert into the cultural capital required in the street culture. The second
trajectory represented by the fallen gangsters was moulded by a habitus acquired through
early involvement in violent gang and criminal networks. Though they were no longer part of
these gang networks, the fallen gangsters had better knowledge of criminal networks and
dealer system and acquired influence, status, respect and power in the street drug market as a
result. The third trajectory represented by risk and adventure-seeking disadvantaged young
boys from ‘dysfunctional and poor families’ (Sandberg 2008 : 612) was marked by a habitus
tied to the articulation of a gangster hip hop culture and construction of a tough masculine and
thug image as a mark of distinction. These young black kids “utilized dealing at The River as
subcultural capital. By participating in street culture, they went from being black losers in
mainstream society to ‘thugs’ and ‘hustlers’ in hip hop and street mythology” (Ibid: 613).
Like the fallen gangsters, they were involved in an alternative search of respect. According to
the authors, it was difficult for these youths to transfer the street capital they internalised and
articulated in the street drug market to other social arenas.
The authors also gave a narrative of the discursive repertoire these youths deployed in the
street drug market. They outlined two discourses they regarded as central elements in these
youths’ street capital: a gangster discourse and an oppression discourse characterised by
victim narratives. These two discourses, according to them, were revealing about living on the
street in what they described as ‘a benevolent welfare state’ (Sandberg & Pedersen 2011:
147). Oppression discourse involves embodied rationalisations and accounts of experiences of
marginalisation, lack of support, racism and discrimination. This discourse supports the role
of the victim and is, according to the authors, akin to and supported by the vocabulary of the
welfare system. According to the authors, oppression discourse can be seen as embedded in
welfare organisations, shaped as they are by their leftist tendency to see the causes of
problems in economic structures and to create sympathy and compassion for their clients.
Through their cumulative interactions with welfare organisations, these youths were able to
appropriate the vocabulary and concepts of these organisations, and came to learn how to
provoke sentiments of identification and commiseration.
Oppression discourse became part of these youths’ criminal discursive repertoire, selfpresentation and self-understanding, according to the authors. Thus, the articulation of this
discourse could be a deliberate strategy devised by the young people in their interactions with
the welfare system. It was important for these youths to articulate a gangster image in order to
be successful on the street. Hence they had to know the discourses of welfare organisations so
as to get the help made available by these organisations. The gangster discourse was
articulated to project a tough and masculine subjectivity, an image of the able, violent and
successful gangster or criminal who knew how to make fast money. As noted by the authors:
The gangster discourse bears clear resemblance to Anderson’s (1999) ‘code of the street’.
However, while the code is a set of informal rules governing interpersonal behaviour, using
the concept of discourse highlights that oppression and gangster discourses are also
conversational tools used to justify behaviour retrospectively (Sandberg and Pedersen 2011:
155).
Thus, in Sandberg’s and Pedersen’s narratives, the individuality and subjectivity of these
youths are thereby reduced to the effects of their internalised criminal dispositions and
discursive repertoires. In other words, the authors seem to suggest that we can understand
who marginalised and street-involved BME youths really are and their criminal behaviours
through their embodied dispositional habituses which they have acquired and internalised
through migration and early experiences of war, through early participation in gang violence
and criminal networks, and through their articulation of a gangster hip hop culture and
construction of a tough masculine and thug image, complete with discursive tools for
rationalising behaviour and abdicating responsibility. We are not offered any insights into
their inner emotional worlds. The impression one gets is that ‘the benevolent Welfare state’
provided most of these young dealers who portray themselves as victims with solid economic,
social, psychological and emotional support and help. All they have to do is to avail
themselves of these supports. They could get help if only they needed and looked for it.
Hence, they have themselves to blame for their existential predicament.
At this juncture, it is important to remember the warning from Jefferson (1994) regarding
reducing subjects to discourse. As he notes, “By reducing subjects to the effects of discourses,
either to a sum of discursive positionings or to a product of the interplay of discourses, it
effectively erases them; in so doing, poststructuralism echoes structuralism’s corresponding
reduction of subjects to the effects of structures” (p. 16). Whiles the theoretical framework
adopted by the authors is poststructuralist, depicting how structure and individual action
interact and may result in a culture of street crime and violence, the emphasis in the final
analysis is on individual criminal dispositions, discourses and violent street rationality. Within
this framework, any positive resources, aspirations, dreams, hopes and prosocial behaviours
or atypical masculine ideals these youths may have as well as any psychic and emotional
pains they may bear due to their marginality become dwarfed by posited internalised
propensities to masculine street violence and victimhood. The depleted images of
marginalised street involved BME youths offered by such an academic concept create no
room for the possibility that street rationality may also involve cooperative values and that
these youths may also articulate such cooperative and caring values not only on the streets,
but also in their non-street relationships.
The implicit suggestion that these supposedly internalised violent street habitus and
rationalising oppression discourse are articulated or manifest themselves within the context of
a ‘benevolent welfare state’ imbues these youths with a negative subjectivity that threatens
the Norwegian social fabric and conceals a law abiding ‘us’ and criminal ‘them’ Othering
discourse reminiscent of negative media discourses. The authors noted that ‘Studying their
involvement in violence and street drug dealing further strengthens a negative public image
[of them]’ (2011: 10), though their intention was rather to dispel such negative stereotypes by
describing the practical rationality of street culture. However, one is left with the negative
impression that the violent dispositions of these youths remain their most important defining
characteristics. One can also identify this Othering process in the thorough, penetrating and
internationally acclaimed work of Bourgois (2003) in which he showed how structural
oppression forced marginalised Puerto Rican youths to participate in the urban underground
economy and street culture in an attempt to redeem their personal dignity and respect. Here
too, it is individual acts of street violence, gang rapes, domestic violence, gun shots and other
forms of terror that proliferate in the author’s narrative, shadowing the various
microaggressions his Puerto Rican youths experienced in their encounters with mainstream
society and the effects on their psyche.
The excessive emphasis by Sandberg and Pedersen (2006, 2011) on the violent masculine
street habitus of marginalised BME youths also lead to several unanswered questions. For
example, the question arises as to whether such notions are based on actually observed
cultural traits of these youths on the streets? How do these youths come to acquire these
cultural traits and articulate them on the street, and what are the psychic and emotional
dynamics involved? Is it also the case that all marginalised street-involved BME youths take
part in the construction and articulation of these violent street cultural postures? Are the
oppressive discourses these youths are claimed to deploy on the streets, which discourses they
are said to have internalised through their cumulative interactions with leftist social workers,
based on actual observations of such interactions? These questions have been largely absent
from the authors’ analysis. However, bel hooks (see also Nightingale 1993 below) notes the
following in relation to the overemphasis on the allure of the street as a culture producing
arena in the American context, especially in relation to black youths:
Contrary to the notion that black males are lured by the streets, mass media in patriarchal
culture has already prepared them to seek themselves in the streets, to find their manhood in
the streets…Few studies examine the link between black male fascination with gangsta culture
and early consumption of unchecked television and movies that glamorize brute patriarchal
maleness. A biased imperialist white-supremacist patriarchal mass media teaches young black
males that the street will be their only home. And it lets mainstream black males know that
they are just an arrest away from being on the street. This media teaches young black males
that the patriarchal man is a predator, that only the strong and the violent survive… Gangsta
culture is the essence of patriarchal masculinity. Popular culture tells young black males that
only the predator will survive (bel hooks 2004: 27).
Thus, it is important to examine the psychic assaults and dissonance such hypermasculine,
hypersexual and aggressive media depictions, especially in commercialised gangsta rap can
engender in the minds of young BME youths in general, and especially those who experience
disadvantage and marginalisation.
Neither is the violence associated with some of these youths peculiar to them. Violence is a
general societal problem. As noted by Lander et al. (2014), violence occupies an ambivalent
position in society in that it is viewed both negatively as something to be condemned and
prevented, at the same time that the ability to commit violence is central in the cultural
construction of masculinity, be it in order to defend oneself, family or belongings or the
nation state during war. It is integral to the performance of male identity, and in state
institutions such as the police and prisons in the form of ‘tamed’ violence. As bel hooks notes
further:
Male violence is a central problem in our society. Black male violence simply mirrors the
styles and habits of white male violence. It is not unique. What is unique to black male
experience is the way in which acting violently often gets both attention and praise from the
dominant culture. Even as it is condemned black male violence is often deified. As Orlando
Patterson suggests, as long as white males can deflect attention from their own brutal violence
onto black males, black boys and men will receive contradictory messages about what is
manly, about what is acceptable (bell hooks 2004: 66)
While we cannot deny the ubiquity of male violence and the fact that some street-involved
BME youths may articulate violent masculine street postures in order to navigate the streets,
an overly attributional, dispositional and deterministic approach that imbues all streetinvolved BME youths with negative masculine traits leads to the reification of these youths
and have stigmatising effects for them. The objectification of these youths and their
investment with a negative subjectivity divert attention from their strengths, aspirations and
resources and the cooperative and caring values they may have. Moreover, it is wrongly
assumed that all marginalised and street-involved BME youths internalise and enact these
negative street values thereby eliding any considerations of how they actually relate to these
street attributes (see Dance 2002). Such assumptions also preclude any consideration of the
complex psychic or emotional contents of such violent masculine street postures. For
example, Jefferson bemoans the lack of focus on the psychosocial understanding of
masculinity as follows:
…for all Connell’s emphasis on the relational nature of ‘masculinity’ … it is still common to
see masculinity used attributionally, as if it referred simply to a list of ‘manly’ attributes –
competitive, aggressive, risk-taker, strong, independent, unemotional, and so on, perhaps even
more so once the term ‘hegemonic’ is added, given the usual considerable overlap between
this list and some cultural norm, ideal or stereotype of masculinity (Jefferson 2002: 70).
He notes further:
Specifically within criminology, the search for connections between masculinity and crime
(and criminal justice) has highlighted some of the more negative attributes at the expense of
the more positive, caring ones underpinning, for example, the father who protects and provides
(Gilmore, 1993) (Jefferson Ibid.).
Jefferson (1994) also problematises the notion of unproblematic internalisation of masculine
ideals through various socialisation agencies. Boys and men may have difficulties in either
accepting or achieving masculine ideals or both. Failure to achieve these ideals may lead
them to reject such ideals and positively identify with other alternative though subordinate
masculine ideals leading to “painful, sometimes frenzied, attempts to drag an unwilling
psyche into line with the unwanted social expectations; living a life of quiet desperation; or,
perhaps most commonly, a lot of faking it” (p.13). As he suggests:
All this means we are going to have to think about masculine subjectivity in a way which does
proper justice to the complexities of both the external and the internal world…and then to the
very difficult question of the relation between them (Ibid., emphasis added).
It is my view that concepts such as “street capital” (Sandberg & Pedersen 2011), “code of the
street” (Anderson 1999) and “protest masculinity” (Connell 1995) which simply focus
attention on the violent masculine public behaviours of disenfranchised black youths tend to
essentialise these youths, invest them with and reproduce a stereotypical criminal subjectivity
that feeds into modern penal notions of the caricatured “situational man” (Cornish & Clarke
1986) looking for criminal opportunities. Such a concept also feeds the underclass discourse
(see Murray 1990, 1994) which underpins paternalistic workfare policies, blame the plight of
disadvantaged clients on their own behavioural traits, and in which behaviour modification or
responsibilisation has become a precondition for support. It is no wonder that most of these
youths reject this exercise in their negative subjectification by depicting themselves as
conscious and intentional agents. Regarding the attributional and essentialising gaze of these
concepts, one can say that they perceive the future behaviours of these black youths as
predetermined, predictable and unredeemable due to their structurally internalised ways of
behaving. This way these concepts become overdeterministic and pessimistic.
As a way of correcting these simplistic characterisations of marginalised street-involved BME
youths and rendering visible their complex emotional and psychic struggles, I would like to
draw upon the classic work of Nightingale (1993), On the Edge (see, also, Young 1999 for a
review) from which I drew inspiration for this study. In this book, Nightingale draws attention
to the moral and emotional struggles that confront inner-city black kids as a result of the
forces that exclude them from any meaningful participation in American economic and social
life. Nightingale views these kids as normal kids. They are like other kids in several respects:
“They love laughing and playing, they have all sorts of wide-eyed dreams, and they are often
astonishingly caring, creative, and curious” (Ibid: 7). However, he points out how the social
conditions within the communities in which they grow up seriously circumscribe their dreams
and hopes.
According to Nightingale, rather than being alienated from the larger American society
“inner-city kids have, actually, become more American, not less, during the late twentieth
century” (Ibid: 9). We can therefore understand their moral and emotional experiences only
within the context of the dominant mainstream American institutions, ideals and images that
shaped how these kids are brought up. These ideas and images include the excessive emphasis
on “social control through “law and order”, American racial imagery, American
consumerism, and American traditions of violence…” (Ibid). Nightingale emphasises in
particular the overlap between mainstream American culture and the lives of poor black youth
in terms of their relationship with important social control institutions in the inner city such as
the family, the police, juvenile justice and prisons. He argues that there is a symbiosis
between forceful parenting in many poor African-American families and mandates of formal
social control agencies in terms of the shared “idea that the control of aggressive or
community-threatening behavior demands some form of didactic use of violence or
incarceration” (Ibid.). This has made these youths amenable to ambivalence toward
cooperative values, interest in aggressive values and painful memories.
Nightingale also shows how inner-city kids glorify racialised American mainstream media
caricature of the black man as violent and hypersexual. In the face of the racial humiliation
they experience, these kids transform this image into a hero and articulate it and legitimate
violence as a way to achieve a compensatory sense of personal worth. In the same vein, these
kids have also embraced mainstream American ethic of consumerism. Given their feelings of
humiliation and frustration due to their poverty and racial exclusion, these kids have
kowtowed to companies that have targeted inner-city black youth with their products in an
attempt to give material form to these kids’ desire for compensatory status.
He also attributes the genesis of street-smart values and the manipulative and aggressive
behaviours endemic to them to America’s culture of violence distributed through violent
television shows and blockbuster action-movies. These street-smart values become an
important aspect of many street-involved youths’ struggle to express their own ethical
consciences. Such compensatory public behaviours also depend to a very large extend on their
personal subconscious struggles with overwhelming memories of painful emotional
experiences. As he notes, “Poverty and job loss have left the kids…with deeply painful
feelings of frustration, disappointment, humiliation, and shame, and these emotions have in
turn deeply affected their behavior toward members of their families and communities” (Ibid:
8).
Nightingale paints a vivid picture of the two fundamentally confusing personal struggles that
confront the inner-city kid. It is the outcomes of these two struggles that determine whether
they adopt aggressive behaviour as part of their social styles and daily habits. The first
struggle occurs at the conscious level and involves the conflict between two familiar but
opposite or contradictory value systems: “on the one hand, an extremely complicated set of
street-smart values that decree an edgy mistrust of others and a cynical sense that
manipulation and force win out, and on the other hand, ethical traditions that advocate
cooperative responsibility and mutual obligation toward family members, and peers” (Ibid:
23). As he notes further:
As complex and varied as they are, street-smart values of manipulation and aggression do not
by themselves account for the full range of values that inner-city children have learned about
and incorporated into their social consciousness during the late twentieth century…[They]
have also felt it necessary to integrate ethics of cooperation and social collaboration into their
moral world” (Ibid: 36).
The contradictions between these two values could create serious confusion and despair for
children who may use several strategies to resolve this: moral ambivalence involving doing
something good when the aim is to do something bad and vice versa; vacillating between
violent peer rules and those of a stern parent; imposing street ethics on cooperative
intervention efforts and values of social workers by depicting such interventions as improving
their legitimacy on the street (someone trying to change them); “reverse accusation” through
which they display knowledge of cooperative behaviours by accusing their accusers of
violation of cooperative norms; using racial stereotypes to “resolve” own moral conflicts;
displaying double standards of female identity by being nasty and sexually seductive and at
the same time the dutiful daughter and responsible mother (Ibid: 38-39). Thus these kids try to
resolve these contradictory values at a conscious level. However, they have to confront
another struggle at the subconscious level at the same time. As Nightingale puts it:
…they also wage a second internal struggle on a subconscious level: this one involves kids’
attempts to cope with often overwhelmingly painful emotions they have collected throughout
childhood in the reservoirs of their emotional memory. In order to explain why kids
themselves have become all too likely to act in ways that undermine their own communities,
we need to investigate the details of these personal struggles (Ibid: 23).
Based on these rare insights into the external and internal worlds of disadvantaged black
youths, Nightingale advances the argument that while street values may serve as blueprints
for violent street behaviour, they may not be the only explanation for such behaviours since
these youths are also familiar with cooperative values and integrate them into their social
outlooks and personalities. Nightingale notes the following:
Kids’ conscious, moral energy has not been the only driving force behind their own personal
tendencies to act out. Like all violence and social betrayal among humans, that among young
people growing up in late-twentieth-century inner cities also reflects individuals’ subconscious
emotional struggles. And poor African-American children…have all lived often deeply painful
lives. Feelings of sheer humiliation and embarrassment, disappointment and frustrations, grief
and loneliness, and fear and anxiety (especially concerning suspicion, rejection, and
abandonment) have filled inner-city black kids’ emotional memories to extraordinary depths.
Because …kids have persistently experienced one kind of pain or another in their relationships
with virtually all of the most important people, institutions and cultural forms, and social
structures that they encounter as they grow up, almost all of kids’ daily interactions with
others, no matter how insignificant, run the risk of reminding them of past painful experiences
and rekindling painful sensations (Ibid: 40).
Nightingale agrees that in a limited sense, the compensatory street or public identities of
inner-city kids may be construed as “political” or as creative adaptations and collective
resistance to the forces that dominate them. He argues, however, that the expression of
masculinity through violence, conspicuous consumption and deployment of the language of
racial hatred in a compensatory manner remain individual acts. Moreover, these individual
acts mimic the strategies of domination and hegemonic values and are usually directed at
members of the oppressed community. He focuses rather on the healing of individual
emotional wounds as he observes as follows:
Indeed conscious political criticism only plays a minor part in informing kids’ everyday
attempts to “resist power”, their various compensatory strategies, and their frequent moral
choice to employ violence as a tactic. In all its varieties, inner-city aggression much more
consistently reflects a personal and subconscious struggle, one waged by individuals against
the threat of complete despair (Ibid: 49).
Nightingale suggests that the frequency with which inner-city kids may experience feelings of
frustration, humiliation, disappointment and abandonment coupled with the fact that they may
lack places or people that could help them understand, acknowledge and come to terms with
their pains, can exacerbate these painful feelings. Discouraged by behavioural codes of their
gender role from acknowledging such pains and vulnerabilities, which codes their peers and
parents may share, such kids may therefore be compelled to repress their painful emotions,
hide them, disguise or protect themselves from them or give violent expressions to them.
Thus, Nightingale transcends the often caricatured and racialised images of black youths and
depicts them as normal kids who share mainstream American ideals, values, dreams and
hopes and share our basic human needs. These youths are creative and caring and look for
love, affection, and understanding. He also affords us vivid insights into their everyday
experiences of poverty and racial exclusion that result in an inner psychic and emotional
turmoil they have to deal with. It is in the light of their existential crises and inner emotional
pains that their street-smart values become meaningful and resilient efforts, albeit
compensatory, ephemeral and self-defeating, to heal their amputated selves. His work also
creates the needed room for the optimism that, perhaps, by availing these youths with spaces
and sources of trust, affection, love, understanding and fulfilment, committed adult caregivers
can assist them in coming to terms with their emotional pains, though the extent of their
emotional pain may confound such caregivers. Therein lies the relevance of his work to my
study.
-48;--316/)576/>=46-:)*4-A7=<0;
Though the literature in Norway on mental health needs of BME youths has not revealed
major differences between their needs and those of majority ethnic youths (see Oppedal
2007), the literature on marginalised street-involved BME youths has firmly established the
psychosocial problems or mental health needs of these youths due to their marginalisation. It
has also afforded us important insights into the existential conditions of these youths, the
important role street milieus may play in their coping strategies, and their cumulative
interactions with the social and welfare services.
For example, I cursorily addressed in my earlier study (Kuvoame 2005) some of the
psychological consequences of marginalisation for marginalised BME youths who
participated in the open street drug market at Akerselva in Oslo. Drawing from the vicious
cycle of marginalisation these young people found themselves entrapped in, I addressed the
fatalism, pessimism, resignation, psychic stress, low self-esteem, self-blame, post-traumatic
stress syndrome, uncertainty about the future and death-wish associated with many of them
and considered their risk behaviours in relation to this. I also pointed out the negative attitudes
and scepticism most of these young people displayed toward the social and welfare services
and some of the factors that characterised interactions between them and the social and
welfare services. This includes lack of knowledge and information on the part of the young
people about the Norwegian society and how its institutions function, the young people’s
mistrust of and scepticism about the services, lack of resources and appropriate intervention
strategies within the social and welfare services, communication problems, and strenuous
bureaucratic demands or conditionalities that most of the young people found difficult to meet
as well as discriminatory and categorising attitudes of some professionals regarding these
youths. This was in sharp contrast to the views of Sandberg and Pedersen (2006) that in their
interactions with these youths, the welfare organisations articulated a discourse of oppression
which the authors understood to be crucial in the self-representations of these organisations to
the outside world and for getting more resources.
Lien (2011) also showed that the participants in her study had cumulative interactions with
the social, welfare, and the probation/parole services, but these interactions were not the
central focus of her study. However, as she pointed out correctly, participation in criminal
networks has its price in that it can lead to complex psychosocial and emotional problems.
Many participants in her study suffered from anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress
syndrome and an inner emotional turmoil related to their experiences in violent gangs,
criminal networks and prison experience.
However, none of these studies has addressed the actual help-seeking behaviours of these
youths or undertaken detailed studies of their utilisation of available services in order to go
ahead in life. It is my view that this can be extrapolated to other ethnic minority groups in
Norway. For example, some literature exists in Norway regarding interactions between
various ethnic minority groups and the Norwegian social, welfare and health institutions:
Pakistani and Vietnamese immigrants’ interaction with the social office (Lien 1986); ethnic
minority drug addicts and treatment and social services (Berg 2003, Hjertenes 2005, Berg and
Audestad 2006); the interaction between Pakistani parents with disabled children and the
health service (Sørheim 2000); interaction between ethnic minority children and families with
the child welfare service (Hagen and Qureshi 1994); interaction between Tamil refugees and
the health service (Grønseth 2006); Somali refugees and Norwegian mental health services
(Hjelde and Fangen 2006). This literature affords us important insights into the different
frames of reference, definitions of problems or needs, and cultural values and norms that
professionals and ethnic minority clients bring to bear upon their interactions and the
communication problems and cultural mistrust that may ensue. Ethnic minority clients also
experience degradation and stigmatisation in their contacts with the social and health services
(see Ylvisaker 2004, and Grønseth 2006). However, none of these studies addresses
specifically the help-seeking pathways of ethnic minorities regarding psychosocial and mental
health problems (see, however, Oppedal 2006, Hjelde & Fangen 2006)
In their review 90 studies on refugees and mental health services in Norway, Guribye and Sam
(2006) concluded that although called for in Government White paper no.17 (1996-97), the
topic of immigrants and health services remains a little prioritised area of research in Norway.
They showed that though services with a low threshold in principle are available, the services
are still underutilised by many refugees with mental health problems All the community
studies report that there are high numbers of refugee immigrants who experience psychosocial
problems who have not sought help. At the same time, clinical studies report an
overrepresentation of refugee immigrants within psychiatric wards. Community studies
(Djuve & Hagen 1995, and Djuve & Kavli 2000, cited in Guribye & Sam ( Ibid.) show that
among those refugees who had received help, a high number felt that they had not received
adequate help
According to Guribye and Sam (Ibid.), research has demonstrated how professional helpers in
Norway may be met with distrust by refugees.
Among both Vietnamese boat refugees
(Knudsen 1986, cited in Guribye & Sam Ibid) and Somali refugees (Hjelden & Fangen 2006,
cited in Guribye & Sam Ibid.) help and the role of helpers is associated with kinship or
friendship. Having difficulties trusting with the bureaucratically organised health care system,
refugees may instead attempt to replace or supplement these services with multiplex
obligating relationships to other refugees from their home country. Acceptance of the role of a
mental patient in Norway may be difficult for refugees unfamiliar with the Norwegian public
health service, and who may attach stigma to the role. Guribye and Sam (Ibid) pointed out
further that there is a fair bulk of surveys on the mental health of immigrants and refugees,
and a few surveys on the utilisation of mental health services among immigrants. Moreover,
this literature is limited largely to adults and those already within the mental health services.
They highlight the need to understand ways in which groups of refugees conceive of and deal
with their own problems outside public mental health services.
Marginalised and street-involved youths are extremely vulnerable to the personal and social
risks from being on the streets (Snell 2003). They have many psychosocial and emotional
needs that they may need help for. Snell (1991, 1995,) studied the help-seeking behaviours
and social support networks of urban young street males involved in prostitution in an urban
setting in the USA. According to him (Snell 1995), most young urban street male and female
prostitutes later experience problems including an inability to trust, relationship instability,
insomnia, poor concentration, depression, suicide and suicidal ideation, self-mutilation,
substance abuse, academic underachievement, hysterical reactions, various infections and
sexually transmitted diseases on so on. Most of them also experience guilt, confusion, shame,
and anger for being exploited. The participants in his study worried about being lonely,
depressed, lethargic, and not having sex.
The results of his study (Ibid.) showed that his study participants sought help from both
informal sources such as friends, family, and peers and from formal sources like social
agencies and professionals. Majority received high levels of emotional and material support
from their families and friends, though most were less likely to rely on friends for material
support. These youths were involved with the family rather than being completely isolated
from them and were preoccupied with the welfare of their mothers, siblings, and other close
relatives. They viewed formal sources of help such as medical services, legal services and
ministerial help as most accessible, while evaluating the police, social and mental health
services as much less available or useful. Long term prostitutes were more likely to seek
formal help than short term prostitutes. While majority were willing to seek help from
hospital emergency room, medical clinic, minister or lawyer, if necessary, a minority was
willing to seek help from the social, welfare and mental health agencies, the police, a private
therapist, or alcoholics/narcotics anonymous. Majority of the study participants were
unwilling to use shelters due to what they perceived as overcrowding, concerns about lack of
privacy, cleanliness and security, feelings of humiliation, and restrictions on other regular
activities.
Snell showed significant differences by race. The white male study participants were more
likely than the black male participants to get drunk or get high when worried. The black males
relied more on family support and learned about places to go for help from their families
compared to white street males. Compared to white males, black males were also more
unwilling to go to traditional sources of help such as employment agencies or
alcoholics/narcotics anonymous.
There were also significant differences in the reasons white and black males gave for not
seeking help from traditional sources. The black males were more inclined to solving their
own problems or keeping it in the family. According to Snell (2003), they viewed this not in a
pathological manner, but as providing the strengths that helped them withstand oppression in
a racist society. Black males were also more reticent in admitting that they needed assistance.
Moreover, they did not wish to be seen as needing help, as they considered such need a sign
of weakness or failure. Majority also expressed the fear of what other people might think of
them. The white males were more likely to give lack of money, say, for transportation, as a
major barrier to seeking help.
According to Snell (Ibid.), these findings were consistent with the findings of other studies to
the effect that black male youth are particularly unwilling to seek help from the mental health
services due to the stigmas attached to seeking help (see also Lindsey et al. 2006), and that
mainstream traditional agencies seem not to reach them. He argued for demystifying and
destigmatising the process of help-seeking for young street males and the need for social
workers to work both on the street level and in the community.
Snell’s study is an important contribution to understanding help-seeking behaviours of streetinvolved youths, especially in relation to informal help. It has also contributed to
understanding the attitudes of black youths in relation to seeking formal help. The study
underlies the importance of understanding the role that the family and peers might play in the
help-seeking efforts of street-involved youth, particularly black youths. However, absent in
his study are the study participants’ knowledge of available services, factors in the therapeutic
relationship or within the provider organisation that might influence the attractiveness or
otherwise of help-seeking and other organisational factors that might impinge on the helpseeker and help-provider relationship. Understanding these aspects of help-seeking and helpproviding can help shed more light on the barriers that street-involved youths might encounter
in seeking formal help.
In their study, French et al. (2003) focused on the perspectives of high risk youths’ regarding
their engagement with a mental health service. The authors referred to studies that showed
that only a small percentage of young people with a diagnosable mental health problem seek
help from mental health services. They argued that for ‘at-risk’ youths whose mental health
problems are often related to their experiences of disconnection and marginalisation from key
institutions in society, the barriers and challenges involved in accessing, receiving and
completing treatment are likely to be more profound.
In exploring the engagement process, the authors focused on the help-seeking pathway from
the time of recognition of a problem through to the early stages of the formation of a
therapeutic relationship. They focused on four main themes. The first theme relates to the
young people themselves, such as their problem awareness, motivation to seek help,
perceptions of counselling and knowledge of services. The second theme relates to
attractiveness of the service, and describes interactions with the service that influenced the
young people’s beliefs that the service would meet their needs. The third factor relates to the
accessibility of the service in terms of the practical parameters of service delivery, including
mobility and cost. The fourth theme, which the authors described as assertive follow-up,
relates to actions taken by the service to initiate and maintain contact with the study
participant.
Though the high-risk youths differed in relation to what motivated them to seek help, they
considered their problems severe enough for them or a significant other to initiate helpseeking, expecting a positive outcome. Some of them stressed the significance of selfmotivation for seeking counselling and the responsibility of making that decision themselves.
Others were encouraged by family members or a professional to do so, whiles others felt
coerced to do so. Their perceptions of counselling was influenced by their perceptions of what
the counselling process might involve, the fear of talking to other people about their
problems, what others will think about them, and issues of stigma, though those who
harboured feeling of stigmatisation were able to overcome such feelings. The participants also
placed emphasis on knowledge of available counselling services suggesting that they would
have contacted these services had they known about their existence and would have given
information about them to their peers. They underlined the importance of counselling services
having a stronger presence within the youth community.
In relation to the attractiveness of the service, the study participants emphasised the
importance of feeling understood and not judged as important in continuing counselling, the
importance of the service being youth specific since they believed that such a service would
better understand them and young people in general. Some of them felt that younger
counsellors would understand them better, while others were more concerned about the
attitudes of the counsellors. The participants stressed the importance of confidentiality, oneto-one counselling (without parents), information about the service, the counselling process
and what the service has to offer and a physical environment where they could feel
comfortable. In relation to accessibility, the study participants stressed the importance of the
service being free, extended opening hours, the importance of the service being based in the
local community, practical issues of time, distance and cost of travelling, and the importance
of the service to engage in outreach work or meeting them outside the office.
Regarding assertive follow-up, participants emphasised minimal or no waiting lists as being
on a waiting list would make them feel unimportant. In terms of assertive follow-up, the
service’s assertiveness in maintaining contact with the participants such as returning phone
calls even if participants chose not to answer the telephone, receiving telephone calls rather
than postal communication to establish and maintain contact and to keep appointments.
Maintaining contact at the early stages of counselling even if participant did not turn up for
appointment was also considered as important.
The importance of the study by French et al. lies in the fact that it focused on the factors that
can hinder or promote the help-seeking efforts of vulnerable youth in relation to formal
agencies. The study showed that the different factors that may promote or hinder help-seeking
behaviours influence participants in different ways. This finding underlies the importance of
services being sensitive to individual needs rather than being inflexible and based on
prescriptive regimes of practice. Though the study was conducted at a mental health service
for at risk youths, it is my view that it has relevance for the social and welfare services too.
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The paramount focus of my study was how the research participants perceived and felt about
the existential challenges they faced in their daily lives, their individual struggles to go ahead
in life, and their help-seeking behaviours and pathways in this regard. This demanded
studying them from the perspective of an interacting, active and knowing individual.
Qualitative research methods hold the promise of doing that. Qualitative research methods
describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives (Denzin &
Lincoln 2000) by stressing the subject’s frame of reference. It also allows for intersubjectivity
and construction of shared or negotiated meanings by the researcher and the researched
(Holter 1996). What is more, qualitative research methods allow for reflexivity throughout the
research process regarding how the researcher’s positionality and other contingencies in the
field can impact the data and analysis. As noted by Denzin and Lincoln,
Qualitative researchers stress the socially constructed nature of reality, the intimate
relationship between the researcher and what is studied, and the situational constraints that
shape inquiry. Such researchers emphasize the value-laden nature of inquiry. They seek
answers to questions that stress how social experience is created and given meaning (Denzin &
Lincoln 2008: 14, emphasis original).
The possibilities available in qualitative research make qualitative research methods relevant
to the research questions and objectives I outlined in Chapter 1. Using such research methods
enabled me to gain in-depth insights into the research participants’ experiential world and
meaning making and the actions taken by them to cope with their existential situation and go
ahead in life. By allowing for reflexivity, qualitative methods deployed in the study also
created room for me to combine a well-founded partisan position with the methodological
rigour that is required to enhance knowledge.
According to Denzin and Lincoln (2008), in order to gain a better understanding of research
themes, qualitative researchers utilise a plethora of interrelated interpretative practices bearing
in mind the fact that each practice makes the world intelligible in a different way. Deploying
multimethods is “a strategy that adds rigor, breadth, complexity, richness, and depth to any
enquiry” (Denzin & Lincoln Ibid: 7). In this study, I deployed qualitative research tools of in-
depth qualitative interviews, participant observation, informal extended conversations, and
focus groups.
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The research participants were administered in-depth, open-ended, multi-session qualitative
individual interviews in accordance with an interview guide. According to Kvale,
“…qualitative research interview attempts to understand the world from the subjects’ point of
view, to unfold the meaning of people’s experiences, to uncover their lived world ...” (Kvale
2007: xvii).
The interview guide addressed five main themes: how the study participants perceived and
felt about their everyday psychosocial challenges for which they thought they needed help;
their familiarity or awareness of available social and health services; their opinions and
attitudes regarding these services; their pathways to and utilisation of these services; and
evaluations of the services they were provided with. In relation to their everyday psychosocial
challenges, the interviews focused on challenges such as drug and alcohol use, criminality,
family challenges, interpersonal challenges, challenges at school, their position in the job and
housing markets, issues relating to psychological distress (e.g., anxiety and depression) and
somatisation. Regarding awareness of services, the interviews addressed the research
participants’ awareness of prominent social and health services for young people in Oslo and
the suburbs in which they lived.
The interviews also addressed cognitive-affective issues such as fear and stigma, concerns
about self-disclosure, problem definition/evaluation, desire to maintain independence, and
opinions of significant others that may have affected the study participants’ contacts with and
utilisation of available services. In addition, the interviews addressed where or to whom these
young people went when they decided to seek help and the importance, in this regard, of
social workers, the clergy, medical personnel, therapists or counsellors at school, the General
practitioner, psychiatrist, psychologist, friends, family or other special helpers og agencies.
The interviews also addressed the evaluations of these youths of the services they were
provided with in terms of the accessibility, organisation and attractiveness of the services, the
attitudes of service providers and how the study participants felt these services helped them to
cope with or tackle the challenges they met in their daily lives.
An important technique I used to garner the experiences of the research participants was to
ask them to recall specific or concrete episodes, incidents and interactions that stood out or
left indelible marks on their minds. This is akin to the critical incident technique (CIT). Citing
Flanagan (1954), Sousa & Eusebio (2007) described the critical incident technique as a set of
procedures for collecting and analysing reports of incidents that involve important facts that
relate to behaviour in defined situations. According to them, “Critical incident data are
anecdotal, that is, a story of how someone acted, responded to, felt or thought about an event”
(Sousa & Eusebio 2007: 222). Such a technique aided me in gathering rich data about the
daily experiences of the study participants and their help-seeking behaviours.
The individual interviews were couched in a form of language that validated the research
participants’ everyday parlance, expressions and frame of reference, and encouraged
reflections upon their everyday experiences. As Kvale (2007) has pointed out, the interview is
a conversation between the researcher and the research participant in which knowledge is
produced through their interaction. While allowing the research participants a wide room to
talk about their feelings and experiences uninterrupted, that is, adopting an emic rather than
an etic perspective, I asked for specific elaborations and engaged them in critical reflections
on some of their accounts, drawing on my experiences in the field of youth work and
background knowledge of how the social and welfare services operate and are organised in
Norway. The hope that the study would contribute to improving the deplorable life situation
of the research participants was an important rationale for undertaking. Hence I made a
conscious effort through informal extended conversations to give them information that could
help them improve their coping strategies. I wrote down detailed fieldnotes after each
interview and noted down my reflections.
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Individual interviews involve personal interaction and therefore depend on the cooperation of
the interviewee. The knowledge that is produced through the qualitative interview depends
on the social relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee, which in turn depends
on the researcher’s ability to create an atmosphere in which the research participant feels free
and safe to talk of private events ( Kvale 2007). Even though good rapport can yield valuable
data through qualitative interviews, the research participant may not be willing to give all the
information on a particular topic that the researcher needs, or may give information that may
not reflect the whole gamut of his or her real experiences (Marshall & Rossman 2006),
especially how they are impacted by larger social and political forces. This can be the case
especially in relation to marginalised and street-involved BME youths with fragmented lives,
who may also articulate a compensatory posture or attitude in tune with street-smartness that
is meant for public consumption. It is therefore obvious that individual interviews alone
could not have afforded me the needed insights into the main themes of this study. Duneier
remarked in relation to supplementing qualitative interviews with participant observation as
follows:
With the proliferation of ethnographic interviewing today, there is the danger of forgetting
how cheap talk can be. Researchers increasingly use interviews to try to discover the reasons
that people did things in their lives, to discover motivation. They let their subjects’ attributions
of cause and effect stand, as they take explanations of why things happened to them at face
value. They write as if there is a clear correspondence between confident statements by
subjects and reality, rather than understanding how what their subjects tell them are actually
public poses, public displays, or public fictions. (...) Nor are scholars who employ these
contemporary approaches to qualitative work able to take the time to follow individuals in
their networks, groups, and communities (Duneier 2007: 36-37).
Duneier made these remarks in relation to the legacy of the context-driven ethnographic
fieldwork of Liebow (1967) on marginalised street-corner black men in an African American
ghetto and of Stack (1974, cited in Duneier 2007) on poor black women in another African
American ghetto. In both cases, the researchers immersed themselves in the social worlds of
their research participants in order to unearth the meanings they invested in their actions and
how everyday contingencies impacted their lives, yielding rich data that dispelled the
stereotypical and racialised representations of these groups in earlier studies.
Such an immersion in the lives of research participants who experience marginalisation is also
evident in the fieldworks of MacLeod (2009), Nightingale (1993), Bourgois (2003),
Dimitriadis (2003), and Bourgois and Schonberg (2009). As argued by MacLeod, studying the
complex situation of marginalised youths can be addressed most thoroughly by a
methodology of intensive participant observation. According to him, “To do justice to the
complexity and richness of the human side of the story requires a level of understanding and
distinction that questionnaires surveys [and individual interviews] are incapable of providing”
(MacLeod 2009: 8). Such an immersion is also important in building and sustaining
relationships (Marshall & Rossman 2006). Dimitriadis showed how his immersion in the
lives of two marginalised young men, Tony and Rufus, who became central in his research,
affected his study:
Rearticulating these relationships forced me to ask different kinds of questions, to see in more
complex and situated ways the array of issues and tensions young people were enmeshed in as
they made the transition from adolescence to adulthood (Dimitriadis 2003: 102).
Active participation or immersion in the lives of some of my research participants was crucial
for gathering rich data about them. This involved hanging out with them on street-corners or
at open street drug scenes they frequented, at nightclubs in downtown Oslo popular with
street-involved BME youths, accompanying some of them to meetings with the social services
and observing their interactions with these services, doing different activities with them like
going to movies, playing billiards, dinning together, and having extended informal
conversations with them and writing detailed fieldnotes. Such an immersion in the lives of
some of the study participants blurred the researcher-researched relationship between us and
created room for intersubjectivity, positionality and reciprocity, thereby making it possible for
me to “work the hyphen” as advised by Fine (1998: 135).
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Data collected through individual qualitative interviews and participant observation were
supplemented by data collected through focus groups consisting of 3-4 research participants
each. Two focused groups were carried out. The focus groups addressed topical issues raised
in the research questions/objectives. A crucial aspect of my research was to study the
complexities, similarities and differences in the lived experiences of my research participants
and to explore inconsistencies or contradictions in their accounts and narratives. The use of
the focus-group method was important in this regard. Discussions that unfold from the
interaction in focus groups provide rich insights into the similarities and differences in the
participants’ views and experiences.
According to Marshall and Rossman (2006), the assumption behind the use of the focus group
is that individual attitudes and opinions do not form in a vacuum. Hence individuals often
need to listen to others’ meanings and understandings in order to form their own. In the focus
group, participants are able to make comparisons among each other’s experiences and
opinions. Morgan and Krueger (1998) suggest that such comparisons are a valuable source of
insights into complex motivations. Marshall and Rossman (2006) note further that the focusgroup interview method has the advantage that it is socially oriented, studies participants in a
more natural atmosphere than in artificial experiments and is more relaxed than in individual
interviews. It also affords the researcher the flexibility of exploring important issues that
surface in the discussions. Denzin and Lincoln (2000) suggest, however, that data produced
by the focus groups may be influenced by the tendency toward conformity and polarisation.
Marshall and Rossman (2006) also suggest the need to be mindful of power dynamics in the
group and the skills needed to facilitate proceedings in the group and the fact that the
researcher can have less control over the group than in individual interviews.
The study was mainly targeted at marginalised and street-involved BME youths regarding
their psychosocial challenges and help-seeking pathways. However, 10 professionals who had
contacts with some of the study participants were also administered individual interviews.
These professionals were both black and white and mainly frontline social and youth workers
with many years’ experience working with marginalised street-involved BME youths. They
were interviewed in relation to how they defined the needs of these youths, the main
challenges they identified as characterising their work with this group of young people and
the organisational and institutional parameters that they considered as impinging upon their
work. Some of them were recruited through the youths and others through my existing social
network.
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5-<07,747/1+)4 :-.4-+<176;
As pointed out earlier, an important rationale for undertaking this study was the hope that it
would contribute to improving the deplorable life situation of the study participants. What I
consider as my moral, political and intellectual duty to confront oppression and disadvantage
and to help improve available services for marginalised BME youths by contributing new
analytical insights and intervention strategies weighed heavily in my choice of research theme
and research questions. This is in line with the view of Calhoun that “…efforts to secure
positive social change thrive most as a combination of … values with strong commitments to
improvements in knowledge and understanding” (Calhoun 2008: xxi).
Though I approached the research site armed with ethnographic tools outlined above, I also
approached the research field as a former activist municipal youth worker who arrived at
youth work through the field of sociology. By virtue of my professional background with
practical work with street-involved youth, it is my conviction that I can be in a better position
to contribute to alleviating human suffering and enriching the discipline of sociology by
linking it to practical work. In other words, I approached the field as a partial insider with a
distinct moral and political stance.
Researching marginalised street-involved black youths as a partial insider with an activist
stance precludes a hierarchical researcher-researched relationship and raises many
epistemological,
ethical
and
methodological
challenges
relating
to
positionality,
intersubjectivity, power, emotional vulnerability and reciprocity. These challenges in turn
raise important questions as to how activist researchers can achieve the methodological and
analytical rigour that is required for enhancing knowledge. This calls for a critical selfreflection necessary for achieving what Hale (2008) describes as a “positioned objectivity”.
Hale (2008) argues that any attempt to defend activist research or scholarship is invariably
met with objections informed by notions of positivism, objectivity, and methodological
rigour. Positivism puts a premium on value neutrality, rationalistic logic, verifiability and
replicability of data, and parsimony of explanation. Objectivity denies not only
intersubjectivity and positionality, but also the intersubjective nature of data collection.
Objectivity imputes no history, identity or social position to the speaker who claims to speak
objectively. The notion of methodological rigour emphasises the researcher’s tight control
over the research process and the reification of quantitative data.
Hale suggests further that it is intuitive to advance or endorse the now well-known counter or
deconstructive analysis “against positivism as an apology for Western imperial reason; against
objectivity as a smoke screen for alignment with the powerful; against methodological rigor
as a fetishization of data in the absence of critical scrutiny of underlying social categories and
precepts” (Hale 2008: 8). Nevertheless, Hale emphasises the importance of couching activist
scholarship in the language of science, while criticising the hegemonic role of that language.
He argues for a strategic duality of deconstruction and reclamation: “In the move from
critique to alternative, the very terms being critiqued, especially methodological rigor, may
need to be reclaimed” (Hale Ibid, emphasis original). Connolly also emphasises the
importance of rigorous and systematic use of methods within critical social research. As he
argues, one of the underlying goals of critical social research is the use of research findings to
problematise social inequalities by exerting pressure on those in positions of power and
responsibility. Hence, it is would be self-defeating producing research accounts that are
clearly seen as partisan or biased. He argues further as follows:
If the effectiveness of such research is in its ability to convince others of the significance of
the issues raised, then there is a need to provide research evidence that is generally acceptable
among academics, policy-makers and practitioners. This, in turn, requires careful and rigorous
use of the fundamental methods of social research. In this sense, while political and ethical
considerations play a central role in the choice of research topic and in how the findings are
later to be presented and used, the methods employed to actually collect and analyse the data
need to follow the generally accepted principles of social research. In other words, the
evidence presented should be convincing whatever the political position of the reader
(Connolly 2001: 167).
Neither Hale nor Connolly is arguing against the assumption or articulation of a partisan
position on social research. They argue, instead, for the combination of a well-founded
partisan position with methodological rigour. Their position pertains to the way in which
researchers conduct themselves in relation to contingencies in the research field with
appropriate tools of social research. Their position is also in line with Becker’s advice “to
make sure that whatever point of view we take, our research meets the standards of good
scientific work, that our unavoidable sympathies do not render our results invalid” (Becker
1967: 246). Hale’s notion of “positioned objectivity” better describes this researcher posture
than Hammersley’s (2001) view that Becker’s exhortation can be “labelled as adherence to
the principle of value neutrality” (Hammersley 2001: 98). Given that Becker does not argue
for banishing the self from research but for ensuring reflexivity in the research process,
Hammersley’s view that there is a fundamental inconsistency in Becker’s position or that that
position detracts from political and epistemological radicalism appears unfounded. As Cousin
observes in relation to notions of reflexivity:
These notions are informed by an acknowledgement that our knowledge of the world is always
mediated and interpreted from a particular stance and an available language, and that we
should own up to this in explicit ways. The self is not some kind of virus which contaminates
the research. On the contrary the self is the research tool, and thus intimately connected to the
methods we deploy. … Researchers, then, should not be wholly detached from their research.
This does not mean they abandon carefulness, or what Bentz and Shapiro (1998) have called
‘mindfulness’ in the research process (Cousin 2010: 10).
In the same vein, Hale suggests that the reclamation of objectivity and methodological rigour
demands critical self-reflection on one’s own positionality and subjectivity as a researcher,
and a systematic examination of how the way that one relates to his or her research
participants affects the content and the meaning of the data one collects. It is to that exercise
in self-reflection I now turn. As a backdrop to this exercise, I present one of my fieldnotes
below:
Fieldnotes - meeting with Ali
I had a brief discussion with Ali over lunch today about my research project. He was released
from prison about a week or so ago. The meeting was scheduled for yesterday, but he called
to ask if we could postpone it to today. The meeting was rescheduled for 12:00 today. He
called my mobile phone around 11:15 and left a voice message detailing his itinerary: he had
a call from the prison to come and pick some personal items he had left behind. He was on the
way to pick the items and would meet me later. He called again at 11:45 to inform me that he
was at the tax office and wondered if we could meet there. We met at the tax office, and I
assisted him in filling out a change of address form and an application form for a tax card. I
helped him carry the items he had fetched from the prison, and we went to an Indian
restaurant. Over lunch, I informed him about my research project and we went briefly
through the draft interview guide. I informed him about my intention to pilot the interview
guide with four young people in the target group for the research. He was willing to assist in
recruiting them and to be interviewed. He stated that he would like to help me so that I could
also help him. He informed me of how he would like to do something meaningful with his life
to prove to his family that he is not a loser.
Ali informed me that his greatest challenge now is that his family does not trust him, because
he has been in and out of prison several times. He was released to “nothingness” and was
living at home with his mother, because his father was away. He recounted how he was
confronted by his elder brother in the city center yesterday. His brother accused him of being
in town to sell or buy hashish and called him a loser. His brother later drove him outside the
city center. According to him, this was the reason he had to postpone our meeting.
Ali was preoccupied with what I could help him with. He said he would like to work with
young black boys – taking them to the cinema and doing other activities with them. He said he
knew many young black kids that he could do activities with. I explained to him that I no
longer worked at the Youth Outreach Unit but would ask if they could support a little project
that he could think of. I encouraged him to write down his ideas about exactly what he would
like to do with the young black boys he had in mind. I emphasised the point that I was not
promising him anything.
Ali has been out of prison for a week or so now but says he has nothing meaningful to do. He
sounded really motivated to do anything that would preoccupy him. He even asked me if I
knew of any “black jobs” he could do. He feels bad that his family does not trust him or want
to listen to how he feels. He felt very humiliated by his brother yesterday. I think he is in a
vulnerable situation. As a researcher approaching him to seek his assistance for my study, I
can create false expectations for him. It is very important that I emphasise that what I need
from him is a favour.
As of now, I am at a loss as to whether I am doing the right thing by approaching him about
this study. Whose interest am I prioritising now? It is obvious that I am prioritising my
research interests over his needs, despite my strong empathy for him. I have known Ali since
he was 13 or 14 and over a period of time collaborated with the child welfare and social
services to assist him. I witnessed how the system failed to give him adequate help. I have
visited him several times in prison, and I am one of the first persons he contacts whenever he
is released from prison
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As a youth worker at the Youth Outreach Agency (Uteseksjonen) under the former City of
Oslo’s Alcohol and Drug Addiction Service (Rusmiddeletaten), I assisted marginalised BME
youths in navigating and negotiating the bureaucratic labyrinth of the Norwegian social and
welfare services, which are undergoing an exacting neoliberal fiscal retrenchment and making
more stringent demands on marginalised and susceptible groups. I problematised and
politicised at various forums the marginalisation processes that many BME youths experience
in social spaces and institutional arenas crucial for their human development and successful
transitions to adulthood in Norway. For four years, I also initiated and managed a youth
project in collaboration with marginalised and street-involved BME youths that aimed to
empower them by assisting them in mobilising their resources, hopes and dreams or
“aspirational capital” (Yosso 2005) and channelling them in a positive direction. In 2008, I
co-founded Center for African Mental Health Promotion and Cultural Competence
(CAMPCOM). CAMPCOM carried out a youth project that targeted marginalised street
involved BME youths during my study. Some of the marginalised and street-involved BME
youths I worked with over the years have confided in me their pains, sorrows, regrets, joys
and triumphs. Moreover, some of these youths seem to believe that we share the same history
or fate, and expect me to understand their predicament and help them negotiate some of the
power blocks they encounter in their daily lives. Thus, a modicum of familiarity, intimacy,
solidarity and trust existed between some of them and me prior to my field work.
As a black youth worker turned researcher, I also brought to the research site the subjective
and objective fact of my existential blackness. This fact is tied to some of my negative
professional experiences as a black youth worker who had worked with marginalised BME
youths within a white institutional and professional world. As I have pointed out elsewhere
(Kuvoame 2007), on many occasions, I experienced my blackness standing out like a
festering wound on a white middle class bureaucratic body, especially when my presence at
certain professional forums elicited complex responses, looks or expectations from many
white professionals, making me feel like an outsider inside who personified Abnormality.
There were instances when other white professionals would ask me to identify myself or
when the police would (mis)take me for a drug dealer during our youth outreach work at open
street drug markets. My white colleague(s) would then step in to confirm to the police that I
was also an outreach youth worker. My experiences of the bureaucratic bottlenecks that
confronted many marginalised and street-involved BME youths with whom I worked often
forced me to reflect upon my trajectory as a black youth worker in a white professional and
institutional world.
Working within this institutional world also afforded me the insider privilege of obtaining
first-hand knowledge of the modus operandi of the Norwegian welfare state, especially its
dealings with marginalised and vulnerable groups such as marginalised BME youths.
Moreover, my interactions with other professionals through various bureaucratic and
professional encounters equipped me with intellectual insights into some of the hegemonic,
colonising and “Othering” professional discourses that can inform professional practice
targeted at marginalised BME youths (see Holm 2000, Pihl 2005, and Ylvisaker 2008 for
some of these professional discourses).
Given my practical experiences in the field of youth work, it is my view that most politicians,
especially those on the left, are concerned that many BME youths in Norway are experiencing
marginalisation, dropping out of school and taking to the streets and over-appearing in the
criminal statistics and the prison population in Norway. However, it is also my view that
government policies and practical intervention strategies targeted at these youths are not
predicated on an exhaustive understanding of their complex psychosocial and emotional
needs. Neither are there requisite structures for actualising governmental intervention or
inclusionary policies, let alone monitoring how they are being implemented. The question
therefore arises as to the responsibilities of adult citizens in ensuring that all our children have
a smooth transition to adulthood in the Norwegian society. Are the social and welfare services
sufficiently equipped to assist marginalised and street-involved BME youths in making a less
traumatic transition to adulthood, or will “the street” become the most important socialisation
factor in their transitions? As Hillyard (2004) points out, the recent postmodern turn within
ethnographic research that seeks to address issues of inequality notwithstanding,
epistemological questions remain as to how theoretical and conceptual concerns relating to
inequality can be met in field research. He refers to Goffman’s works to emphasise how
research style can challenge “hierarchies of credibility” and inequalities. Likewise, Mathiesen
(2011) view sociology as a discipline that is confronted with political choices and that will
always remain political.
Cousin warns against indulgence in “positional piety in which either moral authority is
claimed through affinity with subjects … or through a confessional declaration of difference
and relative privilege” (Cousin 2010: 9) that might emanate from insiderness. Similarly, Hale
warns against “a facile elevation of experience as a privileged source of analytical insight and
political authority” (Hale 2008: 3). However, as he notes:
for people who feel directly and personally connected to broader experiences of oppression
and to struggles for empowerment, claims of objectivity are more apt to sound like selfserving maneuvers to preserve hierarchy and privilege; and the idea of putting scholarship to
the service of their own communities’ empowerment and well-being is more apt to sound like
a sensible, if not an inevitable, way to practice their profession (Ibid).
Moreover, as Vargas argues, “the dialectic between academic training and on-the-ground
everyday community work provides valuable insights into the possibilities of political
activism, generating knowledge that interrogates the self-proclaimed neutral strands of
academic research” (Vargas 2008: 164).
Thus, by virtue of my partial insiderness or embeddedness, and my moral and political stance,
I can neither plead positivist objectivity or affective neutrality nor lay any claims to a pristine
hierarchical researcher-researched relationship in this study. I was condemned in the research
field, so to speak, to heed the call from Fine (1998) to work the hyphen. This also demanded
that I avoid becoming frozen in a self-absorbed subjectivist gaze lest I jeopardised the
necessary methodological rigour required for improving knowledge. I consider the
possibilities, challenges and responsibilities tied to this multiple embeddedness below.
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,14-55);
There are many possibilities associated with being a partial insider when researching
marginalised and street-involved BME youths. As a partial insider, I am fairly knowledgeable
about the street scene in Oslo, some of the open drug markets some of my research
participants frequent and the fundamental changes these scenes have undergone in recent
years. Due to my previous associations with some of these youths such as Ali and the
modicum of intimacy, trust and confidence that existed between us, I found it far easier to
gain access to the research site and to recruit and cultivate research participants than if I were
a complete outsider. For example, this was evident during the first visits I made to the open
drug markets along the Aker River and at Vaterland to orient BME youths who frequented
there about my research project and new role as a researcher. Like Ali, most of the young
people I knew from before were willing to “help” me (to be interviewed and to recruit other
participants). Some of them recalled the assistance they got from me and conversations we
had when I was a youth worker at Uteseksjonen (at times with detailed specifics that I could
not recall myself) and introduced me to some of the young people at the scene I did not know
from before. That some of the youths I knew from before somehow identified with me as a
BME person also became apparent to me when I informed them about my new role at the
university. Many seemed to be happy about my new role and congratulated me. As one of
them put it, “Moses, du rykker fremover i køen” (“Moses, you are moving forward in the
queue”). I understand this shared identification as related to their perceptions of the social
mobility challenges that many BME people experience in Norway.
In relation to recruitment of research participants, I contacted a number of municipal services
in Oslo. These are municipal services whose users include some marginalised and streetinvolved BME youths.
Some of the professionals I interviewed also worked at these
municipal services. The main gatekeepers of these municipals services were my former
colleagues. Thus, I relied on my existing social networks and acquaintances in relation to
recruitment of research participants. Though my existing network aided me in the recruitment
of research participants, it was my responsibility to cultivate my relationships with them
(Feldman et al. 2003).
As a partial insider, I am also fairly knowledgeable about how the social and welfare services
operate and are organised, and some of the institutionalised violence they can visit on
disenfranchised individuals in need of assistance. This background knowledge made it easier
for me than an outsider to contextualise, analyse and examine my research participants’
accounts regarding their experiences with these institutions affording important insights into
how power structures unfold. Moreover, my professional experiences of being an outsider
inside, coupled with my experiences of the Othering discourses some social service providers
articulate in relation to their BME clients, put me in a better position than a complete outsider
not only to examine, but also to engage my research participants in reflections on issues of
racism and social inequality that they framed in course of our interactions, especially in
relation to what racism is and what it is not. This is important for understanding power
structures. As Bourgois and Schonberg argue, “Ethnography is attuned to fine-grained
observations of individuals in action; it tends to miss the implications of structures of power
and of historical context because these forces have no immediate visibility in the heat of the
moment” (Bourgois & Schonberg 2009: 17).
The intimate relationships that have developed over the years between me and some of my
research participants such as Ali as a result of my earlier role as a youth worker may also have
led to more transparency and reduction in power differentials in our relationships. I
experienced this transparency during several interviews where the research participants gave
detailed and uninterrupted and emotionally charged accounts of their childhood and current
experiences and regrets yielding valuable data. Two interviewees broke down in tears and one
of them several times, during the interviews when they talked about their childhood and
families. When I contacted Mohamed at the open drug market at Vaterland about participation
in my research project, he immediately agreed to be interviewed. He said he had a lot to tell
me. He recalled the first time he ever celebrated his birthday, and that was the birthday party
I organised for him about five years earlier under the auspices of the youth project I managed
at the Youth Outreach Agency. Though he did not participate actively in the youth project or
have close contacts with the Outreach Youth Agency afterwards, we exchanged pleasantries
whenever we met.
This openness was also evident in the more informal extended conversations I had with other
research participants. They appeared to feel comfortable to talk about private, emotionally
charged issues they said they had not disclosed to anyone before. Two research participants
asked me after the interviews if I could accompany them to meetings with their local
Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service (hereafter Nav). Another participant asked me to
accompany him to a psychologist he was referred to by his counsellor at Nav. These
invitations created even more opportunities for me to gather valuable data regarding the
interactions between my research participants and the social, health and welfare services,
which constituted an important aspect of my research. Another participant solicited my
opinion about acupuncture which his psychologist informed him about. Partial insiderness
may therefore result more quickly in transparency and reductions in power differentials than
in cases where the researcher has a complete outsider status.
Though being a partial insider in the field carried with it many possibilities, I faced certain
challenges too by virtue of being such an insider. My background knowledge and personal
experience were indispensable to my critical analysis in this research. Indeed, Mathiesen
(2011: 29) argues for the use of personal experience as a basis for critical analyses in
sociology. As he notes, however, this can lead to the proliferation of personal experience in
the analyses and critique. This can create a methodological problem, a problem that is bigger
in reality because it is more hidden in “objective” sociological analyses. According to him,
this does not mean that we must dispense with personal experience in research, since that will
mean denying sociology an important chunk of reality. Mathiesen implores us, instead, to
own up to it thereby inviting critical discussions regarding analysis.
In more practical terms, however, it means being careful not to become locked into a
particular way of interpreting and analysing the data. One-sided interpretation can affect the
reliability of data gathered in a research and the later analysis. Hence grasping the complexity
of the field situation and remaining mindful throughout the research process of the fact that
the research was not about me as well as focusing on my research participants’ frame of
reference in my interviews and other interactions with them became paramount in the study. It
became also necessary to examine the complexities, similarities and differences in their
experiences, explore inconsistencies or contradictions in their accounts and how their various
narratives relate to my research themes or questions. Thus, my partial insiderness demanded
my consciousness of how my positionality could impact the data and analysis. It demanded
my openness to accept and explore participant accounts and narratives that deviated from my
background knowledge, but at the same time encouraged dialog and reflections with them in
relation to our shared experiences.
Moreover, some of the young people I had previously worked with appeared to withhold
important information from me, thinking that I already knew enough about them. I
experienced this during my initial visits to the field. For example, when I asked one of my
experienced and active elderly field contacts in the open drug markets at the Aker River and
Vaterland for information about recent changes in the milieu, he told me he did not have
anything new to tell than what I knew from before as a youth worker at the Youth Outreach
Agency. Moreover, it is not necessarily the case that having an insider status or prior rapport
with research participants always leads to disclosure as I realised during the interview I had
with a young man who actively participated in the youth project that I managed at the
Outreach Youth Agency. Through his participation in the youth project, I got to know his
family and about his difficult life experiences. I wanted to interview him in order to find out
about his experiences after the youth project ended. He was willing to be interviewed, but was
reticent about some private issues during the interview. I did not consider him motivated
enough for the interview and did not feel that I had control over the interview situation.
Though his reluctance can be interpreted in many ways, in this particular instance, it
represented a clear limit to my insider status.
The implication from the above examples is that in certain cases, having an insider status may
not lead to the collection of rich data as is commonly assumed. This observation is akin to the
findings of Young regarding how having an insider status may have disabling effects and
inhibit data collection during certain moments in fieldwork. Young argues in relation to one
of such cases as follows:
This case is an illustration of what a respondent believed need not have been said
because, taking into account who he was talking to, he believed the point to have been
made. Moreover, this situation demonstrates how impossible it is to know exactly
what or how much individuals do not say in certain junctures in an interview because
they believe that they are in conversation with someone who fully understands their
views (Young 2004: 195).
Thus, though rapport is often associated with intimacy and trustworthiness related to
insiderness, that insider rapport can be ruptured as shown by my examples above and by
Young’s experiences. As Young (Ibid) argued, such cases underlie some of the virtues of
outsiderness and how insider and outsider statuses function together in the research field and
operate with problems and possibilities. In my research, this demanded, among other things,
casting my recruitment net wide enough to include marginalised and street-involved BME
youths I did not know from before.
;;=-;7.:-;-):+0-<01+;)6,8-:;76)4,14-55);
This study was informed by ethical issues relating to informed consent, safety of study
participants, confidentiality, contracts and permission. The research was approved by
Approved by one of the Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics (REC
South East) in Norway. However, I experienced some tensions relating to having intimate
relationships with the research participants that I had known from before.
As I noted earlier, having such intimate relationships can make it easier to depend on the
rapport, trust and confidence established from before. However, this entails some ethical or
moral dilemmas relating to issues of power and informed consent, emotional vulnerability and
reciprocity.
Though the intimate relations I have with some of the youths over the years and my present
role of a participant observer sharing some of the conditions of their lives must have reduced
the impact of power issues, I felt on many occasions in my contacts with some of them, as
indicated in my fieldnotes with Ali earlier, that I was manipulating our friendship to favour
my research interests. My closeness to some of the potential participants therefore raised in
my mind ethical issues relating to how free those I may already have helped would feel to say
'no' to my requests for their participation. Another issue was differences in our age. To
alleviate the impact of these perceived power issues, I found myself emphasising to my
research participants the importance of the study, the meaning of my new role at the
university, that I needed their help in relation to the ‘book’ I am writing, that their
participation was strictly voluntary and that their unwillingness to participate at any stage of
the study would not in any way affect our genuine contacts. At times, I accepted their offers to
pay for coffee, beer or food for us in order to cement our reciprocal relationship and reduce
any feelings of inequity that might result from them being at the receiving end all the time. It
is difficult to tell whether these helped to reduce such power differentials.
Moreover, as Cotterill (1992) showed in relation to her study, certain issues arise when
research participants are long-standing friends. In her research, she experienced that she was
unsure whether she would be seen “as a friend who was doing research, a researcher who
happened to be a friend or even if it was possible to differentiate between the two roles” (p.
597). As I indicated in my fieldnotes on my meeting with Ali, such issues were further
complicated in my case because some of my research participants knew me as a former youth
worker. Like Ali, some of them asked me for specific kinds of favours like accompanying
them to Nav, the social services or the psychologist. These are the kinds of assistance
associated with my former role as a youth worker at the Youth Outreach Agency. This
situation created some initial dilemmas for me. I illustrate these dilemmas below with the
following fieldnotes I wrote when James, whom I earlier on interviewed, called me to inform
me that he was on admission at the a psychiatric hospital. He wondered if I could visit him
because he wanted to see me. He also asked me to buy him a 20 pack cigarettes and would
pay me back later.
Fieldnotes regarding telephone conversation with James.
I carry the impression that James is not very clear about my present role as a researcher and
is confusing it with my former role as a youth worker. I am also wondering if he considers me
a trusted friend to the extent of asking me to buy cigarettes for him and be paid later. I am
aware that James has not been visited by any other person apart from his partner who is
expecting a child. He is seeking contact and I believe that he trusts me. Here, I am in a
dilemma regarding the issue of closeness and distance. This dilemma is complicated by the
fact that I have to depart from my researcher role in the face of what he is going through now.
I think it is important to clarify my roles with him and expunge any direct monetary
exchanges between us. In that vein, I am not going to ask him to pay back the money for the
cigarettes. I’ll add it to the research budget.
Another initial tension resulting from my intimate relationships with some of my research
participants was that it became difficult for me to know when to switch to the researcher role
regarding what they said in our informal extended conversations. This need to switch roles
was also apparent in the interviews I had with some of the research participants I was familiar
with. Gunter (2010), a youth worker turned ethnographer, also experienced the same tensions
or dilemmas in his study of black youths he was familiar with as a youth worker in a poor
neighbourhood in East London. Moreover, as observed by Cotterill, most research
relationships are formal ones initially, but the situation is different with friends. She
experienced that she had to do a “catching up” making it difficult to know when to start the
tape recorder and properly begin the interview: “there is always a momentary disjuncture
between informal talk and the formal interview, but this tended to be more pronounced and
embarrassing with friends” (Cotterill 1992: 597). I experienced similar difficulties during my
interviews with some of my research participants, though the interviews went well.
As I have pointed out above, a crucial aspect of my intimate relationships with some of my
research participants was the transparency and reduction in power differentials that yielded
rich data. But as noted by Cortterill in reference to the argument advanced by Ribbens (1989,
cited in Cortterill Ibid.), “obligations to friends may limit the researcher’s ability to use
information generated via the interview, though this might be true whether the respondents
are friends or not” (Ibid.). She experienced high levels of confidence and trust between herself
and her informants through the methods she used, “but an uncomfortable side-effect in
building rapport in this way was that some respondents revealed very personal details which
were distressing for us both. They were often shocking and usually quite unexpected so could
not be predicted or prepared for prior to the interview” (Ibid.). As she noted further, the
research relationship is inevitably affected by painful life stories, especially when they result
in the respondent breaking down because something “touches a nerve” (Ibid.). Some research
participants can regret what they have revealed in the interviews.
Regarding the issue of respondent vulnerability and regrets, I recall the interview I had with
Mohamed. He broke down in tears several times in course of the interview when I asked him
about his childhood and family. I had to stop the recording several times during the interview.
I did not want to continue the interview and told him we could take it up another time. But he
asked to take a small break and continue. Four weeks after the interview, Mohamed asked me
what date it was when we had that particular interview and I told him. I asked him if there
was any reason why he wanted to know. He said he just wanted to remember the day. Was he
harbouring any regrets regarding things he revealed in that interview? Or take the case of
James who narrated his painful life story, punctuating it with shocking details, and who could
think of killing his parents for neglecting him, and going to the Central Station in Oslo with
an automatic weapon to kill as many people as possible and then take his own life. The ethical
dilemma is whether such disclosures can be written up?
There is a modicum of emotional vulnerability inherent in most qualitative research about
respondents’ life experiences. However, this emotional vulnerability can be more marked in
researching young people and other social groups who experience multiple and prolonged
marginality and lead fragmented lives. That such interviews can make respondents
emotionally vulnerable imposes ethical responsibilities on researchers. In some cases, it will
become important to prepare the research participants before interviewing them about their
life story as Bourgois and Schonberg (2009) did in relation to Tina, one of the San Francisco
(Edgewater) homeless drug addicts they studied, due to the emotional vulnerability she
presented during such interviews. I also prepared Mohamed for our subsequent interviews by
telling him beforehand issues I wanted to take up with him. Respondent emotional
vulnerability also imposes extra demands on the researcher to make sure that what he or she
writes about such respondents does not worsen their existential situation. This is especially
important because as noted by Cotterill:
When the researcher leaves the field and begins to work on the final account, the responsibility
for how the data is analysed and interpreted is entirely her own. From now on the researched
are vulnerable. Their active role in the research process is over and whatever way it is
produced is beyond their control. (…) Indeed, as Ribbens (1989) argues, to define other
people’s realities for them and for a wider audience may be the greatest power the researcher
has” (Cotterill 1992: 604).
Moreover, researching marginalised individuals like the BME youths in my research may
result in the risk of the researcher becoming vicariously exposed to their respondents’
biographies of pain, frustrations and suffering that the researcher may have to deal with. This
is especially the case with researchers who have intimate relationships with their respondents.
On many occasions, I found it difficult to relate to the emotional contents of the data I
collected in the study leading to a strong urge to distance myself from the material. Two tragic
events that occurred during the study, involving a study participant and a would-be participant
became very emotionally and psychologically challenging for me and haunted me throughout
the study. There are also researcher frustrations and other emotional challenges related to
keeping up the motivations and commitments of marginalised BME youths with fragmented
lives, changes in their moods, their projective identifications, appointments that are not kept,
their sudden disappearance from the street scene without any information about their
whereabouts, and breaches of trust, among others. This is true of all researchers who
genuinely care for these youths. This is the main emotional cost of the kind of research they
do with disenfranchised BME youths. In my case, researching these youths imposed extra
emotional and pedagogical demands because of my multiple entanglements, even though as a
partial insider, I am familiar with some of these emotional vulnerabilities and have learnt to
deal with them over the years. As I noted elsewhere:
There is … the pedagogical challenge and emotional and mental balancing act involved in
working with black youth as a black professional. Many of the youths believe we share the
same history or fate and, as a result, expect me to understand their predicament and assist them
in navigating the system successfully. (…) I assuage their anger and mistrust of the system,
while nurturing their hopes, dreams and motivation. I must engage myself in the artistic act of
calibrating carefully the emotional and professional balance between closeness and distance
(Kuvoame 2007: 53).
I consider this posture as equally important when researching marginalised and streetinvolved BME youths one has intimate relationships with as a partial insider.
#-+18:7+1<A B 4-)>16/<0-5*-<<-:<0)6?-.7=6,<0-5
As noted earlier, a modicum of familiarity, loyalty and trust exists between some of my
research participants and me. In terms of the notion of “Hierarchy of Credibility” articulated
by Becker (1967) in relation to the unequal distribution of credibility, knowledge of truth and
the right to be heard in society, I am on the side of marginalised and street-involved BME
youths. They belong to the social category of the “lumpen” that bear the destructive scars of
biopower (see Bourgois and Schonberg 2009). They are at the bottom of the Norwegian
society and the Hierarchy of Credibility. As noted earlier, they are often represented in the
media as miscreants who try to jettison the Norwegian social order. They have been Othered
in a number of studies through an excessive focus on their violent and compensatory street
behaviours often under the guise of centring their voices. My study was about their
experiences and meaning making in relation to research questions I considered relevant to
their existential situation and reduction in their Othering. It sought to center their subordinated
voices regarding their inner emotional worlds. I share a sense of solidarity with them. As
noted by Chari and Donner (2010), solidarity implies some kind of relationship of reciprocity
with research participants and political allies. I am deeply buried in the conviction that it is
important to give something back when researching marginalised youths. I share Dimitriadis
(2003) view that we leave them better than we found them.
This conviction led me to reflect upon and resolve the initial tensions and dilemmas I
experienced regarding my research participants confusing my roles as a researcher and a
former youth worker. It became apparent to me that drawing such distinctions is not very
relevant to marginalised street-involved BME youths. To them, I was still the person they
knew from before, that they could relate to and who they believed could assist them in
negotiating some of the power blocks they encountered in their everyday lives. With time, I
became more and more preoccupied with what my research participants were going to get
back in return for granting me interviews and use of their time. Having this in mind, I said yes
to my research participants’ requests to accompany them to various official appointments,
informing them of how this would enrich my research. I visited James when he was on
admission at the hospital and brought with me the cigarettes he requested. I accompanied
Mohamed to two meetings and assisted him in getting the documentation he needed in order
to apply for municipal housing which he later got. I also offered him the chance to participate
in a youth project that CAMPCOM was running. He became a junior leader in the youth
project. I also assisted Jamal when he moved into a new accommodation and offered him the
chance of participating in the youth project, an offer he accepted. I earlier on interviewed
Jamal and accompanied him to two meetings with Nav. I visited him at home several times
upon his request and had several informal extended conversations with him. I played billiards
with him on two occasions. Both Jamal and Mohamed accepted an offer to join a boat trip
with other young people in CAMPCOM’s youth project to Copenhagen during the summer of
2011. I re-established contact between Jamal and the Youth Outreach Agency when his heavy
drug use became apparent later on and made it impossible for him to continue in the youth
project. Other research participants were offered the chance to participate in CAMPCOM’s
youth project with due respect to ethical considerations. As I noted in my self-reflection
regarding the importance of reciprocity:
I am very preoccupied with the thought that the young people who are going to
participate in my research project get something back for their efforts apart from the
gift cards I intend to give them after the interviews. I feel that this has to do with the
feelings of solidarity I have for them. Moreover, I am studying these marginalised
young people for my PhD, which will probably boost my career. Sure, my main aim in
undertaking the research project is to contribute to the development of more effective
services for these youths. But that is a long-term aim. I feel strongly that these young
people should benefit directly from the research project, hence my offer to them to
participate in the youth project. It is, however, important that the young people do not
carry the impression that participation in the youth project is conditional on
participation in the research project or vice versa. Hence it is crucial to emphasise the
voluntary nature of their participation in either project.
Regarding how the ethical issue of reciprocity can change the original research agenda and
blur the researcher-researched relationship when researching marginalised and street-involved
BME youths, the research experiences of Dimitriadis (2003, see also Liebow 1967,
Nightingale 1993, MacLeod 2009) with Tony and Rufus readily come to mind. As time went
on, these two young people became bigger and bigger parts of his research. He made demands
on their time for interviews, to hang out, and so on. As time went on, the young people began
to make demands on him as well. This meant trips to the Laundromat and shopping out of
town, visits to their families and to the hospital. According to Dimitriadis, this was largely
how he was useful in their lives. As he notes:
Understanding Rufus and Tony’s lives in new ways demanded … that I bracket my initial
research agenda on popular culture and education. It demanded, instead, that I navigate a
terrain without safe shores, without the steadfast truths, and monolithic ways of imagining the
relation between self and community” that often gird the research process (Behar, 1996, p.32).
Opening myself up in this way – becoming the “vulnerable observer” Ruth Behar writes about
– meant getting closer to the everyday lives of these young people. In particular, it meant
understanding how quickly and how totally their lives could be derailed by large and small
real-world contingencies (Dimitriadis Ibid: 82)
Commenting further on the implications of his intimate relationship with Rufus and Tony
Dimitriadis notes: FRearticulating these relationships forced me to ask different kinds of
questions, to see in more complex and situated ways the array of issues and tensions young
people were enmeshed in as they made the transition from adolescence to adulthood” (Ibid:
102).
I was, however, mindful of the fact that helping and caring demand time and energy. I
therefore engaged my research participants in a genuine and honest dialog and reflection
regarding how far I could meet some of their requests. For example, I declined James’
additional request that I make some shopping for him on my way to visit him at the hospital
explaining to him that I did not have enough money for that. I also experienced some tensions
and vulnerabilities related to what Bourgois and Schonberg (2009) have described as
“manipulative requests” from (potential) research participants, especially those I knew from
before. For example, when a young man who was willing to be interviewed saw me at a
popular nightclub frequented by street-involved BME youths, he asked me for a loan to be
paid back the next day. I declined his request. On another occasion at the same nightclub, he
asked me to buy him a pint of beer, which I did. On a more dramatic note, Jamal called me
early one Saturday morning and asked me to come over to his apartment because he had
something very urgent to discuss with me “face to face”. I went over to his place and he asked
me for a loan to pay his rent. He used the rent money he collected from Nav on drugs.
According to him, he risked being thrown out of his apartment and would consider taking his
own life if he was thrown out. I declined his request and advised him to contact his case
manager at Nav for emergency help and offered to accompany him there, which offer he
accepted. Similarly, two other young people I knew from before specifically emphasised the
pecuniary motivations behind their willingness to be interviewed. Another interviewee
requested me to give him cash instead of the gift card I gave him after an interview, whilst
one of my elderly field contacts asked me to pay the registration fee for him so he could
attend a course. In their study of the San Francisco homeless drug addicts, Bourgois and
Schonberg have observed the tensions and uncertainties such requests can engender in an
insider researcher and how they resolved them as follows:
At first, we felt overwhelmed, irritated, and even betrayed by the frequent and often
manipulative requests for favors, spare change, and loans of money. We worried about
distorting our relationships by becoming patrons and buying friendship to obtain our research
data. At the same time, we had to participate in the moral economy to avoid being ostracized
from the network for being stingy and antisocial (Bourgois & Schonberg 2009: 6).
Such requests therefore represent an ethical dilemma related to researching marginalised and
disenfranchised individuals. As Bourgois and Schonberg have observed, their study
participants had to hustle in order to survive on the street and they as researchers had to learn
not to take their petty financial manipulations personally and to refrain from judging them
morally. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for them to enter their lives respectfully
and empathetically. They emphasise the importance of embedding themselves in “the logics
of hustling to be able to recognize, through an acquired common sense, when to give, when
to help, when to say no, and when to be angry” (Ibid). As they have pointed out further,
“Dogmatic rules for researchers with respect to giving money or doing favors for research
subjects are out of touch with practical realities on the street” (Ibid).
In the introduction to Asylums, Goffman writes:
It was then and still is my belief that any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or
patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable, and normal once
you get close to it, and that a good way to learn about any of these worlds is to submit oneself
in the company of the members to the daily round of petty contingencies to which they are
subject (Goffman 1961: ix–x).
That such considerations destabilise any notions of a serene researcher-researched
relationship is aptly captured by Fine as follows:
When we opt … to engage in social struggles with those who have been exploited and
subjugated, we work the hyphen, revealing far more about ourselves, and far more about the
structures of Othering. Eroding the fixedness of categories, we and they enter and play with
the blurred boundaries that proliferate” (Fine 1998: 135, emphasis original).
Such blurred boundaries are inextricably tied to the fact that as human beings engaged in
researching other human beings, we cannot wish away our political and ethical selves or
subjectivities or pretend to. We must own up to them and be explicit about how we deal with
field contingencies related to them. Regarding the issues of objectivity Sjoberg argues as
follows:
One can reduce biases and increase objectivity within social science. However, such cannot be
achieved through repetition of the formula “I am objective”, but through examination of the
impact of ethical and political decisions upon social research” (Sjoberg 1967, cited in Hale
2008: 8).
By so doing, we are able to achieve a positioned objectivity.
)<)6)4A;1;
What constituted the main body of data for this study were transcripts of audio-recorded
interviews and focus groups, detailed fieldnotes, and written reflections on informal extended
conversations. In all, I had individual interviews with 15 study participants of whom one was
female. The open street drug scenes from which most of the study participants were recruited
were male-driven. The interviews varied between 35 minutes to 4 hours. 3 participants were
interviewed in my office and two in institutions. Others were interviewed at the Riverside
Youth House (see Chapter 10) where I was allowed to use one of their offices for this
purpose. Some were also interviewed in Cafes or restaurants. Some of the study participants
were interviewed two or three times in addition to informal extended conversations when I
hanged out or engaged in activities with them. The interviews were conducted in both English
and Norwegian. In addition to the 15 study participants who were administered individual
interviews, I had informal extended conversations with 10 other young people in and around
the open drug markets at Vaterland Park during the periods I hanged out there, especially
during the summer months. I also took part in several informal conversations with young
people who came to the Riverside Youth House to use its services. 10 frontline professionals
were also administered individual interviews. The gathering of data for the study was
continuous and spanned a period of three years.
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the empirical data
generated through the qualitative methods deployed in relation to the marginalised and streetinvolved BME youths. The primary goal of IPA is to lay bare and in detail how individuals
actively engage in interpreting events, objects, and people in their lives in order to make sense
of their experiences (Pietkiewick & Smith 2014). The method allows for a systematic analysis
of study participants’ narratives in order to get deeper insights into their personal or life
worlds. The emphasis is on the participants’ phenomenology. Thus, IPA transcends the
participants’ behaviour and focuses instead on their feelings, emotions and thinking or
cognition. This exercise in trying to understand participants’ meaning-making actively
involves the deployment of the researcher’s own subjective conceptions through his or her
own interpretations. As Smith and Osborn put it, “The participants are trying to make sense of
their world; the researcher is trying to make sense of the participants trying to make sense of
their world” (Smith & Osborn 2008: 53). The method is empathic and doubly hermeneutic in
this sense.
According to Smith and Osborn,
IPA has a theoretical commitment to the person as a cognitive, linguistic, affective and
physical being and assumes a chain of connection between people’s talk and their thinking and
emotional state. At the same time, IPA researchers realize this chain of connection is
complicated – people struggle to express what they are thinking and feeling, there may be
reasons why they do not wish to self-disclose, and the researcher has to interpret people’s
mental and emotional state from what they say” (Ibid: 54).
IPA is appropriate for my analysis in this study because of its emphasis on the participants’
own phenomenology thereby making it possible to centre their own voices. In order to grasp
the participants’ inner emotional world, and meaning-making, I assumed an empathic
interpretative relationship with each transcript, treating it as a case study and subjecting it to a
detailed and repeated reading and analysis in order to identify different themes, the
connections between them and a sense of the participant’s self-concept. It is like stepping into
the participant’s shoes as far as possible (Pietkiewick & Smith 2014). I made notes on and
summarised each transcript in terms of its general content and themes and identified
differences, similarities, emphases or contradictions in what the study participants were
narrating. The relevant and prevalent themes that emerged from the repeated reading of the
transcripts were checked again and again against the data to ascertain if they were in line with
the data. This enabled me to focus on the research participants’ frame of reference and to
accept participant accounts that deviated from my background knowledge as a former black
youth worker, while at the same time drawing on my interpretative resources as informed by
my standpoint of positioned objectivity. In order to give concrete voice to the study
participants regarding the important themes in the analysis, I allowed them to speak through
extracts from their own narratives. I used sociological, criminological and psychological
concepts in order to give form to, understand and shed more light on themes that emerged
from the transcripts.
I deployed discourse analysis (DA) in my analysis of the interviews with professionals in
order to identify different conceptualisations of the needs of marginalised street-involved
BME youths and work with them. Discourse analysis as informed by the work of Foucault is
“a very diverse area of study, with a variety of approaches in each of a number of disciplines”
(Fairclough 2002: 14). Foucaultian discourse analysis is not integrated in such a way to be
described as a paradigm (Diaz-Bone et al. 2007). The focus in my analysis is mainly on how
discourse is shaped by relations of power and ideology, and its constructive effects upon
social identities, social relations and systems of knowledge and belief (Fairclough 2002) and
practice. As noted by Fairclough (Ibid), this has been Foucault’s important contribution to the
theory of discourse. This conceptualisation of discourse in which emphasis is placed on the
relationship between discourse and power and construction of subjectivities through discourse
is echoed by Levitas (2005) who conceptualises discourse as follows:
…sets of interrelated concepts [which] act as a matrix through which we understand the social
world. As this matrix structures our understanding, so it in turn governs the paths of action
which appear to be open for us. A discourse constitutes ways of acting in the world, as well as
a description of it. It both opens up and closes down possibilities for action for ourselves. If
we can make it stick, it does this for others too (Levitas Ibid: 3).
Levitas outlines three ideal-typical political discourses as an analytical device in
understanding different political understandings of social exclusion. These are a
redistributionist discourse (RED) which is primarily concerned with poverty and inequality as
underlying social exclusion and redistribution of wealth and power in society as the panacea
to social exclusion; a moral underclass discourse (MUD) which blames what is considered as
the moral and behavioural deficiencies of the socially excluded for their own self-exclusion in
society and emphasises inculcating of various forms of moral discipline or behaviour
modification; and the social integrationist discourse (SID) which emphasises unemployment
and paid work as a vehicle for social inclusion. According to Levitas, the three discourses
differ in how they conceptualise the relation between inclusion and exclusion and inequality
within society. How professionals who work with marginalised and street-involved youths
defined the needs of these youths are analysed by drawing on Levitas concepts. I analyse how
these discourses impact their professional practices with these youths. Foucault’s
conceptualisation of power and governmentality (Foucault 1982, 1991, see the next chapter)
are also drawn upon in the analysis of the interactions between study participants and various
professional helpers.
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The main focus of the study was the study participants’ inner emotional turmoil and pains as
conditioned by their existential situation, and their efforts to ameliorate these. Thus,
understanding the psychosocial and emotional consequences of multiple and prolonged
marginality weighed heavily in the conceptual and theoretical framework deployed in the
study. Conscious efforts were, therefore, made on my part to transcend the overly cultural and
social explanations which have been so central to criminology and sociology and which have
tended to downplay the importance of psychological explanations.
57<176;=4<=:)4+:1516747/A)6, 8;A+07;7+1)4 +:1516747/A
The study was not incorporated into any grand or overarching theory or theories in relation to
the psychological and emotional consequences of marginalisation. However, I drew upon
insights in psychosocial criminology (Jefferson 1994, 2002, Gadd & Jefferson 2007, Webber
2007, Jones 2008, and Sclater et al. 2009) and cultural criminology (Katz 1988, Young 2003,
Hayward 2004, Hayward & Young 2004, Ferrell 2004, Lyng 1990, 2004, and Ferrell et al.
2001). These insights increasingly focus attention on the role of emotions in transgression. In
these works, emotions, identity and the psyche have become central in understanding acts of
transgression within the context of the ontological insecurity or existential crisis that is
endemic to living in post-modern consumerist society, especially life in its underbelly. Such
acts of transgression are viewed as creative and expressive attempts to resolve or cope with
inner emotional and psychological tensions engendered by the crisis of belonging that
especially marginalised groups may experience in post-modern consumerist societies.
While cultural criminologists do not deny the opportunistic motivations or rational
calculations that may underpin some crimes as posited by rational choice theory or what
Young (2003: 392) describes as the “criminology of neo-liberalism”, their emphasis is on “the
existential foreground of crime” (Ibid: 391) characterised by threatened identities and social
narratives in the face of cultural globalisation and economic insecurity and deprivation.
Emotions related to existential fears, boredom, feelings of humiliation and anger, resentment,
but also exuberance, joy and excitement-seeking and risk-taking, therefore, become central in
understanding acts of transgression in the context of modern existential insecurities. In a
similar vein, responses to crime are also seen as becoming more and more expressive. As
described by Young:
…the intense emotions associated with much urban crime relates to significant and dramatic
problems in the wider society. What is important, here is a criminology which insists that in a
world of broken narratives, where economic and ontological insecurity abounds, that the
nature of crime and the response to it—is far from mundane. That the actors are far from pallid
creatures calculating the best manoeuvres through the social world in order to minimize risk
and maximize contentment and that much of the dynamic behind crime is resentment and
much of the response to it vituperative. Crime has its excitement, its drama, its seductions and
punishment, like it, its vindictiveness, its hostility, its thinly concealed satisfactions (Ibid: 391392).
While new insights in cultural criminology increasingly draw attention to the importance of
emotions in understanding transgressions, systematic attempts are not made to theorise the
subjects of such emotions or to centre the voices of individuals regarding their inner
emotional and psychic worlds. Thus, cultural criminology identifies the importance of
emotions, but does not theorise the subjects of those emotions as psychosocial subjects. Focus
on emotions and identity is more pronounced in psychosocial criminology in explaining not
only transgressions, but also desistance from crime (see, for example, Gadd & Farral 2004).
Here, a psychosocial approach is adopted in the study of emotions and concrete attempts are
made to deploy relevant theories in psychology in understanding such emotions. Psychosocial
criminology tries to transcend the psychological reductionism inherent in purely clinical
psychological accounts of individual behaviour by taking into consideration the social
dynamics of such behaviour. By so doing, the psychosocial approach integrates psychological
explanations within mainstream criminology in which emphasis on social dynamics is central.
Such psychological explanations and focus on individuals’ emotional worlds have largely
been absent in the discipline of criminology (Jones 2008). Thus, in the psychosocial approach
as noted by Sclater et al., emotions
…can be understood as a crucial bridge between the individual and the social, and are
quintessentially psychosocial phenomena. They have a mercurial status, not existing without
an individual to experience the emotion, but often having little significance without a sociocultural framework that imbues feelings and meaning (Sclater et al.: 1).
According to Jones (2008: 245), some of the important areas criminology has failed to explore
in its theories include: the inner experiences of the emotional lives of individuals; the inner
experience and psychological roots of masculine modes of experience and behaviour; the
significance of family and intimate relationships in shaping people’s interactions with the
larger world; and overlap between issues of criminal behaviour and mental health.
The reasoning, therefore, in psychosocial criminology is that a great deal can be understood
about criminal behaviour by focusing on the emotional worlds of individuals involved in
crime and viewing their emotions, morality and violence as engendered by feelings of anger,
shame and guilt as a result of disrupted relationships, especially under the conditions of high
modernity. A cardinal work in this regard is the book by Gadd and Jefferson titled
Psychosocial Criminology: An Introduction in which they emphasise understanding the
psychic world of individuals and their social reality and the interrelationship between the two
in relation to transgressions. The authors argue as follows:
…all crime, including the most apparently bizarre, is normal in the sense that it can be
understood in relation to the same psychosocial processes that affects us all – much in the way
that Freud saw mental illness. We are all more or less neurotic and life, given certain
psychosocial exigencies, can make psychotics of any one of us. This does not obviate the need
for understanding, but it does require that we do so using understandings of psychic life and of
the social world – and their interrelationship – that are applicable to all: pacifist church-goer as
well as multiple murderer. This should humanize the criminal, however awful his or her deeds,
and rescue him or her from the uncomprehending condescension of pathologising discourses
and the exclusionary practices these tend to promote (Gadd & Jefferson 2007: 2).
In pursuance of this psychosocial approach, Gadd and Jefferson brought psychoanalytic
insights and theories about identity and gender to bear on the explanation of specific and
exceptional crimes such date rape, violent serial murder, racial harassment, intimate violence
and sexual crime in order to aid our understanding of these crimes and the victimisation they
entailed.
In addition to new insights in cultural criminology and psychosocial criminology, I also
deployed relevant existentially situated psychological concepts to aid our understanding of the
existential catastrophes that can be wrought by experiences of an ontologically insecure life.
Bulhan’s (1985) conceptualisation of the existential crises that can unfold when the basic
human needs of individuals, especially when their need for sociability and self-clarity are
frustrated, and Laing’s (1990) conceptualisation of coping strategies that can ensue in the face
of ontological insecurity are central in this regard. Foucault’s conceptualisations of power
relations and new forms of government (Foucault 1982, 1991) are deployed to aid our
understanding of the subtle power relations that unfold in the interactions between the study
participants and various professional helpers. Four main conceptual, theoretical and analytic
frameworks namely: the concept of pathways (Rogler & Cortes 1993), the concept of cultural
mistrust (Terrell & Terrell 1981), the concept of stigma and the concept of institutional racism
also informed the analysis of the study participants’ help-seeking efforts. I consider these
various conceptualisations in what follow.
);1+0=5)66--,;=40)6C;6--,;87?-:)88:7)+0
The basic needs my study participants strove after in order to make less traumatic transitions
to adulthood in Norway are the same as the basic human needs we all share. Negative social,
psychological and emotional consequences unfold if the satisfaction of such basic needs is
frustrated through prolonged experiences of marginalisation or social exclusion. Using his
experiences from situations of oppression, Bulhan (1985) elaborates seven basic needs of all
human beings as follows:
(a) biological needs of which the need for food is most basic, (b) sociability and rootedness,
(c) clarity and integrity of self, (d) longevity and symbolic immortality, (e) self-reproduction
in praxis, and (f) maximum self-determination (Bulhan 1985: 262).
Bulhan conceptualises these human needs at the same time as human powers in that each need
demands to be satisfied, and once satisfied or gratified, they become human powers. These
needs are not hierarchically ranked or are in any order of importance. Rather, the relations
between them are organic and dialectical. The needs exist as “actualities to be overcome” and
the powers they confer when gratified are “potentialities to be realized” (Ibid). But none of
these needs or powers is completely thwarted or gratified.
To that extent, “they
simultaneously exist as needs inasmuch as they are partially frustrated and as powers insofar
as they are partially gratified” (Ibid). Those needs which are most frustrated in human beings
become the most manifested in a given period and social condition. Bulhan contrasts his needpower approach to human attributes to instinctual renderings of such basic attributes in
psychology/psychoanalysis. He considers such instinctual renderings as individualistic and
reductionist. He also contrasts his needs-power approach to Maslow’s rendering of human
needs into a “hierarchy of needs”, which Bulhan considers not only elitist, but also a
replication of existing hierarchy of social classes in society, the implication being that it is
only the rich in society who can achieve self-actualisation.
The biological needs Bulhan writes about refer to basic human needs such as food, sex and
shelter. The human need for sociability and rootedness refer to the need for human contact,
connectedness or communication with others, and affirmation or recognition and even
opposition from others. Human beings can live in and acquire a given culture through
sociability, intersubjectivity or interdependence. As he puts it:
Not only the development of our higher powers of cognition and affect, but also the
development of our basic senses rest on the fact that we are social beings…In a sense, an
infant at birth is a bundle of possibilities, a living candidate to many but not infinite
alternatives, awaiting a series of social “re-births” and self-realizations. If failure to satisfy
biological needs leads to disease and physical death, then denial of human contact,
communication, and affirmation (even opposition from others) leads to a social and
psychological “starvation” or “death” no less devastating than, and conditioning, physical
death” (Ibid: 263, emphasis added).
So fundamental is the human need for sociability that our very self-conceptions are dependent
on it. Bulhan postulates that no matter how we conceptualise the self, “whether considered as
the whole person of the individual, a psychic organization, a meaning-making system, or
otherwise … [it] is invariably embedded and formed in a social world. In other words, the self
is a social self, having its origin, affirmation, and transformation in sociality” (Ibid, emphasis
original). The basic human need for self-clarity or selfhood represents the human capacity for
meaning-making and has survival, developmental and organising importance. The pursuit of
self-clarity is inextricably tied to the clarity we first develop about our body, its boundary and
attributes and our larger social environment. Our self-clarity defines both how different we
are from others and how interconnected we are to them. Hence, according to Bulhan,
“Without some clarity of the self, however tentative and tenuous, there can be no meaningful
relating with others, no expression of inherent human potentials, no gratification of essential
needs – in short, no life as we know it” (Ibid: 264).
To achieve self-clarity, we require fundamental respect to our self-integrity. It is difficult to
attain self-clarity when we experience insults and assaults to our being with a certain degree
of regularity at critical developmental periods of our lives. In such cases, our self-clarity
becomes incomplete or negative. According to Bulhan, the experiences of the oppressed
illustrate both the centrality of the need for self-clarity and how “structural and formal
constrains of oppression result in painful ambiguities and constrictions of the self” (Ibid).
Faced with the inevitability of physical death, human beings are also preoccupied with
achieving longevity and symbolic immortality. We strive to achieve symbolic immortality
“through our children, social relations, cultural elaborations, theological convictions, and/or
other modes of “transcendence” (Ibid). Involvement in some form of goal-directed,
purposeful, and socially meaningful human activity is crucial in the pursuit of longevity and
symbolic immortality. Bulhan refers to this purposeful human activity as praxis. Praxis as
purposeful human activity “is imbued with consciousness and intentionality” (Ibid). It is
through praxis that human beings are revealed as socially active agents having a dialectical or
reciprocal relationship with the world in which they live by transforming it and being
transformed by it. While acknowledging other forms of praxis, Bulhan emphasises not only
the centrality of productive labour as praxis for self-reproduction, but also the process of
intersubjectivity involved in it:
Productive labor is, however, “praxis par excellence, since it is by means of labor that people
elaborate social relationships and satisfy their human needs. Unalienated labor is also one
effective means through which people, individually, unveil their implicit identity, objectify it,
and, collectively, build a civilization…That is why experiences of alienated labor or forced
unemployment, both of which are rampant among the oppressed, entails not only a frustration
of biological and social needs, but also an ontological impasse and existential stagnation (Ibid:
265, emphasis original)
However, we cannot attain or gratify these basic human needs without a measure of selfdetermination. Like the other needs, the search for self-determination is fundamental to our
self-definitions as people. He defines self-determination as referring to “a process and
capacity to choose among alternatives, to determine one’s behavior, and to affect one’s
destiny. As such, self-determination assumes a consciousness of human possibilities, an
awareness of necessary constraints, and a willed, self-motivated engagement with one’s
world” (Ibid). Bulhan considers self-determination in terms of freedom, albeit positing that
we are not completely free because of structural and historical impositions. Neither are we
completely externally determined since we have a modicum of choice, influence and control
in relation to what happens to us or what we allow to happen. Thus, Bulhan considers the
individual as not overdetermined, but rather an active, conscious and reflexive social agent as
follows:
History and social conditions presents alternatives but also constrains. We can choose to act or
not to act. But even when we lack alternatives in the world as we find it, we do possess the
capacity to interpret and reinterpret, to adopt one attitude and not another. Without the right to
self-determination, we are reduced to rigid and automatic behaviors, to a life and destiny shorn
of human will and freedom” (Ibid: 265-266).
Bulhan’s power/needs approach to basic human needs is relevant to this study because it
constitutes an important point of departure for understanding the lived condition of
marginality. Marginality matters because it violates or frustrates the individual’s basic human
needs and unleashes severe social, emotional and psychological injuries. However, Bulhan
does not afford us concrete insights into how ontological insecurity may actually be
experienced and/or coped with. These are addressed by Laing (1990). Laing and Bulhan share
similar views in their insights regarding the existential condition of ontological insecurity.
However, Laing goes further to elaborate the existential anxieties that may attend the
condition of existential stagnation.
)16/C;+76+-8<7. 76<747/1+)416;-+=:1<A
In his book The Divided Self, Laing (1990) argues that it is only when a human being is able
to have self-clarity or a clear and cohesive sense of his continuous presence in the world as a
real, alive, autonomous, and whole being that he can project himself unto the world and reach
out to others and experience them as equally real, alive, whole and continuous. Such a person
or being acts from an existential position Laing describes as primary ontological security. An
ontologically secure person will confront various challenges of life, whether social, ethical,
spiritual, or biological from a position of a firm sense of self-clarity and other people’s sense
of reality and identity. Such challenges do not threaten his self-clarity. A person whose
existential conditions are characterised by partial or complete absence of sureties of
ontological security experiences ontological insecurity. According to Laing, in everyday life,
an ontologically insecure person:
… may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously
differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in
question. He may lack the experience of his own temporal continuity. He may not possess an
over-riding sense of personal consistency or cohesiveness. He may feel more insubstantial
than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable.
And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body (Laing 1990: 42).
Such a person will experience everyday circumstances as a threat. Hence anxieties and
dangers arise in existential conditions characterised by ontological insecurity. As Laing points
out:
If the individual cannot take the realness, aliveness, autonomy, and identity of himself and
others for granted, then he has to become absorbed in contriving ways of trying to be real, of
keeping himself or others alive, of preserving his identity, in efforts, as he will often put it, to
prevent himself losing his self” (Ibid: 42-43, emphasis added)
Laing outlines three forms of anxieties that the ontologically insecure person encounters:
engulfment, implosion, and petrification.
This form of anxiety is associated with an ontologically insecure person who is preoccupied
with the preservation of his existence. It is characterised by the fear that relatedness with
others, anything or himself may threaten the individual with loss of his autonomy or identity.
The main strategy used to preserve one’s autonomy and identity in this case is isolation.
According to Laing, this kind of anxiety explains the ‘negative therapeutic reaction’ to correct
interpretation in psychotherapy, where excessive attempts by helpers to help clients or
patients are perceived by these clients as being swallowed up.
Here, the ontologically insecure person is saddled with the sense or feeling of emptiness. The
individual longs for the emptiness to be filled, but dreads this happening because of the
feeling that the nothingness he feels is all he can be. He avoids contact with reality since he
feels imploded by it because he perceives it as threatening his sense of identity and autonomy.
This relates to the sense of being thingified, dehumanised or deprived of one’s subjectivity;
the feeling that one is a stone or automaton rather than a person. The ontologically insecure
person who feels this form of anxiety in turn treats others as things negating their personal
autonomy and ignoring their feelings.
It is not the aim of Laing to explain the causes or sources of these anxieties, but to emphasise
that people who experience ontological insecurity make existential choices and adopt various
compensatory behaviours in an attempt to cope and deal with such anxieties and dangers. One
way of coping is the excessive projection of what Laing describes as the “false self”. While all
of us, in one way or the other, wear a false self or masks in our daily interactions with others,
the false self permeates or pervades the actions of the ontologically insecure person. Drawing
on the works of existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre, he conceptualises
the false self as an inauthentic self, a way of not being oneself or living an inauthentic life.
He distinguishes the false self which is ‘identity-for-others’ from the “inner” self or ‘identityfor-one self’. The “inner” or real self is preoccupied with the maintenance of its identity and
freedom and becoming transcendent. While Laing applied his concept to understanding
schizoids and psychotics, which my study participants were not, his concept is relevant to our
understanding of the existential choices they made in the face of the inner emotional turmoil
engendered by the ontological insecurity that threatened their existential identities.
Thus, like Bulhan’s, I found Laing’s conceptualisation of the consequences of experiencing
an existentially insecure life valuable for understanding the psychic and emotional worlds of
the study participants, especially in relation to some of the coping strategies they adopted in
the face of their multiple and prolonged marginality, including their interactions with helpers.
7=+)=4<7687?-::-4)<176;)6,/7>-:65-6<)41<A
Questions of power are part and parcel of the interactions between individuals and state
institutions in any modern society. In their dealings with disadvantaged individuals and
groups, professionals within state institutions are in a power and authority position as the
representatives of the state and often deploy various discourses in relation to their clients.
Professionals can be conscious or unconscious of the kind of authority and powers at their
disposal, but how they exercise these powers can have far reaching consequences for
disadvantaged individuals and groups that come into contact with them. The power that may
unravel in client-professional interactions is an archetype of relations of power in the
Foucaultian sense.
Foucault suggests that through power relations “human beings are made subjects” (Foucault
1982: 777) and it is important to understand the strategies of power involved. He
conceptualises this form of objectifying power as follows:
This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the individual,
marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth
on him which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him. It is a form of
power which makes individuals subjects. There are two meanings of the word “subject”:
subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own identity by a
conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and
makes subject to (Ibid: 782).
With this conceptualisation of power, Foucault transcends typical understandings of the
power of the state that focus on the state’s totalising power and ignores the individual. He
argues that “the state’s power (and that’s one of the reasons for its strength) is both an
individualizing and a totalizing form of power” combining “structures of individualization
techniques and of totalizing procedures” (Ibid). This process has come about in modern
western societies, he argues, because the modern western state has integrated and moulded
anew an old technology of power that dates back to early Christian institutions. He denotes
this strategy of power “pastoral power” (Ibid). Pastoral power aims “to assure individual
salvation in the next world”. It is not only a power that commands. It is also “prepared to
sacrifice itself for the life and salvation of the flock”. It looks after the whole community, “but
each individual in particular, during his entire life” (Ibid: 783). He emphasises the
individualising and subjectifying element in this form of power as follows:
…this form of power cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of people’s minds,
without exploring their soul, without making them reveal their innermost secrets. It implies a
knowledge of the conscience and an ability to direct it (Ibid).
According to Foucault, the function that this power played in Christian institutions has
expanded and multiplied outside these institutions since the eighteenth century.
Correspondingly, the aims and objectives of pastoral power have changed from “salvation” in
the next world to salvation here and now in this world in the form of a “series of “worldly
“aims” such as health, well-being, security, and protection against accidents. In modern times,
this pastoral power is executed by state institutions, private ventures, welfare societies and
philanthropies. The exercise of pastoral power creates relations between people and groups,
and in these power relations, certain actions modify actions of others. As he notes in relation
to the technology of behaviour modification endemic to the exercise of this form of power:
it is …always an act of acting upon an acting subject or acting subjects by virtue of their
acting or being capable of action. A set of actions upon other actions …The exercise of power
consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome.
Basically power is less a confrontation between two adversaries or the linking of one to the
other than a question of government (Ibid: 789, emphasis added).
Foucault conceptualises “government” in terms of its generalist or comprehensive sixteenth
century connotations of directing the conducts or behaviours of individuals, guiding and
tutoring children, directing communities, the sick, directing the soul, and so on, (in addition
to the terms reference to political institutions or administration of states). Foucault considers
this form of government as follows:
…modes of actions, more or less considered or calculated, which were destined to act upon the
possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field
of action of others. The relationship proper to power would not, therefore, be sought on the
side or of struggle …but rather in the area of the singular mode of action …which is
government (Ibid: 790).
According to Foucault, the exercise of this power in which a mode of action affects other
people’s actions presupposes autonomous individuals who have freedom to choose between
different ways of behaving and comporting themselves. Thus, “power is exercised only over
free subjects, and only insofar as they are free” (Ibid). Foucault suggests that one can analyse
how these power relations and new forms of governance unfold and how they are resisted
within specific institutions because, as he argues, “power relations have been progressively
governmentalized, that is to say, elaborated, rationalized, and centralized in the form of, or
under the auspices of, state institutions” (Ibid: 793). In fact, he suggests that the very survival
of the state depends on tactics of governmentality. He argues it as follows:
…the governmentality of the state is what has permitted the state to survive…thanks to this
governmentality, which is at once internal and external to the state, since it is tactics of
government which make possible the continual definition and redefinition of what is within
the competence of the state and what is not, the public versus the private, and so on; thus the
state can only be understood in its survival and its limits on the basis of the general tactics of
governmentality (Foucault 1991: 103).
The shift in welfare and social policy towards a policy of workfare involving conditionalities,
responsibilisation and the underlying modification of behaviour characteristic of most
advanced western countries represent a new form of governance. As noted by Kelly,
“Discourses of governmentality think of (neo)liberalism as a problematisation of the practice
of liberal welfare government” (Kelly 2001: 26) in which there is an “increasing mobilization
of expertise in more sophisticated attempts to govern the ungovernable” (Ibid: 28). Rose has
pointed out how Foucault’s notion of governmentality has become pertinent to “contemporary
programmes, strategies and techniques for the government of conduct” (Rose 2000: 323). In
relation to welfare provisions, Rose notes the following:
This alloy of autonomization and responsibilisation underpins shifts in strategies of welfare, in
which substantive issues of income distribution and poverty have been displayed by a focus
upon processual issues that affiliate or expel individuals from the universe of civility, choice
and responsibility, best captured by the dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion (Ibid: 324).
Thus, a distinction is drawn between majority of citizens who are capable of ensuring their
own well-being and security through active self-promotion and taking responsibility for
themselves and their families and those anti-citizens outside the circuit of civility: “the
underclass, the marginalized, the truly disadvantaged, the criminals” (Ibid: 331). With
reference to the neo-liberal problematisation of the practice of liberal welfare, Rose affords us
insights into the rationality or discourse that undergirds the neo-liberal critique of liberal
welfare as follows:
the problem created by welfare was essentially a moral and ethical one (Himmelfarb 1995):
some were lured into welfare dependency by the regimes of social security themselves, some
were unable to accept their moral responsibilities as citizens for reasons of psychological or
other personal incapacity, some were enterprising, rational and calculating but enterprised
themselves in the culture of anti-civility, of crime and drugs, rather than within the values of
civility and responsible self-management (Ibid).
Thus, these marginalised individuals are couched in the neo-liberal discourse as being selfirresponsible due to reasons attributable to their own dispositions, abilities or capacities. This
is similar to the moral underclass discourse outlined by Levitas (2005). Workfare is a strategy
aimed at the “ethical reconstruction” of the excluded individual “to micro-manage the
behaviour of welfare recipients in order to remoralize them” (Rose 2000: 334). The emphasis
is on reformation of habits as a precondition for social benefits and ultimately to get
disadvantaged but able body individuals off benefits.
In this processes, problematic
behaviours are cast as ethnical or moral problems in relation to how such individuals
understand their existence and conduct themselves in society. As Rose describes it:
This ethical reformulation opens the possibility for a whole range of psychological techniques
to be recycled in programmes for governing ‘the excluded’. The imperative of activity, and the
presumption of an ethic of choice, is central not only to the rationale of policy but also to the
reformatory technology to which it is linked (Ibid: 334).
With reference to the works of Cruikshank and Baistow (Cruikshank 1994, and Baistow 1995,
cited in Rose 2000), Rose draws attention to the importance of the language of empowerment
for professionals who operate within such technologies of government. In the language of
empowerment, social exclusion is seen as “lack of self-esteem, self-worth and the skills of
self-management necessary to steer oneself as an active individual in the empire of choice”
(Ibid). Rose points out how the language of empowerment works as follows:
Autonomy is now represented in terms of personal power and the capacity to accept
responsibility – not to blame others but to recognize your own collusion in that which prevents
you from being yourself, and in doing so, overcome it and achieve responsible autonomy and
personal power. High self-esteem is linked to the power to plan one’s life as an orderly
enterprise and take responsibility for its course and outcome (Ibid: 334-335).
I found Foucault’s conceptualisation of power relations and new forms of government and its
elucidation by other authors in relation to workfare regimes relevant in illuminating the
discourses that unfolded in the study participants’ interactions with various professionals and
the study participants’ resistance to their subjectification. The pivotal role that the ideology of
empowerment can play in new forms of government of the socially marginalised is also
relevant in understanding some of the professional interventions target at the study
participants.
76+-8<7. !)<0?)A;
Rogler and Cortes conceptualise help-seeking pathways as “the sequence of contacts with
individuals and organisations prompted by the distressed person’s efforts and those of his or
her significant others, to seek help as well as the help that is supplied in response to such
efforts” (Rogler and Cortes 1993: 555).
They focus on the pathway comprising the
interpersonal help-seeking and help-receiving effort as including cultural interpretations of the
evolving distress, attempted therapeutic and social interventions by laypersons and
professionals, and referral to help-giving primary and secondary groups. According to them,
the pathway has direction, which is the sequential ordering of individuals and organisations
contacted during the effort. It also has duration, which is the time lapse between the initiation
of the help-seeking effort and the formation of contacts. They point out further that
psychosocial and cultural factors impinge upon direction and duration to shape the pathway’s
historical course. Some factors affect the pathway directly, and some affect it indirectly
through social networks that bind the distressed person to his or her significant others.
The importance of the concept of pathways lies in the fact that it is generic and focuses on the
whole gamut of the distressed person’s contacts with formal and informal sources of help
even before involvement in social or mental health care, and the important functions such
sources play in his or her attempt to cope with the distressed situations as well as different
psychosocial and cultural factors that affect the process. This is crucial in understanding the
whole range of coping behaviours of marginalised street-involved BME youths, including
their requests for help or support and advice from friends, relatives, natural helpers,
neighbours, significant others as well as various professionals and the factors that affect these
behaviours.
=4<=:)41;<:=;<)6,6<-::)+1)41;;76)6+Terrell and Terrell (1984) developed their notion of cultural mistrust in relation to Blacks’
underutilisation of mental health facilities in the United States. Their main argument is that
because African Americans as a group have a long history of racial mistreatment by Whites,
African Americans may have developed a generalised suspicion or mistrust of whites. They
define cultural mistrust as the extent to which Blacks mistrust whites (Nickerson et al. 1994).
This mistrust emerges as a psychological factor that might function as an impediment in the
relationship between Black clients and white professionals in terms of establishment of a
working alliance, reluctance to reveal personal information, termination of treatment or
contact and so on. Whaley (2001) in his meta-analysis suggests that the negative effects of
Blacks’ cultural mistrust in interracial situations are not unique to counselling and
psychotherapy, but represent a broader perspective which may encompass cultural beliefs of
African Americans. The implication here is that if an African American exhibits a high level
of mistrust of Whites in the broader society, it is likely that that person will not trust a white
therapist or professional. Drawing from Terrell’s and Terrell’s notion of cultural mistrust,
Chandler develops the notion of “interracial dissonance” which “refers to Blacks’ feelings of
physical, psychological, and social disconnect from Whites, wherein blacks perceive that their
ways of living and intentions for themselves significantly differs from those of whites”
(Chandler 2008: 7).
The importance of the notions of cultural mistrust and interracial dissonance derives from the
suggestion that psychological factors and different frames of reference unravel in the contacts
between white professionals and ethnic minority clients that might affect seeking professional
help and utilising available services. As pointed out above in the literature review, there are
indications of mistrust between ethnic minority clients and social and health service providers
in Norway. It is, therefore, important to gain more understanding of this mistrust. However,
the notion of cultural mistrust fails to take into consideration the role that knowledge of
available services, opinions about services, the views of significant others and accessibility of
services as well as how services are organised can play in determining help-seeking behaviour
and utilisation of services. These other factors were also crucial in understanding the helpseeking pathways of the target group for this study.
6;<1<=<176)4#)+1;5
The notion of institutional racism addresses more specifically accessibility of services and the
way they are organised. The Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence in the
UK defined institutional racism in their Inquiry Report as follows:
The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to
people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes,
attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice,
ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage ethnic minority people”
(Home Department 1999:28 cited in Inyama 2009:29, emphasis added).
According to Griffith et al. (2009), understanding the role of organisational factors can
contribute to addressing health care disparities. They conceptualise racism in a health service
delivery as consisting of three components: the extraorganisational, the intraorganisational
and the individual. Extraorganisational racism explains the reciprocal relationship between
organisations and their external environment. Here, one can think of the legal rules and
regulatory frameworks within which the social, welfare and health services operate, which
can be unwittingly or unintentionally discriminatory to ethnic minorities. Intraorganisational
racism operates, according to them, through an organisation’s internal climate, practices,
policies, and procedures, whiles individual racism operates through provider and staff
attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours.
The importance of the concept of institutional racism derives from the fact that it emphasises
organisational processes and factors and professional attitudes, and how these can affect
service delivery to marginalised BME youths, their views and experiences of these services
and professionals, and how these may affect their help-seeking behaviours in relation to these
services. The concept is also important from the point of view of organisational change. It
suggests the importance of organisational changes in improving the accessibility of services
for marginalised BME youths and reducing any negative perceptions and attitudes they might
have about professional help-seeking.
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The literature suggests that ethnic minorities attach stigma to mental illnesses and other
psychological disorders, and experience degradation and stigmatisation in their contacts with
the social and health services (Guribye & Sam 2008, Grønseth 2007, Fangen & Hjelden 2006,
and Ylvisaker 2004). As noted by Grønseth (Ibid) in relation to the Tamils, depression and
other psychological disorders are related to stigma and such symptoms are disadvantageous as
they reduce self-esteem, social status and power and usually lead to ostracism that affects
marriage prospects and family life. Feelings shame, humiliation, resentment, and
dehumanisation are associated with stigma. Goffman (1963) conceptualises ‘stigma’ as an
attribute that is strongly discrediting, degrading and dishonourable and which swathes all
other attributes the stigmatised has. Hence, understanding the feelings of stigma marginalised
street-oriented BME youths may associate with seeking care, especially professional care,
may aid us in understanding their delays in seeking professional help for their emotional and
psychic needs and underutilisation of available services. This may be important in developing
appropriate intervention strategies to reduce the stigma attached to these services.
8-:)<176)41;)<176 7.7<0-:+76+-8<;
I would like to use the remainder of this section to operationalise and expatiate on key
concepts and notions that are recurrent in the thesis
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The phrase ‘Black and minority ethnic youths’ as used in this study refers to young people
with immigrant and non-western origins who because of their ‘race’ or external features like
skin colour and language, and religious and cultural heritage are distinguishable from the
indigenous ethnic Norwegian majority population. The term as used refers to any of these
youths with, at least, one parent with non-western roots. It also refers to young people with
mixed or inter-racial parentage. Some of these BME youths were born and bred in Norway,
while others came to Norway through adoption, or either as unaccompanied minor asylum
seekers/refugees or through family reunifications. The term ‘Black’ is used exclusively to
denote young people with a pan-African origin. Thus, the connotation ‘Black and minority
ethnic youths’ is more nuanced than the political usage of the term ‘Black’ which, according
to Sallah, “can be described as generic and at best be defined as a fluctuating social construct
whose boundaries are extended and contracted according to various interests” (Sallah 2007:
21). According to Eriksen and Sørheim (1998), one can identify two kinds of ethnic
minorities in Norway: the indigenous Sami population and urban minorities or immigrants,
refugees and their children and grandchildren. The focus in this study is on urban ethnic
minorities.
The relationship between ethnic minorities and the ethnic majority population is often an
asymmetrical, dialectical and dynamic one. This relationship can be assessed in terms of
differences in their access to power (Thorbjørnsrud 2001), resources and services. Social,
economic, and political processes and institutions in society (including those that address
health and welfare needs) are often predicated on the values, norms, and way of life and
thinking of the majority population. The majority population or the elites who represent its
interests thus determine the rules and regulations for access to societal resources. The
majority has the power to define and the minority must so act in accordance with the premises
laid down by the majority (Thorbjørnsrud 2001). The power differentials between ethnic
minorities and the majority can lead to differences in access to scarce resources or welfare
goods and services which can in turn have ramifications for active participation in society
leading to marginalisation or social exclusion (Kuvoame 2005).
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Like many other social science concepts, the term “marginalisation” is imbued with different
definitions. However, the term is often used to describe the processes, mechanisms or factors
that may lead to individuals and social groups being “pushed” to the sidelines of society.
According to Heggen, “In general, marginalisation may be said to describe individuals driven
or drawn towards the margins or dark sides of society” (Heggen 1998: 47). In this
dissertation, the term is used to describe the processes and mechanisms which may prevent
social groups or individuals from actively participating in important societal processes by
cultivating and using their human resources, and the social and psychological consequences
that may result (Kuvoame 2005). I use the concept in two ways. Firstly, the concept is used to
describe the processes and mechanisms of marginalisation, and secondly, the end result of
these processes or marginality understood as a condition. In relation to youths, the term refers
to the exclusionary processes they may encounter in social and institutional arenas that are
important for their transitions to adulthood such as the family, school, the youth labour
market, housing market, social support networks, recreational activities, the social and welfare
services and so on. This conceptualisation is more encompassing than the economistic one
that views youth marginalisation mainly in terms of lack of participation in the labour market.
As Heggen suggests:
Marginalisation is dependent not only on a youth’s position in or outside the labour market,
but also on their degree of integration or isolation in relation to a number of other important
arenas, such as school, family, organisations and groups. Only when a youth has a weak
position in a number of arenas simultaneously can we talk of marginalisation. Such positions
limit their access to economic, social and political resources (Ibid: 48).
Following the conclusions of Littlewood and Herkommer (1999) regarding common themes
that run through most exclusionary discourse, the term “marginalisation” as used in this study
emphasises access to resources, the relational aspect of that access, the role of ascriptive
factors like gender, race, ethnicity, language and religion as well as the multiple and
accumulative nature of the condition of social marginalisation. The emphasis is on the
multidimensional nature of marginalisation as a process and condition. This is crucial because
social groups or individuals can experience marginalisation in relation to different social or
institutional spheres simultaneously. For example, a social group or an individual may
simultaneously be marginalised in relation to school, the housing market, the job-market, the
family or significant others, the social and welfare services . The social and psychological
consequences of multiple and prolonged social marginalisation are cumulative and long
lasting.
Marginalisation cannot occur in a vacuum, but in terms of exclusion from full participation in
specific institutional or social spaces in society. Hence, the individual’s marginalisation at the
micro level is best understood in terms of an analysis of exclusionary processes at specific
social and institutional spaces at the macro level and the interrelationships between the two
levels. For example, we cannot fully understand the marginalisation young people may
experience in school without a critical analysis of the key exclusionary factors or processes
within the school system as a whole.
According to Wyn and White (1998), there seems to be a broad agreement that
marginalisation can lead to increased risk for suicide, homelessness, dropping out of school
and that it is associated with physical and psychological abuse as well as unemployment. Øia
(2000) has also noted both the externalised and internalised problems associated with
marginalisation. The externalised problems include difficulties at school, crime, violence and
substance abuse whiles the internalised problems include anxiety, depression and eating
disorders. Experiences of multiple and prolonged marginalisation can, therefore, detract from
the individual’s personal worth, self-realisation and personal control and may result in social,
physical and psychological death, as mentioned earlier.
The cumulative and negative
emotional and psychological consequences that experiences of multiple and prolonged
marginality can lead to were the focus of my study. Most definitions of marginalisation do not
emphasise these psychological and emotional dimensions. However, it is my view that these
dimensions may be crucial in understanding the compensatory and nihilistic behaviours that
may be associated with marginalised youths, and may have important implications for
intervention policies and strategies targeted at them.
The concept of marginalisation as used in this study also encompasses the notion of “selfmarginalisation”. The notion of self-marginalisation denotes how in his or her attempts to
cope with his or her condition of marginality, an individual may make choices or adopt
strategies that may exacerbate his or her marginalisation. Thus, self-marginalisation can be
construed as secondary marginalisation. For example, the compensatory public behaviours
such as crime, violence and drug use that marginalised youths may indulge in, and the
alternative survival strategies, friendship networks, values, norms, skills, vocabulary and
styles they may articulate in street culture often tend to have negative consequences for them
and may contribute to buttress their social marginalisation. This way, these youths can
contribute to the societal processes that marginalise them. Thus, experiences of multiple and
prolonged marginalisation may lead to self-marginalisation.
It is important to point out that though individuals and social groups may be socially
marginalised, they may not be culturally marginalised in that they may share the conventional
cultural values and goals of society. Bauman (1998) suggests that the late-modern society
engages its members, first and foremost, in their roles and capacities as consumers. Most
marginalised youths also share the contemporary consumerist youth culture and are caught up
in a consumption spiral characterised by consumption of popular lifestyle products and
immediate gratification.
To that extent, they are culturally integrated though socially
marginalised. Young describes a society in which both exclusion and inclusion occurs
simultaneously as a bulimic society. According to him, a bulimic society
… is where massive cultural inclusion is accompanied by systematic structural exclusion. It is
a society that has both strong centrifugal and centripetal currents: it absorbs and it rejects.
[There is an] array of institutions which impact the process of inclusion: the mass media, mass
education, the consumer market, the labour market, the welfare state, the political system, the
criminal justice system. Each of these carries with it a notion of universal values, of
democratic notions of equality and reward and treatment according to circumstances and
merit…Each of these institutions is not only a strong advocate of inclusive citizenship, it is
also paradoxically the site of exclusion (Young 2003: 397)
The emotional and psychological strains that may characterise the existential condition of
being culturally included but socially excluded are central in the notion of marginalisation
articulated in this study.
Prolonged experiences of marginalisation combined with other deprivations such as low
consumption and living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods often result in social exclusion.
Social exclusion is conceptualised by Taket et al. as follows:
The concept of social exclusion attempts to help us make sense out of the lived experience
arising from multiple deprivations and inequities experienced by people and localities, across
the social fabric, and the mutually reinforcing effects of reduced participation, consumption,
mobility, access, integration, influence and recognition. The language of social exclusion
recognises marginalising, silencing, rejecting, isolating, segregating and disenfranchising as
the machinery of exclusion, its processes of operation (Taket et al. 2009: 3).
Thus, social exclusion may be described as the extreme form of multiple and prolonged
marginalisation. While it is important to address the causes of marginalisation, whether at the
individual or structural levels or the interrelationships between the two, this was not the main
focus of this study. The focus was rather on the lived experience of social exclusion and
marginality as an existential condition and how the study participants tried to cope with it.
The notion of experience as used here is akin to the conceptualisation of experience central to
feminist thought. As noted by Held: “It is the lived experience of feeling as well as thinking,
of performing actions as well as receiving impressions, and of being aware of our connections
with other persons as well as of our own sensations…the experience of actual women in all
their racial and cultural and other diversity” (Held 2006: 23).
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I conceptualise ‘psychoaffective injuries’ or the ‘pains of marginality’ as the social,
emotional and psychological consequences of a socially disordered or disrupted life. These
consequences include painful memories and recurring feelings of humiliation, anger,
resentment, bitterness, frustration, rejection, loneliness, worthlessness, meaninglessness, lack
of self-clarity, uncertainty about the future, mistrust, and the sense of fatalism and pessimism
that experiences of prolonged social marginalisation can engender in young people, as well as
the nihilistic and compensatory coping behaviours thereof. Central to this conceptualisation is
the centring of the voices of individuals who live these injuries.
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Thoits conceptualises social support as consisting of “emotional, informational, or practical
assistance with stressors from significant others such as family or friends” (Thoits 2010: 111).
According to Turner and Brown, research in the field demonstrates that “social support is a
multidimensional concept involving perceived, structural, and received support” (Turner &
Brown 2010: 200). They note further that social support “always involves either the presence
or implication of stable human relationships” (Ibid). According to them, the dominant
hypothesis within present theory and research is that “social support may represent an
important buffer against the impact of life stress and thereby one’s mental health” (Ibid: 202),
though there are differences regarding whether social support functions as the main effect or a
mediating variable. They present the conceptual framework of Cobb (1976) as the “best
known and most influential conceptualisation of social support today” as follows:
He viewed social support as “information belonging to one or more of the following three
classes: (1) information leading to the subject to believe that he is cared for and loved; (2)
information leading the subject to believe that he is esteemed and valued; and (3) information
leading the subject to believe that he belongs to a network of communication and mutual
obligation” (1976, p.300). In other words, social support refers to the clarity or certainty with
which an individual experiences being loved, valued, and able to count on others should the
need arise (Turner & Brown 2010: 202).
They emphasised the distinction Cobb (1979, cited in Turner and Brown Ibid) draws between
social support and instrumental support (counselling, assisting), active support (e.g.,
mothering), or material support (providing goods and services) thereby emphasising the
distinction between perception of social support and the actual receipt of supportive resources
or engagement in supportive activities
According to Turner and Brown, the dominant views of social support available today
understand the concept as involving dimensions such as perceived support or emotional
support, structural support and received support. Emotional support involves the subjective
feeling that one is part of a “communicative and caring social network” (Ibid: 203). Structural
support depicts how individuals’ ties to one another is organised and involves frequency and
density of ties, the strength of social bonds, degree of reciprocity of exchanges between
provider and receiver, and similarities between network members. Received support refers to
the actual help, whether material or informational, loved ones in the network gives to one
(Ibid).
According to them, studies of emotional support or perceived support dominate the research
conducted into the importance of social support for psychological health and well-being
suggesting a primacy of perceived over received support. Turner and Brown emphasise the
importance of perceived support as follows:
Given the observations that (1) perceived social support is most persistently and powerfully
associated with mental health and (2) that other elements of social support apparently exert
their effects by influencing this perception, perceived support may represent the most direct
criterion for assessing the broader role and significance of social support. The importance of
this concept is that perceived social support may provide a basis for identifying behaviours
and circumstances as promising targets for intervention efforts to prevent or ameliorate mental
health problems.” (Ibid: 204).
The interconnected social relationships that young people may have to their families, friends
and other significant persons are referred to as social support networks. According to
Whittaker and Garbarino, “A social support network is a set of interconnected relationships
among a group of people that provides enduring patterns of nurturance (in any or all forms)
and provides contingent reinforcement for efforts to cope with life on a day-to-day basis”
(Whittaker & Garbarino 1983: 5). With reference to Pilisuk and Parks (1980), Whittaker and
Gabarino provide a working definition of social support:
“Social support networks” conveys something about the processes of support [“… a range of
interpersonal exchanges that provide an individual with information, emotional reassurance,
physical or maternal assistance, and a sense of the self as an object of concern”, according to
Pilisuk and Parks, (1980, p. 158)] as well as the structures and regular patterns of support.
Networks are interconnected relationships, durable patterns of interaction, and interpersonal
threads that comprise a social fabric. (Whittaker & Garbarino Ibid: 4, emphasis original).
The social supports young people can mobilise through their social networks represent their
stock of social capital. In their transitions to adulthood, young people can also have important
relationships with societal institutions that offer specific services these youths might need in
order to go ahead in life. This is especially the case when young people experience important
disruptions in their informal relations or social networks. In relation to the helping seeking
behaviours of the study participants, I focused mainly on their perceptions regarding the help
they might seek and/or get.
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In this chapter, I present four life histories from the street to serve as a backdrop for my
analysis in subsequent chapters. Through these life stories, the voices of the study participants
are centred regarding their lived experiences and inner psychic and emotional worlds. The
events that these study participants narrated in their life stories were those that they
considered as meaningful and interpreted as pivotal in their lives, and which made the choices
they made in life intelligible to them. This way, their feelings, thinking, actions and emotions
are centred and their complexity as virtuosic human beings revealed in the life stories. I
played an active and empathic role in their construction and interpretation of their life worlds
by allowing them to talk freely about these. The life stories depict not only the choices these
youths made given their existential situation, but also key indicators of marginality and strains
associated with many of my study participants. The focus in the life stories is thus on their
emotions occasioned by the processes of marginalisation and strains they experienced in
social and institutional arenas that are crucial for transitions of young people to adulthood in
Norway, and how they tried to cope with these. These four life stories are chosen purposively
in relation to the main themes of this study.
Some of my study participants insisted that I use their real names when writing my report
based on the interviews and extended information conversations I had with them. While this
might be their attempts to sensitise the reading public to what they perceived as their
precarity, or even politicised it, I declined to do so explaining to them the law of
confidentiality. The country of origin (apart from Mohamed, Jamal, Jibril, Hassan, and Liban)
and names of the study participants have been changed in order to provide them with the
utmost anonymity. In centring the voices of the study participants, I have used empty brackets
( ) where I have omitted material and square brackets [
] where I have inserted words or
phrases for clarification and, ellipsis points (…) where there is a pause in the participants
speech (see Riggs & Coyles 2002)
-41@
Since Felix, his mother and siblings fled from war-torn Sierra Leone, he always struggled
with the uncomfortable feeling that he might never get to know what role his father really
played in the genocidal war that devastated his country and tore the family apart. Felix lost his
father, an uncle and his wife and their seven children (his cousins and nephews) in the war.
According to him, his father, who was highly placed in the government at the time, was killed
in the war. Rumours had it that his father was complicit in events that led to the death of
thousands of his countrymen during the war. These rumours detracted from the pristine image
Felix held of his father at the tender age of 5. The emotional turmoil or pain he carried with
him all these years became apparent when he broke down in tears as he narrated his many
efforts to know the truth, amidst accusations by some of his acquaintances that his father was
a murderer.
Felix: You know, I mean, I lived all my life in the shadow of documentaries, realities, gossips
[about the war] (…) what is true, what is not true. My family (…) they tell you a story, but
they keep limits because they don’t want to hurt you. ( ) So I started even hating that I am
Sierra Leonean (…) and I went out with other people, anybody but them [Sierra Leoneans]
[long silence, crying again and wiping his tears].
The war broke out when he was just a kid, but he could recall that his father was an important
and highly respected person in Sierra Leone before the war. He narrated a strong
identification with a loving father who would come home from the office, cuddle him and
play with him and then retire to his study. He painted a picture of a disciplined father who was
highly committed to his upper middle class family. Felix felt that he always met a stone wall
in his attempts to know the truth. He felt that the demise of his father affected him deeply and
left a gaping hole in his heart. Listening to Felix, I felt I was sitting in front of a young man
saddled with a deep emotional emptiness, who yearned for and mourned his father, and who
had never had the chance to come to terms with such feelings.
Moses: Have you had the chance to talk to someone about this?
Felix: Never, never, never. Never said this to anyone.
Moses: Not even in school?
Felix: In school? Never. In the Child Welfare? Never.
In the absence of a father he hardly knew but whom he longed for, Felix turned to his
grandfather as his role model, though his grandfather stayed back in Sierra Leone. But he died
in 2008: “Eh, my grandfather went (…) died in 2008 without me ever seeing him since 1998”.
This double loss weighed heavily on Felix.
Felix is a bright, perceptive, well-articulated and artistic young man aged 22. The first
impression you gather when conversing with him is a reflexive and perceptive young man
who is up to date with world events, politics and religion. For many years, he was one of the
key actors at one of the open street drug markets in Oslo. He sold drugs, used them and drank
alcohol, at times heavily. He came into contact with the police several times. He went to
prison four times. He got out of prison about six months ago after serving a long sentence and
vowed to do everything possible not to go back again.
Felix and his mother came to Norway as refugees when he was 13 years old. That was after
short sojourns in two other European countries. They arrived in Spain when Felix was 10 and
he went to school in Madrid. At the beginning, everything was good at school. He had good
grades and made some friends. Then came his first encounters with everyday racism in form
of racist slurs from his schoolmates, which his teachers seemed to condone. These hurtful
racist slurs sensitised him to the existence of a colour bar within the school system, and set
him off on the quest to assert himself, and search for his true identity as a black youth. The
rejection he met in school fomented in him an expressive anger and a rebellious attitude to
school:
Felix: So I went to school, got good grades. But then, I started hearing (…) I started hearing
funny, funny, funny, funny, funny, but very, very hurtful things. And I can sit here and write
you a book of songs, jokes [racist songs and jokes he endured] (…) you know. ( ) So the first
joke I heard was ‘Oh how could you find your mamma’s teats in the dark when you were
young?’ [Referring to Felix’s and his mother’s dark skins].
Moses: Ooh!
Felix: That was the first. The other one was ‘Oh. When God painted you, you had your hands
on the table (…) [referring to the differences in the colour of his palm and the back of his
hand].
Moses: The white kids were saying that?
Felix: That is Normal. In Spain that is normal [exasperated]. They would say it in the
classroom. The teacher is there. If I complained, the teacher would tell me (…) ‘They are just
kids. They are boys. They are young. They are joking’. [Long silence] Why does it have to be
always me? [Stammering] Why does it have to be on me?
Moses: And you were just 10.
Felix: At school (…) so I started running out, you know. Black Power. Black Power this,
Black Power that. You know, I still have the traces [hair style, hip look and the army pants].
So because I wanted to find out who I am. And that’s the only way I could find [out] who I am
[Crying]. So fighting started.
Moses: Fighting?
Felix: Yeah, fighting. I burned school text [books], of all that in school and I hit, I hit back and
I was suspended and kicked out of school. And my mother said ‘It is enough. You know?
We’re going to move from Madrid to Barcelona’.
Felix, his mother and two siblings spent some few months in another European country before
moving to Norway. His siblings stayed behind in one of these European countries. Felix and
his mother lived in a refugee camp in western Norway for two years after they arrived in
Norway. Here too, Felix felt physically segregated, Othered and looked down upon with
suspicion.
Felix: The first thing I saw was that they segregated everybody.
Moses: How?
Felix: In Norway, ( ) when you come in, you are guilty until proven innocent.
Moses: How can you explain that?
Felix: What they do is that they isolate you. Have you ever taken the map of Norway? The
‘asylmottak’ [refugee camps], how they are placed?
Moses: No, I have not seen that.
Felix: Try to.
Felix recounted what he perceived as the deplorable conditions at the camp: deplorable
facilities, the lumping together of idle young people, women and men (he described some of
the men as criminals) in a refugee camp that was located several kilometres from the nearest
city:
And the kids are getting spoiled. Girls are having sex at the age of 13 (…) Kids are learning
how to smoke. I learned how to smoke there. I stole my first car there. I stole my first car
when I was 13. When I was in the camp (…) I stole the car with a guy named [mentions real
name].
Felix came into contact with the police and the Child Welfare Service (CWS) because of the
car theft. He gave a very vivid but negative account of how he experienced this contact as
degrading and humiliating. He believed that this negative treatment from the police and CWS
was due to the fact that he was a refugee without any rights, an outsider, and therefore
worthless in the eyes of the police and the CWS:
Felix: [Imagining how he thought he was perceived after presenting himself to the
police/Child welfare as living in a refugee camp]. The first light comes up. ‘Oh, he is a pain in
the ass. He is a fucking refugee’. ( ). When you tell them that [you live in a refugee camp],
you are already low, because you are the son of en utlending (a foreigner). Once you tell them
that you are from (…) the refugee camp, [that] you don’t have papers [residence permit] then
you’re quite insignificant (…).
Felix moved with his mother to Oslo when he was 15 years old. He entered upper secondary
school, but displayed a rebellious attitude to school and dropped out after a short period:
Felix: I dropped out after 10 months. The reason is not that I could not [manage the
subjects][silence] I did not bet on education, I did not bet on education. I was a truant’.
Moses: Why were you a truant?
It was this question from me that led Felix to narrate the story about his father’s death and the
indelible emotional scars his death unleashed in his life. He never had the chance to get the
help he needed to come to terms with this loss. Later on in the interview, I addressed the
school issue again. Felix felt he got only a half-hearted care from his teachers at school:
Moses: I was wondering about your relationship with the teachers in school.
Felix: You know. I had a great relationship with some of the teachers. I had not so great
relationship with some of them. I didn’t have one [any particularly] bad relationship with any
teacher.
Moses: But I mean those that you had a good relationship with. Didn’t they try to (…)
Felix: They are ( ) nonchalant [inaudible].
Moses: They are what?
Felix: Nonchalant. They, they don’t care. They are (…), they are like (…), they care, they
care, but I didn’t see a deep concern (…) I saw concern, a professional concern, a 9[am] to
5[pm] concern. I didn’t see real concern.
Moses: A 9 to 5 concern. Ok.
Felix: I didn’t see a (…) I see somebody [a teacher] that is trying to justify to him or herself
that they are doing a good job.
Moses: Yeah. What about those that you had a negative relationship with?
Felix: Being in a negative relationship (…). It is difficult to have a negative relationship with
[someone] unless you are peers. Peers have many things to have a fight about. But I have
profound respect for maturity (…) for elders. So it is very difficult for me to come in banking
heads [having issues] with [elders].
Felix came into contact with the CWS again when he was 17. He felt that his contact with the
CWS did not yield positive results. Felix felt that the child welfare workers found him too
“difficult” to handle since he did not answer to what he perceived as the stereotypical images
held by these professionals of a ‘normal’ Child Welfare Kid. He was always questioning,
trying to negotiate, avoided tantrums and tried to avail himself of all the opportunities the
CWS could offer. The CWS terminated contact with him the same day he turned 18. He was
suspicious of and mistrusted the intentions of the CWS for him: “They kicked me out of Child
welfare because they knew I was going to [make] use of (…) all of the possibilities
[opportunities they could give] they gave me to the fullest and they were scared of that.
Because before I became 18, I had applied for a driver’s license already”. He felt that the
CWS denied him opportunities he could have used had he continued the contact with them
after he turned 18.
Felix mentioned throughout his narration that he would like to go ahead in life, but that he had
a lot of baggage from his past. One aspect of his past that he believed could come back to
haunt him was unsettled scores with some people he had altercations with on the street and in
jail, people who would be ready to use violence. He recalled how he was attacked one
evening by friends of a feared young man serving time in prison with whom he had a fight
while in prison. How to negotiate the street so as to avoid the potential violence these people
could unleash and how to react to that violence so as not to go back to prison weighed heavily
on his mind. But he seemed determined not to go back to prison. Though determined to go
ahead in life and having some concrete plans in that regard, he was realistic enough to
recognise the huddles he had to overcome. As he put it, “I have a lot of baggage from the past,
but I am not going backwards. I am going forward. But it is difficult (…)”. So I asked him
about his dreams, who he really wanted to become and the following ensued:
Felix: The question is who I would like to be?
Moses: Yes, your dreams.
Felix: I have many dreams and what I think is important in life is [that] (…) one must have a
dream. But one must also be ready to face reality, what is possible and what is not possible.
Actually, to face reality is a way of saying ‘Don’t give up’ (…). My dream is simply to get
along in life. That is to say, I want to have a comfortable life (…) to be able to afford all I
need. But I am not ready to make just any compromises. I will not make any compromise in
order to reach that goal. The way I picture it (…) it can be right, it can be wrong. The way I
imagine it, the way I picture it, (…) it is the way I want to pursue it. I don’t want to make any
compromises like to say ‘oh, well because the work is too hard [laughing] or that there is too
much strife (…) or too much of those bad adjectives you wanna stay away from’ (…) so you
cave [in] and go and do mediocre (…) jobs just to be able to [maintain] the status quo.
Moses: So what are the concrete dreams that you have now?
Felix: Concrete dreams? I have a five years plan. I am 22. I didn’t have a five years’ plan four
years ago because I was 18. And if I had [had] a five years plan, I should not have been in this
situation because actually the past five years, I have not accomplished anything tangible,
anything palpable. I can say I have experience that I can build on, but it does not necessarily
mean I have accomplished something. But my five years’ plan is (…), first is health. Health is
first because (…) health is the greatest wealth ( ). Now about concrete things, I need a job. I
need income for [my] freedom. From there, I can build anything (…) the sky is the limit.
Felix emphasised that what he needed most was routine and counseling or guidance: “(…)
someone to tell me that Felix, ok you can do this, but you really suck on this”.
While in prison he attended some courses with the view of going back to upper secondary
school upon release. Upon release, he maintained contact with the probation office only
because he had to. “They are there to hear [to listen and talk to you at the periodic and
compulsory meetings] (…). But they will not do anything for you”. He needed
accommodation and wanted to go back to school. In relation to school, the Probation Service
found out that Felix had exhausted his statutory right to upper secondary school education.
The probation office could not offer him accommodation other than hospice. Felix would not
live in hospice with drug addicts. He eventually managed to get his accommodation through
the help of outreach workers. Realising that going back to upper secondary school was out of
the question, he tried to get admission into the Adult Education Programme. He took the
required courses and came out with “flying colours” only to be informed later on that he could
not be admitted because he was not yet 25 years old and so was under the age limit. Felix then
turned to Nav where he attended several courses and had short job placements without these
resulting in a permanent job. Felix felt a sense of hopelessness, anger and disillusionment
because of his experiences of meeting the wall all the time as shown in the following
interview excerpt:
Felix: So I am trying to remedy my position [situation], but I can’t get into upper secondary
school. Then I said oh well, I’ll try adult education. You close the door there too. I come to
Nav and instead of getting me into a course that will probably get me a job, they want me to
go to those courses that bring me back in that cycle I have been in. You finish one course, and
then they tell you ‘oh (…) you have to go there again’. [Silence and with a dejected voice] I
am tired of that.
Moses: Tell me about your experiences with Nav.
Felix: I don’t wanna talk to them because they, they are the worst hypocrites that I have ever
met in the world.
Moses: How?
Felix: They say that they’re a safety net. They say that Nav is very (…) a good programme
because Norway has a safety net [that] many countries don’t. But that safety net can entrap
and choke you and you can die ( ).
Felix’s experiences with key Norwegian institutions seemed to nurture the perception that
there is systematic or institutional racism in Norway and that this prevents many youths like
himself from going ahead in life: “I told you that the racism here is systematic and is guilty
[responsible for] of many of the tragedies of young people in this country”.
But Felix also felt that he must accept the blame for the situation in which he found himself
and harboured regrets in relation to negative choices he had made. These weighed heavily on
his mind as he described in the following interview excerpt:
Felix: I let myself down in the past (…) and that is why I am here today (...) I probably will
take 50 [per cent responsibility]; the Norwegians will take maybe 7 [per cent]; the Spaniards
will take maybe 20 [per cent], some other people (…)
Moses: Norwegians will take 7?
Felix: Maybe 10, maybe even 12. You know (…).
Moses: You accept your responsibilities
Felix: Yeah, I accept my responsibilities, but they’re trying to make me understand that they
[the system] don’t have no responsibilities (…). I have burnt a lot of bridges, Moses. I have
burnt a lot of bridges, even in places (…) that were not obvious to me (…). So, when I lay
down on the pillow, it’s not easy to live with myself [thinks a lot].
Felix also narrated regretfully the pain he felt he had caused his mother and how he could not
fulfil his dreams and good intentions towards her: “I had visions of who I wanted to be for my
mother. Actually becoming it is quite something else. It’s quite harder than I thought (…) I
broke my mother’s heart and I still do. But God is my witness”.
He believed that his mother understood his predicament and that she was someone he could
turn to for emotional support, though her mother too had experienced traumatic moments in
her life. As narrated his feeling towards his mother as follows:
Yeah, she understands me. Quite recently she even said sorry. She said sorry about one thing.
She said she never wanted to say sorry to me, because for her to come and say sorry to me
means that she failed somehow, and it hurts her more than it hurts (…) even me, I think. And I
feel sorry for her too. But she said sorry that she did not take into consideration that I was at an
impressionable age (…). You have to put this in context. I travelled and grew up (…) on the
skirt of my mother (…) trying to make the lives of my older brothers (…) trying to settle them.
But what I saw holding to that skirt all the way till I was 12, 13 (…) was not always pleasant. I
told you [about] my personal life.
Felix alluded a number of times to religion in his narrative, so I tried to explore what religion
meant to him. He believed that his religious beliefs would equip him with a new frame of
mind and the tenacity of purpose he needed in order to continue his struggles to go ahead in
life. He was also pragmatic enough to recognise the fact that the struggle would not be easy,
as the following interview excerpt shows:
Felix: Religion is everything
Moses: Do you pray at times?
Felix: Nah, I haven’t confessed since 2003. And (…) usually you cannot go to participate in (
) Mass on Sunday if you do not confess yourself [your sins].
Moses: But do you pray when you are at home?
Felix: Of course, I have my (…)
Moses: What do you pray about?
Felix: Nowadays, I pray that I have the strength, that I have discipline. But I must practice it
more. I pray, I pray to God to give me the courage to have that discipline that is necessary to
(…). Because, now I am juggling three things at the same time
Moses: What are those three things?
Felix: I am trying to get a job [through Nav]. But if (…) it does not work, that cycle is closed.
I am not going back there. If this does not work, I am not going back to Nav. I got my family.
They’re trying to find me some job (…) if they fix me a job, oh well, I might stick to it. But
I’ve applied for a one and a half years’ course in China
Moses: In China. What is the course about?
Felix: It’s meditation in a temple (…) Shaolin temple, Buddhism. It’s all about self-discipline
and (…) Confucius.
Moses: So you believe that things are going to be ok?
Felix: I know, I know.
Moses: Will you describe yourself as an optimist?
Felix: I am
Moses: You are optimistic
Felix: I am not optimistic in the sense of [coughing] in the sense of the optimism that the
world’s trying to (…) or everything is (…) I am a realist. I am a realist, but there is a little bit
of optimism because without optimism, then I don’t think I will be even religious. Because
religion gives you faith, hope (…) So, I consider myself an optimist.
)5-;
James is a reserved, well-built, handsome and soft-spoken 25 year old young man originally
from Nigeria. For many years, he frequented and actively participated in open street drug
markets in Oslo. My earliest memories of him date back to my days at the Youth Outreach
Agency. He just moved to Oslo from a city in Southern Norway at that time. It did not take
him long to start frequenting open drug scenes in downtown Oslo. James became an injecting
drug user at the age of 16 or 17 and that was before he moved to Oslo.
James came to Norway together with his parents and his brother as refugees when he was 11
years old. They were settled in one of the Southern cities in Norway after three months in a
refugee camp. James experienced the first four years in Norway as good and memorable. He
articulated the individualistic achievement ideals shared by most Norwegians and was filled
with optimism about his future. He believed that if one is able to exercise self-control and
make good and responsible decisions and choices, then one can have a smooth transition to
adulthood in Norway:
James: Actually, it is not very difficult to grow up in Norway, but it is up to the individual
what he makes of his life.
Moses: So you mean that every individual must take responsibility for his or her own life?
James: Yes [nodding his head]. And it is about self-control. Controlling your body and not
allowing others (…) to steer your life (…) [Not allowing] chocolate (…), cocaine (…) hashish
to control your life.
He used to be a good football player. With the help of the local coaches he trained
assiduously with other young and talented players in the local community. James was so good
that he was tipped for the national under-16 team and he got positive feedback that if he
persevered, he could make it to the Norwegian national team one day. But what he believed
he lacked most during those early formative years in Norway was parental support. He felt
neglected by his parents. He did not feel that he got love, care and affection from his family at
this tender age. Rather, he felt rejected by his family:
But the problem was home. I got zero support. I would come home from training hungry and
would be denied food. I didn’t get good nourishment. A football player needs to drink enough
water, to eat well, to eat salad (…). But I only trained, trained and trained my body. In the end,
it didn’t go the way I wanted. I did not feel at home at home ( ). Everyone was against me all
the time. I did not have my peace. I just wanted to get away from there’ .
Feeling rejected by his family and searching for the care, love and affection that he could not
get from home, James sought it elsewhere. He soon came into contact with a young man from
Congo who was living in a refugee camp in the same city. James found him very exciting and
fell under his influence as he described in the following interview excerpt:
He was living in the refugee camp. His name is [mentions a name known to me]. And what
happened was that he was very nice. He showed me the love that my family didn’t. But I knew
that he had a bad habit. That he was dealing with hash. He introduced me to hashish and we
smoked.
James gave a vivid description of how he felt the first time he smoked cannabis with this
young man. Soon they became close friends and smoked every day. Most of the time, James
spent the whole day with him and would not go home to his parents. James’ parents
complained about his spending a lot of time outside the home, but knew nothing about what
he was doing at the refugee camp. In any case, Felix found it difficult to understand his
parents’ concern because “I just liked him [his friend], he was my idol”. Then his friend
moved to another city further south. James really wanted to move away from his parents and
thought he now got the opportunity to do so: “I reasoned that, ooh my buddy has moved to
[name of city]. Let me try and get a school there. Then I’ll have the possibility [of meeting
him] if I get admitted. Then things will be fine”. By then, James was offering the basic course
in mechanics in upper secondary school which could make him eligible for a further course in
marine technology which was on offer at a school in the city his friend had moved to. He
applied and got an admission and moved to that city: “So I settled in and went to school. My
grades were good. The first few months went very well”. James bumped into his old friend at
a discotheque one evening and they renewed their friendship:
James: He was hilarious. He said to me come, come, I’ll teach you this and that. He took me to
a pub and we drank. All went well. It was exciting. He had muscles, tattoos, Tupac T-shirt and
such. He took me to his apartment after that and that evening I saw what they were up to.
There were a lot of girls there and a lot of money changed hands. Some of the guests stuck
something like needles in their arms and they danced and did a lot of things afterwards. I also
wanted to have fun like them. You could see that they were having fun. So I asked him to give
me some.
Moses: What was it?
James: It was (…) I didn’t know. I didn’t know. But today, I know it was heroin.
James began his unfortunate journey to drug addiction that evening. He became an active
heroin user and later on started using amphetamines and involving himself in petty crime:
Later on, I started using amphetamine which is called speed. And I injected it too and could
not sleep for three days. Just partying, partying, and partying. Hmm, I could walk several
kilometres without getting tired (…). I was the best thief in town. I stole without being caught.
James’ heavy drug use detracted from his school work. He was absent from school for two
months without the school authorities asking any questions. He went back to school and
confided his heavy drug use in a concerned teacher. The teacher strongly advised him to seek
help from his doctor. This was at the end of the school term and James had to go back to his
parents. Back with his parents, he did not have money to buy heroin or amphetamines, so he
started shooting water after experiencing terrible symptoms of abstinence. James did not seek
any help when he went back to his parents because they were about to relocate to Oslo. His
parents did not realise that James was “sick” and needed help. They eventually moved to Oslo
only for James to get to know that his friend had also moved from the south to a small city not
far from Oslo. Moreover, he got easier access to drugs in Oslo. He felt his cries for help fell
on deaf ears as he recounted as follows:
James: When I came to Oslo, I continued my drug use because it was much easier to get drugs.
We shot drugs together (…) because my friend also moved to [name of city]. I bet you. I
don’t know how many overdoses I have had and was awakened back to life (…) or woke up at
the hospital only to see needles being pulled out.
Moses: How old were you?
James: 17, 16.
Moses: But, was the Child Welfare Service in the picture?
James: [expression symbolising ‘No’] I had contact with the Social Office [now Nav]. I was
living in a bedsit where I continued to use drugs everyday (…) just using, using and using
[drugs].
Moses: But was the Social Office aware that you were on drugs?
James: [with emphatic and raised voice]. Yes, yes.
Moses: And they did not (…)
James: [interrupts] I said I needed help [agitated] (…) I said I needed help. [I asked them to]
send me somewhere. I said to my mum, I went to my mum and said ‘send me to Nigeria, do
something. I am dying here’. I continued to cry everyday (…) I felt sorry for myself. I was in a
bad shape
Moses: But you were 17, weren’t you? Didn’t the Social Office refer you to the Child Welfare
Service?
James: Hmm. They [the social office] said a lot of things. How they [the CWS] would
perceive me; they would ask me to do some tests; there was a long waiting period; there are
many people who were looking for help; a lot of such things.
James’ mental health deteriorated because of his heavy drug use. He got very troubled and
described symptoms that indicated psychosis, paranoia and hallucination, especially after
heavy use of amphetamines. As he described it, “My head [brains] stopped to function at that
time”. One day, after another shot of amphetamines, James nearly stabbed his neighbour’s 10
year old son had it not been for the timely intervention of the police. The police rescued the
young boy and arrested and put James in jail, despite James’ protestations that he was sick
and needed help and care, as he recounted as follows:
(…) they handcuffed me and wrapped me in a bed sheet [because he was naked when the
police arrived] and drove me to [mentions name of prison]. They could have driven me to the
hospital because I was sick. My condition got worse inside [the prison]. If I told you what
happened [to me] inside the prison, you would not like to experience what I experienced.
James gave a heart-wrenching account of his experiences in isolation in jail in the following
interview excerpt:
Moses: Did you get help from a doctor?
James: No, I didn’t get any help from a doctor. Nothing when I was in there. I became very
sick, very sick and I defecated on the floor. I smeared my body with my own faeces (…) I
don’t remember everything (…). The only thing that made me feel safe in the jail (…) was a
fly that came to my room. It was my only friend inside. A little fly came in and I caught it and
held it in my hands and it was my friend inside.
Eventually, James was transferred to a psychiatric hospital. Since then, he was in and out of
psychiatric institutions, mostly through prison referrals. James was ambivalent about his
experiences within psychiatric institutions, but believed strongly that he was not listened to,
was wrongly medicated, experimented upon and used as a guinea pig. He felt pushed beyond
what his psyche could tolerate.
James tried to go ahead in life in between his periodic bouts of drug use and mental health
problems. He managed to quit drugs on his own for some months. He attended some courses
under the auspices of Nav and was able to get police clearance to get job placement or
apprenticeship at a kindergarten. He felt badly treated at the first kindergarten so decided to
quit. He got placement at another kindergarten where he enjoyed working. He felt accepted by
his boss and colleagues:
They liked the way I worked. They tapped me on the shoulder and said “You are doing a good
job”. It is my kind of job. And I liked it because I am actually a nice person. I am very loving,
and to show affection to children is a good thing for me.
James worked there for about a month and was looking forward to receiving his first pay
cheque like his colleagues, only to realise for the first time that he was only on an
apprenticeship [under the auspices of Nav] as a precondition for his social benefits. He felt a
strong sense of being used and violated and decided to quit the job: “But the problem [was
that] I was not paid [dejectedly]. I worked for free [indicating disappointment]. I felt used,
exploited. I would not work for free”.
James eventually went back to using drugs and started frequenting open street drug markets
again. His condition worsened and he struggled to be drug free again on his own, holding on
to unrealistic dreams and fatalistic beliefs in divine intervention, as indicated in the following
excerpts from an interview:
Moses: Do you work now?
James: After all that I have gone through, do you think I can get a job? No! It is difficult to get
a job. I have lost my concentration. I have lost my memory (…). I become aggressive at times
for nothing (…). Now I have put everything into the hands of God. I tell my inner self that I’ll
find a job myself. He [God] has given me the type of protection which has enabled me to come
[so far], (…)to keep me alive, to feed my body and clothe myself. When my brains finally
begin to function well, I’ll try to find myself a job. It can be in the kindergarten, or in a
warehouse because I have the certificate for driving forklift.
Moses: But are you looking for work now?
James: No, I have not applied for any job. Right now, I am trying self-detoxification at home.
Kick off the negative things first. I cannot go to work in my present condition (…) So, I am
trying to get myself in good shape first so that I do not relapse (…); a couple of months, and
things will be fine.
Moses: What plans do you have for the future?
James: My future (…) I have many dreams. My dream was to become a football player. Earn
good money and travel around the world. But it is dead now. I am 25 now. I think it is too late.
But my new dream is to become a rapper.
Moses: A rapper
James: To become a rapper, super star. I believe I have what it takes to become a rapper (…)
because of what I went through, I can rap about my life and strengthen others through that
(…).
James continued to reel from the painful memories of parental neglect and rejection, but also
revelled in the joy of finding a caring partner as he narrated as follows:
Moses: Do you have contact with your family now?
James: I don’t have contact with my family because they have not assisted [me] in anyway. ( )
And that pains me very much, because my father has not been there and supported me. He has
not been a good person to me. I hate him [serious tone]. ( ) One thing I have been able to do
is to get myself a girlfriend (…) and we have been together for three years and all is fine. I like
that life. You can come home and there is someone there (…).You can do shopping together.
Someone who can call you and ask you, “Where are you? Come home now”. Bother and take
care of you (…) She has become my mother and father.
With a caring partner by his side, James looked to the future with hope and renewed optimism
and would not give up trying to go ahead in life:
I am going to manage it (…); if you have the will, you know, and you have belief and hope,
you can manage this. I believe I have a treasure in my head. If I get well and think normally, I
think there is something there [a talent] that may bring me a lot of money, and I can have a
normal life. I believe it.
James disappeared from the street scene for almost twelve months and all my attempts to trace
him failed. Rumours had it that something terrible had happened to him. He called me one
day and we met. He was in a wheel chair. He was paralysed from the waist down. He threw
himself in front of a high speed train because he heard a voice gorging him to end it all and
return to his maker [God]. He told me that he got all the help he always needed after the
incident: He got disability support, a psychologist, a physiotherapist, and on the right
medication. James did not feel pity for himself, but felt victimised. He wished he could walk
like other able-bodied persons and at times felt jealous of them, but he was thankful that he
was alive. He managed to forgive his parents because he felt that forgiveness is a noble act.
41
Ali has a distinctive characteristic as a help-seeker. He keeps his appointments, is punctual
and always calls in time to cancel his appointments if he cannot come. The result is that if he
fails to turn up for an appointment and does not give prior information about his inability to
come, or his phone is turned off, then it can only mean one thing. He is back in jail or prison.
Ali has had cumulative interactions with the social and welfare services and the criminal
justice system for many years. He was 25 years old at the time of the interview. I have known
him since he was 16. He was one of the first BME youths who started frequenting the open
street drug market along the Aker River in downtown Oslo in 2001 (see Kuvoame 2005). He
was also active in other open street drug markets in Oslo. He used to sell drugs and has used
almost all psychotropic drugs one can find in open drug markets in downtown Oslo, except
intravenous use of heroin.
I first came into contact with Ali in 2001 as a youth worker at the Youth Outreach Agency
and assisted him at that time in negotiating the CWS. We have maintained contact over the
years. He has spent almost 10 of his 25 years on earth in and out of prison for offences
ranging from sale of drugs, drug and weapon possession, assault, mugging, theft and unpaid
fines. On one of my prison visits to him in connection with this study, Ali stated in an
informal extended conversation that “(…) it is better to be in prison than to be back in society.
I know that it is not a sound reasoning to like prison, but the point is that I have become used
to it and feels home in prison”. He felt that “there is too much manipulation out there in
society where the powerful pick on the less powerful, where there is so much competition
among people, spurred on by a manipulative media that encourage endless consumption”. He,
however, bemoaned and regretted the stigma he thought his parents would experience for
having a son in prison.
Originally from Iran, Ali came to Norway with his parents and five siblings when he was five
years old. Though he always wanted to live on his own and had done that for short periods of
time, he lived with his parents most of his life. Ali’s mother is a homemaker and his father is a
pensioner. Ali has a strong bond with the family, especially his mother, though he has always
had a difficult relationship with his father who has often been absent from home. Though he
knows that his family is not economically well-off, he believes that his family will always be
there for him. Ali thinks, however, that one of the greatest challenges he faces right now “is to
rebuild my family’s trust in me”. He feels that his family does not trust him because of his
criminal and prison career. He would like to do something meaningful with his life so as to
prove to his family that he is not a loser. He believes that with a stable accommodation and a
meaningful and structured activity such as a permanent job, he could function better and deal
with his drug use.
Growing up in Norway was not very easy for Ali. From his early years in school till he
completed junior secondary school, Ali changed schools five times, at times in the middle of
the school term. This was due mainly to the fact that the family had to move several times to
different areas in Oslo because of short housing contracts. The result was that Ali never had
the chance to have stable friendships with his peers in the local communities they moved to.
At age 13, he came into contact with other young people involved in petty crime. Ali was
absent from school most of the time when he was in grade 10. He had concentration and
language problems and hanged out a lot with other kids involved in petty crime. He was later
diagnosed for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and transferred to a special
school. Ali graduated from lower secondary to upper secondary school with poor grades. He
decided to quit upper secondary school because he did not feel at home in school, and had
altercations with one of the teachers. Later on, he tried to pursue a vocational course, but was
absent from the course most of the time because of his drug use. Ali’s family and the Youth
Outreach Agency collaborated over a long period of time with the local CWS in relation to
Ali without any positive results. Ali really wanted to be placed in an institution outside Oslo,
which the local CWS finally agreed upon. But the decision was not approved by the district
administration due probably to budgetary concerns. The CWS terminated contact with him
when he turned 18. Since that time, Ali has been critical of the CWS.
In early 2011, Ali entered a drug rehabilitation institution as an alternative to his prison
sentence in line with the Prison Act of 12 December 1958, no. 7, but under strict supervision
from the Prison Service. He arrived at the rehabilitation centre clearly officially labelled by
the Prison Service as a ‘wile, conniving and dangerous’ person. This was prior to his recent
release from prison in 2013. I attended a supervisory group meeting with Ali in connection
with his progression in drug treatment and future plans and what the systems and institutions
around him had to offer him upon release. Representatives from two different local offices of
Nav were also present at the meeting. What this meant was that Ali was registered at two
different local Nav offices. A conversation ensued between the two Nav representatives
before the meeting started. The two representatives wondered whether he should have been
transferred to either of the local offices. They acknowledged the fact that being registered at
two different districts could create problems for the user due to problems that might emanate
from lack of information flow. Ali made it clear at the meeting that what mattered most to
him was the quality of the aftercare he would receive after completing drug treatment:
(…) the last time I was released [from prison] I had a very good aftercare: a place to live with
close follow-up, contact with a psychologist, a counsellor at Nav, and prospects of
participating in a youth project. Because of this, I was able to last 8 months before getting
arrested again.
Ali emphasised that he would like to enter a residential facility with aftercare after his drug
rehabilitation, but not a known one in Oslo where “there is too much use of drugs. This scares
me’. He admitted the fact that he gives in too easily to peer-pressure, but that it his choice to
say ‘No’ to any requests from his peers: “I am the one who makes my choices and responsible
for them, I cannot blame anyone, not my peers who may pressurize me into crime and drug
use”. His plan was to use the time at rehab to “know myself better” and to build his identity.
He needed help to work with the “chaos in me” and “my ADHD sickness”. He would like to
get more information about his ADHD status and in collaboration with the staff at the rehab
centre reflect upon the role the sickness had played in his life. This way, Ali believed that he
could be in a better position to relate to other people. He considered drugs and crime as the
main challenges facing him. In order to overcome these major challenges he felt he needed to
get himself a job and earn his own money. He would like to practice cooking, and he managed
to acquire Microsoft Data Card and a forklift license while in prison. He stated the following
in relation to the skills he has:
I have learnt how to relate to and live together with other people and to see things
from a different perspective. Thanks to the anger management training I participated
in. I also have good knowledge of cleaning which I have acquired through my own
efforts. So I think I can work either as a cook or a cleaner.
Ali would also like to start fishing: “I have tried it a number of times and liked it very much”.
Ali didn’t complete the drug treatment because he was caught smoking cannabis on three
occasions. This meant that he violated the strict terms set by the Prison Act in relation to §12,
so the treatment was terminated and he went back to prison.
Upon release from prison, Ali got assistance from a Foundation that helps former prisoners in
their efforts to re-join society. Ali got into contact with them in prison and identified with one
of the founders of the Foundation who was a prisoner himself. The Foundation has a
residential facility in Oslo, so provided Ali with accommodation and worked to help him
apply for a youth programme run by a sports club in Oslo. Ali spoke warmly of the
foundation, especially the founder from whom he said he got a lot of inspiration. This founder
commended him for being able to wake up early in the morning and do the rounds that he had
to. Ali got a place on the youth programme and was billed to start in two weeks, something he
really looked forward to. Ali spent another week with the Foundation and decided to
terminate contact with them. According to Ali, some of the former prisoners he was living
with under the auspices of the foundation broke into his room and stole his personal
belongings including his laptop. He lost his place on the youth programme organised by the
Sports Club as his participation depended on continuing his contact with the foundation. So he
needed a place to stay now.
Ali turned to one of the local Nav offices represented at the supervisory group meeting earlier
in the year. According to Ali, they had earlier promised him an accommodation upon release
from prison. I attended a meeting at Nav together with Ali in connection with his need for an
accommodation, but he could not be offered any accommodation. What was more, his case
was assigned to a new counsellor who did not know much about Ali’s case. Ali stormed out
of the office. Ali decided to transfer his case to the other local office of Nav represented at the
supervisory group meeting. He had earlier on attended three meetings there. Ali liked the way
Bjørn, an elderly counsellor, talked to him the three occasions they had a meeting. “I like him.
He understands me. He helped me to fix the code that I needed to claim my unemployment
benefit”. Bjørn was at much pain to assist Ali. He engaged Ali in honest discussions about the
challenges Ali would face trying to re-join society and made it clear that Ali had to do the
greater part of the work himself and would assist all the way. The next meeting was scheduled
for two weeks, by which time Bjørn would have collaborated with the other local Nav office
to transfer Ali’s case to the local Nav office where Bjørn worked.
Meanwhile, Ali did not have anywhere to stay and began spending a lot of time hanging out
in town. He was devastated by the fact that he lost his place on the youth programme. The
weekend prior to the scheduled meeting, I met Ali several times in downtown Oslo. On one
occasion, he was together with a troubled young woman he introduced to me as coming from
“a mad house” (a psychiatric institution). Both of them looked very hooked on drugs. Ali was
critical of the Nav office that could not arrange an accommodation for him and the
Foundation for not letting him continue on the youth programme. He was looking forward to
the meeting with Bjørn the coming Tuesday. I met Ali again on Sunday. He did not look good
to me and I informed him that I was worried for him. I called him on Monday to remind him
of the meeting the next day. We agreed on a time to meet and go to the meeting together. At
the scheduled time, I called Ali several times, but his phone was off. I went to Bjørn who was
waiting for us. Ali was nowhere to be found. Bjørn called his phone, but it was turned off. It
could mean only one thing. He must be back in jail.
70)5-,
I waited for Mohamed at the Café as we agreed and he arrived at the appointed time. He
wanted me to accompany him to another meeting he had scheduled with his local Nav office.
He needed help in relation to his accommodation problems and difficulties in finding a job.
Mohamed, aged 25, came to Norway from Somalia with his parents as a refugee when he was
15. He lived at home with his mother and two siblings aged 21 and 20 till the age of 24. They
lived in a three room apartment in an eastside suburb of Oslo with a high concentration of
non-Western immigrants, and had done so for the past eight years. According to Mohamed,
their father moved out to another city in Norway some years back. Mohamed and his siblings
had sporadic contact with him. Mohamed’s mother was unemployed. She was shot in the leg
during the war in Somalia and has had problems with one of her legs for many years. I asked
him how he felt about living with his mother and siblings and he answered that it was a big
challenge to him, since he had no privacy at the age of 24 and could neither invite his friends
nor his girlfriend home. His friends always invited him over to their place and he felt this
could be humiliating at times.
According to him, this lack of privacy often made him angry and he had several altercations
with his siblings and mother as a result of the tension and misunderstandings engendered by
living in a crowded apartment. One of his major challenges was how to find himself an
apartment. He tried to call some vacant apartments in the private housing market advertised in
the newspapers and on the internet, but described most of the renting agencies as reluctant to
accept collateral security in form of a written guarantee from Nav instead of cash deposits. He
preferred getting municipal housing since he reasoned that they were cheaper than
accommodation in the private housing market, which he believed he could not afford if he
managed to get a permanent job in the future.
Mohamed described his inability to find a job as a major blow to him. He completed upper
secondary school in Norway with specialisation in Building and Construction, but could not
find a job placement in that field, a prerequisite for obtaining a tradesman’s certificate. He
attended several courses under the auspices of Nav and had several apprenticeships as a
precondition for social benefits, without these apprenticeships resulting in permanent job
offers. At one time, he held an apprenticeship for a year assisting in painting and fixing
furniture and broken windows on properties owned by the City of Oslo. He had no job
preferences. He was interested in any offers including cleaning jobs, working in shops,
working at the warehouse, restaurant and so on. He said he heard that salaries in the garbage
collection sector were quite good and would like to work there. He asked me if I knew how he
could go about that. I advised him to take it up with his counsellors at Nav. According to him,
he applied for a number of jobs without any positive results and he felt bitter about this.
Mohamed believed that his inability to get a job was because of the colour of his skin – that
is, racial discrimination. When I asked him in that connection if he thought Norway had a lot
to offer him as a black youth he answered “Not in my case” and gave examples of many BME
youths he knew who were unemployed. He also blamed the difficulty of finding a job on
Swedish and Eastern European immigrants who have flocked to Norway in recent times:
White people from anywhere can come to Norway today, and tomorrow they’ll get a job. I
went to school here, but it is not easy to get a job. Then it is easy to get depressed, sad if you
do not have a shit to do. People say to me, ‘you must wake up early in the morning’. Wake up
early? What am I going to do?
Regarding his relationship with his two counsellors at Nav, Mohamed described one of them
as “nice” and the other one as “difficult”. He felt that it was difficult to have meetings with
the two of them at the same time because they played “soft” and “hard” on him making him
feel confused at times. Besides, he felt that they made too many demands on him without
offering him anything concrete apart from the apprenticeships that never resulted in a
permanent job and the welfare provisions conditional upon them. He was happy that I was
accompanying him to the meeting.
The meeting commenced with a question from one of the counsellors as to what Mohamed
had been up to since the last meeting. They could not come up with any concrete housing or
job offers, but were more preoccupied with what Mohamed himself was doing in order to get
a permanent job and an accommodation. Mohamed had with him a list of vacant apartments
from a well-known private housing company in Oslo. He showed the list to the counsellors
and asked if they could call the company on his behalf. The case officers asked him to call the
company himself. One of the counsellors oriented him on some of the clandestine strategies to
use when calling the housing company. She asked Mohamed to deploy “small white lies”: not
to reveal that Nav was involved – that is, to conceal his client-status; not to disclose that he
was unemployed; not to mention that Nav would guarantee a deposit; he should not sign the
contract when he was offered one, but ask to be given a day to reflect upon the offer, which
time the counsellors could use to check if the apartment and contract were legal. Having no
concrete housing offer and reluctant to call the housing company on his behalf, lest the
company got to know that a client was involved, they could only refer Mohamed back to the
private rental market, asking him to conceal his client status. Mohamed agreed to call the
housing company and give the counsellors a feedback.
The discussions then shifted to Mohamed’s job situation. They asked Mohamed what he had
been doing in relation to that. Mohamed answered that he applied for some jobs without
positive results. One of the counsellors confirmed that Mohamed had a standard job
application that he used to apply for some jobs. Mohamed reminded them of the courses he
had attended and the various apprenticeships he had completed without any of them resulting
in a permanent job offer. The counsellors argued that the more courses he attended, the better
his CV would be. They informed Mohamed of another course that was coming up in August.
It was for young people who would like to become youth workers in the local community.
Would Mohamed be interested? Was he motivated enough for it? Mohamed answered in the
affirmative. They asked Mohamed if he had lived in the suburb for a long time, since that was
one of the preconditions for being taken up for the course. Mohamed said his family moved to
the suburb more than seven years ago. So he asked them if he was qualified. They answered
“Yes”, but there were only 15 places and the competition for places was going to be very
keen. Mohamed would have to attend an interview whose outcome would determine whether
he could participate in the course/project or not.
I informed the counsellors about the CROSS-Worker Project, a youth leadership training
program targeted at young people who would like to work with other young people. The
project was under the aegis of the Competence Centre at the then Alcohol and Drug Addiction
Service (Rusmiddeletaten) in Oslo, and the certification was recognised throughout the
European Union. I oriented them on my positive experiences with the project as a youth
worker. The project would start in August depending on funding, was free, and would stretch
over a period of 10 months with 6 three-day seminars for the participating youths. The
counsellors asked me if Mohamed would be paid to attend. I answered in the negative and
asked them if they could collaborate with the Competence Centre in relation to Mohamed’s
participation in the project. They reasoned that giving Mohamed social or welfare provisions
to participate in a project that would stretch over ten months might involve some financial
complications, but they would look into it and discuss it with their superiors. They asked
Mohamed if there were other issues he wanted to take up. He had no other issues to take up,
so the meeting ended without any concrete offer on the table in relation to housing or job.
Outside, I asked Mohamed what he thought about the meeting. He told me that the
counsellors were unusually nice with him today and that the meeting was the longest he had
ever had with them. He said further that meetings with them usually lasted for 15-20 minutes,
but today it went on for about 35 minutes. Mohamed said that they never offered him
anything concrete and always demanded a lot from him and made him angry and bitter as a
result. His housing problems and the inability to get a job were quite devastating for him, and
made him bitter, frustrated and angry. He finally moved from his family and lived with
friends over a period of time.
I got to know Mohamed through my work as a youth worker at the Youth Outreach Agency.
During that time, he hovered around the fringes of the open street drug market at the Aker
River over a period of time, but had never been very active or been an integral part of the
scene. He smoked cannabis and sold it occasionally. He had a problem with alcohol over a
period of time. Mohamed started frequenting the open street market when he dropped out of
upper secondary school during the first year. He had earlier completed the preparatory
programme and courses for entering upper secondary school when he arrived in Norway.
According to him, he felt that the teachers in upper secondary school, especially one of the
teachers he showed me on the street one day, were impatient with him and unhelpful
regarding his performance in the classroom. For Mohamed did not have any systematic
education apart from his attendance at a Madrassa in Mogadishu before coming to Norway.
He grew up in the middle of the war, and described how his parents had to move from one
city to another inside Somalia because of the war, hence his inability to attend primary and
middle schools. Mohamed did not participate directly in the war but stated that “I was lucky
my family was well to do”. But he added: “If I told you what I saw, Moses, you would not
believe it”.
Mohamed decided to cut his ties with the open street drug market at the Aker River and other
youths that frequented there. According to him, the open street drug market had undergone
major changes in recent years and life there had become harder than before. Both documented
and undocumented asylum seekers now dominated the sale of cannabis in the area. Moreover,
some of the BME youths who used to participate in the open street drug market had started
using more heavy drugs. Some became dependent on cocaine whiles others smoked heroin, as
he noted as follows:
Formerly, we went there to sell hash in order to make some quick money since we were
jobless and to have fun. But now, some of the youths have become drug addicts. It has become
more dangerous to go there now, and there isn’t much money to be made there like before .
Mohamed was arrested once by the police for selling cannabis. He served a short prison
sentence as a result of his inability to pay a fine imposed on him. This had a major deterrent
effect on him. He said further that he also came to realise that one could not have a bright
future in Norway if one continued to participate in such open street drug markets and had a
criminal record as a result. Mohamed went back to upper secondary school and completed a
course in Building and Construction, but could not find any placement position after that.
He managed to enter the youth program under the auspices of Nav. He attended the course
four times a week and had an apprenticeship at a youth club once a week. According to him,
the course was fine, but his real wish was to get the work at the youth club as a permanent
one. He felt that this particular course would not result in a permanent job just like the other
courses he attended. Meanwhile, one of the counsellors was able to get him into a youth
shelter in Oslo where he lived for about two months. Mohamed did not like the place because
the other youths in the shelter were using heavy drugs and he did not like the manner in which
the staff handled an altercation between him and another youth in the shelter, whom
Mohamed accused of casting racist aspersions on him. Besides, Mohamed felt that the
workers at the shelter did not give him the help he needed in relation to getting a job and his
own accommodation. He was on the verge of beginning to drink heavily again. One of the
social workers at the shelter took the initiative to contact the staff at a youth shelter being run
by the Church City Mission in Oslo, a youth shelter complete with a close follow-up. She
arranged a meeting with Mohamed’s counsellors at the local Nav office and informed them
about the youth shelter. At the meeting, which I attended with Mohamed, the representatives
considered the youth shelter very appropriate for Mohamed, more so because of the close
follow-up he would get. The only nag was that it would be too expensive for the local Nav
office. One week after the meeting, Mohamed was offered a bedsit in the local community by
the Nav office.
He was very satisfied with the fact that he had his own apartment now. This helped him to get
more rhythm into his life, according to him. He would wake up at 0900 in the morning, attend
the youth course and spend time with his girlfriend. He felt that he had better control over his
use of alcohol now. He said he decided to limit its use since it became clear to him that he was
just damaging his head. He drank during some weekends. I asked him if he still smoked
cannabis. He smiled and answered “at times”. He wanted something concrete like a job to go
to everyday. Mohamed completed the youth program under the auspices of the local Nav
office. Again, this did not result in a permanent job offer. Neither did the other numerous
meetings he had with Nav afterwards.
I accompanied Mohamed to another meeting with Nav in connection with his search for jobs.
A young man met us and announced in a polite manner that he was going to have the meeting
with Mohamed. The gentleman informed Mohamed that he was going to be his new
counsellor and needed to ask him some questions so as to get better acquainted with him. He
explained to Mohamed that the purpose of the meeting was to find out which appropriate onthe-job-training programme to offer Mohamed. The way the counsellor conducted himself
through his body language and manner of speech created a relaxing atmosphere after a short
period of time. Mohamed looked relaxed and informed him about his education and all the
courses and apprenticeships he had had under the auspices of Nav. And that he would like to
have placement in line with his competence - Building and Construction. He felt that that he
had nothing to do: “I feel like a mason. I can work as a mason”. He made it clear to the case
officer that he was undergoing a lot of stress because he had been without a permanent job for
a long time now. He really wanted to work. Now that he had no work he was also considering
the alternative of going back to school to study something new. Regarding his future plans in
answer to a question from the counsellor, Mohamed said he would like to have a permanent
job, his own apartment and car. He believed other things would fall in place if he was able to
acquire such things. For example, he could begin to think of marrying and starting his own
family. He emphasised the point that he had many “wishes”. He could, for example, think of
working with children as a teacher and wondered what it would take him to achieve that goal.
The counsellor pointed out that Mohamed had many balls in the air at the same time.
There followed a session of motivational interviewing from the counsellor that lasted for
about 20 minutes. He was resource focused, gave positive feedback to Mohamed regarding
his ambitions, aspirations and so on. He mentioned that he was aware of some of the negative
things that Mohamed got himself involved in in the past, but the most important thing now
was to focus on the future. He commended Mohamed for deciding to change his life. He
counselled Mohamed on the importance of taking responsibility for his own personal
development in relation to his attitudes, motivation for a positive life, and that every
individual has that responsibility. He also talked about Nav assisting him to sort out external
challenges he was meeting. The counsellor went on to give Mohamed a thorough presentation
of what the on-the-job-placement programme entailed, the role of Nav and Mohamed’s role,
and the necessary remuneration. He used humour, several metaphors (climbing Mount
Kilimanjaro/Everest, proverbs, culturally sensitive roles models such as Martin Luther King
and President Obama), and concrete examples from his own life. There was genuine dialog
between him and Mohamed. Later on, he was able to get a placement for Mohamed at a
mechanic workshop. When Mohamed met up at the workshop, they asked him if he had any
competence in mechanics. He answered “No” but that he could learn, whereupon he was told
that they needed recruits with competence in mechanics. Mohamed was devastated by this. As
he lamented later on over beer:
One cannot live in this country without anything to do. No job, no school, nothing. It is,
therefore, easy to end up in the worst situation. You wake up every day without any plans,
without anything to do. I am tired of this life (…) I feel that I have lost everything. I am a
young man. I want to work and build my future. I am sitting here drinking beer. It is not good
to be a young African man in Norway.
Mohamed combined assisting his sister with her children, helping his handicapped mother,
and searching for jobs with volunteering on a youth project under the auspices of CAMPCOM
over a period of time. He informed me the last time I spoke with him that he was considering
“travelling” to Syria. When I asked him if he knew what was happening there, he answered in
frustration: “Moses, why should I continue to live in this country and having nothing to do? I
don’t want to become a drug addict”.
************
The four study participants presented above have backgrounds from four different
nationalities in the non-western world and different biographical trajectories. The
circumstances that made them become street-involved youths differ too. They do not
constitute a homogeneous group of individuals. However, they share many indicators of
marginality and experience many strains associated with the majority of the 25 street-involved
BME youths from 10 different nationalities I interviewed and had extended informal
conversations with in connection with my research project.
Some of my study participants were born and bred or grew up in Norway. Others came to
Norway through family reunification, while others came as unaccompanied minor asylum
seekers or refugees from war-torn areas. Some were active in wars in their countries of origin
or were witnesses to various atrocities of war. Some of them lost one or both parents. Most of
them lived in suburbs of Oslo with a high concentration of ethnic minorities and came from
families that cannot be described as economically well to do by Norwegian standards. Many
actively participated in open street drug markets, and involved themselves in criminal
activities for many years and some were in and out of prison. Others managed to cut contact
with open street drug markets and their criminal peers and decided to go ahead in life, despite
their precarious life conditions. Though some of them experienced precarious life conditions
and frequented the streets, they were not involved in crimes or the criminal justice system.
Most people who may encounter or observe these youths from afar hanging around street
corners or dealing drugs in downtown Oslo may easily dismiss them as losers, indolent and
criminals who have themselves to blame for their predicaments. For such people, these streetoriented youths answer correctly to popular media depictions of them as unredeemable and
representing a threat to the Norwegian social fabric. But once we get closer to them and delve
deeply into their complex personal and emotional lives, and carefully listen to what they have
to say, we discover that they are ordinary human beings like ourselves. For majority of my
study participants had dreams and aspirations. They would like to go ahead in life and many
took concrete steps in that direction. They shared conventional values like most of us. They
would like to have their own apartments, have a car, a stable job, start a family and have
children. Moreover, they recognised the importance of individual effort in this regard. Like
most of us, they also accepted personal responsibility for their own actions and lives and the
wrong choices they made, and would like to make amends and go ahead in life.
But many had also experienced critical and traumatic events in their young lives that left
indelible emotional scars that they found difficult to erase from their memories. Some of them
even contemplated suicide. Majority of my study participants experienced marginalisation and
strains in relation to important social and institutional spheres that are crucial for the smooth
transitions of young people in Norway such as the family, school, the housing market, and the
job market. Some of them presented with mental health problems. Majority of them also had
cumulative experiences with the social and welfare services, some of them from an early age.
Besides, those of them who involved themselves in drug use and criminality also experienced
strains in relation to their street and peer networks and police brutality. In short, majority of
my study participants presented a multiplicity of social and emotional needs and challenges,
and a deep sense of resentment seemed to characterise their everyday existence. They lacked
the opportunity to cultivate and harvest their human potential to its fullest and found it
difficult to make their transition to adulthood in Norway in a positive and less traumatic way.
Their lives were characterised by ontological insecurity.
When seen from the perspectives of most of these young people who find themselves at the
bottom of the Norwegian society, the Norwegian welfare state is not as generous and
benevolent as many commentators are wont to postulate, but characterised by structural
inequality. In the next chapter, I delve into the vicious cycle of marginality and strains in
which many of my study participants were entrapped and how this circumscribed the efforts
they exerted to go ahead in life.
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The family plays a crucial role in the transition of young people. In an era of rapid social,
economic and cultural change and uncertainty, this function has become even more crucial.
The family can function as a haven for social, economic, moral and emotional support for
young people as they grapple with the challenges of adolescence and the uncertainties that
attend youth transitions to adulthood in risk society. Young people who experience various
strains in relation to the family can, therefore, experience their transitions to adulthood even
more challenging.
On the whole, majority of my research participants narrated strong social and emotional
bonds to their families. However, they narrated the family strains they felt too. These strains
include their families’ economic insecurity, bereavement or sickness in the family, the effects
of war and separation on the family and domestic conflicts. In some cases, these conflicts
resulted in contact with the CWS. Some of the research participants attributed the family
strains they experienced to attempts by the CWS to intervene in the family, at times through
sustained efforts to play their little siblings against their parents by enticing them with many
promises if they would admit to domestic problems and decided to leave home. Some narrated
how the fear of the CWS hovered like a dark cloud over their families for many years. Some
of the study participants also described the enormous responsibility they felt they had for the
welfare of the family and how this co-operative ideal engendered a lot of stress in their lives.
For example, Liban’s greatest regret was that he was not in position to cater for his mother
and extended family living in Somalia. He was migrated to Norway as an unaccompanied
minor asylum seeker at age 8. Now aged 21, he frequented one of the open street drug
markets in downtown Oslo some years back. He started using cannabis in lower secondary
school and later on sniffed cocaine and smoked heroin. He went through a period of heavy
drug use between the two interviews and subsequent informal extended conversations I had
with him. He managed to quit drugs on his own, though he was briefly in a detoxification
centre. He lost contact with his parents and siblings back in Somalia. Though he discovered
that he had an uncle and aunt here in Norway, was provided with a guardian when he arrived,
and later on had foster parents, his thoughts always went back to his biological parents and
siblings. Throughout his growing life, Liban’s mind was saddled with the uncertainty of not
knowing whether his parents were dead or still alive. He later got to know that his three sisters
and grandmother died in Somalia. The pains he felt about their loss and his inability to attend
the funeral to pay his last respects and loyalty to them were emotionally and psychologically
devastating for him. Besides, he felt a huge responsibility to cater for his extended family
economically as he narrated in following interview excerpt:
Liban: The whole family is in Somalia. I have lost three sisters [silence], so it is hard, isn’t it?
So you think about it [silence] (…) I tried to get rid of it, my angst, isn’t it? So it bothers me
(…) when [I] could not attend the funeral of my three sisters and grandmother. ( ) I would
like to help the family in Somalia, but I can’t manage it, you know.
Moses: You would like to help the family in Somalia?
Liban: I do not sleep. I think about it.
Thus, Liban expressed a strong emotional bond and obligation to his extended family. He felt
a strong need to give something back to the family probably because he felt he was migrated
at such a young age in order to do so. His conception of himself and well-being were
inextricably linked to the collective well-being of his extended family. This seemed to
engender a tension between his own efforts at individual achievement and collective family
concerns which, according to Engebrigtsen (2011), is characteristic of many migrant
populations.
One can also see this exertive and exacting desire to cater for family in how Mohamed felt
about his caring and motivating mother’s health. Having a sick mum who could not work,
Mohamed devoted a good deal of his time and energy to caring for her:
Mohamed: (…) she uses to tell me ‘go and work; take an apprenticeship if there is one, go
back to school’. It is my mother who motivates me to study and so on because she was a
secretary in Africa
Moses: Is she well educated?
Mohamed: Yes. She was a secretary in Africa
Moses: What is she doing now?
Mohamed: Nothing, Moses. Nothing. She is not doing much. She is just home. [She] took
some courses. She is done with the Norwegian language course (…) but you know, my mother
(…) she can only work in the office, but not with other tedious [work] and she has a bullet in
the leg. ( ) So she finds it difficult to walk (…). It is painful for her to walk.
Moses: So she is a bit disabled. ( ) How old is she?
Mohamed: About 55 or so.
Moses: She is not all that old.
Mohamed: Not all that old, no. She is very young, but I mean, you know, the situation in
which she is. She is not as healthy as others in her age group, you know. ( ). Her body and
leg. She feels pains all over. She feels a lot of pain when the weather is very cold because she
has a metal [bullet] in her leg, you know. So she complains a lot. I use to massage her leg
when she asks me to or when she is in pain ( ).
Having chronically sick parents was challenging for Salma too. Salma’s parents migrated to
Norway from Iran. She was born and bred in Norway and aged 21. She was not involved with
drugs or any criminal activity, but spent a lot of time hanging at a youth club in Oslo and
interacted with many street involved youths who frequented the youth club. Salma always had
close contacts with social and youth workers. She held a number of part time jobs, dropped
out of school, but wanted very much to go back. She did all she could to find a job but to no
avail and was having problems with Nav in relation to her unemployment benefits. Besides,
she was finding it difficult to go back to school. Like Felix, she exhausted her statutory rights
to upper secondary school education and was too young for the Adult Education Programme.
The challenges she was facing in relation to Nav, getting back to school and finding a job
were compounded by frustrations about her divorced parents’ chronic illnesses. But she was
resilient in the face of these challenges.
Moses: In relation to your mother, you said she is a single mother?
Salma: Yes, now. Because my father became sick and was admitted at the hospital and he has
been on admission for a long time. He is sick, my father. He is. He has been sick since we
were small. All the time.
Moses: Ok
Salma: And my mother became sick because she could not get any help from Nav to find a
job. She got an apprenticeship at a kindergarten and was asked to attend a Norwegian
language course and it went well. But she never got any follow-up after that. So it has always
been back and forth for her too. And she was not born here. She came here when she was 20, I
believe. And she was (...) home with the children. She did not work outside the home, so she
doesn’t speak good Norwegian and has no work experience. So things have been even more
difficult for her.
Moses: But how many siblings do you have?
Salma: We are five. Two sisters who are younger than me a big brother and sister
Moses: So how is the situation at home?
Salma: It is quite OK. But (
) isn’t it? When my mother is sick and you are afraid that
something will happen (…). If you have sick parents at home you feel that you are kind of (…)
it’s kind of hopeless sometimes. It is exactly that aspect which is bad.
Moses: But your younger sisters. Who takes care of them now that your mother is sick?
Salma: They are 16 and 18. So they are able to manage. So it’s really we who help our mother.
She does not help us anymore. But we are managing (…).
Moses: I was wondering about something. You said you father has been sick for a long period
and your mother is not healthy now. But how was it like to grow up in Norway?
Salma: It has been ok. I think I am very lucky to live in Norway. Actually, I am, to be honest.
However, it is somewhat difficult to have sick parents throughout your life. But I just feel
that things would have gone well if I had a job, a steady job and had managed my studies.
For Petrus, it was the deep shame he felt about his father’s alcoholism and the persistent need
to hide this from his friends and acquaintances that he perceived as some of his biggest
emotional challenges. His father’s alcoholism resulted in some violent episodes at home and
tore the family apart, making him feel responsible for the family as the eldest son. Petrus,
aged 21, came to Norway from Ghana together with his parents when he was 3 years old. He
had several challenges at school and dropped out of upper secondary school. Unemployed, he
shared a one room apartment with his single mother and 5 year old sibling. Petrus spent a lot
of time hanging out with his friends at the Central Station in Oslo over a period of time. Apart
from a fighting episode that brought him into contact with the police, he never involved
himself in drug dealing or any other criminal activities. Like Salma, Petrus always had a close
relationship with social and youth workers and even volunteered at a youth club where many
street-involved youths frequented. As he narrated in the following interview excerpts:
Petrus: It was very tough for me (…) to take care of my sister and mother at the same time
(...), and I did not know who to talk to. ( ) I came into contact with the Child Welfare because
I had a lot of problems at home when I was very young.
Moses: How old were you?
Petrus: I was 15 or 14 when I came into contact with the Child Welfare. It was because my
father drunk a lot and he and my mother quarrelled a lot. So it became too much (…)
Moses: ( ) Do you have a lot of contact with him?
Petrus: I used to have a lot of contact with him, but the older one becomes, the less contact one
has with his parents. And I know that I can always go to daddy if needs be, and I contact him
sometimes when I have enough time to talk with him.
Moses: How is he doing now?
Petrus: Well [sighs] ( ) I think he is doing fine. I use to (…).
Moses: He has stopped (…).
Petrus: He is still drinking.
Moses: How do you feel about the fact that he drinks (…)?
Petrus: I have done a good deal and tried to help him to stop. He managed to stop, but he has
fallen back. So for me, it’s really up to him what he chooses. I cannot decide [for him] any
longer what he ought to do. If he feels that what he is doing is right for him, he can continue
with it.
Moses: Did you get help to tackle the fact that your father drunk so much (…) or you did not
have the need for it?
Petrus: I have not contacted anyone. I think that there is a limit in relation to whom you tell (
). So I kept it a secret, because he is my father and I love him irrespective of who he is.
Because we are talking about someone who held me in his hands when I was a baby and who
has been there [for me] all the way.
The chaotic situation he experienced at home weighed heavily on Ajar too. He suffered
physical abuse from his father and felt the need to protect his mother from the physical and
emotional abuse his father unleashed on her. Ajar, aged 17 came to Norway from Kurdistan
with his parents when he was 13 years old. According to him, he did not participate actively
in the liberation struggle there, but assisted in the delivery of food and supplies to the
liberation fighters. He came into contact with the CWS when he was 15 because of some
criminal offences. He lived together with his parents but felt that “There is a lot of chaos
there. They shouldn’t have been living together”.
Moses: But (…) how is the relationship between you and your father?
Ajar: [silence] He is still be my father, even if he has been very bad or mean to me, to my
mum. My name is still Ajar [mentions surname in addition]. I will not change my name for it.
If he makes my mother happy, then he will get something good from me in return. If he
doesn’t make her happy, he gets nothing from me in return (…) I say to you, the day he yelled
at my mum, I nearly ate him up [silence].
Moses: Has he been mean to you?
Ajar: Not only to me [intense]. He was violent towards my mother (…).
Ajar described how he felt whenever he saw his mother crying as follows:
Ajar: What gives me energy [to go ahead in life and be successful] is when I see my mother
crying (…). She gives me energy when she is crying. But I do not say it to her (…).
Moses: Why does she cry?
Ajar: Because of many things. For example, if her mother needs money. Her mother is sick.
What will she do? Dance?
Moses: No
Ajar: Her mother who is in Kurdistan needs money. We are here in Norway. Maybe we are
managing here. What shall we do?
I interviewed Ajar and Yasser together. Yasser, aged 20, was soft spoken and reflective
during the interview. At a young age, he also became active in the liberation war in Palestine.
He and his mother and sisters moved to Norway to join his father about 5 years before the
study. His parents got divorced and Yasser moved and shared an apartment with a friend. He
was briefly involved with the CWS when his parents were divorced. His contacts with his
father were sporadic, but he maintained a close contact with his mother and siblings. Yasser
went to upper secondary school. Though he hanged around town a lot with friends and was
involved in a number of fights, he never involved himself in any criminal activities or drugs.
He was preoccupied with acquiring higher education and a good job so he could cater for his
mother and siblings as well as the extended family back in Palestine. The enormous
responsibility he felt for the family was emotionally challenging and taxing for him as he
recounted as follows:.
Yasser: It is not easy, brother. I often think about the time I’ll be able to (…) when I’ll see to it
that I am able to cater for my family (…) They feel that I am their man, that I am everything
for them. They feel so, but (…).
Moses: Your parents?
Yasser: Yes
Moses: Are you the eldest son?
Yasser: Yes
Moses: So you feel that you have much (…).
Yasser: [interrupts]. Because we were not together with our father all our lives. I was the one
who catered for them [in Palestine]. I worked.
Ajar: [interjects]. You know, I am in a similar situation. I have not lived with my father for a
long time, but my father and mother are not divorced (…) It is the same with me. I (…) am
number one. If I become a loser in life, then the whole family loses.
Yasser: The same here
Ajar: (…). Because they have invested their future in me (…).
Yasser: They are proud of us. We don’t want to be losers and make them sad and hurt them in
so doing.
Moses: I understand.
Ajar: I can [cater for them], but not now. I feel that I am always preoccupied with that thought.
I wish I could complete my education and start working and have money and everything, so I
can give them what they need from me. Because they gave me a lot (...).
Yasser: In order to get here [to Norway]
Ajar: To get here. They gave so much. That is what we are very much preoccupied with. Had
it not been for the family (…) we would have committed suicide long ago.
Yasser: Do you know what is irritating? When I visit my mother and see her crying, just
crying and she will not say why she is crying. She hides everything in her heart. She doesn’t
want to make us sad; she locks herself in a room and (…)
Ajar: [interrupts] and cries alone.
Yasser: Crying alone and not wanting anyone to see her. But I understand her (…).
Thus, for Ajar and Yasser like many of my other study participants, the fear and potential
shame of not being able to meet their obligations to the family weighed heavily on them. They
regarded their destinies and that of the immediate and extended family as intertwined. They
experienced adultization at a young age by taking upon themselves adult roles of caring for
others, mostly their siblings and mothers, in spite of their own precarity. Being in a position to
care for others, to reciprocate, was paramount in the aspirations of many of them. They
combined caring for others with their own search for care or help. Thus, like the black kids
Nightingale (1993) studied, my study participants articulated cooperative values. In their
study of young people in refugee families in Norway, Engebrigtsen & Fuglerud (2007)
showed the strong bonds they have with their families, but also how such families are
characterised by disrupted relationships under traumatic conditions, difficult economic
conditions, emotional bonds, and financial obligations to the extended family in their country
of origin. They also experience discrimination, racism and being disqualified like other
migrants. Taslaman and Balic (2006) also showed on their study how experiences of war can
impact refugee families. The family is ruptured and the roles in the family change. Parents
themselves change as a result of new challenges that confront them, and some can become
emotionally absent. They may appear authoritarian and aggressive and become a source of
threat rather than security for their children. The narratives of some of my study participants
seem to confirm these insights. In many cases, these strains strengthened the emotional bonds
between the study participants, their siblings and single mothers.
The various obligations or bonds of reciprocity my study participants felt towards their
families can be viewed as sharply contrasting with normal expectations in Norway regarding
young people’s obligations to their parents. In Norway, though various bonds of reciprocity
exist between young people and their parents or family as in many other countries, young
people are not under the pressure of having financial obligations to their family. Rather, a
crucial aspect of family practices in Norway is the financial or economic support most
Norwegian parents normally give to their children, so they can either acquire their own homes
or stand on their own two feet. As noted by Holdsworth and Morgan (2005), because of their
prosperity, many parents or family members in Norway give substantial financial assistance to
their children to acquire a new home. This can be in the form of paying deposits,
contributions to payment of mortgage interests, or as guarantors of the mortgage for their
children. Thus, rather than being financially obligated to their families most ethnic Norwegian
youths received more financial transfers from their parents. None of my study participants
received such substantial financial transfers because of the economic insecurity experienced
by their families.
There is no doubt that the emotional bonds of reciprocity and financial obligations the study
participants felt toward their families constitute a strain on their individual aspirational capital
or efforts to go ahead in life. However, the data also suggest that the feelings of caring they
harboured and the strains involved may become a veritable source of strength and resilience
for these youths, galvanising them to work even harder in order to go ahead in life, as Yasser
and Ajar narrated. In other words, their caring for others may tend to strengthen their
aspirational capital. Thus, while their family experiences may create emotional and
psychological tensions for BME youths who experience marginalisation, many may consider
their experiences of marginalisation especially in relation to school and the labour market
much more stressful, since such experiences undermine their ability to meet the strong
obligations they may feel toward their families. Nevertheless, such family strains can detract
from the social and emotional support that these young people can receive from their families
as they make their difficult transitions to adulthood. It is, therefore, important to situate the
family strains that I have described above in relation to my study participants in the larger
societal dynamics their families are embedded in. Doing so will enable us to avoid what
Currie describes as the “fallacy of autonomy” (Curries 1985: 185), where the family is
studied or analysed without taking into consideration the larger social, economic and political
contexts within which it is embedded.
7=;16/B:-4)<-,;<:)16;)6,075-4-;;6-;;
Accommodation or a place to call home plays an important role in the development and
effectuation of our human potential. Our ability to acquire the necessary skills that are needed
in order to participate effectively in important societal processes and social arenas, and actual
participation in such processes and arenas, are to a large extent dependent on having a roof
over our heads or a place to call home. Growing up under living conditions characterised by
unstable and unsafe accommodation or homelessness can have negative effects on the
individual’s physical, social and mental well-being as well as the family’s ability to give
children a good foundation for growing up. In addition to other basic human needs like food
and clothing, therefore, decent accommodation influence the quality of life and power
relations between different social groups in society (Kuvoame 2005).
For young people in particular, having own accommodation makes it possible to have an
independent life by moving from the parental home (Ruud et al. 2012). Tenuous
accommodation can also affect their participation in other arenas such as school, the job
market and leisure time (Ruud et al. Ibid). Emotional attachment and identification to a place
one can call home is important to psychological health since in its absence, individuals may
experience isolation and low self-esteem (Riggs & Coyle 2002).
Ruud et.al (2012)
underscored what it means for the identity and self-esteem of vulnerable youths to have their
own accommodation. Having own accommodation gives status, a sense of security, worth and
having control over ones’ life.
The general picture of the housing conditions of my study participants is that of unstable or
impermanent accommodation, and inability to readily acquire and pay for own
accommodation. Like Mohamed and Felix, majority of study participants lived in temporary
accommodation, usually bedsits paid for by the local Nav office, with scant furniture and, at
times, deplorable facilities. The housing problems of some of them were closely linked to
their family’s housing careers. Like Ali and Petrus (see below), some of them had lived in
families that moved several times. Like Felix and Ali, the impermanence of their
accommodation or homelessness was related to some of them serving prison terms. They
were often released from prison to homelessness. Majority also had experiences with
temporary youth shelters or hostels and a number of them had lived in hospices with injecting
drug addicts. Their unstable housing conditions had serious consequences for them. They
used a lot of time and energy to find a place to lay their heads, at times from day to day. They
found it difficult to structure their lives as a result. An unorganised day made it difficult for
many of them to attend school, to look for jobs and to keep appointments with public
institutions. When I asked Petrus how the situation was at home, he narrated the following:
Petrus: There, we have a small apartment
Moses: Two rooms or three rooms?
Petrus: It is just one room
Moses: One room? Where you live together with your mum?
Petrus: And my little brother who will soon be 5 years old. So I live in a cramped apartment
and I do not have my own room. My ‘room’ is a bed in the living room which is almost
attached to the kitchen. And I have a little closet where I put my clothes and other small items.
Otherwise, the room is very, very small. ( )
Moses: How long have you been living there?
Petrus: For two years now
Moses: So you have lived at other places?
Petrus: Yes
Moses: How many times have you moved since you came to Norway?
Petrus: About six times.
Moses: How do you feel about living so cramped?
Petrus: It is stressful. ( )
Moses: But what is your biggest challenge now?
Petrus: My living conditions
Moses: Living conditions
Petrus: It is tough to live with your mother when you are 21. When you are 21, you are
expected to have a small apartment and be able to help [your family], right? But now, it is
difficult to get the experience one needs to be able to live alone, to take care of oneself. For
when you live with your mum, it feels like she is taking care of you ( ), right? But that is a
mistake. People should take care of themselves. And I really think Nav should help those who
are capable of taking care of themselves ( ) so they can learn quickly how to take care of
themselves.
Moses: But have you informed Nav that you need accommodation?
Petrus: I have informed them about everything, but they said I do not really have any rights.
Moses: ( ) Why?
Petrus: Because I am living with my own mother.
Moses: Yes, because you are registered as living there.
Petrus: Yes.
Moses: Yes. So have they advised you as to what you can to do to get your own
accommodation?
Petrus: They just told me to go and find a job.
Moses: Ok
Petrus: But the probability of actually finding a job is little for many.
Petrus underscored the importance of having own accommodation in the transition of young
people to a gradual self-supporting and independent life. His homelessness made him feel
ashamed of himself for not meeting what he perceived as the cultural norms or expectations of
society regarding leaving the parental home. In Norway, most young people leave home
between the ages of 18 and 20. Petrus harboured the feeling that his cohort had left him
behind in terms of leaving home. This shook the very foundation of his self-identity. He felt
that his homelessness undermined his individual effort to take control over his own life. He
reasoned also that having responsibility for his own life would enable him to cater for his
family better. He abhorred the dependency involved in homelessness, finding it stressful to
remain under the constraints and supervision of his mother. Being homeless, therefore,
undermined his feelings of freedom, independence and autonomy, which are crucial for the
human need for self-determination. He had a roof over his head, but no psychological or
emotional attachment to where he was living.
Mohamed expressed similar views in an interview after he moved from his mother and lived
in a municipal youth shelter. He too described the lack of independence and constriction of
self he felt about not having a job and his own accommodation. He felt that he lacked
privacy, lived under coercion and constant supervision and had little control over his own life.
He considered this an assault on his self-worth, and the dependency involved as a source of
humiliation to him. I was trying to find out how Mohamed felt about his life in general. He
was tearful throughout this particular interview. The following are excerpts from the
interview:
Moses: Hmmm. You said life is difficult.
Mohamed: Yes.
Moses: How difficult is your situation now?
Mohamed: [long silence] It is very difficult, Moses, not to have [your own] apartment, and not
to be able to go anywhere. And, you know, do things you can do in your [own] apartment. To
have a woman, you need an apartment [of your own]. You cannot do it there [take a woman to
the youth shelter]. There [in the youth shelter] I live like I am in prison, you know. They
control me, check me. The only difference is that it is not called a prison.
Moses: Especially the rules.
Mohamed: Yes, all the rules.
Moses: They treat you just like a kid.
Mohamed: And the curfew. Even talking is specified there [in the rules]. (…) Who can tell a
grown-up man to go to his room at 24:00, Moses? It doesn’t make sense (…) that is why it is a
bit confusing, brother.
Living in a municipal youth shelter was so demeaning and humiliating for Mohamed that he
hid it from his mother:
I met her yesterday and told her that I have gotten (…) I didn’t tell her that I live there [in the
youth shelter], but that I live at a place, a kind of hotel temporary in order to get an apartment.
[I told her that] if I do not go there [accept the offer to live in the youth shelter] they [Nav] will
not help me blah, blah, blah. And she understood it and said ‘it’s alright. Just be careful’’.
Mohamed experienced his stay at the municipal youth shelter called EXIT as the worst period
in his life as a homeless person. According to him, he had altercations with some ethnic
Norwegians who also lived there. Mohamed narrated that the youths, who used drugs at the
youth shelter, cast racist aspersions on his person. Mohamed felt that the staff at the youth
shelter did not handle the situation in a just manner, but sided with the ethnic Norwegian
youths involved. He considered the staff as racists. Mohamed became agitated, angry and felt
discriminated against. He protested against the way the staff handled the situation. He was
later evicted from the youth shelter. The staff felt threatened by Mohamed and sought the
assistance of the police to evict him, leaving behind his belongings. It took Mohamed almost
two weeks to retrieve his belongings. All my attempts to intervene on his behalf failed
because the “the head of the shelter was not around” any time we called to fetch his items.
Mohamed wore the same clothes for two weeks. Mohamed expressed his feelings as follows
in an informal extended conversation:
Moses: When you think about it, how did you feel about what happened?
Mohamed: I felt very much like, you know, that I was violated by someone. All that shit [that
happened] there was because of Nav. They sent me to a place full of drug addicts.
In order to cope with his homelessness, he kept up with different friends over a period of time,
something he experienced as humiliating since he had to live on their terms. Thus, Mohamed
abhorred what he perceived as institutionalised racism at the youth shelter, and resisted it, but
his resistance resulted in his expulsion from the youth shelter. In a brief informal conversation
I had with the head of the youth shelter later on in another context, she admitted that her staff
needed to be culture sensitive in their interactions with marginalised BME youths who used
their services.
When Jamal became homeless and approached his local Nav office for accommodation, he
was offered a room in one of the hospices in Oslo used by drug addicts. The reason his
counsellor at the local Nav office gave was that he would be going to prison in about a week,
so he only needed a temporary accommodation. By this time, Jamal started injecting
amphetamines. He had never been to a hospice before. According to him, he had the greatest
shock of his life when he got there. He felt devalued by the experience as he narrated as
follows:
So when I came to Ila [name of hospice], ( ) I saw how people were living there. The blood,
the yelling, the mourning, the loneliness, the pain (…), the ugliness in them (…) even the
smell was different from the smell outside. ( ) I mean, I had to be there like a week! I was
waiting to go to prison then ( ). So I have to come [there] 22:00. Sleep from 22:00 to 07:00
the next morning. It was an experience that I have never thought I would see in my life.
He described some of the drug addicts he saw at the hospice. He made an analogy between
what he saw and what the police would have seen in a hypothetical police swoop from room
to room as follows:
a guy with a needle in the arm; a guy with a needle in his neck; a guy with a needle in the leg;
a guy with a needle in his ass; a girl with a needle in her pussy; a woman there with a needle in
her teats. That’s how bad it was. At least, that’s how I saw it. I tried a second to find one
normal person (…). Every room I went [to], every room [that] I saw, there was somebody with
a needle or something. ( ) I hated it. That’s when I hated [the] needle.
It is, therefore, not surprising that like Felix and Jamal, many homeless street-involved BME
youths turn down offers from Nav to accommodate them in hospices. As suggested by Riggs
and Coyle (2002) with reference to the literature, the lack of attachment and identification
homeless young people have to impermanent accommodation may be understood through
concepts of place attachment (emotional bonds to a place) and place identity (thoughts and
feelings, attitudes and behaviours relating to a place). Homelessness or impermanence of
accommodation can therefore thwart young people’s “place-making efforts” (Engebrigtsen,
2011:309) and threaten their self-identity. According to Riggs and Coyle (2002), identity
threat arises when one or more of the principles that define desirable end states of identity
such as self-esteem, continuity, positive distinctiveness and self-efficacy, are challenged
Faced with homelessness, many marginalised street-involved BME youths in my study looked
for a place to crush, at times, from day to day. They used different coping strategies. Like
Mohamed, many crushed with their friends. Those who were able to acquire bedsits willingly
shared it with other street-involved youths they considered at a particular time as buddies.
This is one of the central features of the changing constellations of ‘friendship’ one can
identify among street-involved youths in downtown Oslo. It is part of the moral economy of
the street. For example, when he later got his own accommodation through the local Nav
office, Mohamed could not help it but allow a friend to share it with him, precisely because it
might be his turn to crush with someone should he become homeless in the future. Thus,
allowing a friend to crush with him was a coping strategy adopted by Mohamed against future
homelessness. However, as Mohamed discovered later, sharing one’s bedsit with a buddy or
buddies often resulted in one losing his bedsit because of the constant partying or having too
many homeless visitors.
Another strategy is to commit crimes that one knows will result in an arrest with the sole aim
of going to prison or jail such that one can, at least, have a place to sleep and three meals a
day. Jamal tried to adopt this strategy when he was kicked out of school, unemployed and got
fed up with crushing at a junkie friend’s apartment:
( ) My whole plan was to get high, just get high. I am looking [I wanted] to go to prison. I
was doing anything that you can [do to] go to prison. ( ) Because the thing is that then
[during that time] I didn’t have an apartment. I didn’t have a place to go and I was living with
another junkie ( ). His whole life was just about waking up in the morning, smoking till night
and sleeping (…), waking up next morning, smoking and sleeping again. ( ) I have been in
that place [keeping up with his friend] for like a month ( ).
Others can exchange sex for getting a place to sleep. Jamal recounted the advice a homeless
friend in Oslo gave him when Jamal moved from the North to Oslo and was homeless: “Men,
I am the same as you [homeless]. I fuck a woman to sleep at her place. So if you wanna
survive in this place ( ) you got to do something with it”.
When I was doing my fieldwork, I hanged out at the Riverside Youth House at Grønland for
about three weeks. According to the staff, about 90 per cent of young people aged between 16
and 22 who use this municipal youth service are BME youths (mostly from Somalia and
Afghanistan). I made some observations and had informal extended conversations with some
street-involved BME youths who frequented there. Some of the youths always came there in a
flock several times during the day and hanged out there for some hours. Most of them
dropped out of upper secondary school and were unemployed. Others went through the
criminal justice system. Some of them used soft drugs. They did not necessarily avail
themselves of the services offered by Riverside Youth House such as free access to internet,
helping young people to write CVs and job applications, and so on. Instead, these youths,
mostly of Somali origin, used the place as a space for conviviality. They would arrange with
their friends to meet there instead of inviting them home, the main reason being that they
lived in crowded or cramped apartments with their siblings and their parents, and so could not
invite their friends home. They spent a lot of time commuting between Riverside Youth
House, Oslo Central Station, the city centre and the Red Cross Youth Centre. Commentators
without inside information would probably consider these youths as exploiting the services of
youth agencies in downtown Oslo, and by so doing lose sight of their homelessness. The
suggestion here is that most of these youths may have become street-involved and hanging
out a lot in the city centre due to their tenuous housing conditions. Øia’s (2003) study showed
that BME youths, especially boys, hang out more in the city centre in Oslo than ethnic
Norwegian youths. The tenuous accommodation that many street-involved BME youths have
may partly explain this.
To understand the housing problems that confront these youths in Oslo, it is important to
focus on the Norwegian housing policy, especially the ownership structure of the Norwegian
housing market, since it circumscribes the choices these youths can make in their bid to leave
their parental home and lead an independent life. Ruud et al. (2012) analysed policy
documents regarding prevailing conceptions or discourses that undergird Norwegian housing
policy. They pointed out the following:
In the policy documents, the importance of owning a home is seen in conjunction with other
key areas of life. Housing is primarily a means of achieving other welfare goods and a decent
life. It is about how living in a good home affects a person’s ability to get an education and
work, look after themselves in terms of health and enjoy a social life. The home is also seen in
the context of social inclusion. Here, having a home is seen as benefiting personal security and
stability, both of which facilitate participation in other areas of life. The “home perspective” is
not as prominent in these policy documents, and comes to expression mainly in connection
with policy on institutional care for senior citizens. Another perspective stands out, however,
and that is housing as an investment, a commodity to buy and sell on a market and which can
help people move their housing careers forward (Ruud et al. 2012: 10, emphasis original)
Hence, the idea that everyone should be able to own a decent housing or accommodation has
been a major feature of welfare politics in Norway after the Second World War. To a large
extent, this objective has been achieved in that, today, about 80 per cent of all indigenous
Norwegian households own their dwellings (Norges Leierboerforbund 2000).
The
implication is that the Norwegian housing market is dominated by a large owner-occupier
sector in form of free holdings or ownership through housing cooperatives or corporations
(Andersen 2001). The rental sector is very small and is dominated by private speculators
(Nordvik 1996, cited in Andersen Ibid).
The consequence is that the municipal housing sector accounts for only 5 per cent of the
rental sector in the housing market in Norway. The figure for Germany and France is 20 per
cent; for Denmark and Sweden 25 per cent and for Great Britain and the Netherlands 40 per
cent (Leieboerforening Ibid). The small private rental sector is market driven and so
characterised by speculation which pushes up rental prices. Hence, the structure of the
Norwegian housing market creates a big room for the exclusion of young people, students,
ethnic minorities and other vulnerable groups. As the municipal housing sector is small, it is
difficult for the City of Oslo to provide adequate and decent housing for needy individuals,
who cannot compete in the owner-occupier and private rental sectors. Given the structure of
the housing market, it is easy to discriminate against ethnic minorities, especially
disadvantaged and street-involved BME youths, in the private rental sector. The consequence
is that some of them live on the streets and lead a nomadic housing life. It is within this
context that we can understand the advice given to Mohamed by one of his counsellors to tell
“small white lies” and hide his client status when looking for accommodation in the private
market. The counsellors at the local Nav offices are aware of the structural bottlenecks in the
Norwegian housing market and are also powerless in relation to them.
$+0774:-4)<-,;<:)16;
The risk society is a knowledge-based society in which acquisition of higher qualifications
and competence through higher education has become an important determining factor for the
individual’s life chances and the choices he or she can make. The kind of educational
qualifications or competence one has can become a decisive factor in determining whether
one is included or excluded in society (Kuvoame 2005). It is therefore not surprising that
many young people spend a greater chunk of their lives in the educational system than before.
As France (2007) has observed, the ‘crisis’ in modernity that has engendered rapid structural
and cultural change has also led to a ‘crisis’ in school-to-work transitions. Post-16 education
in the western world has been expanding in terms of growing opportunities and the number of
young people who further their education in higher educational institutions. Larsen and Øzerk
(2000) have also observed that in recent times, the position of the school in Norway has been
strengthened for many because of lack of other alternatives to schooling before upper
secondary school. Many years of schooling has become an integral aspect of life for most
people in Norway, and one has a greater opportunity than before to choose from several
academic and vocational disciplines.
In Norway, education is viewed as an important panacea to the challenges facing the Welfare
State today (Government White Paper nr. 44. 2008-2009). It is viewed as a welfare good in
itself, since it is through education that the individual acquires the skills necessary to exercise
control over his or her own life and for self-determination. Besides, education is seen as a
stimulant for democratic participation, cultural development and the development of the
individual’s self-esteem and identity. The implication here is that important humanitarian,
democratic, egalitarian and welfare values or ideals undergird the role of the school in the
lives of young people in Norway. Moreover, the school has become one of the key
instruments at the disposal of the state for generating communitarian feelings and cultural
identification within the Norwegian population (Eriksen & Sørheim 1998). If culture can be
defined as the knowledge and skills necessary for functioning in society, then the school is
one of the most important means of transmitting culture (Ibid). The school is supposed to
transmit culture, shape attitudes and create potentials for the growth of the individual and the
society (City Council Report 2/2000).
As observed by Øia (2013), given a school system where all have statutory rights to attend
upper secondary school and where remaining in school for 13 years is the implicit
requirement, young people who experience school fatigue and choose to quit risk being
stigmatised. In other words, young people are under pressure to acquire the necessary
qualifications and to assume individual responsibility for their failure or success in doing so.
It is, therefore, important to understand whether schools actually meet the humanitarian and
welfare ideals they are supposed to implement to enable pupils acquire the skills and
qualifications they need in order to participate effectively in society. This is even more crucial
for children and young people with immigrant background, because as noted by Jonsson and
Rudolphi (2011), a fundamental resource for immigrants’ integration into the receiving
country is the formal qualifications they attain through the educational system.
According to a statistical report published by the Norwegian Directorate of Education (2012)
children, young people and adults with immigrant origin have weaker educational or learning
outcomes, have greater difficulty in getting apprenticeships, and complete upper secondary
school to a lesser extent than those who are born in Norway or have one Norwegian parent.
Those who have immigrated generally perform poorer than those who are born in Norway
with immigrant parents, and other students. According to the report, much of the differences
in school performance and completion can be attributed to level of parental education.
However, the impact of parental level of education on learning outcomes is lesser for
immigrant youth than for majority youth. Immigrant youth with parents without high
education perform better than majority youth with parents without higher education.
Heath and Brinbaum (2007) have also emphasised the lesser impact of parental education for
the learning outcomes of minority ethnic students. Fekjær (2007) has also provided
compelling evidence to the lesser impact of parental socioeconomic background on
educational or learning outcomes of ethnic minority students in Norway. Likewise, Lauglo
(1999) argues that it might be wrong to assume that social and cultural reproduction processes
are the same for migrants as for the majority population. The implication here is that, while
we cannot dismiss the effects of class, parental level of education or socioeconomic
background, other mechanisms or factors may account for the weaker educational outcomes
for minority ethnic youths. Heath and Brinbaum (2007) suggest that understanding the
considerations these youths themselves make in relation to schooling through qualitative
research might be helpful in this regard.
In my study, I focused on how the study participants perceived schooling and their
experiences in school. The finding that young people with immigrant origin have weaker
learning outcomes in Norwegian schools and that their poorer school outcomes may be
attributable to other mechanisms other than socioeconomic factors or parental level of
education seem to be borne out in my study. Only three out of the 25 street-involved youths I
interviewed or had informal extended conversations with completed upper secondary school
due to a plethora of reasons. Two of those who completed the required vocational courses in
upper secondary school could not get places for apprenticeships. Most of them quit school
during the basic school or after a year or two in upper secondary school. Others decided to
take time off from school with plans to go back, plans that never materialised, mainly because
like Salma and Felix, they exhausted their statutory rights to upper secondary education or not
qualified age-wise for the Adult Education programme. Like Ali, some of them quit school
very early due to their drug use and association and involvement in petty crimes with
delinquent peers in neighbourhoods with a high concentration of immigrants. Others quit
school because of what they described as concentration or mental health problems, lack of
motivation, reading and writing challenges, problems with some teachers or feelings of not
being seen, while others dropped out not because of pedagogical challenges but because of
critical situations they considered were beyond their control.
Leonard, aged 24, came to Norway from Cameroun with his parents when he was 7 years old.
Leonard’s dream was to become a professional cook and own a restaurant in a tourist resort in
Cameroun in the future. It was that dream and the assistance he got from his father that
motivated him to continue in school. He became very active at one of the open street drug
markets in Oslo after he was kicked out of upper secondary school. He went to prison three
times because of involvement in criminal activities. He worked as an extra hand in a
restaurant in Oslo at the time of the study and combined this with drug dealing. Leonard
narrated that he did not have any pedagogical challenges at school: “I have always
concentrated whenever I wanted to. ( ) I have shown interest in the subjects which (…) I was
offering”. But he felt that his teachers did not have high expectations of him because “I am a
foreigner ( ) So, I don’t think that much [was] expected of me (…) at school. (
give you little […] less motivation”.
) So they
He felt that BME youths were subjected to
discriminatory or differential treatment at school: “They didn’t give us opportunities. They
just stopped us on the way. They humiliate us (…) It’s like you are not given any choice”.
When I asked him if he had plans to go back to school he answered: “Shit ( ). I have almost
forgotten how it is to be at school. How it feels like to be in school”.
Leonard hated the idea of going back to school because of an event he regarded as the most
critical incident in his life. According to him, he was kicked out of school when he overstayed
his permission from school to accompany his mother and siblings to Cameroun to bury his
father who suddenly died in Norway. Leonard was very close to his father. His father’s death
and his subsequent expulsion from school had a very traumatic effect on him as he narrated as
follows:
From then till now (
) It has changed a great deal of my life from then till now. Had I
continued school (…). It came as a shock to me when I was kicked out of school. ( ) I just lost
my father. I went back to school and I was not wanted there. And it has changed my life (…)
[Long silence].
Leonard felt that he was not motivated by his teachers in school because of the colour of his
skin. He harboured the feeling that he did not receive the sympathy, empathy, understanding
and compassion he needed at what he considered the most critical stage of his young life. He
rather felt like an outcast, unwanted at school, creating in him a strong aversion to school.
The school authorities did not seem to be very concerned with his familial affairs, but with the
implementation of rules governing school attendance or absenteeism. Such rules are informed
by the achievement or meritocratic ethic or rationality that governs formal education. The
school prioritised such an ideology over the school’s welfare and humanitarian roles in the
lives of young people as spelled out in policy documents.
Salma too felt that her dreams of attaining higher education was nipped in the bud by the fact
that her school authorities did not show any concern for the fact that she had been sick over a
long period during the final year in upper secondary school. Despite her sickness and the
difficult situation at home regarding her parents, she managed to get the required grades to
further her education, but the school authorities decided to give her a failing grade for chronic
absenteeism. But Salma did not give up. She tried to study privately in order to make the
grades she needed for further education: “But I gave up because it didn’t work. I studied and
took the exams but it went pretty bad. I tried the Adult Education Programme, but I [my
application] was rejected because I was 21 [under the age limit]”. Salma felt bitter, angry and
frustrated about the fact that she seemed to be going nowhere with her present life in spite of
her efforts. Here too, we see how the institutional or systemic logic of the school system is
inextricably linked to the meritocratic ideology, making it difficult to adapt it to the individual
needs of students. Salma recounted the learning difficulties she had at upper secondary school
and the good assistance she received from some teachers, one of whom she still had contact
with. However, such is the force of the achievement or meritocratic ideal that it may confound
the genuine care that many teachers may have for needy students above pure academic
performance.
For Yusuf, it was the inability of the school to help him deal with his violent temper and
tantrums that resulted in him being expelled from school. He wanted to study, but his
temperament seemed to create in him distaste for school. As he put it, “I really wanted to, but
it was a bit too demanding (
). There was much fighting with teachers, [my] temper. ( ).
There was a lot of trouble in school”. Yusuf suffered a severe head injury before moving from
Eritrea to Norway to join his uncle and wife when he was 8 years old. Yusuf was operated for
his head injuries in Norway. According to him, “I developed a severe temperament because of
( ) a major surgery [that affected] my nervous system ( ). So I had huge problems with [my]
temper. It was up and down in school ( )”. He was emotionally and psychologically troubled
and felt more attracted to hanging out in town with his friends rather than staying in school
where he did not feel at home. Yusuf started smoking cannabis and involving himself in petty
crimes with some of his schoolmates in lower secondary school: “The adrenaline rush became
more and I became dependent on that life”. Yusuf was kicked out of school when he assaulted
a teacher and served a prison sentence as a result. He was referred to anger management
counseling as part of the sentence. Later on, he started hanging out with people older than
him: “It went too far. (
) it became a habit. (
) You will recall that I hanged out with only
elderly ethnic Norwegians and Somalis. I was the lonely wolf”. Yusuf went to prison a
number of times “only for violent assault because of [my] temper”. According to Yusuf, the
school knew nothing about the surgery he had, so there was not a good collaboration between
the school and his doctor. He did not get any help from the school to tackle his tantrums.
Rather than construing his violent outward behaviours as symbolic expressions of his inner
emotional challenges for which he needed help, the school interpreted his behaviour as a
purely disciplinary problem. While no one can condone physical assaults on teachers,
excessive emphasis on punishment as a way of instilling the kind of discipline that school
authorities may regard as central in promoting the achievement ethic, may prevent them from
understanding the emotional and psychological challenges and needs of many troubled
youths.
For Franklin, aged 22, it was the bad choices he felt he made growing up in what he perceived
as a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Oslo with a high concentration of immigrants, and
attending schools in the neighbourhood, that made him dropped out from school. He could not
resist the peer pressure he felt in this disadvantaged neighbourhood school. Franklin’s family
was well to do and highly educated. His siblings found their various places in Norway. He
believed in the meritocratic and achievement ideals of formal education and blamed himself
for not acquiring higher education as his parents wanted him to. He would not blame his
parents who really encouraged and gave him all the assistance he needed, but himself for
giving in to his deviant peers. Neither would he blame the school. He did not really have any
academic challenges at school or problems with teachers. Regarding what he felt detracted
from his performance at school, he narrated the following:
It is only that when you are young, you wanna pretend to be someone you are not, you know.
You wanna play tough and all that when you are young. If I had focused on my lessons, grades
and family, I would have done better. ( ) People dish their own dirt, you know. They think it
is right. ( ) But, you know. If the milieu is bad, then school too becomes bad. But if the milieu
is good and you have support from people and you feel safe in the community, then it becomes
easier to study for good grades and all that. ( ) But when you do not feel safe in the
community, you hang out in a bad milieu, you do not listen to your parents, you only end up
being kicked out of school, you become violent and society gets tired of you. You get arrested
and you lose your family.
Franklin grew up in one of the Eastside suburbs of Oslo with a very high concentration of
non-western immigrants. His parents moved there from another city in Norway when he was
young. He became a member of a group of 20 BME youths who lived in the same
neighbourhood and went to the same neighbourhood school. They involved themselves in
petty thieving, mugged children in the street, smoked cannabis, hanged out a lot in downtown
Oslo and fought with other BME youths. What bothered him most was how to cut off contacts
with his delinquent peers. He came into contact with the CWS because of his criminal
activities. He felt that the CWS really wanted to help, but he had to travel to another European
country to visit a relative, perhaps as a way of cutting off ties with the youth gang. He also got
into contact with the Psychological Pedagogical Service (the PP-service) when he was in
upper secondary school through referral from the school and was put through a lot of tests on
which he did very well. He narrated how he perceived those tests as follows:
Franklin: In the end, I just didn’t understand why all those tests.
Moses: It was not understandable?
Franklin: I don’t think [those tests] help you in life. [What bothered me] had nothing with
mathematical texts to do. I just wanted to get out of the milieu. That was what bothered me. I
didn’t need any mathematical tests. It doesn’t help in anyway.
Moses: You mean you didn’t get help from the PP-service to cut contact with the milieu?
Franklin: No.
Moses: They only tested you (…).
Franklin: Yes. It was not a problem with the family, not a school problem. I am not stupid. It
was the milieu that took me away from my family and made me not to focus on school work. I
felt that the guys [in the gang] were my brothers. ( ) That was it.
Franklin dropped out of upper secondary school. He found going back to school difficult
because of concentration problems. He attended some courses under the aegis of Nav and got
some apprenticeships, but found it difficult to concentrate. For Franklin was shot several
times in a gang fight and was nearly killed. This critical event had a traumatic effect on his
psyche. By focusing solely on his academic performance by administering tests and exploring
his family background in that regard, the school authorities lost sight of the strong influences
that deviant peer groups can have on young people growing up in a disadvantaged
neighbourhood. Some of these youths may feel unsafe and unprotected in such
neighbourhoods. Once they become part of such deviant peer groups, which they may see as
providing them with protection, a sense of belonging, affirmation and recognition, they may
find it difficult to cut ties with such groups. The neighbourhood strains and peer strains such
youths may feel growing up in such neighbourhoods can also affect their perceptions of
schooling. As suggested by Heath and Brinbaum (2007), it is possible that such schools might
have some disadvantages for BME students concentrated as they are in relatively
disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Such neighbourhoods tend to be associated with poorer
schooling, higher teacher turnover and, possibly, negative contextual effect on the schools’
social composition and student performance and achievement.
Some of these perceptions were echoed in the views of Ajar and Yasser. They attended an
upper secondary school where about 85 per cent of the student population consisted of BME
youths. They felt at home at school and said they had good contact with social workers in the
school, many of whom they considered as “doing a great job”. However, they considered the
school environment as very deplorable because of gang fights and heavy police presence as
they narrated in the following interview excerpt:
Ajar: What is stressful is that the police are here throughout the day when we are at school. I
don’t think [we can call] this place a school. It is a police station. Yes. Is that not true?
[Addresses question to Yasser]
Moses: Why is it so?
Yasser: It is like that at times because (…) there was a lot of trouble last year. Boys [youth
gangs] from outside the school used to come here and cause trouble. It happened to me [three
months ago]. They came from [mentions the same Eastside suburb in Oslo where Franklin
lived and went to school]. They wanted to kill me. They came with knives. I didn’t even know
them. There was a fight at the school between them and some guys [here] and I tried to
mediate between them, but was later ambushed on my way home from school ( ).
Moses: Were they BME youths?
Yasser: Yes. One of them took a knife and said ‘motherfucker’ to me, and I went mad.
Moses: You said that this place is similar to a police station.
Yasser: Yes, because the police come here all the time with dogs to check for cannabis and so
on.
Ajar: What a hell? Are we really in school? Dogs check you up ( ) at school.
Moses: But regarding the social workers, do you think they are doing a good job? I can see
that there are many social workers here.
Ajar: The social workers? Not all.
Yasser: I think I have good contact with them. They are trying their best, yes. And they are
kind. They have good contact with the students, especially [mentions the name of a known
youth worker].
While many motivated teachers and social workers may exert their efforts to help troubled
young people in such schools with a high concentration of BME youths, the resulting
concentration effect in itself, coupled with the stigmatisation the students may feel in relation
to availability of drugs and heavy police presence, can easily detract from the efforts of such
motivated care-givers, and the learning outcomes of the students.
For Petrus, it was the feeling of being invisible, not being seen by his teachers, and his special
needs not being recognised that weighed more on his mind than anything else regarding his
school experiences. He felt marginalised in school. He experienced his first years in school as
difficult because of language problems. He was referred to the PP-service and was diagnosed
for dyslexia. He narrated his school experiences as follows:
Petrus: I passed all my examinations at school. But the farthest I came was the third year in
upper secondary school. ( )
Moses: Have you had positive experiences with your teachers?
Petrus: [Laughs and lightens up] Well, I had. ( ) For example, at upper secondary school, I
had a supper teacher in the Norwegian language ( ). She was good in teaching the Norwegian
language. She always strived to help all the students. She would run around and help all the
students who needed help so they could be more fluent in the language ( ).
Moses: But have you had any negative experiences?
Petrus: You mean in relation to the subjects [academic work]?
Moses: Both academic work and your relationship with teachers and such.
Petrus: I have had bad teachers [and] the best teachers in the whole world. ( ) I had both bad
and good teachers. So actually, it was up and down. [My experiences] were neither wholly
positive nor wholly negative. It was exactly in between.
Moses: Could you please give concrete examples of your negative experiences?
Petrus: The negative experience I had was in relation to the fact that the teachers didn’t exactly
see me when I asked for help. They were not there when I needed help most. This destroys
[the feeling of] being part of the Norwegian [educational] system when it comes to education.
Moses: You felt that you were not seen? So it means a lot to you to be seen?
Petrus: Yes.
Moses: How?
Petrus: It is important that they see me. It is important for them to realise it [when a student]
needs extra help more than others. [That] he trails behind others and think about what [they]
can do to lift him up so he can be at the same level as others. I think they should have focused
more on that.
The feeling of being seen is a fundamental human need. Being seen is being recognised and
acknowledged as a fellow human being. The feeling of being recognised is crucial to the
social, physical and emotional well-being of young people, and that feeling can only be
cultivated in relationships young people regard as nurturing. In the interview above, we read
how Petrus was able to master the Norwegian language in spite of his reading difficulties
because of a caring teacher who recognised his needs and those of other students and spent
her time and energy on them. The positive experiences about school some of the study
participants recalled with glee were related to the special care they received from outstanding
and caring teachers they met along the way, and how the love and affection and understanding
they received from them were a veritable source of motivation for them. Most of that care
was, however, related to their academic performance. Nevertheless, majority of the study
participants recounted lack of assistance when they needed it most and not knowing where to
go for help.
Mohamed narrated the difficulties he had in upper secondary school, especially how he was
ridiculed by his classmates and felt like an outsider because of his language difficulties.
Though Mohamed did not feel that he got the help he needed in upper secondary school and
dropped out and became street-involved, he managed to go back and complete the course in
Building and Construction. However, he could not find any company to offer him a place for
the two year apprenticeship for the work-based education he needed to acquire a tradesman’s
certificate. The feeling that he would never be able to acquire this certificate was devastating
for him. Jibril, another study participant, shared the experiences of Mohamed in relation to
getting a work-based education or apprenticeship after completing school-based vocational
courses in upper secondary school. In the end, both Jibril and Mohamed lost the motivation to
pursue higher education. They held their inability to acquire a trade certificate as dimming
their prospects in the labour market.
In their study of allocation of apprenticeships after completion of school-based vocational
education in Norway, Helland and Støren (2006) showed considerable differences between
ethnic minority and ethnic majority students. Ethnic minority students are at a disadvantage.
While human capital factors such as attendance at school and good grades seem to have a
considerable effect on allocation of apprenticeships, ethnicity factors are also crucial in that
ethnic minority students must work harder to outperform their ethnic majority colleagues to
have the same chance of being offered apprenticeships especially in Oslo. As suggested by
them, unequal access for different ethnic groups to apprenticeships deflates ethnic minority
students’ chances in the labour market and undermines equity as the cardinal goal of
Norwegian educational policy.
In my interviews and informal extended conversations with my study participants with
background from war torn countries, I made a conscious effort not to thematise their
experiences of war so as not to burden them with any flashbacks. However, some of them
talked about their war experiences. It is not unrealistic to speculate that such experiences
would have had some traumatic psychic and emotional effects on them and, to that extent,
affected their performance in school. As argued by Taslaman and Balic (2006), the traumatic
experiences of children during and after war can affect their development and performance at
school. As they suggested further, the costs that children incur because of war include loss of
home, community, school and future plans – their very sense of belonging.
None of my study participants who came to Norway from war torn countries had any
psychological follow-up when they lived in refugee camps in Norway or when they went to
school. Apart from Yasser who said he declined an offer to talk to a psychologist for anger
management counseling because of his temper and the fights he was involved in at school,
none of my study participants got any psychological help or counseling in relation to their war
experiences when they lived in refugee camps in Norway or after their settlement permits
were granted.
For example, the faint memories Jamal, aged 23, had of his mother dated back to the early
stages of the war in Somalia. He recounted his mother holding his hand when they were
running for shelter in a city in Northern Somalia after another bombing raid by government
forces. In the midst of the pandemonium, he slipped out of her hands and that was the last
time he saw her. He was five years old. His father was earlier on killed in the war. According
to Jamal, “I was brought up by the rebels”. He killed his first victim as a child soldier at the
age of 12. He showed me bullet wounds on various parts of his body. He recounted
witnessing several casualties, and he “lost several friends”. The time he spent in six different
countries before arriving in Norway at 16 was punctuated by traumatic experiences, including
rescues at sea and spending time in detention camps. Perceptive, erudite and very politicised,
he strived to acquire some basic education in some of these countries. He lived in three
different refugee camps in Norway for a total of three years without any psychological help.
While at one of the refugee camps, he took the Norwegian course and went to basic school.
He started using hard drugs in the refugee camp and this affected his school work. He found
the camp and school boring. In the following interview excerpt, Jamal narrated his negative
views of school, and the ontologically empty and hopeless life he led in the refugee camp, a
wasteland where he felt like a nonhuman in a warehouse:
Jamal: The drugs came in all the way from the camp and I haven’t seen a day [There was
never a day] that someone told me things gonna get better. ( ) And basic school; I hated it.
How many years do I have to go to basic school? Oh, brother. They tell me every time [to go
to] basic school. I was like ‘what a hell? Am I gonna sit there and do the same thing [all over]
again?’
Moses: And you were older than the other kids.
Jamal: Yeah. Fuck.
Moses: So in Norway, what would you say about your experiences in school?
Jamal: It’s not that good for being a foreigner. It’s not that good. Hell. Even for being a
Norwegian, it’s not that good ( ).
Moses: I was wondering about something. When you were living in that refugee camp; when
you came to Norway and you were living in that refugee camp, did you talk to anyone about
your past, about your life in Somalia, a psychologist or something?
Jamal: Nope
Moses: You didn’t get any help? Did you ask for any help in relation to that?
Jamal: ( ) I don’t think there is any help there because this is what happens: When you come
to a camp, the camp people have nothing to do with you ( ). They will give you a room and
when UDI [the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration] wants to talk to you, they will call
those people [the camp staff] and [they] will come and find you. If the UDI answers you
[approves or rejects your application for asylum], those people know your answer, but [they]
don’t know anything beyond that.
Moses: Ok
Jamal: If the UDI says “we don’t want that nigger [if your application is rejected]; kick him
out, call the police”, those people will call the police. The police will come and these people
will find you ( ).
Moses: When you came to Norway, you talked to the foreign police and they knew about your
history in Somalia.
Jamal: Yeah
Moses: And UDI was aware of that.
Jamal: Yeah.
Moses: But they didn’t give you any psychological help.
Jamal: No.
Moses: Nothing.
Jamal: Nothing.
Moses. They were just handling, processing your case.
Jamal: Yeah.
Moses: For three years.
Jamal: Three years.
Moses: And you were in a refugee camp.
Jamal: A refugee camp ( ).
Among some of the students in primary, lower and upper secondary schools in Oslo who have
direct or indirect experiences of war, Larsen and Øzerk (1999) found a lack of curiosity,
reticence and passivity, forgetfulness, anxiety, attention deficiency, lack of endurance,
somatic illnesses, and externalizing behavior towards teachers and students. The authors
suggested that in such a situation, these students can perceive schooling as very problematic,
and the likelihood that they may drop out of school increases. These psychological reactions
result in concentration problems and reduce the students' learning outcomes in various
subjects. Bent on acquiring education, Jamal managed to enter a Folk High School in another
city. He was thrown out when he was caught smoking cannabis. He took his expulsion with a
heavy heart. He decided to move to Oslo and there descended into a spiral of heavy drug use
interspaced with part time jobs and incarceration.
The foregoing suggests that both school and non-school factors and aspects of schooling seem
to impact the attitudes and perceptions of my study participants regarding schooling. It might
be helpful to consider these attitudes and perceptions of schooling against the backdrop of the
experiences of BME youths in Norwegian schools. A study done by Opheim and Støren
(2001, see also Støren 2011) concluded that a large percentage of BME youths drop out very
early from the Norwegian educational system. According to them, BME youths are less likely
than majority ethnic youths to complete basic school and progress to upper secondary school,
and that BME youths have greater difficulties at upper secondary school than majority ethnic
youths. According to the authors, the weaker progression among BME youths partly have
with poorer grades to do, but they were quick to point out that poorer grades alone do not
constitute an exhaustive explanation. According to them, the level of BME youths’ wellbeing
and integration in relation to everyday school life appears to be the major explanatory factor.
They showed with reference to other studies how immigrant or BME youths can experience
everyday school life as difficult and boring when they are confronted with social closure,
stigmatisation, and hopelessness, when concepts used during lessons are not understood, and
when they experience lack of interest for what they know about their own countries.
My study participants’ narratives also underscored how the institutional logic of the school
system puts much premium on the meritocratic and achievement ethic. This ethic
overshadows any considerations of their inner emotional and psychic worlds or
neighbourhood and peer strains, as well as the role that love, affection, caring and careful
listening can play in helping these youths experience the healing they may need in order to
engage in serious academic work. This way, most of these youths may find it difficult to
consider the Norwegian school system as both a social and pedagogical room for developing
their self-identities and self-worth, cultivating their innate potential and acquiring the skills
and qualifications they need to make less traumatic transitions to adulthood. Like Salma,
Franklin and Felix, many who eventually drop out of school, blame themselves for their poor
school outcomes, since they seem to believe in the meritocratic and achievement ethic.
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A common feature associated with my study participants was their marginal position in the
labour market. None of them was in gainful employment during the time of the study, though
few of them had earlier on held part-time jobs, especially summer jobs. For example, even
though Jamal used drugs while at a refugee camp and when he moved to Oslo, he managed to
acquire summer jobs at restaurants and got positive feedback regarding how he worked. Like
Felix, Mohamed, and James, majority of the study participants had had various
apprenticeships under the auspices of Nav as a precondition for social benefits, without these
apprenticeships resulting in permanent jobs. Like James, most of those who said they had
apprenticeships claimed that they got positive feedback from their colleagues and bosses. This
suggests that they exerted themselves on these apprenticeships reasoning that this might
improve their prospects of getting a permanent job. Some of the study participants had
combined hustling in the street with summer jobs or apprenticeships for social benefits. One
of the young people I had informal conversations with at the open street drug market at
Vaterland had combined active sale of cannabis and hustling in the street with a permanent
part-time job for over three years.
The general picture, however, is that the study participants had little or no secured attachment
to the labour market. But at the same time, many of them were eager to find a job. Many of
them claimed to have applied for several jobs, looked for and called vacant jobs advertised on
the Internet and in the newspapers, or personally delivered applications to vacant jobs. Like
Mohamed, many of them had standard applications that they used when applying for jobs.
Most of them had no job preferences. They would like to work at McDonalds, in
Supermarkets, clothing shops and warehouses. At one time, Mohamed had unsuccessfully
applied for a job as a paperboy. These are sectors in the youth labour market in Oslo where
high educational qualifications and specialised skills and knowledge are not the paramount
considerations for recruitment. Besides, many study participants were fluent in Norwegian, so
would not have had foreseeable challenges in terms of language proficiency in such jobs.
The important point to note here is that most of these youths, even those who were streetinvolved for many years, believed in the mainstream Norwegian work ethic. These youths not
only seem to adhere to mainstream Norwegian values regarding work, but also tend to accept
low-skilled, low-wage, often dead-end jobs. They perceive having a permanent job as the
surest way of getting ahead in life and achieving economic independence. In other words,
their conceptions of social mobility in Norway seem to be inextricably tied to the acquisition
of permanent jobs, even if low-wage jobs. As we shall see below, like most Norwegians, the
self-perceptions of the study participants are tied to their ability to get meaningful and
productive jobs. As with Felix, the study participants’ sense of personal freedom or autonomy
was tied to having steady incomes from productive work so they could take responsibility for
their own lives. This underlies the view of Bulhan (1985) that productive labour is an
important medium through which individuals unmask their self-identity and objectify it. This
was more so with those study participants with who strongly articulated the desire to give
something back to their families. They conceptualised their self-reproduction through
productive labour as tied to their families’ self-fulfilment or reproduction. However, like
Felix, some of them imbued certain jobs, such as picking litters in the street and cleaning,
with low social value for which reason they would not accept such jobs. Though majority of
the study participants believed in the work ethic, they were marginalised in relation to the
formal youth labour market in Oslo and many of them seemed to risk permanent exclusion
from the Norwegian labour market.
According to Stavik and Hammer (2000), compared to adults, young people in general have a
marginal position in the labour market, though youth unemployment tends to be shorter than
unemployment among adults. According to them, this is partly due to young people being
prioritised on training schemes and having a higher rate of changing jobs. Moreover, some
young people may not be willing to take permanent jobs because of the desire to pursue
higher learning. These factors, however, do not seem to explain the unemployment associated
with my study participants. Most of them were not on any training schemes apart from
apprenticeships for social benefits, or had any sustained intentions of pursuing higher
education. Besides, most of them did not have the privilege of changing jobs often as many
majority youths would. Their unemployment seemed to be long term and indicated their risk
of permanent exclusion from the labour market. Their experiences of long term
unemployment seemed to nurture in some of them low motivations to engage in active jobseeking. In an interview, Mohamed narrated how he had lost the motivation to search for jobs
as follows.
Moses: And regarding finding jobs. What are you doing about this?
Mohamed: (
) I have stopped [actively applying for jobs], you know. If I see a vacant
position [advertised] on the net or a placard in front of a shop, I go there to deliver an
application and just wait to see what happens.
Moses: Have you delivered a lot of job applications?
Mohamed: I have [personally] delivered many, many applications. I cannot even remember
how many.
Moses: But what kind of jobs are you looking for?
Mohamed: Any kind of job.
Moses: For example?
Mohamed: I apply for (…) jobs in the shop (…) shop assistant, and (…) in the warehouse (…)
any kind of job.
Moses: But have you attended any courses under the auspices of Nav?
Mohamed: ( ) I was on an apprenticeship [for social benefits] for one year.
Moses: One year at different places or just one place?
Mohamed: One time, I was on apprenticeship for a year at one place.
Moses: And you have not been offered a permanent job after that?
Mohamed: No. Nothing permanent.
Moses. What kind of job was it?
Mohamed: It was a kind of municipal job. I worked together with some other people. We went
all over properties owned by the City of Oslo like kindergartens and offices and painted the
walls and fixed furniture. Everything the people from the municipality wanted us to do.
Moses: And you were not offered a permanent job after that.
Mohamed: No. I got nothing from them.
After being on an apprenticeship for social support for one year, Mohamed thought he would,
at least, be given a good confirmation letter of completed apprenticeship that he could use
later in his job applications. He described the disappointment he felt when he was handed a
confirmation letter as follows:
I have had many apprenticeships [as a condition for social support]. They don’t even give you
good recommendations. I worked for the municipality for a year [as condition for social
support]. They wrote only two sentences on the paper [confirmation letter of apprenticeship].
Only two lines. ( ) I thought I would get more than that. It was like that. It is not easy ( ).
In another interview, Mohammed lamented about his unemployment as follows:
I can’t get any job. Even a cleaning job; [washing] the floor. You can’t get even a cleaning
job, man. I need a cleaning [job]. If you don’t get a cleaning job, you have to go on
apprenticeship [as precondition for social benefit] and I don’t want an apprenticeship. For me,
I think apprenticeship is slave labour because I have had apprenticeships for many years ( ).
I worked the whole day and got paid 300 crowns. I’ll never take an apprenticeship [as a
precondition for social benefit] again.
Having various apprenticeships under the auspices of Nav as a precondition for social benefits
was something many study participants recounted with distaste. Liban managed to acquire
forklifts driving certificate, but could not get any job in a warehouse. He also recounted with
resentment how he got an apprenticeship through Nav as a precondition for social benefit as
follows:
Liban: They [Nav] sent me to (…) I got an apprenticeship. You work so hard [emphatic with
gesticulations], but work only for social benefit.
Moses: And you did not get a permanent job?
Liban: No, [only] social benefit. You get that. And [the job] is not even permanent, you know.
The boss [at the job] would not even talk to you. He would just tell you to fix things for 8
hours, and I would manage it in only 6 hours. He should have been satisfied [with my efforts].
Liban perceived his efforts or labour as not valued by his boss, but as something to be
exploited and discarded. His labour was not imbued with the respect and sociability Liban
would regard as affirming. Hence, he felt resentful and angry. Liban recounted how he
assisted in painting a whole school block and got paid “only 4000 crowns [£400] a month”.
He quit the apprenticeship after two months. The study participants viewed repeated
apprenticeships from Nav as coercive, exploitative and humiliating work that compounded
their feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. They did not regard such jobs as the
productive and cooperative work that would enable them to project their identity and selfworth. They, therefore, refused to imbue them with any social value. Like Felix who would
not make any compromises by doing “mediocre jobs”, a number of study participants tended
to look down upon jobs, such as picking litters in the street and cleaning, as demeaning to
their identity or self-esteem. As Jamal put it, “I won’t clean their shit for them”. As pointed
out by Liebow (1967) in relation to the black streetcorner men he studied in an American
inner city, these men put no lower value on the job than does the larger society, and the lack
of commitment some of them might display can be explained in terms of the overall social
value they place on the job.
When asked why they thought they found it difficult to get a permanent job, my study
participants gave various reasons. For example, Mohamed attributed his inability to get a
permanent job to his initial difficulty in getting the job placement he needed in order to
acquire a tradesman’s certificate in Building and Construction, a qualification he thought
would have increased his chances on the job market. He felt that the “financial crisis” that
occurred at the time he completed the school-based course in Building and Construction
accounted for this. He felt also that he did not have the requisite social networks or
connections, but he also held what he perceived as regional labour migrations within Europe,
and the racial advantages that underpin such migrations as responsible. He considered this as
undermining the prospects of BME people in the job market. Mohamed narrated his views as
follows:
Mohamed: [Long silence], Yes, this issue of jobs ( ). As you know, here in Norway one
cannot get a job. Yes, there is a reason why you cannot get a job, right? ( ). All those
application forms [one has to fill when applying for jobs], [job] applications. Much depends
on what names you have; the kind of background you have (…) and that is not good. And you
need to have some kind of names [Norwegian names in order to get a job]. My name is
Mohamed. [Even] if I have good certificates [qualifications] I don’t stand a chance ( ) and
that is what I don’t like about it. I don’t know a lot of people [I have a limited social network].
I have been living in Norway for 10 years and I have worked only once [summer job]. ( ) I
have applied for jobs all the time ( ) I even tried to apply for a job as a paper boy.
Moses: Paper boy.
Mohamed: Newspaper [boy] ( ) I never got an answer.
Moses: You said that if you apply for jobs and they see your name on the application they
throw it away. Do you think that white people have better chances in Norway than black
people?
Mohamed: Correct
Moses: How?
Mohamed: Each day I see people coming from Sweden, ( ) from Poland and from other Baltic
countries we have not heard of before. They cannot speak Norwegian. They come to Norway
and work. How is that possible? They cannot speak good Norwegian like me ( ). It is easier
to understand me than them. But they still get jobs (…).
Moses: How do you feel about that? It is unfair, isn’t it?
Mohamed: Yes, very unjust. ( ) You just feel dejected by it, sad. You cannot do anything
about it ( ). And at times, I think that it is my fault because I have come here, isn’t it? ( ).
Moses: So do you think that the fact that many job-seekers from Eastern Europe are coming to
Norway makes it difficult for people like you to (…)
Mohamed: [interrupts]. Yes, yes. That is the case. ( ) If I get a job right now, I would like to
earn (…) If my colleagues at work earn 200 crowns [per hour] I would also like to earn 200
[crowns] per hour. But for those Polish ( ) they come from a country where the conditions are
not the same as in Norway. They work [here in Norway] no matter what the bosses say to
them [no matter the working conditions or how they are treated at work]. If the boss offers to
pay them 50 crowns per hour, they accept it. So it not easy for me to get a job, you know.
In another interview in which I asked Mohamed, like other study participants, about what he
thought about the Norwegian opportunity structure, that is, if he thought BME youths had the
same opportunities as majority ethnic youths, he narrated the following:
Mohamed: ( ) Is not easy to get a job when you have a Muslim name though you have
good qualifications. So I think there is a huge difference [in opportunities] being a
native Norwegian [and] an African.
Moses: So you mean that ethnic Norwegians have better chances than Africans?
Mohamed: Yes, yes. They have better chances and that is how it is in Norway. It is not
just anyone who gets a job. For example, if I have certificates from the university
[university degree] as a teacher and ( ) if I apply for a job that I like and do not know
anyone there, have any contacts where I applied for a job, it is certain that I’ll not get
the job because no one knows me. But if it is the son of someone who is known [who
applies for the position] and is Norwegian, he can get the job, maybe without writing
an application ( ). It is easier for you to get a job here in Norway through people you
know. And I think it sucks.
Moses: Why do you think so?
Mohamed: But it is not fair. That is why [it sucks]. Ok, it’s like if you know me then I
can get the job. If you do not know me, then I cannot get the job. What’s that? Maybe,
I can do the job ten times better even though you don’t know me. Because I don’t
know you and [because I] respect you, I cannot mess with the job. I don’t know what
one will think when one gets the job through an acquaintance or your [his or her]
father. But he [or she] may not take the job seriously, and it is certain that this will be
the case (…) because he thinks he can always get another job. So it sucks. Those who
put in 100 % [put in a lot of effort] do not get the job they need, and [but] those who
know other people, [a] well known father or mother or uncle, find it easier than others.
Jibril also narrated his experiences in seeking jobs. As he recounted in relation to his
experiences about seeking jobs, “I have had many experiences of being informed that ‘Sorry,
you are not qualified enough for the job’”. But two experiences left indelible and humiliating
marks on his psyche. He recounted one of the two interviews he attended in the following
interview excerpts:
Jibril: I applied and applied and applied for jobs all the time, but didn’t get any jobs. One day I
went to an interview. The boss was weird. It happened twice. The boss was weird
Moses: Norwegian boss?
Jibril: Yes. I don’t know how to put it. I am not thinking about racism, but I have never felt
like that before. ( ) He could have just told me ‘Sorry, you are not qualified enough for the
job’. It wasn’t like I had to get the job [at all cost] ( ).
Moses: So what was it that you did not like about the interview?
Jibril: He said to me that “a person like you cannot get the job”.
Moses: He said that?
Jibril: Yes. “Someone like you cannot get the job”. So I laughed. But I was angry. ( ) So I ask
him what he meant. What kind of person was he seeing? He answered “No, no it is you people
(…)”
Moses: Ooh
Jibril: ( ) He said, “To be honest, you are a nice person”, but added “it is impossible for me to
employ a Somali”.
Moses. He really said that?
Jibril: He said it. I was bored. ( ) I got angry. I had a bottle of Cola (…) I lost it on the floor.
He asked me to pick it and I said I wouldn’t. It was weird.
Moses: It was weird.
Jibril: A Norwegian guy I knew told me later that he [the boss] didn’t like foreigners very
much ( ).
Like Mohamed, Jibril felt that BME youths were at a disadvantage in relation to the
opportunity structure and explained this as follows:
Jibril: It might be because you do not have contacts [and] friends, but you have a better chance
and make better impressions when they see [when you have] names like Jens, Peter and the
like ( ). There are many things they think about when you are an ethnic minority.
Moses: What do you think they think about when you are an ethnic minority?
Jibril: ( ) They would be wondering what you are up to. Will he create problems [at work]
later? Will he create problems if he loses his job? Is he violent?
Petrus also recounted his experiences in the labour market. He felt that it is generally difficult
for young people to enter the job market especially those without higher education and any
job experience. However, he felt that minority BME youths were at a disadvantage in relation
to the opportunity structure. He expressed this as follows:
Petrus: [sighs]. To be honest with you, I think that people with minority background find it
more difficult to get a job because of their names than a person who is called Ola Nordmann.
[Norwegian employers] would rather employ Ola Nordmann than someone with ( ) ethnic
minority background, though the person with ethnic minority background has more experience
than Ola Nordmann.
Moses: Why do you think it is so?
Petrus: I think it has to do with employers. They reason (…) that he [an applicant with BME
background] has not lived in Norway for a long time, does not speak fluent Norwegian and,
maybe, does not write it well either. Or they [Norwegian employers] do not know the situation
in the countries they [BME job applicants] are coming from. And they wonder very much if
they [BME applicants] are drug users or if they are criminals or have done something wrong in
the countries they are coming from. And they strive to make sure that the person [BME
applicant they employ] has been living in Norway for many years and can speak fluent
Norwegian. So it varies in relation to which company is in question.
The views expressed by Mohamed, Jibril and Petrus in the interview excerpts above informed
the narratives of most of the study participants. They displayed a keen awareness of the many
factors in the labour market that might affect the employment prospects of potential applicants
including BME youths. These include level of qualification, structural changes in the labour
market caused by world financial markets, the importance of social networks, regional
migration patterns, and the racism, discrimination and ethnocentrism that underlie a skewed
opportunity structure that favour ethnic Norwegians and white migrants. However, the most
crucial factor they tended to emphasise was what they perceived as employer discrimination
based on suspicions and stereotypical and stigmatising images of ethnic minority job
applicants. The study participants considered this unmeritocratic and unjust. Even a study
participant like Salma who counted herself lucky for having landed “some good jobs” before,
felt that she would have come even farther on the job had she been an ethnic Norwegian.
Moreover, she narrated how she felt stigmatised on the job as a Muslim through some hurtful
comments made by some of her white and non-Muslim colleagues. As a Muslim, she used to
pray at work and attracted comments like “Ash. You are a Muslim and want to pray”. She
narrated how she felt Othered by such comments as follows:
I don’t know. I felt that they perceived me as a different kind of person. ( ) I feel that there is a
lot of racism no matter where one finds herself. And the jobs I have had. There was always
racism, everyday racism where they [ask you] ‘where do you come from? Why do you do this
and that?’ You feel it. Racism.
We can glean the intense feelings such experiences or feelings of racism or discrimination can
arouse in these BME youths from the example of Jibril above in a job interview he
experienced as vituperative, humiliating and dehumanising. He felt his identity as a Somali
violated, stigmatised and jettisoned by the unbridled anti-Somali sentiments expressed by his
job interviewer. His momentary feelings of self-doubt gave way to coping through anger and
confrontation. At a loss as to why the difficulty of getting a job, Jibril could only recourse to a
fatalistic explanation that helped him to cope with and escape his unemployment: “At times, I
think that it is the will of God that [I should not get a job] ( ) It helps me a lot because I
become stronger ( )”.
Fangen and Paasche (2013) studied how exclusion in the labour market is subjectively
perceived and experienced among highly educated young adults of ethnic minority
background in Norway. They found that the possibility of employer discrimination loomed
large for several of their interviewees. This was especially the case with their interviewees
engaged in customer contact. Their interviewees narrated their experiences of ethnic prejudice
at interviews, fewer call backs and experiences of discrimination in customer contacts. They
also found ethnic hierarchies at work in the labour market where people from particular ethnic
backgrounds such as being African, a Muslim and a Middle Easterner found it more difficult
to get a job than Eastern Europeans, South Americans and South East Asians. Fangen and
Paasche noted the following about their key finding:
A key finding, however, is that the line between actual and possible experiences of exclusion
is often blurred by ‘attributional ambiguity’, a social psychological concept first coined by
Crocker et al. (1991). The core meaning of this concept refers to ‘a situation in which the
reasons for feedback (or other kind of treatment or outcome) is ambiguous, typically one in
which the recipient’s group membership is a salient potential reason for the feedback received’
(Ruscher, 2001: 99-100). The degree of attributional ambiguity, we argue, both structures the
experience of (possible) exclusion for stigmatized young people and the use of counter
strategies when faced with it (p.609, emphasis added)
These findings are not unlike those associated with my study participants, despite their low
level of education. The similarity in the findings suggests that irrespective of educational
background and age, these feelings might hold true for many BME peoples. When Jibril was
informed that he could not be employed because of the type of nonpersons his interviewer
thought Somalis were, he experienced this attributional ambiguity. For this reason, he strove
to find out who his job interviewer thought he was or felt was wrong with his person. Many of
my study participants were uncertain why they could not get jobs, and wondered if it was
because there was something fundamentally wrong with them as human beings, or if it was
because of their own fault or the hand of fate. As Mohamed put it: “( ) I have never gotten a
job here [in Norway]. ( ) I don’t know what is wrong [with me]. Is it, maybe, because I am
called Mohamed? Or because I am (…) I don’t know if it is fate, I don’t know. Or it is
because they have stopped employing people?” Mohamed reasoned also that the employers at
the jobs he had applied to might have gotten information that he was once in prison. In the
end, he lost the motivation to actively seek for jobs. The implication here is that the inability
to get a job or to be unemployed for a long time or having what one perceives as a demeaning
and exploitative apprenticeship can erode an unemployed young man’s sense of humanity,
self-confidence, self-esteem or motivation, making him or her feel ontologically insecure. As
noted by Liebow:
The streetcorner man is under continuous assault by his job experiences and job fears.
His experiences and fears feed on one another. The kind of job he can get – and
frequently only after fighting for it, if then – steadily confirms his fears, depresses his
self-confidence and self-esteem until finally, terrified of an opportunity even if one
presents itself, he stands defeated by his experiences, his belief in his own self-worth
destroyed and his fears a confirmed reality (Liebow 1967: 71).
According to Lennon and Limonic (2010), cross-sectional, longitudinal, and prospective
studies of individuals as well as time-series aggregate studies of communities have shown that
unemployment increases symptoms of anxiety and depression, and reduces self-esteem and
security. They cited the latent deprivation model of Jahoda (1981, 1982, 1997, cited in
Lennon and Limonic Ibid) to illustrate the mechanisms through which unemployment can
have adverse psychological effects. The latent deprivation model posits that employment
serves both manifest and latent functions. The manifest or intended function is to earn an
income or a living, while the latent or unintended functions include definition of one’s
identity and connection to important social institutions and associations. Unemployment
results in losing latent employment benefits. More specifically, Jahoda (1981) posited five
specific experiences in relation to the latent functions or ‘unintended by-products’ (p.188) of
employment that also underlie the views of Bulhan (1985) above:
First, employment imposes a time structure on the waking day; second, employment
implies regularly shared experiences and contacts with people outside the nuclear
family; third, employment links individuals to goals and purposes that transcend their
own; fourth, employment defines aspects of personal status and identity, and finally,
employment enforces activity (Jahoda 1981: 188).
As she explains further, it is these latent functions of employment that motivate people to
work beyond earning a living and that underscores why employment is psychologically
supportive even when conditions are bad and why unemployment is psychologically
destructive. So important are these latent functions of employment that “even with
redundancy payments - where they exist - the unemployed do not enjoy their “leisure”; they
become disheartened, lose their self-respect and their sense of time, and feel on the scrap
heap” (Ibid: 189). Haukelien and Vike (2001) also underscored the importance of these latent
functions of employment in Norway. They emphasised that one of the central cultural values
in Norway is the ethical value attached to the work ethic in which all are expected to cater for
themselves. This ethical value, they suggested, is stronger in Norway than elsewhere in
Europe. Like Bulhan (1985), they argued that it is through one’s job that one gets recognition
and realises one’s dignity. It is also an important criterion for identity. Hence, for those who
are excluded from participation in the labour market or have never participated in it, it
becomes difficult to meet this overriding criterion for dignity. As Liban succinctly put it in
relation to how the job one has defines his or her identity and self-worth: “It is important, yes.
You are nothing if you do not have a job”.
Hammer (1994) addressed the psychological consequences of long-term unemployment for
young people. According to him, research has shown that young people who had experienced
unemployment have a high risk of becoming unemployed again. The longer they experience
unemployment, the harder they find it to become employed again. They tend to have poor
mental health, especially young people without coping strategies who experience financial
strains because of their unemployment, or who are dependent on social benefits or involved in
criminality. Unemployment brings in its wake vulnerabilities and uncertainties and inability to
plan for the future which can affect the self-identity of unemployed young people. By making
them dependent on social benefits, he noted, unemployment detracts from young people’s
cultural, social and personal freedom, and young people who would like to be free of this
dependency can be predisposed to criminal activities in order to survive.
The financial strains young people can experience due to prolonged unemployment detract
from their capacity as effective consumers in a consumerist society where all are under
enormous pressure to consume. The inability to be an effective consumer in a consumerist
society can engender emotional or psychic insecurity as contemporary cultural criminology
has posited (see, especially, Young 2003). As noted by Bauman (1998), in its post-modern
stage, society engages and shapes its members in terms of their ability and willingness to play
the role of instant consumers of objects of desire. Daily visits to the market place have
become the overriding criterion for self-identity and a meaningful life. Young people are the
ones who most feel this pressure to consume, especially in relation to expensive and
expressive designer goods and other lifestyle products that powerful commercial forces target
at them (Kuvoame 2005, see also Øia 2013). These forces ensure that young people are
caught up in a consumer culture and spiral where endless consumption and instant
gratification are values in themselves. Young people who are incapable of acquiring the latest
clothes, mobile telephones, video games and other products popular with young people may
risk status frustration or respect among their peers. This is because such products are
important symbols of identity among young people today irrespective of whether they are
marginalised or not. Hall and Winlow (2005) demonstrated how the atomisation,
instrumentalism and insecurity that are endemic to the economic consumerism that attend
advanced capitalism have detracted from social cohesion, especially working class
community and identity, and increasingly predispose young people to criminality. Their
study showed “the upturn in the degree of unlimited instrumentalism that many young people
are willing to use to achieve their paradoxical ambitions to both fit and stand out in consumer
culture” (Ibid: 40), and that this “...instrumentalism is being enacted in a more radical, nonconsequential and ruthless manner by individuals who feel trapped …in situations of extreme
economic disadvantage, cultural impoverishment and psychosocial insecurity that set them
apart from other social groups (Ibid).
The implication of the foregoing is that disadvantaged youths who lack the opportunity to
articulate, accumulate and consummate the various status-making, identity-defining and
meaning-making consumer symbolisms that characterise consumer capitalism, images that
powerful commercial forces target at them, may risk status frustration and become exposed to
the concomitant psychosocial, emotional or psychic insecurities. This exposure may be
deleterious for such youths and can predispose them, like many study participants, to
involvement in illegal activities as a means of achieving some resemblance of economic,
emotional, social and psychic security.
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The streets may function as a site of resilience for disadvantaged youths in search of
economic, emotional, social and psychic closure. However, such youths, especially those
without social supports, may be exposed to many risks and dangers of the street. This may be
the case especially for young people who participate in open street drug markets or other
scenes characterised by different kinds of criminal activities. One of the strains such youths
can experience is exposure or susceptibility to street violence. Several ethnographic studies in
which the researchers immersed themselves in the lives of their study participants over long
periods of time have demonstrated the salience of violence in the lives of street-oriented black
youths (Liebow 1967, Nightingale 1993, Anderson 1990, 1999, Bourgois 2003, and
Dimitriadis 2003) and white and black youths (MacLeod 2009). The stories of Felix and
Franklin in my study illustrate the sort of violence that street-oriented youth might be exposed
to.
Throughout my fieldwork, however, I never witnessed unrestrained use of physical violence
at the open street drug markets BME youths frequented in downtown Oslo. One of the street
drug markets I frequented during the summer months in connection with this study was the
Vaterland Park in Grønland in downtown Oslo. On several occasions, I observed conflicts that
called forth threats and that almost escalated into violence. I also observed the social
dynamics involved in these conflicts when others became involved. For example, when a man
with background from North Africa stole a can of beer from a Somali man, the thief accused
another man from Senegal, a hustler who sold cheap stolen beer in the milieu, of stealing the
beer he earlier on sold to the Somali man. The Somali man and Senegalese beer vendor
demanded to check the backpack of the North African man who denied stealing the beer. Two
other North Africans supported their North African brother. The Somali man uttered some
threats to shoot him in the head while the Senegalese beer vendor almost began a fight with
one of the buddies of the North African man. Finally, the North African man was forced to
open the bag and there was the beer! The Somali man took back his beer, muttered some more
threats, and the Senegalese hustler revelled in his vindication.
What amazed me during my fieldwork in these open street drug markets was how warm
embraces and offers of free beers and joints when buddies or acquaintances arrived in the
milieu could easily degenerate into hot exchanges and expressions of anger among the same
buddies after a short period of time. Such hot exchanges were over trivialities like mistakenly
drinking from a buddy’s can of beer. In the street, conviviality, sociability and mutual
obligations characterise the various constellations of ‘friendship’ one can identify. Thus,
Francis, one of the active youths at Vaterland Park whom I interviewed, could say in relation
to other buddies he was hanging around with that “together we are against the system”,
implying a solidarity of resistance to the societal structures and institutions he perceived as
oppressing him and his buddies. But that conviviality or solidarity is often punctuated by
conflicts between individuals and between different constellations of ‘friends’ and attempts to
resolve them with threats of use of physical force. At times, it is difficult to know whether
some of these conflicts or flexing of muscles are just being staged, especially when some of
them subside as soon as they start, or just as they are about to escalate into real fights. Most of
these conflicts end up with those involved embracing.
When I asked Anthony, who had participated for many years in different open street drug
markets in Oslo, if it was dangerous to be street-involved in Oslo, he said the following:
It is not dangerous (…) It is not dangerous to be on the street here in Norway. I cannot say it is
[dangerous]. I think Norway (…) Oslo is a very safe city. But maybe, you can (…) you can
find yourself in a dangerous situation that can be dangerous for you. But I have never ended
up in such a situation.
This suggests that unrestrained use of physical violence may not necessarily be a
characteristic feature of everyday street life as lived by street-involved youths in open street
drug markets in Oslo. In other words, street violence is not ubiquitous. Use of unrestrained
force or violence in the street may be contained by the sense of solidarity or collective
resistance street-involved youth may share. However, this is not to say that street-oriented
youths do not risk the danger of being victims of violence. For example, Francis arrived at the
open street drug market at Vaterland Park one day and showed me a gaping but healing
wound on his forehead which he tried to conceal with his baseball cap. According to Francis,
he was attacked on the street by a group of white youths on the night of May 16, the eve of
the Norwegian Constitutional Day, for no apparent reason. He was drunk and they were
drunk. He did not regard it as a racially motivated attack. For him, the potential use of
violence in the street was real enough to be accepted. He did not feel bitter about being
attacked. What he felt bitter about was the way he felt he was “mistreated when I went to the
emergency casualty clinic. I was bleeding a lot, but was not attended to as an emergency case.
I was asked to join the queue”. He tried to enter one of the consulting rooms, but was
restrained by the security guards, whereupon he decided to leave. According to him, he was
treating the wound himself.
Thus, street violence is real. But whether street-involved youths become exposed to street
violence depends on contextual and processual factors.
Baron et al. (2007) examined how
homelessness and deviant lifestyles increase exposure of street-oriented youth to conflict.
They also examined the interactional dynamics of these conflicts and how they lead to
violence and victimisation. Rather than focusing solely on lifestyles of street-involved youth,
or assuming that violence is endemic to street cultures or to the dispositions of street-involved
youths, they emphasised the processual dimensions of disputes and the dynamics and
interaction between victims and victimisers.
According to them, association with violent and deviant peers may lead street-involved youths
more likely to perceive harm and to use force to settle disputes or conflicts because of peer
pressure. Moreover, the different psychological and biochemical effects of drugs and alcohol
use such as reduction in inhibitions, unleashing of provocative tendencies, and the slowing of
defensive reflexes as well as the social context in which they are used can increase the risk of
victimisation. In turn, drug use, violent peers, and the willingness to use force to settle
conflicts are associated with increases in violence as an offender, and this violence can then
result in victimisation. The dynamics within the disputes are also important. Where the
dispute is intense and the harm doer is male, homeless street-involved youths were more
likely to use force to settle disputes. They were also more likely to use force to settle disputes
in the street than in a school yard. In the streets, their reputation and image are on stake. Their
study also suggests that the more dispute-prone and aggression-prone street-involved youths,
the more they are likely to be involved in violent disputes and becoming victimised. The
implication of the study of Baron et al. is that street violence is real, but highly dependent on
contextual factors and dynamics of interaction related to disputes and conflicts.
Peer and street strains related to violence may lead to heightened perceptions of harm. As the
story of Felix above has shown, exposure to street violence can create fear and anxiety for
street-involved youths and heighten their perceptions of harm. As Felix put it in relation to
further threats from his “enemies”: “I don’t usually go to [names three areas in one of the
Eastside suburbs of Oslo] ( ) because I am very careful where I am walking (…) especially in
the night, especially when I am walking alone, especially when I know that I am indisposed”.
Thus, street-involved youths involved in serious conflicts with other street-involved youths
bear the strains involved in looking over their shoulders whenever they are in the streets.
Their greatest challenge is how to navigate the streets and areas they perceive as dangerous in
relation to their adversaries. They have to adopt coping strategies of being ‘street wise’
(Andersen 1990) or ‘street savvy’ (Dance 2002). However, many found it stressful to always
articulate the attitudes and norms or behavioural dispositions that go with being ‘street-wise’
or ‘street-savvy’. Moreover, street-involved youths who articulate such norms and attitudes
may also contribute to their own marginalisation, since such norms and attitudes may be
unacceptable to the larger public. Exposure to street violence can also create serious psychic
problems as Franklin’s story has shown. According to him, “( ) I feel mentally ill”.
In her study referred to earlier, Lien (2011) illustrated how participation in criminal networks
can exert its toll in that it can lead to complex psychosocial and emotional problems. Many
participants in her study suffered from anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome
and an inner emotional turmoil related to their experiences in violent gangs and criminal
networks and prison experience.
Another source of street strain narrated by my study participants was the stress they felt they
experienced in relation to the police. All the study participants had come into contact with the
police in one way or another. Majority of them, including other youths I had informal
extended conversations with, regarded the police as major threats and stressors in their
everyday lives. This threat was perceived in different ways by the study participants. For
those who, at one time or another, engaged in dealing in drugs, it was the fear of being
arrested by the police that they felt hanged over them. They felt it was stressful to be on the
lookout for the police all the time and to be wondering, as Liban put it, “is the guy [standing]
there a police man, a civil police? (
). No one likes running away from the police [being
chased by the police], (…)”. Dealing in drugs in open street drug markets involves many
creative but hazardous skills. Because the police know most of the youths involved in the sale
of drugs and other criminal activities, they target them and the youths are aware of this. The
risk of being arrested is ubiquitous. So the dealers employ several strategies to avoid it. They
have to study the routines of the police, device creative schemes for hiding the drugs and
carefully choosing where to stand when dealing. The dealers go to such lengths because
losing drugs due to police swoops can have serious consequences for them. They can incur
debts or risk serious reprisals from their suppliers. Losing drugs can predispose them to
committing robbery in order to pay back the debt or selling hard drugs in order to do so
(Kuvoame 2005). Thus, those study participants involved in drug dealing knew that the police
would come after them and considered this legitimate. They accepted it as the hazards of the
job, though they experienced the cat and mouse drama involved as stressful.
However, what many study participants described as humiliating and dehumanising in
relation to the police was the way the police conduct their work and the feeling that the police
often abuse their powers, especially in relation to being repeatedly stopped and searched in
public. They felt not only being racially profiled by the police, but also being paraded and
[mis]represented in public as criminals through the police method of stop and search. They
also abhorred the police practice of imposing arbitrary curfews on them and, by so doing,
restricting their freedom of movement. In an informal extended conversation with three
Somali youths who frequented the Riverside Youth House, they narrated with revulsion and
resentment their experiences with the police. They recounted how they were stopped and
searched several times one evening by the same police patrol at different locations in the city
center, without the police finding anything on them. Finally, the police imposed a curfew on
them by asking them to leave the city centre. They felt that the police were arbitrary and
always stopped them without giving any reasons because they were Black and Somali. They
regarded the police as racists in this regard. Many study participants echoed this feeling about
police stop and search methods. Sollund (2006, 2007) also observed similar sentiments
among her BME youths in her study of the interaction between the police and BME youths in
Oslo in relation to the stop and search method. Mohamed narrated his experiences with the
police in the vicinity of Grønland as follows:
Mohamed: You know, I have been stopped many times maybe because another African who
looks like me had done something silly [criminal]. So whenever the police see me hanging
around there, they jump on me even though I am not the one. Even if I say I am not the one,
they always wait for the patrol car to come and confirm that “no, he is not the one. It was
someone else who looks like him”.
Moses: Hmmm
Mohamed: I swear to you. One day they took me at Grønland. They asked me if I was the one
they were looking for. In fact, they showed me the name [of the person they were looking for].
( ) I took out my ID and told them I am called Mohamed ( ). One of them ordered me to sit
at the back of their patrol car. They put me in there. They drove me far away from town. So far
that it could take me about an hour to walk back to [Grønland]. And they said to me ‘Now you
can go’. They threw me out of the car and drove away from me. And I told myself it’s ok. At
least, I am not in jail. ( ). And it is this racism one experiences. I have experienced ( ) this
racism many times [at Grønland].
Mohamed’s experiences were confirmed by Anthony as follows:
[Intense and raises his voice] ( ) I can say this about the police in Norway. If they see
Africans going about in Grønland, irrespective of whether [even if] they are going to visit their
relatives, they suspect that these Africans are dealing drugs. I think it is very unfair. I have
seen them do that several times without finding anything [drugs] on them. (
) They stop and
search people and find nothing. And I see [ethnic] Norwegians going about here [and] they
don’t do anything to them [stop and search them].
Mohamed’s narrative underscores the feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness most of the
study participants felt in their encounters with the police. He felt like a thing or object that the
police could use and discard according to their whim, just because he was black. In the minds
of many study participants, these systematic experiences they considered as institutional
racism undermined the legitimacy of the police as an institution that is meant to ensure the
safety and security of individuals and to maintain law and order. They felt targeted by the
police because they were black and perceived police encounters as provocative, humiliating
and stigmatising. All the study participants, except Petrus, said they would not go to the
police for help if they needed it, showing the huge distrust they had for the police as an
institution. Such views were also widespread among BME youths I had informal extended
conversations with at The Riverside Youth House who had nothing to do with open street
drug markets. They felt equally powerless and angry in the face of what they regarded as
police harassment. Many viewed different forms of police harassment as inextricably
intertwined with their everyday lives and accepted this with indignation and an uneasy
resignation. Some of the study participants also narrated the physical violence they felt they
suffered at the hands of the police, as narrated by Felix as follows:
(…) there was a policeman who did that [manhandled] me a while ago. Actually, he arrested
me. He even found drugs on me. But because of the way he had treated [assaulted] me at the
back of the vehicle, he decided to keep the hashish and told me ‘to get the fuck of out of here’;
because I told him [that] when we got there [to the police station], ‘I shall report you’. And he
knew his [job] was at stake because I really, really, really had bad marks [bruises] on my
shoulder.
According to Felix, this was similar to the brute racial and institutional violence used by the
policeman who arrested him when he stole a car at the age of 13 when he lived in a refugee
camp. He recast the exchanged that took place between him and the policeman as follows:
Policeman: What is your name?
Felix: My name is Felix. You almost broke my arm [demonstrating how the policeman tried to
handcuff him]. Eh, my men, you see I am not strong. You can break me [imitating talking to
the policeman]. I am a small guy.
Policeman: How old are you?
Felix: I am 13.
Police: You are lying. I know all of you guys. You come [to Norway as refugees/asylum
seekers] and say you are 13 for papers [to be granted permit to stay as minors]
Moses: That was the policeman, yeah?
Police: How old are you [imitating the policeman again]
Felix: 13. The guy got angry, pale (…) physically.
Police: You are not 13. Ok we’ll go to the police station and we would find out if you are 13.
In this rehashed exchange by Felix, the policeman was not only violent, but also racist or
xenophobic by stereotypically depicting refugees and asylum seekers as dishonest. As noted
by MacLeod, “Racial domination is seldom as graphic and straightforward as police brutality,
although some police officers are openly racist” (MacLeod 2009: 246). Many study
participants narrated the vituperative outbursts from some policemen they came into contact
with. Such verbal abuses from the police often aroused the anger of these youths. The youths
became provocative and confrontational in their interaction with the police. In the end, they
ended up being charged with disorderly conduct. Many, therefore, viewed contacts with the
police as often criminogenic.
According to Sollund in many cases the treatment meted out by the police to BME youths
“falls short of what citizens should expect from a professional police force” (Sollund 2006:
287). She agrees that such treatment can be culturally insensitive in terms of the racist slurs
the police may deploy in their interactions with BME youths. However, she cautions that the
encounters between BME youths and police in stop and search situations are complex.
Several factors may come to play in such situations. For example, while many BME youths
may experience racial profiling in such encounters or consider the police as racist and abusing
their powers, such youths may be wrong to feel that they are stopped solely because they are
black. They may also become supersensitive about such stops because of the experiences of
their friends. Sollund’s reservations may not be out of place. But as my study participants
narrated, systematic experiences of police abuse and brutality can breed feelings of
ontological insecurity in their interactions with an institution charged with the responsibility
of providing security to Norwegian citizens. Such feelings often lead to serious psychological
and emotional consequences. This way, institutional violence becomes psychological and
emotional violence. Thus, unhealthy psychological processes or “racial dissonance” (Chandler
2008) unravel in BME youths’ contacts with the police making BME youths feel unsafe and
distrustful of the police.
One can conclude from this chapter that the study participants shared most of the
conventional goals and values of mainstream Norwegian society and exerted themselves to
achieve them and, by so doing, fulfil themselves. They also articulated co-operative values,
desiring to care for others. However, they lacked the opportunity to nurture and cultivate their
human potential to the fullest through meaningful and sustaining relationships within the
various social and institutional spaces that are crucial for the safe transitions of young people
to adulthood in Norway. Most of them felt trapped in a vicious cycle of marginality where the
challenges they experienced in one arena were compounded by challenges in other arenas
making those challenges difficult to disentangle and tackle. Thus, because they were
unemployed and their families could not assist them economically, they could not afford
decent housing or a place to call home and enjoy the sense of independence and autonomy
that comes with it. Without a roof over their heads, most of them found it difficult to engage
in other life nurturing activities, including a sustained process of seeking jobs in a labour
market in which they felt discriminated against. Since most of them were forced to abandon a
school system that failed to meet their inner psychological and emotional needs because of a
systemic logic that emphasised meritocratic and achievement ideals, they failed to acquire the
necessary academic qualifications, making it even more difficult for them to acquire jobs and
become “good” consumers. As poor consumers, they risked status frustration among their
peers. The everyday racism many experienced and the unhealthy emotional and psychological
processes that they might risk by virtue of their involvement in the streets, especially in their
interactions with the police, buttressed their marginalisation. Though the study participants
were resilient in the face of these challenges, many experienced their dreams and hopes of
going ahead in life and achieving self-fulfilment as difficult to sustain.
It is, therefore, my contention that the multiple and prolonged marginality most streetinvolved BME youths like my study participants experience, and the emotional consequences
thereof, constitute a gross violation of their basic human needs and engender an existential
condition of ontological insecurity or what Bulhan describes as “ontological impasse and
existential stagnation” (Bulhan 1985: 265). A condition of multiple and prolonged marginality
is a condition of severe ontological insecurity. Being marginalised in relation to important
social and institutional spheres simultaneously and over a long period of time detracts from
the study participants’ sense of humanity, dignity and the need for mutual recognition. For as
suggested by Bulhan (1985) and Laing (1990), the individual’s self-identity, self-worth and
self-actualisation are inextricably tied to his or her sociability, the possibility and opportunity
to be enmeshed in meaningful relationships with others and to project oneself into the future.
The absence of social bonding and feelings of autonomy, adequacy and social rootedness
ultimately leads to feelings of social death, self-doubt and misrecognition. In the next chapter,
I centre the voices of my study participants regarding these psychoaffective injuries of
multiple and prolonged marginality, and some of the coping strategies they adopted in order
to sustain their amputated selves.
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In this chapter, I centre the voices of the study participants regarding their painful emotional
worlds or feelings and how they tried to cope with these. As I have argued earlier, it is
important to understand the psychosocial and emotional consequences of multiple and
prolonged marginality for these young people in order to fathom how these impact and
circumscribe their choices as active social agents. Understanding the existential crises that
confront them also has far reaching implications for services targeted at them. By centring the
voices of the study participants regarding their inner emotional and psychological worlds, it is
also my hope that the study will contribute to filling the gap in cultural criminology in which,
as I argued earlier, focus on centring the subject’s voices regarding his or her inner emotions
is often absent.
It should be emphasised at the outset that this is not an attempt to psychologise or pathologise
the study participants, but to follow the example of psychosocial criminologists by deploying
psychological insights in understanding the psychic and emotional worlds of subjects in the
context of their ontological insecurity. Thus, it is possible to deploy psychological
explanations without pathologising the individual.
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Most of my research participants articulated what may be described as an ontological split or
schism between their physical and mental/emotional presence in Norway. They harboured the
feeling that they lived in a rich welfare society physically, but outside it socially, emotionally
and mentally. The feeling was that there exists two parallel societies in Norway: the one that
is adorned with riches and populated by the native majority population and where people have
the opportunity to go ahead in life mainly because of the colour of their skin and social
networks, and the other society populated by deposable bodies and social dregs like
themselves who lack opportunities to advance and who feel trapped and choked by what they
perceived as a paternalistic institutional safety net. As we noted earlier, Felix remarked that
the institutional safety net designed for the disadvantaged in Norway could trap and choke
them. He was of the view that the ultimate consequence of getting trapped in this institutional
safety or welfare net is to find oneself in the underbelly of the welfare state:
This welfare [system] in Norway (…). It is strange. It detaches you from society, brings you
into a parallel society (…). There is a parallel society in Oslo. Not everybody lives in the same
society. Once you are in this parallel society [and] you don’t have the fortitude to muster all
the energy you can and (…) go back [to the larger society], you end up (…) in that net (...).
Felix’s statement underscores the difficulty many study participants felt was involved in
emerging from the underbelly of the welfare state once you got entrapped there. Many
perceived themselves as social outcasts and their marginalised lives as characterised by bare
existence and engulfment, where one had to contend not only with the institutional violence
one could be exposed to, but also deal with the traumatic experiences of street life. They
perceived the existential crises that characterised life under the belly of the welfare state as an
ontological threat because it constricted their freedoms, choices and efforts to go ahead in life,
and stretched their psyches to their last elastic limit. Moreover, the real possibility of
permanently remaining in this existential abyss stirred them in the face. Thus, most of the
study participants seemed to be buried in the pessimistic conviction that no matter what they
did to go ahead, they would still remain trapped at the margins or bottom of society.
Omar, an enterprising but bitter young man aged 25 sold drugs at the open street drug market
at Vaterland. I had informal extended conversations with him on two occasions. He could not
get an apprenticeship after completing the theoretical course in electrical installation at upper
secondary school. He worked for some time with a processing company. He was able to save
some money, quit his job because he felt mistreated at work, and decided to start his own
business in the UK. The business went to the ground after some few months because of what
he described as “the financial crisis at the time”. He severed his contact with Nav because he
felt he could not endure the shame and humiliation involved. Severing contact with Nav was
his way of preserving his self-worth. Like Felix, he meant one risked being swallowed up or
engulfed by the system. He felt powerless in the face of the institutional labyrinth he had to
navigate. I reconstruct what he narrated about his perceptions of the opportunity structure in
Norway as follows:
People say that there are more opportunities here in Norway than in Somalia and that I have
more choices here. I disagree with that view. I have been in Somalia a number of times now,
and I think there are more opportunities there than here (…). This system is upside down. It is
designed to destroy you. I have been living in Norway for 14 years. But there is no difference
between me and those who have come two months ago (…). I met an Iranian engineer the
other day, and he told me how he has been discouraged to pursue further education, because
he risks being labelled “overqualified” if he does so. And you are labelled “not qualified”, if
you do not have higher education (…). Yes, that is how the system is. I don’t know if it is
intentional, but that is how it is (…). The system is in place and you have to deal with it. I
have plans to go back to Somalia. I don’t intend to live here permanently anyway.
Mohamed also narrated how some highly educated Somalis he knew could not get any jobs.
Narrating his own experiences, he dismissed the belief in the notion of equality as follows:
All that one hears about equality is just bullshit. Equality means that [all] men and women
shall be [treated equally], right? (…) Not even [all] men are [treated] equal. How can there be
equality? (...) I don’t feel I and a native Norwegian are equal (…), a white person my age. I
don’t feel we are equal. I don’t feel it (…). People always use that word (…) saying we are all
equal, but they don’t practice it [in reality]. Verbally, yes [we are all equal], but not in reality.
For Mohamed, political, legal and professional protestations of equality or equal rights hold
true only at a theoretical or abstract level. The reasoning that all men are born with inalienable
human rights is mere rhetoric when one takes into consideration what happens in reality. Skin
colour matters in matters of equality. Generally, my study participants’ feelings of social
rejection and the pain this feeling engendered in them clearly emerged when they talked about
their perceptions of the opportunity structure in Norway. While all of them accepted the ethic
of individual responsibility and effort, and expressed regret for some of the wrong choices
they had made, they tended, also, to emphasise the many obstacles they perceived BME
youths as having in relation to social mobility compared with majority ethnic youths. Liban
said the following when I asked him if he thought he had the same opportunities like an ethnic
Norwegian youth:
I have just told you I applied for a job at a warehouse and they replied that they did not have
any foreigner there. Do you think that I have the same opportunity? Just think about it. If it
had been a Norwegian applicant, he would have gotten the job. I can get you the letter (…).
Do you think I have the same opportunity? [Silence].Think about that.
Thus, feelings of being socially rejected and Othered, being treated differently from others ran
through the narratives of the study participants. This feeling of being different from others is
characteristic of the ontologically insecure person as noted by Laing (1990).
#-+=::16/5-57:1-;7.?): 8;A+01+)6,-57<176)4075-4-;;6-;;
The feeling of living socially tangential lives in relation to the larger Norwegian society also
seemed to evoke strong memories of war and a propensity to use the metaphor of war and all
the devastations war can cause in the minds of my study participants who had experienced
various aspects of war. Many recounted their experiences of these wars and compared them
favourably with their situation in Norway. One wonders whether this invocation of war was
not a subconscious articulation of the psychic and emotional turmoil and homelessness they
experienced in their everyday lives. Mohamed described as follows how the sanctuary he had
fled to from the war in Somalia became a space for a new war in his mind:
I fled from the destructions of war and lost dreams in Somalia. You come to paradise and you
are here in a community that judges your actions [to] the limit. I came [to Norway] to save my
arse. But I find myself in a new war.
An important aspect of the war in Mohamed’s mind was his experience and feeling of being
constantly judged, objectified and labelled as “a problem” and the feelings of humiliation and
stigmatisation involved. In his book titled The souls of black folk, Du Bois posed the
rhetorical question “How does it feel to be a problem?” that confronts all black people in the
USA – being seen by the American society as a problematic group. As he points out, “…
being a problem is a strange experience – peculiar even for one who has never been anything
else…” (Du Bois 1903.1). The felt burden of carrying the stigma of being a problem weighed
heavily upon some of my study participants, especially those with background from Somalia.
Most of them alluded to the negative images of Somalis in the media and the shame and
humiliation it induced in their psyches. They experienced such images as detracting from their
subjectivities resulting in feelings of being depersonalised and reified.
Inextricably linked to the invocation of the war metaphor was their romanticisation of war,
especially the ‘normalcy’ and ‘predictability’ they perceived as characterising war, and a
longing to go back to the war - to a normal and predictable life. Here again, one can see the
subconscious articulation of a longing or yearning for a normal, meaningful and predictable
life, a life in which one can have a measure of knowledge of what would happen tomorrow.
Mohamed again:
I did not know any hindrances in Somalia. Difficulties became normality. There, one knows
that people live and die, get raped, go hungry. That is the order of the day.
This view was similar to the one expressed by Jamal as follows:
I never knew I would miss Mogadishu so much: the dilapidated buildings, cars travelling at 90
kilometres per hour, and children playing football on the street and in the dirt. It is better than
here in Norway. It was better in Somalia. All you needed was to relax under a tree with a gun
Mohamed and Jamal were referring to the lack of integrity and unpredictability that is
endemic to the existential condition of marginality and ontological insecurity and the deep
sense of dislocation and indignity this condition can engender. The day is experienced as
fragmented or discontinuous, unplanned and unfocused and becomes meaningless. There is no
possibility of self-actualisation and reproduction through a meaningful and productive
activity. The monotony and boredom involved in an unstructured day constricts one’s
biographical narrative or what Laing describes as “temporal continuity”, as was expressed in
the following statements by Liban, Leonard and Salma when I asked them to describe their
typical day:
Leonard: I wake up, eat breakfast, sneak out [to town], and chill out with my friends and spend
time with my family. I don’t have anything to do. I don’t have a job.
Liban: Without a job (…), you wake up and you don’t have any plan apart from going to
Grønland [open street drug market to hustle] and that is nothing [not a meaningful life], men.
Salma: I wake up and eat, train a little and accompany my mum to town if she cannot do it
alone. Go out and do some shopping [Sighs]. I try to read at times. (…) My normal day (…). I
wake up. Eat, pray, watch television, use data. Otherwise, nothing special happens. It is
seldom that my normal day varies.
The emotional assault and psychological rape the experience of being excluded from
meaningful social participation can wrought on an individual’s sense of identity, self-worth or
personal integrity, and the hopelessness, resignation and compensatory behaviours it can
engender are illustrated by the following statement by Mohamed. Mohamed wept through
most of this interview:
No one can live in this country without anything to do. No jobs, no education, nothing. Then it
becomes easier to end up in the worst situation. You wake up every day without any plans,
without anything to do. I am tired of this life. I feel that I have lost everything [that I am a
loser]. I am a young man. I would like to work and build my future. I am sitting here drinking
beer (…). I am angry at Norway. I would have been married and found something to do if I
were in Somalia. Maybe, I must change my skin colour like Michael Jackson in order to get a
job. That’s life. But I’ll keep my colour. I cannot go around and pretend to be what I am not. It
is dangerous to live in Norway (…). It is not good to be a young black man in Norway.
Almost all my study participants expressed the desire to go back to the original countries they
came from due to the deflation of their original visions of coming to Norway. Some of these
countries were still in the throes of war and instability or saddled with high levels of poverty
and unemployment. Nevertheless, some of these youths considered going back a sensible
thing to do. As Felix put it, “(…) I feel like going to Gardermoen [Oslo Airport] and telling
the police to take their visa [Norwegian resident permit], take everything and just send me
back to Sierra Leone”. Another young man I had an informal extended conversation with put
it this way: “In Africa, people are poor but seem to be happy and wear smiles whereas here in
Europe things are different”. Mohamed and Jamal regretted coming to Norway in the first
place. This yearning for home can be viewed as a reflection of the psychic and emotional
homelessness most of these young people felt. But Jamal could also consider “defecting from
Somalia” as the following excerpts from an informal extended conversation indicates:
Jamal: I am defecting from Somalia
Moses. What do you mean by that?
Jamal: I am defecting. I don’t want to associate myself with Somalia.
Moses: Why is it that?
Jamal: For 6/7 years, I have been thinking whiles her in Norway. I tell myself that had it not
been for the shit that happened in Somalia, I would not have been here.
Saddled with feelings of social rejection in Norway and the stigma and humiliation he felt he
carried on his body as a Somali, he could express his ambivalence towards Somalia. His
desire to defect from Somalia was a way of giving a symbolic expression to his feelings of
belonging nowhere and sitting in limbo, a psychic no man’s land. This feeling of sitting in
limbo is endemic to the condition of being socially excluded and ontologically insecure.
)::)<1>-;7.:)+1;5)6,)58=<)<-,;-4>-;
A significant chunk of my study participants’ narratives related to experiences of what many
described as discrimination or everyday racism in school, the labour and housing markets and
contacts with key institutions like Nav and the police. I have elaborated on some of these
experiences and the humiliation involved in the last two chapters. Most of the study
participants also recounted either being thrown out of nightclubs for being allegedly drunk,
though they tried to proof otherwise, or being refused entry into such nightclubs. Mohamed
recalled nearly bumping into a Norwegian man on the street one evening. According to him,
the man, who was under the influence of alcohol, looked angrily at him and said “Hey, you
fucking nigger”. When Mohamed retorted by saying “mutherfucker”, the man hit him in the
face. Mohamed could not hit back because “the man was huge”. Jamal also recounted how he
was a victim of what he described as racially motivated violence on two occasions when he
was attacked by a group of ethnic Norwegian youths. These feelings seemed to buttress their
experiences of being outsiders in Norway. Many study participants felt that it is skin colour
that determines whether a person can be regarded or treated as Norwegian or belonging to the
Norwegian fellowship.
Here, I would not like to delve into what racism is or is not. In his book Blackfellas,
whitefellas, Cowlishaw (2004) emphasised the anxiety with which intellectuals speedily and
assiduously disavow any references to race and try to deny, explain, neutralise or remove its
descriptive legitimacy. He refers to what Fanon (1990, cited in Cowlishaw Ibid) called “the
fact of blackness” and how this is still pertinent to people described as black. As noted by
Cowlishaw: “This is not the fact of skin colour, but the social significance attributed to racial
categories of colour which carry a pervasive but unspecified blot” (Ibid: 10). The fact of
being black and the feelings and perceptions of misrecognition involved were central in the
narratives of my study participants. Hence, I would like to discuss and emphasise the
psychological and emotional assaults involved in experiences of racism, especially in relation
to the crises of self-identity it can induce in black youth, since it is my view that this has
implications for services targeted at them.
When I asked Leonard what he thought was difficult with growing up in Norway, he
answered “racism” and narrated the following:
[There is] a lot of discrimination. You grow up here in Norway and when you are young
[come of age] you are looked down upon because you are seen and treated as different (…). It
is [a] normal [experience] for all of us [black youths] to be looked upon as criminals. The
police, the system (…) you are stopped [and searched] and looked upon [as a criminal]. You
are looked upon as such [as criminal] even though you have not done anything stupid
[criminal], [but] because of whom you are [a black youth]. So because of your skin colour,
you are judged differently in Norway.
Thus, in Leonard’s perception, black youths are thingified, reified or caricatured and imputed
with negative attributes because of their skin colour. Hence, being young and black in a white
society in his mind implies being dehumanised or deprived of one’s subjectivity. He felt
petrified by his racist experiences. We have heard Mohamed above wondering if he had to
change his colour like Michael Jackson in order to get a job. This statement from Mohamed is
a powerful expression of the existential violence that experiences of racism can do to a black
youth’s self-worth, self-identity or personal integrity. In my earlier work on marginalised
street-involved BME youths (Kuvoame 2005: 99), one of the youths expressed similar views
in an exchange with a native Norwegian social worker as follows:
Youth: How is it like to be a Norwegian, like real Norwegian-Norwegian-Norwegian?
Social Worker: I have never been anything else so it is difficult to have something to compare
with.
Youth: I am going to be the King of Norway by marrying princesses Martha Louise
(jokingly)…But then I have to bleach my skin first [thoughtful] …I can scrape off my skin
[demonstrating with his fingers]
Social worker: She is not someone worth keeping if she does not accept you as you are
Youth: That’s right, man! You are who you are.
The answer given by the Norwegian social worker to the question as to what it meant to be
really Norwegian raises several theoretical and practical questions regarding how whiteness
can be taken for granted. Do native Norwegians have a “white identity” in addition to their
identity as human beings? How do they define their white identity? However, we can glean
from Mohamed’s statement and the exchange above that experiences of racism by BME
youths, whether in the form of “everyday microaggressions” (Pierce et al. 1978, cited in Sue
et al. 2007), or “everyday racism (Essed 1991) or institutional violence, can pose a serious
threat to their sense of being human and leave behind debris of amputated selves. The fact of
blackness can be experienced as a special stigma to be physically managed by being peeled or
scraped off the skin as expressed by Mohamed and the youth in the exchange with the social
worker. The fact that experiences of racism can constrict one’s sense of being human and free
is captured in the following terse statements by Jamal which are excerpts from an informal
extended conversation:
When they see a black man, they think you are a lesser human being, lazy, dumb and an
animal. In Africa, I thought I was born free, but I discovered racism in Europe.
Like Leonard, Jamal was painting the negative and stereotypical images he perceived whites
as having of
black people through the mass media and in popular opinion or within
institutional contexts – being reified or objectified as savages, inferior or half human and of
base nature, indolent, ignorant and infantilised with a condescending gaze. The feelings of
depersonalisation engendered by his racist experiences in Europe jolted any remaining sense
of humanness he carried with him from Africa, leading to his discovery of his existential
blackness. Like Felix, who struggled to discover his true identity due to his racist experiences
at school which his teachers condoned, most black youth in my study had to confront and
endure such negative images and experiences daily and the threat to selfhood or self-clarity
involved. With reference to Pierce, Sue conceptualises everyday microaggressions as follows:
brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to people of color because they
belong to a racial minority group…Microaggressions are often unconsciously delivered in the
form of subtle snubs or dismissive looks, gestures, and tones. These exchanges are so
pervasive and automatic in daily conversations and interactions that they are often dismissed
and glossed over as being innocent and innocuous (Sue et al. 2007: 273).
Many study participants found it difficult to erase the indelible emotional and psychological
scars of these racist experiences, as can be seen in the following interview with Salma:
Salma: (…) I feel that there is a lot of racism [in Norway], no matter where you go. I have
experienced racism in all the jobs that I have had. I always experience racism, everyday
racism, when they ask you “Where do you come from”…You feel it, racism (…).
Moses: What do you think about being exposed to such racist [experiences]?
Salma: It’s ok sort of, you know.
Moses: It is ok?
Salma: [laughs] it’s ok if only they can accept that (…) for example, I get irritated when ethnic
Norwegians say “No, you are Norwegian”. [I get irritated] because if I am Norwegian why do
you ask me where I come from or look down upon me if I want to pray as a Muslim? (...)
[Sighs) It’s not ok, but it is something I am used to (…) so I just accept it (…).
Thus, Salma resisted any semblance of Norwegian identity imputed to her by ethnic
Norwegians because of what she perceived as demeaning and Othering references to her
ethnic origins/skin colour and religious practices. Such references negate any identification
with Norway she might feel. For these reasons, she felt that she could never be accepted as a
real Norwegian. She also felt angered by the ignorance ethnic Norwegians who described her
as Norwegian displayed regarding her ethnic and racial experiences.
Many study participants narrated how they tried to cope with such experiences of everyday
racism. Jibril and Mohamed narrated the emotional torture they experienced in their attempts
to cope with and correct the caricatured images they felt prospective employers had of them
by striving hard to present an appearance they deemed acceptable to these employers. Some
study participants reacted with anger and others through silence. Some adopted the coping
strategy of asserting their BME identities. This is captured in the following informal
conversation between two social workers, Salma and me the first time I met Salma. One of
the social workers, who is of mixed parentage, asserted his identity as a Norwegian by virtue
of having an ethnic Norwegian father. The conversation took place at a youth club and I
reconstructed it in my fieldnotes immediately after it occurred. The following is a portion of
the conversation:
Moses [to Salma]: Were you born and bred here in Norway?
Salma: Yes, I grew up here.
Moses: Then you are Norwegian!
Salma: No, I am not Norwegian. I am Iranian. But I have Norwegian citizenship.
Salma [to Moses]: Where do you come from?
Moses: Ghana, in West Africa.
Salma: Do you consider yourself Norwegian?
Moses: I have Norwegian citizenship.
Salma [looking at the social worker in the sofa]: He says he is Norwegian.
Moses: Yes, he is.
Moses [to social worker in the sofa]: Aren’t you?
Social worker in the sofa: Yes, my father is Norwegian, so I am Norwegian.
Social worker at the desk: I was born and bred in Norway, but can never consider myself a
Norwegian. I cannot relate much to Africa and Ethiopia where my parents come from, but I
consider myself African and Ethiopian. I consider Norway as my home.
Social worker in the sofa: It is unfortunate that people who are born and bred in Norway do
not consider themselves Norwegian.
Salma: But how can I be? I tell Norwegians I was born and bred in Norway, whereupon they
will ask me “but where do you come from originally?” So they don’t consider me Norwegian.
Salma [looking at my direction]: You can be a Norwegian citizen, but never like a native
Norwegian.
Social worker at the desk: It is a matter of colour.
Salma [to the social worker in the sofa]: But you do not really look white or Norwegian.
Social worker in the sofa [dejected]: I am Norwegian.
Thus, in the perceptions of Salma and one of the social workers, ethnic origin and skin colour
are decisive in determining whether one can be considered Norwegian or claim Norwegian
identity. In other words, for them, race and ethnicity matter in matters of identity. They are
outsiders inside, so to speak, and how they relate to Norway is emptied of any cognitive or
emotional content or attachment because of their racial experiences in Norway. While the
other social worker can assert the emotional and cognitive content of his ‘Norwegian-ness’
based on the fact that his father is a native Norwegian, he stands the risk of this assertion
being severely interrogated as in the exchange above, because of the colour of his skin. He
must, therefore, be prepared to defend it. Having the “wrong” race or skin colour or ethnic
origin in a white society can, therefore, endanger your self-conception. You must either repel
or resist impositions of identities coming from others or try to discover, assert or reclaim what
you consider your true identity.
For many black youths, this struggle to define your selfhood or substantial self in a white
society can leave behind emotional and psychological scars. This is especially the case with
black youths without strong social supports to help them sustain a positive sense of their
ethnic or racial identities. Like Mohamed who said “This is life” and Salma who said “It’s not
ok, but it is something I am used to (…) so I just accept it”, some of my research participants
wore these scars under the cloak of silence or equanimity. Their eloquent silences became the
invisible badges of their powerlessness, helplessness and resignation in the face of constant
emotional assaults stemming from experiences of everyday racial microaggressions. It is
especially in their accounts of encounters with the police that these feelings of powerlessness,
helplessness and resignation were given utmost expression. As Mohamed put it, “The police
(…) misuse their power everywhere”. Such encounters often resulted in repressed feelings of
anger, pain and resentment or emotional numbness.
Erik Erikson is famous for his theory on developmental stages of adolescent identity
formation. His greatest regret was that he did not devote much of his scholarship to
understanding how black youths attempt to deal with the identity crises they experience. He
stated his regret as follows:
A lack of familiarity with the problem of Negro youth and with the actions by which Negro
youth hopes to solve these [identity] problems is a marked deficiency in my life and work
which cannot be accounted for by theoretical speculation (Erik Erikson, 1964:29).
Here, Erikson seems to acknowledge that the identity issues that may confront black youths
growing up in a white society may not be the same for the white youths who constituted the
basis of his work. As will be shown later, the emotional and psychological scars many streetinvolved black youth carry regarding their struggles to create meaningful identities are rarely
thematised by professionals who come into contact with them.
$-4.*4)5-:-/:-<;/=14<)6,8-:;1;<-6<;0)5Following Young (2004b), I asked my study participants in my interviews to express their
views on the following two statements:
1. “Everyone has the ability to get ahead in the world because it is simply up to each
person to do so”.
2. “Nobody gets ahead by himself because factors beyond one’s control matter most of
all in determining who gets ahead in society”.
The aim was to garner their perceptions of the opportunity structure in Norway.
All the study participants agreed with the first statement. Their view was that it is the
individual who has the major responsibility of going ahead in life. This is a conventional
belief in the achievement ideal and the importance of individual effort that is cherished by
most people in western societies. In fact, this belief in individual effort, to stand on one’s own
feet, seemed to predispose some of the study participants to criminal activities. This was the
case with those like Omar, who decided not to have anything to do with Nav because of the
shame and humiliation he perceived as characterising contacts with the institution. None of
my research participants painted a picture of himself or herself as a victim of circumstances
absolutely out of his or her control. In other words, they asserted their self-determination
which, according to Bulhan (1985), involves a self-motivated engagement with the world.
Irrespective of the challenges that confronted them, they expressed a modicum of selfdetermination, the view that they had choices, albeit circumscribed. Like James, most of them
emphasised the importance of having self-control and taking responsibility for their own lives.
Like Felix, many also held themselves partly responsible for some of the wrong choices they
had made along the way. As pointed out in his life story, even Ali admitted the fact that he
gave in too easily to peer-pressure, and that it was up to him to say “No” to any requests from
his peers: “I am the one who makes my choices and responsible for them, I cannot blame
anyone, not my peers who may pressurise me into crime and drug use”. Similarly, Felix
narrated how he burnt many bridges and took responsibility for his present predicament: “I let
myself down in the past (…) and that is why I am here today (...) I probably will take 50 [per
cent responsibility]”. We have also seen how Franklin held himself responsible for dropping
out of school because of the bad choices he felt he made growing up in what he perceived as a
disadvantaged neighbourhood with a high concentration of immigrants and attending school
in the neighbourhood. He could not resist the peer pressure he was exposed to in this
disadvantaged neighbourhood school. In the following excerpt from an informal extended
conversation with him, Jamal narrated this belief in individual effort this way:
Jamal: There have always been complications in my life. I think I always complicate things for
myself.
Moses: Don’t you think there are certain things beyond your control?
Jamal: I am beginning to doubt such reasoning. Here in Norway, it is not that difficult to get
basic things like food, clothing and shelter. Once these are in place, you have to work out the
rest for yourself.
But recounting his experiences with Norwegian institutions in the same conversation,
especially experiences in relation to his help-seeking efforts regarding an injury that
constituted a critical incidence in his life in Norway and triggered off his drug use, “Norway
kills you and makes you live”.
All the research participants were quick to point out in relation to the second statement that
one can encounter hindrances in his or her efforts to go ahead in life and may need assistance
in order to surmount these hindrances. For many of them, it was in terms of their efforts to go
ahead in life and their interactions with key Norwegian institutions that they felt victimised.
Most of them expressed a keen awareness of the inequality of the opportunity structure and
other structural hindrances they needed to navigate and the difficulties involved. Thus, all the
study participants acknowledged the conscious choices that they can make as active social
agents. At the same time, they displayed a keen awareness of the structural factors that
circumscribed the choices and alternatives available to them.
Nevertheless, the regrets, shame or feelings of self-blame they harboured seemed to weigh
heavily on many of them, despite the fact that all had tried in one way or the other to go ahead
in life. Thus, Salma could blame herself for failing to complete upper secondary school.
Recall that she was not awarded her grades because of chronic absenteeism due to illness:
It is very frustrating and irritating [intense]. [Sighs] Actually, I have been angry with myself
for a long time because I was sick. If only I had turned up at school without ever being sick. It
irritates me a lot.
In a similar vein, Franklin blamed himself for dropping out of school. MacLeod (2009)
showed how the groups of disadvantaged young black and white youths he studied in a public
housing project in an American city internalised the blame for their inability to move ahead in
society, despite the structural and institutional barriers that confronted them. This applied
especially to the black youths in his study, who had both class and racial-based hindrances to
overcome. He attributed this internalisation of self-blame to their acceptance of the myth of
the achievement ideology, which leads to the attribution of lack of social mobility to personal
deficiencies.
Shame can be conceptualised as emotion. It is an emotion of self-contempt that exposes
individuals to feelings of being defective in the eyes of others (Wurmser 1987, cited in
Ahmed & Braithwaite 2004). A deeply felt shame experience is often related to feelings of
inferiority, helplessness, a loss of self-esteem (Cook 1996, Lewis 1971, cited in Ahmed &
Braithwaite Ibid), and a fear of social exclusion (Elias 1994, cited in Ahmed & Braithwaite
Ibid). Drawing on Scheff’s study of how shame impacts social bonds, Chase and Walker
emphasised the co-constructed nature of shame in the context of poverty, especially shame as
felt by the poor in different social contexts such as the family, in social interactions and in
interactions with bureaucracy as follows:
…shame is almost always co-constructed – combining an internal judgment of one’s own
inabilities; an anticipated assessment of how one will be judged by others; and the actual
verbal or symbolic gestures of others who consider, or are deemed to consider themselves to
be socially and/or morally superior to the person sensing shame (Chase & Walker 2012: 740).
Ahmed and Braithwaite (2004) showed with reference to the literature how acknowledged
shame is adaptive in terms of interpersonal relationships and how unacknowledged,
undischarged or unmanaged shame can lead to the externalisation of that shame. The shame
can be redirected at others in the form of anger and blame. Hence, there is a relationship
between shame, anger and criminal behaviour. Ahmed and Braithwaite (2004) suggested the
following in relation to the nature of shame:
Shame acknowledgement represents responses that are thought to serve adaptive functions in
maintaining interpersonal relationships. These are feeling shame, feeling like hiding oneself,
taking responsibility, facing up to others’ rejection, and making amends. In contrast, shame
displacement is considered as maladaptive from the perspective of good interpersonal
relationships. It consists of distancing strategies in response to shame: externalizing blame,
having unresolved shame, feeling anger, retaliatory anger, and displaced anger. All these
variables represent attempts to deflect shame through displacing the felt shame into otherdirected anger (Ibid: 271)
In their narratives, most of my study participants acknowledged their regrets and feelings of
shame and blamed themselves for their present predicaments. They acknowledged or
expressed this shame, self-blame and regrets in many ways. Like Omar, some of them
narrated the shame and humiliation they felt in their contacts with the welfare system. Like
Ali and Felix, some of them narrated their shame in relation to the pains they felt they had
caused their parents or family. They felt they had disappointed their families and would like
to do something worthwhile to make amends for that or restore the family’s trust in them.
Their inability to do so seemed to augment their shame and pain. For others like Yasser,
Liban and Ajar, it was their inability to play their perceived roles as caretakers or
breadwinners of the extended family or protectors of their mothers and siblings that
constituted a source of shame to them. In addition, others like Liban narrated the shame they
felt dealing in drugs or drinking too much alcohol:
I am not happy about what I am doing [dealing and using drugs] (…) I am not happy. This is
no life. You have no respect. You just feel like shit. I came here [to Norway] to have a better
life. But what do I have now? [Silence] Fixing myself hashish and going to bed. That’s it. I
want a better life.
Similarly, Yusuf expressed the shame and guilt he felt by dealing drugs as follows:
Selling drugs is one of the worst things I have experienced (…). It was so painful for me to
sell heroin and cocaine and look at people becoming more and more destroyed. I felt I had
given people [I sold drugs to] a loaded pistol and just allowed them to pull the trigger. So it
was… [Long silence] it was… [a] deep [pain]. Though I have also experienced (…) things that
made me depressed, I felt I exploited them.
Jamal conceptualised the shame and regret he felt as the rewards for his sin against God. He
felt he had sinned over and over again against God by using and dealing in drugs and saying
bad things about God. He felt he had departed from God and needed to go back to Him in
order to redeem this sinful image. Mohamed too felt shame. Apart from his joblessness and
homelessness, it was the gossips and questioning gestures or gazes from elderly Somali
acquaintances in Oslo that often triggered his feelings of shame. For these questioning
gestures were eloquent reminders to him that he had failed to fulfil some of the cultural
expectations of his ethnic Somali community of a young man his age. As he put it: “People
wonder. Why is he not married? Why is he so thin? I feel sorry for myself. I don’t have
money. How can I marry?”
As will be shown later, the feelings of shame and regrets engendered by their perceptions that
they disappointed or failed significant persons in their lives prevented some of the study
participants from disclosing the challenges facing them to these significant persons so as to
“save” these persons from further pains such disclosures might cause. Thus, Mohamed hid the
fact that he was living in a youth shelter from his mother and would not like her to know
about his heavy drinking because he would not like to make her sadder. In certain cases too,
these feelings of shame about disappointing earlier professional helpers also detracted from
the help-seeking efforts of some of the participants. But in certain cases, these feelings of
shame resulted in anger and resentment that were repressed or directed at others.
#-8:-;;-,)6/-:)6,:-;-6<5-6<
Like Mohamed who stated that “I am angry with Norway”, most of my study participants
seemed to be bitter about what they perceived as their negative experiences in Norway. This
bitterness or anger was not always given concrete expression in their actions, but seemed to
be repressed. This repressed bitterness and anger or resentment were given symbolic
expressions in several interviews in terms of the intensity of the narrations, changes in
tonation, prolonged silence, tears and body language. Several of the study participants
recounted situations, either in their private lives or in their contacts with institutions, where
they had to deal with stressful and provocative situations in order to save face or remnants of
their self-worth. In some situations, some of them used their silence as a defensive wall
against emotional eruptions.
In my interview with them, Ajar and Yasser, whom I
interviewed together, narrated that they often got angry. Ajar was intense and agitated
throughout most of the interview. The following is a portion of the interview:
Moses: So you guys get angry often?
Ajar: We are angrier than you think. At times, I become so angry that I cannot see the person
who is sitting in front of me (…). I keep quiet when I get angry. But deep inside me, I feel like
devouring the person who irritates me. So we are angry.
Yasser: When we are angry we try not to show it. We just move away from the situation and
try to find something else to do, try to be alone or get drunk.
Thus, though they felt angry often, Ajar and Yasser tried to ward off any emotional outbursts
by using different coping strategies including walking away, isolating themselves or indulging
in a coping behaviour like getting drunk so as to numb off their emotions. This detracts from
the popular conception that marginalised and street-involved BME youths are violent and
aggressive miscreants who look for targets on which to vent their aggression. The study
participants’ narrations indicated, on the contrary, high thresholds for emotional outbursts, use
or threat of use of physical violence. Thus, the various coping strategies street-involved BME
youths may use to cope with anger and resentment may reduce their use of unrestrained
violence. But Ajar and Yasser also narrated how they regretted the way they reacted either
verbally or physically on certain occasions. For that repressed anger or bitterness could erupt
into violent outbursts of emotions when the provocative situation breached its tolerated
threshold. Yasser again:
Since I started [name of upper secondary school] I tried not to fight. I get provoked, but
manage to [contain it]. But if someone shouts at me and looks straight into my eyes and, for
example, says something bad about my mother, I go mad. That’s when I can no longer contain
it, and a fight breaks out.
Like Yusuf who was expelled from school for assaulting a teacher, Ajar also narrated how he
was expelled from school when he physically assaulted a teacher whom he felt provoked him.
He also recalled several tantrums in relation to his contacts with the CWS because he felt that
the CWS was bent on destabilising his family. Ali also could not contain his rage when his
new counsellor at Nav could not assist him with the accommodation he was promised while in
prison. The new counsellor was not even conversant with his case. He shouted at her and
stormed out of the office. In one of my informal extended conversations with him while he
was in prison, Ali vividly described the tidal wave of anger and frustration that washed over
him in a court appearance when he felt wrongly remanded in custody for a crime he meant he
did not commit. He could not hold back the anger and physically assaulted the prosecutor. In
these cases, we can see how experiences of institutional violence as perceived by these study
participants ignited interpersonal violence. But more often than not these violent emotional
outbursts were directed at other vulnerable young people other than others outside their
immediate world. Powerless in the face of the structural and institutional violence they
experienced, they could only externalise their wounded emotions and other-direct them unto
their peers in fate. Through this unacceptable other-directed anger, they sought to regain their
sense of worth and respect. In all these instances where they other-directed their anger, the
study participants experienced threats to their own personal autonomy. Feeling depersonalised
by these experiences they negated the personal autonomy of others as suggested by Laing
(1990).
Hence, we need to go behind the violent acts perpetuated by marginalised street-involved
BME youths and explore their painful emotional and psychic worlds in order to understand
how they can use other-directed violence to satisfy their psychic and emotional needs. Unless
we are able to do this, we risk reducing the violence associated with many such youths to a
dispositional or cultural trait, thereby accentuating their stigmatisation and social exclusion.
Understanding how blocked opportunities can give rise to unmet emotional and psychic needs
that must be met through other means, in this case through violence, can help us understand
how structural and institutional violence can engender interpersonal violence. As bell hooks
succinctly puts it as follows:
When black males are unable to move past reactive rage they get caught in the violence,
colluding with their own psychic slaughter as well as with the very real deaths that occur when
individuals see no alternatives (bel hooks 2004: 64).
--416/;7.:->-6/-)6,;<:1316/*)+3
But repressed anger, frustration or resentment can also be other-directed and given verbal
expression in terms of vengefulness or the desire to strike back at those perceived as the
source of the distress. Thus, James could think of acquiring firearms, killing his parents
whom he felt neglected him, and going to the Central Station in Oslo to massacre as many
people as possible and taking his own life. Revenge can also take the form of legitimating
murderous violence. For example, Jamal recalled in an informal extended conversation the
tragedy on a tram in Oslo involving a psychotic Somali man who stabbed a passenger to
death, which event took place not long after Jamal came to Norway. He thought at the time
the event occurred that the man must have been really crazy to have committed such a
dastardly act. However, “having lived in Norway for 6 years and endured mental tortures”, he
felt he could now understand or relate to the man’s actions. Like James, he narrated that at
times he felt like just going out to kill people and ending up in jail. He narrated how, under
the influence of amphetamines, vengeful thoughts rushed through his veins and mind one day
at a Nav office when he felt that the help he so needed was not forthcoming. He thought that
“if only I have a knife, if I have a knife now, I would kill someone and end my own life”. He
described the resentment he felt for Norway as follows:
I am glad I am in Norway because I don’t know where else I would have been. But I hate this
place. Any time I hear the word Norway, I feel revulsion in my stomach
Jamal’s feelings of revulsion, resentment and revenge also found their cathartic
consummation in sexual exploitation of white women as indicated in the following excerpt
from an informal extended conversation in which he stated his strong resentment towards
whites:
Jamal: How I hate the white man.
Moses: Why do you hate them?
Jamal: When they see a black man, they think you are a lesser human being, lazy, dumb and
an animal. In Africa, I thought I was born free, but I discovered racism in Europe.
Moses: So what are you doing about it?
Jamal: I take it on their women. I fuck the white man when I am fucking their girls.
Moses: So that is a kind of revenge.
Jamal: Yes, it is (…).
Powerless to direct his resentment and feelings of revenge unto the structural forces or
institutions he held responsible for his predicament, he tried to cope by venting these feelings
onto the white girls he had sexual relationships with. The bodies of these white girls seemed
to symbolise in his mind the Norwegian society that he perceived as oppressing him. So he
unleashed on them all his frustrations, hatred and contempt for the white man by adopting a
false self, an inauthentic self that answered to the hypersexuality or animalistic sexual
prowess he perceived the white man as imputing to him. With a naked white body under him,
he could revel in his imagined power, albeit ephemeral, over the white man and enjoy the
imagined therapeutic pleasure involved. For him, having sex with a white girl is a soul
cleansing and cathartic ritual. To a large extent, the contempt which some marginalised and
street involved BME youths have for ethnic Norwegian girls, or the derogatory language in
which they often objectify them as sexual objects to be exploited may be explained as
conscious or subconscious acts of revenge in the face of the repressed rage and resentment
some of these youths might harbour. Feeling depersonalised by their experiences, they
objectified others negating their personal worth (Laing 1990).
In her book about how black British youth constructed their identities Alexander showed how
her study participants objectified white women as representing the ‘other’ (white society and
wider societal forces) and as possessions and sexual objects to be exploited. As she argues,
“… the powerlessness of black men in white society is rearticulated and contested at a street
level to empower black men through the use of white women” (Alexander 1996: 178). I
contend that the robbing of white children (barneran) by Franklin and his peers may also be
explained in a similar vein as their search for a psychic closure for the scars of territorial
stigmatisation they bore as second class citizens living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood.
-8:-;;176;<:-;;)6,;=1+1,)41,-)<176
I did not deploy any measuring instruments in this study in relation to the mental states or
health of my study participants since the idea was not to diagnose them. However, I asked
them to recount critical events in their lives and how they felt about them. A sizeable number
of my study participants came to Norway from war afflicted countries either as refugees or
minor asylum seekers or through family reunification. Only Yasser and Jamal and, to a certain
degree, Ajar narrated that they took active part in the wars that raged in their countries. Apart
from them and Mohamed, who came to Norway in their teens, others with background from
these areas came to Norway at a young age. As noted earlier, I did not ask them specifically in
the interviews to narrate their war experiences due to the unpleasant memories I thought such
narrations could trigger, though some of them freely talked about them. Some of them
experienced war from close quarters or indirectly through the direct involvement of their
significant others. Some lost their parents or relatives in these wars or were witnesses to the
human devastations of war.
In their review of research findings regarding the mental health consequences of war,
Murphy and Lakshminarayana (2006) found that refugees from war afflicted countries carry
with them high levels of psychiatric symptomatology with a significant correlation between
mental health status and traumatic events. Many are associated with symptoms of depression,
anxiety, post-traumatic stress-syndrome and psychosomatic complaints like insomnia.
Among children, they found high levels of post-traumatic and grief symptoms relating to the
type of exposure concluding that “There is consistent evidence of higher rates of traumarelated psychological problems in children” (Ibid: 28). For example, the most common forms
of trauma exposure for children in Palestine are witnessing funerals, shootings, seeing injured
or dead strangers and family members injured or killed. We can safely speculate that my
study participants from war-torn areas may have carried some of these traumas with them to
Norway.
As we have seen in relation to Jamal and Felix, none of them got any treatments for these
traumas when they came to Norway. Jamal, for example, spent three years in three different
refugee camps in Norway without any psychological help. These traumatic experiences still
haunted some of them from time to time. As I have argued above, the war metaphors they
used in their narratives coupled with the romanticisation of war may be seen as symbolic
expressions of mental and emotional wars engendered by their ontologically insecure lives.
Some of them recounted the nightmares and flashbacks they had from time to time, sleeping
problems and feelings of loneliness and sadness. Mohamed recounted how he usually wept
anytime he spent time alone thinking about his precarious life. He described the stress and
confusion he often felt, especially when he was homeless as follows:
(…) Stress, stress, stress, all the time (…). The fact that one cannot sleep; you think too much.
(…) you begin to feel that you do not have any future, you know; that you are lost in the
woods. You don’t know the way forward or backwards. You just stand there wondering which
way to go.
Mohamed’s use of the metaphor of being lost in the woods is a vivid description of the
emptiness and lack of anchoring or sense of direction he felt. It is a symbolic expression of his
ontological insecurity and cognitive disorientation, and more so of the social and psychic
starvation or even death that he pictured stirring him in the face. His sense of ontological
insecurity swathes his self-projection into the future. He yearned for a hand that would help
him out of the precarious wilderness of life he found himself in.
Statements such as “Life is difficult”, “I try to do away with my anxiety”, “Life is not easy”,
“I am tired most of the time”, “I have lost energy”, “I have lost interest in things I used to
like”, “I feel sad at times”, “I have sleepless nights”, “I sleep too much”, “I get depressed at
times” were used by some of the study participants to describe how they felt. Yasser
described how he found it difficult to have sex at times because of the stress he felt most of
the time. When I asked Salma to explain why she had sleeping problems, she said the
following:
I have always had sleeping problems. All in my family have sleeping problems [laughs]. I am
not able to sleep [because] I sit up and think. It tends to go over, but I’m mostly irritated about
the fact that I am unemployed and have been home a lot. That’s when you become depressed.
But I have not been all that depressed. It tends to go over. (…) Otherwise, it is irritating, a lot
of emotions (…).
Narrating how he often thought about death, though he would never think of taking his own
life, Leonard described as follows the emptiness he felt inside and his search for a richer and
more fulfilling life in the face of the existential challenges he perceived as facing him,
especially after the sudden death of his father:
I try every day to understand the meaning in life. Does life has a meaning? That is actually the
big question. I go about thinking what I can do to give a deep meaning to my life.
Some of the study participants also stated that they had often thought about death as a way out
of their precarity. They grappled with the death wish in the face of what they perceived as
their existential crises. Both Yasser and Ajar narrated that they had experienced so much in
their home countries and in Norway that they had thought several times of taking their own
lives. Ajar described how scared he could be of himself at times, the feeling that he would
harm himself one day. He asked me, specifically, to ponder over the anomalous existential
condition of being afraid of oneself. The question arose as to why they had not taken their
own lives. In answer to this question, Yasser described his suicidal thoughts as follows:
In Norway, I have thought about it [suicide] several times. Several times (…), I swear to you. I
would have done it long ago had it not been for the fact that I have a family. The only thing
that stopped me was thoughts about what would happen to my siblings if I took my own life.
Ajar agreed with him and narrated how he had wanted to take his own life but decided not to
carry it through when at the last minute, he suddenly saw someone who resembled his mother
and he took to his heels. The huge responsibility and loyalty they felt towards their immediate
and extended families were the only feelings that prevented them from taking their own lives.
In a very important and altruistic sense, they prioritised the well-being of others over what
they perceived could have been the final solution to their own predicament: death, the
ultimate form of exclusion. Ajar also recounted how his best friend, who hailed from the same
country as himself and who shared similar life conditions as him, took his own life in Norway
moments after he spoke with him on the telephone, and how this sad event still haunted him.
In the following excerpts from an interview, Jamal too narrated his preoccupation of ending
his own life through deliberate overdose of drugs because he felt that his life had no longer
any meaning. Life no longer held any meaning for him because he struggled for many years to
get help for a leg injury he sustained in Norway, an injury that triggered off his excessive drug
use and deflated his cherished dreams of becoming a professional football player:
Jamal: (…) I don’t know how long I’m gonna live (…) and I never thought I’m gonna live [to
be] 20 (…).
Moses: Come on. What did you think was going to happen to you?
Jamal: [Long silence] Ah, the drugs I was taking. I knew I was going to have overdose. Yeah,
I knew I’m gonna have overdose sooner or later. You know, at times, I do it just to overdose
it.
Moses: You do that purposely?
Jamal: Yeah, purposely. Yeah
Moses: Why?
Jamal: (…) I am like…I don’t wanna live here. All the things people live for [in life] seems to
be nothing to me. I mean, people live for children. I am like (…) no. I don’t wanna bring
children into this world. Thank God, I am here already. I ain’t gonna bring children here.
Moses: So this excessive taking of drugs. You were doing it consciously just to kill yourself.
Jamal: Just to kill it, man. And because I felt when I die, everything’s gonna be
numb.[Silence]. Nobody knows what [the] afterlife is.
Jamal’s perception seemed to be that his death would bring everything including his painful
existence to a sudden standstill. In death, he would become oblivious to the travails and
vicissitudes of the meaningless life he perceived himself as experiencing. When I asked Jamal
in an another conversation why he had not committed suicide, he said he hoped to make a
documentary film about his life in the future, and sit back and watch it on a big screen. In
other words, he would like to detach himself from his own life, from reality, and examine it
critically to see if it had any meaning and was worth living. It is a way of imposing more
meaning on his life, a kind of self-therapy. James also decided to take his own life when he
heard a voice gorging him to do so and return to his “Maker” [God]. He jumped in front of a
high speed train and got paralyzed from the waist down. I never got to interview Abdi who
was willing to be a study participant. He accepted an offer to join other youths in
CAMPCOM’s project on a trip outside Norway. A short time after the trip, he committed
suicide.
Their perceptions or experiences of emptiness and meaninglessness or not having meaningful
lives due to their experiences of marginality seemed to undergird the death wish narrated by
some of my study participants. Like Bulhan (1985) and Laing (1990), Twenge and
Baumeister (2003) observed that having a sense of meaning or meaningful thought is crucial
for self-awareness and emotion. Experiences of “rejection may threaten meaningfulness
because it strikes a blow against one’s anticipated future life …” (Ibid: 411). According to
them, many suicide attempts can be traced directly to recent experiences of social exclusion
that may reflect badly on the self and result in a state of cognitive deconstruction, which may
be used as a defence mechanism against negative experiences of social rejection and
exclusion. Cognitive deconstruction or disorientation is characterised by meaninglessness that
brings in its wake distortion of time flow, immersion in the presence rather than the past or
future, lethargy and acute passivity, and emotional numbness leading to many self-destructive
behaviours. Through cognitive deconstruction, the socially excluded attempt to avoid negative
self-awareness and emotional distress. Twenge and Baumeister (Ibid) consider suicide as the
ultimate self-destructive behaviour and, like Durkheim (2002/1897) observed that people with
fewer social attachments are more likely than others to commit suicide.
)<)41;5)5*1>)4-6+- )6,<:)6;+-6,-6<)41;5
I asked all my study participants to narrate where they thought they would be and what they
would be doing in five to ten years from the time of the interview. This appeared to be a
difficult question for them to answer and many answered after a long and reflexive silence
symbolising the difficulty of projecting themselves into the future. This silence and
uncertainty about the future was also given expression by Yasser and Ajar whom I
interviewed together. Ajar, who was intense and agitated in course of the interview, became
subdued when asked about his future:
Moses: How do you think your future is going to be in Norway?
Ajar: [Silence] Ask Yasser.
Moses: I am asking you.
Yasser: He is asking you.
Ajar: No. The point is that I don’t know (…) Of course, I want the best for myself and us [my
family] and all my friends.
Moses: Do you think things will be fine with you in Norway?
Ajar: [In an uncharacteristically subdued voice] I think about it a lot, I believe I’ll be fine.
Though Ajar was preoccupied with his future prospects, he could not say anything concrete
about his future. In other words, he did not feel that he had control over his future given his
present existential quagmire. Mohamed too narrated his fears about being unsuccessful in life
if he continued to live in Norway in the following excerpt:
Mohamed: [Tearful and speaking heavily] Brother (…) I don’t think I have a good chance of
becoming who I want to be if I continue to live in this country, you know. I want to have
children, and all the things I want. I know it is not easy. Though one is willing, it is not easy.
Like Ajar and Mohamed, many study participants hoped that they would be able to achieve all
or some of their dreams in the future and these included having their own homes, car(s),
getting married, having a good job and taking a good care of their spouse and children. But
this hope of being successful in life was tied to their dreams of going back to their home
countries in the future, though some of these countries were still experiencing wars, as I
pointed out earlier. Mohamed put it this way:
To have my peace, I would like to go back to my country and live there. You know my
country is still at war and there is a lot of chaos there. But I don’t have any choice.
However, they were quick to point out the difficulty involved in going back and the
importance of fixing their lives right now in order to achieve these dreams. Thus, implicit in
their narrations was a bleak or pessimistic representation of the future. In other words, they
were more present-oriented than future-oriented. As will be pointed out later, this immersion
in the present rather than in the future, which is conditioned by their ontologically insecure
existence, may account for the hedonistic orientations of some of the study participants as a
way of coping with their present life conditions.
Luck featured prominently in their narratives. For many study participants, life became a
game of dice or cards being controlled by a beneficent force in the face of the insurmountable
huddles they perceived as facing them. The perception was that you could get lucky and
become successful in life. Some of them believed that they might get lucky one day and get a
new job or achieve their unrealistic dreams like becoming a super rapper, a film star or a big
businessman owning a beach resort along the shores of the Mediterranean. Some dreamt
about having their own luxurious villas, a Mercedes or Ferrari one day. Being poor and
socially marginalised in a rich welfare state can breed in the mind of the individual fatalistic
beliefs in the intervention of external forces and delusions of grandiose future success. Such
fantasies are addressed by Wacquant as follows:
Under ... conditions of relentless and all-pervading social and economic insecurity, where
existence becomes reduced to the craft of day-to-day survival and where one must continually
do as best as one can with whatever is at hand, that is, precious little, the present becomes so
uncertain that it devours the future and prohibits thinking about it except as a fantasy”
(Wacquant 1999: 156).
These beliefs and delusions are a powerful nonconscious expression of these youths’ keen
perception of the inequality that characterises the opportunity structure and social mobility in
Norway and the feeling of being socially excluded. Mohamed framed it as follows:
We live in the world’s best country. But [it is] not for everyone. (…) Here in Norway, it is not
just anybody who succeeds. One needs to be lucky in order to succeed. For some people, it is a
matter of everyday survival.
Some of the study participants believed that their lives were predestined by God irrespective
of the outcomes of their efforts or choices. They believed that their predicament was the Will
of God. For example, Jibril expressed the belief that his inability to get a job might be the
Will of God. In answer to the question where he would be in five years, he said the following:
Only God knows, though I have hopes I can share with you. I don’t know what the future will
bring, but I hope to be able to be good to humanity, have a good wife and maybe a child in
five years. [Silence] And learn more about Islam. That’s what I am thinking
Hassan, aged 22, was apocalyptic and adamant that his life was a test by God. He grew up
with his single mother in what he described as a “ghetto” in Sweden before moving to Oslo
five years before this study. He narrated how he grew up in abject poverty, and like Franklin,
could not resist the peer pressure in the disadvantaged neighbourhood with a high
concentration of immigrants in which he grew up. He dropped out of school when he was 16,
became involved in serious crime and went to prison twice. According to him, he had desisted
from crime and had put his former life behind him. He insisted that God created human beings
to test them, to see if they would be faithful to him. All have to give accounts of themselves to
God on judgment day:
Hassan: There’s gonna be a judgment day, man. And that’s what I believe. (…) The world is
gonna go under, man. (…) I think the world we live in is just a game, just a test. (…). I have
to pass the test.
Moses: So you believe that God is testing all of us and whatever we do on earth will determine
our destiny?
Hassan: Hmm [Nodding agreement].
Moses: So what specific tests do you think God has put you through?
Hassan: Everything, man. Every step I took, man, was a test. That was already written, man,
[that] I will do that, I will do that. Everything, man.
Moses: My impression is that you believe in destiny.
Hassan: Yeah, man.
Moses: Then if you believe in destiny it means you don’t have any choice.
Hassan: No, I have a choice. Everybody has a choice, but it’s still destiny, man. It is still
destiny.
Moses: So it means you cannot do anything about your destiny?
Hassan: [Silence] Of course, you can do something with destiny, man.
Moses: You can?
Hassan: Because, we people [human beings], we know what’s wrong and what’s right, man.
Everyone has a choice, man.
Moses: Yeah, you have a choice.
Hassan: If you take the right one or the bad one [if you make a good or bad choice], there
comes a new challenge, you know. That’s destiny, man.
Hassan could accept the challenges he faced in his efforts to go ahead in life because they
were the divine acts of God. His life was already predestined. In this belief, growing up with a
poor single mother in a ghetto could not be held responsible for his life chances. He accepted
his predicament with equanimity because of his faith in God. Such a belief or frame of mind
helped him to cope with his situation. Franklin also expressed belief in the omnipotence of
God. He turned to God after the shooting incidence in which he was nearly killed:
Right now, I have begun to pray very much, so I can have inner peace and forget all those
things. It is a way of cleansing the mind. I cannot change my past. It is only God who can help
you at the end of the day. It is He who has the power. No other person can help you. Everyone
has his or her problems. So, you can get disappointed if you rely on someone. The only person
who cannot disappoint you is God. He will never disappoint you.
Thus, ambivalence, uncertainty, fears, inability to articulate concrete future plans and concrete
steps to achieve them, and fatalistic and religious ruminations seemed to characterise the
future orientations of the study participants. Any prior religious beliefs some of the study
participants might have had seemed to be cemented by their ontological insecurity. Majority
of them narrated that they prayed for God’s intervention in their lives in relation to the various
challenges they had. They emphasised the importance of being spiritual and believed that one
must believe in something higher than oneself, or submit oneself to a higher force in order to
tackle challenges. Such religious beliefs equipped them with a new frame of reference for
understanding and coping with their irrational and unjust ontological insecurity and for
achieving a semblance of longevity or symbolic immortality. It enabled them also to forget
the past and to face the future with hope. Thus, Liban could say “One can change the future,
one cannot change the past”. Felix could also describe himself as an “optimist” because
“religion gives me faith and hope and makes me consider myself an optimist”. In the absence
of any secure future prospects, transcendental hope became central in their views about the
future. Liebow observed the following regarding the future orientations of the young streetinvolved black men he studied in an inner city in the US:
As for the future, the young streetcorner man has a fairly good picture of it…It is a future in
which everything is uncertain except the ultimate destruction of his hopes and the eventual
realization of his fears. The most he can reasonably look forward to is that these things do not
come too soon” (Liebow 1967: 66).
%0-;<:--<););1<-.7: <:)=5)<1+ )6,<-587:):A 8;A+01++47;=:Such is the force of the human thirst for social recognition and self-worth that it can remain
unquenchable. With most of my study participants, that thirst found its consummation in the
sociability of the streets. For these youths are not passive social agents. They tried to make a
sense out of their precarious situation. As noted earlier, for most of them the streets
represented a temporary site of resilience and self-projection where they searched for respect,
belonging, status and a meaningful sense of identity. Liebow (1967) showed how the street
can become a site where disadvantaged black men strive for universal human autonomy and
recognition:
The desire to be a person in his own right, to be noticed by the world he lives in, is shared by
each of the men on the streetcorner. Whether they articulate this desire… or not, one can see
them position themselves to catch the attention of their fellows in much the same way as
plants bend or stretch to catch the sunlight”. (Ibid.: 60-61)
For many study participants, the streets represented sites of momentary psychic and emotional
closure. They participated in the moral economy of the streets and this provided them with a
modicum of sociability and solidarity with their peers in fate. Many study participants
recounted the various loose and shifting constellations of ‘friendships’ they established and
how these constellations were characterised by reciprocal obligations, partying and sensation
seeking. Study participants like Ali, James, Leonard, Felix, Franklin, Hassan, Jamal and
Yusuf were very active in the underground economy of the street. They narrated how the
monies they made through involvement in illegal activities enabled them to cater for
themselves and pay various bills. But it also enabled them to buy the latest sneakers, hip hop
clothes and other status symbols powerful commercial forces target at the youth in
consumerist society. In addition, they maintained a hedonistic lifestyle.
In my earlier study (Kuvoame 2005: 106), Ali whom I also interviewed in the present study,
distinguished between the uses of money that is acquired illegally and money that is acquired
legally. Legally acquired money is used judiciously. Illegally acquired monies come easily, so
you use them lavishly on your friends and for fun in order to project your image. You lose
your status among your criminal peers when the monies run out. Life then becomes boring, so
you have to “work yourself up again” for life to continue. Yusuf also narrated that in Norway,
it is risky to put monies acquired from illegal activities in the bank and you cannot carry them
around. You have to spend them and enjoy life. To him, such monies are not worthy.
Thus, the general orientation the study participants had in relation to money acquired through
illegal activities was very epicurean and purposely for self-projection. This was typical of
Abraham who had a very low status among street-involved BME youths in downtown Oslo.
He was often picked on and beaten up by his street peers. Though we could not have
interviews we scheduled because he was very high or drunk most of the time in between his
prison tours, he volunteered three poems that he recited off hand as his contribution to the
study. I met him several times at a nightclub in Oslo frequented by black youths. He would
buy two or three bottles of expensive champagne on ice and go round from table to table and
offer free champagne to his acquaintances. On two occasions, he pulled out a large wad of
notes and offered to give me money. By offering free expensive champagne to his
acquaintances, he sought to project himself and catch the attention of his peers. The nightclub
became a stage where he attempted to restore his amputated self.
In an interview with Hassan, he narrated with glee the thrill he derived from the hedonistic
lifestyle he fuelled through his criminal activities as follows:
Moses: But Hassan, when you think back now. All those things you did in the past (…)
Hassan: [Interrupts] I don’t regret it, man.
Moses. You don’t regret it?
Hassan: No. No hell, man.
Moses: Why not?
Hassan: Because it was so fantastic, man. It was a good moment.
Moses: In what way?
Hassan: All ways, men. All things (…) it was fun. It was fun.
Moses: You were doing all those things for fun?
Hassan: Hell, no. It was not for fun when I was making the money [committing the crimes]. It
[the crime] was the way [means] to live, men. I have to have food on the table, you know. But
I am talking about the parties, the ladies. All that was fun. That was fun. I don’t regret it. Hell
no, man.
For Hassan and other study participants, crime held both a pecuniary and an emotional or
psychic appeal. The hedonistic lifestyles narrated by the study participants were a coping
strategy, given their ontological insecurity. This hedonistic lifestyle provided them with
psychic and emotional closure, albeit temporary, through the possibility it offered for
sociability and self-projection. This is in line with the observation of Laing (1990) that denied
opportunities where they can feel real and alive, individuals will contrive ways of trying to be
real and preserving their identities. Such a lifestyle is therefore a meaningful existential
choice and should be viewed in terms of their experiences of existential stagnation.
In his book titled Seductions of Crime, Katz (1988) addressed this subjective and emotive
experience of crime and argues that criminal activities involve more than mere acquisition of
money. It can be a means for achieving psychic or emotional needs such as overcoming
boredom, feeling that one is in control over one’s situation or testing the limits. Thus, crime
has a strong magical, sensual or seductive appeal and can be experienced as exciting. Katz’s
work is indispensable to understanding the hedonistic lifestyles narrated by my study
participants. However, as I have argued above, these hedonistic lifestyles should not be
divorced from the general conditions of life of these youths. It is only through a thorough
understanding of the multiple and prolonged marginality these young people experienced and
the psychoaffective injuries thereof, that we can fathom the hedonistic lifestyle they
articulated. Conceptualising such lifestyles and the emotions that underline them are central
issues addressed by contemporary cultural criminology. Such emotions are analysed in the
context of what Young would describe as their “world of broken narratives, where economic
and ontological insecurity abounds” (Young 2003: 391). Such hedonistic lifestyles also reflect
or encapsulate the uncertainty of their future prospects. It is a realistic way of relating to the
future given their existential quagmire.
The streets are sites of resilience. But they are traumatic spaces too, as noted in the last
chapter. Many street-involved youths soon realise that there are traumatic consequences
involved in searching for respect, status, identity, sociability or recognition in the streets. As
Liban noted in relation to life in the street, “There is no life there in the street. There is no
respect”. Mohamed also narrated the emotional pain and feelings of inadequacy involved in
always wearing false masks in the street and consciously trying to articulate what Anderson
(1999: 33) describes as “the code of the street”, or the set of informal norms that prescribe and
govern the proper way to comport oneself, especially in relation to violence, and to respond to
challenges on the street. As Mohamed noted, “It is important to be yourself and stop trying to
become somebody you are not”. The streets can be dangerous places. They can be violent and
in order to navigate it safely one has to adopt a tough or hypermasculine posture. As noted by
Young (2003), such an essentialising posture is an attempt to repel the crisis of identity
engendered by the humiliation and double stigmas of relative deprivation caused by poverty
and unemployment, and misrecognition associated with lower status and lack of respect in the
wider society. It is “a need to combat a feeling of a ‘nobody’, a ‘loser’, a worthless person”
(Ibid: 406).
Many street-involved black youths are confronted with stereotypical images from society as
criminals and bestial as Leonard and Jamal narrated, and with hypermasculine, hypersexual
and aggressive depictions of black men in commercialised gangsta rap music and videos.
Such stereotypical images often create a psychic dissonance for many black youths in relation
to their identity, as I have noted earlier. Some of them may, therefore, be often predisposed to
articulate such images under a false mask, especially under the influence of their peers
resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy, or playing the ‘problem’. Young explains this posture
as follows:
Even the essentialising projections of the better off, the othering of the poor becomes utilized
by the poor to esssentialize themselves. Thus the widespread self-referral as ‘nigga’, the cult
of ’badness’, the ethical inversion of ‘motherfucker’, ‘pimp’ or ‘b-boy” (Ibid: 406-407).
Disenfranchised street-involved BME youths use these false selves or masks to hide their
painful emotions. As Franklin put it, “They hide their feelings, you know. They try to hide
their feelings”. Many study participants narrated the importance of adopting such postures
from time to time in order to navigate the streets. But sooner or later they abandon it because
of the stress involved as intimated by Liban and Mohamed above. According to Dance
(2002), while some street-involved black youths she describes as “street-savvy” may aspire to
be real gangsters, for most black youths the gangsterlike posture is a temporary disposition
adopted strategically to navigate the street. Such postures are not a permanent mind-set, or
career orientation. I argue that in order to understand who these youths really are, we have to
transcend their so-called street-savviness, smartness, competence, wisdom or what I may
describe as “the deficit models of black youth street agency” and explore their painful
emotional worlds.
As I noted earlier, Felix and Mohamed broke down in tears a number of times in course of the
interviews I had with them as they poured out their repressed pains and fears. As streetinvolved, “street wise” or “street-savvy” black youths who articulated the hip hop culture,
people who did not know them well could easily dismiss them as gangsters when they met
them on the street. But were such people to know them well enough, they would have realised
that they were just boys trying to be men. And undoubtedly, Felix and Mohamed would have
projected such a gangsterlike posture, or even exaggerated it, to any journalist or social
scientist interested in their “gangster” activities or narratives. As Cassidy and Stevenson
observed in their study of African American males in a disciplinary school:
…”tears and sighs” are likely to exist under young Black males’ hypermasculine facades; yet,
sadly, those signs of hypervulnerability are often overlooked, minimized, or misinterpreted by
the general public, as evidenced by the persistence of negative stereotypes that dismiss the
vulnerable aspects these youth may possess. By appreciating how these boys may have
feelings and reactions that run contrary to popular assumptions about them, it seems likely that
the public may learn to view these boys with greater accuracy and less bias if they accept the
possibility that they may simultaneously act in both hypermasculine and hypervulnerable ways
(Cassidy & Stevenson Jr. 2005: 70)
Thus, the identity, self-(re)discovery and meaning they attempted to create and achieve on the
street involved a traumatic process for most of them. As Bourgois (2003) showed in his study,
street culture is a site for a search for respect and a protest against racial discrimination and
subjugation. But it also becomes a catalyst for self-destruction and community ruin. In other
words, marginalised from meaningful participation in society, these youths turned to the
streets for psychic and emotional closure only for the street to fail them in spite of their street
savviness or wisdom. Hence, the ever present desire among most of my study participants to
escape the streets. But for many, however, such an escape can be traumatic in itself due to the
closed doors they might meet in the attempt.
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For study participants like Ali and Jamal, the prison played an important role as a place to
seek refuge from the beatings of life. Their attitudes to prison detract from the conventional
view of prison as a correctional or disciplinary institution. The prison has become the most
important bureaucratic or institutional track through which individuals who are defined and
labelled by the criminal justice system as “deviants”, “criminals” or unwanted elements are
channelled with the view to “correcting” their undesirable behaviour (Kuvoame 1994) or what
Mathiesen described as the “return to competence” (Mathiesen 1990 :139). Prisoners undergo
strict disciplinary procedures and the regimentation of their lives and suffer various
deprivations Sykes (1958) described as the pains of imprisonment. These include deprivation
of liberty, of goods and services, of heterosexual relationships, of autonomy and of security.
Yet, Ali and Jamal could consider the prison as a space for refuge. On one of my prison visits
to him, Ali narrated the reputation he had acquired in the prison for helping people to get
parole. He said he felt at home in prison. In other words, he managed to achieve a status or
recognition in prison that he could not in the larger society. I reconstruct below excerpts from
the extended informal conversation I had with him during the visit:
Moses: Why do you feel at home in prison?
Ali: I know that it is not a sound reasoning. But the point is that I have become used it and I
feel at home here. There is too much manipulation out there in society where the powerful
pick on the less powerful, where there is so much competition among people encouraged by a
manipulative media that encourage endless competition among people.
Moses: Is having the freedom to move about freely not important to you?
Ali: Freedom is important and in prison this freedom is restricted. But no matter what prison
officers do, they cannot break me. They can only break me down if they imprison my mother
with me. Even if I like it in prison, my family will experience the stigma attached to having a
son in prison and that is what I regret most. What is upmost in my mind right now is to make it
up to my family.
Ali acknowledged the pains of imprisonment he had to endure in prison and was ready to put
up some resistance in attempts by prison officials to depersonalise or humiliate him. He
acknowledged the pains he had caused his parents. But denied any meaningful participation
and feeling misrecognised in a society that he despised, he chose to isolate himself from that
society and enjoy the status and reputation or prison capital he had built for himself in prison,
though there are costs involved. One can explain the criminal activities Ali always engaged in
as a protest or resistance against the failure to provide him with good aftercare upon his
releases from prison. When Ali was given adequate aftercare and follow-up after one of his
numerous prison sentences he lasted almost eight months before going back to prison. In that
sense, his criminal exploits may be explained as a conscious or nonconscious longing for the
safety of the prison. It is a longing for ontological security, albeit within the constricted walls
of the prison.
Jamal was scared the first time he went to prison, but he described with exhilaration how he
felt the third time he was imprisoned. This was the time he was homeless and deliberately
committed a crime he knew would send him to prison. The following is an excerpt from an
interview with him:
Jamal: Now I was in Ila hospice [hospice for mostly injecting drug addicts] and the day came
[for me] to go to prison. I went there six o’clock in the morning.
Moses: Oh yeah, in the morning.
Jamal: In the morning. They didn’t even open the [prison gates] for me. I had to wait until nine
o’clock. I was waiting outside the prison with my bag [laughing and joined by Moses].
Moses: I am coming. I am ready. I am here to serve [laughing].
Jamal: Yeah, I am ready, mutherfuckers. Are you crazy? I mean, I had so many struggles and
stuff like that. I can’t take it no more. (…) By then, I was not having flashbacks from my
childhood. (…) I was just having problems with drugs and people [isolating myself]. They
opened the prison gate for me and I said ‘please lock me away. I am tired of this shit. Just put
me in one room and start my time. I need it. (…) Start my time when you want to’. They
locked me away and, again, in Oslo Prison. When I came to that room, it tasted sweeter than
anything else in the world. I swear to God. It was like coming to heaven. When they closed
that door, it came like music to my ears [gives a long sigh]. I checked the walls. I checked the
walls. I said, this is a wall, this is a wall, this is a wall. That’s the door. This is the window.
Ok. I opened the fridge and there was milk. I drank the milk, and I laid back and I slept. I slept
four days straight. Four days. They would wake me up, I would take my food and go back to
sleep. [After] four days, I started talking to people in the prison.
Thus like Ali, Jamal did not view the prison as a site for his oppression given his existential
situation, but as a haven against the emotional and psychic onslaughts of the outside world.
When he became homeless another time, Jamal purposely committed crimes so he would go
to prison. Mohamed too narrated how some of his acquaintances preferred staying put in
prison to coming out as follows:
[In prison] They have free accommodation and food. Each time they are released, they do
something in order to go back. I believe many of them commit robbery in order to go back to
prison. They use a lot of drugs and drink heavily upon release [from prison], rob people, hung
around [the crime scene] waiting to be arrested by the police. This is the kind of life I don’t
want to have.
I her study referred to earlier, Lien (2011) found that one out of five ethnic minority inmates
she interviewed in Oslo Prison were very satisfied in prison. She suggests that this can be
understood in terms of the specific pedagogy that is built into the prison system. A career
system has been built into it in that there is movement in time and space beginning from the
lowest level where frustration, depression and despair is greatest after which the situation
becomes better. It is my view that the ontological insecurity some disenfranchised youths
might experience outside the prison setting may also make prison attractive for them. These
marginalised youths are so desperate that they are prepared to exert any effort to achieve any
slightest semblance of ontological security.
)6)/-5-6<7.;0)5- )6,A-):616/ .7:)++-8<)6+As I pointed out earlier, many study participants felt the shame of disappointing their families
or significant persons in their lives and strove to make amends so as to restore the family’s
trust in them. The management of shame also seemed to influence the sort of jobs some of the
study participants would like to do in the future. In order to get some relief from their regrets,
self-blame and shame, some of the study participants yearned to work with children and
young people in the future. For example, one of Ali’s future plans is to “build a huge
entertainment hall in Oslo where different activities and concerts can be organised for
children from different African countries and Norwegian kids. No alcohol will be served”. He
could also think of working directly with young people so he could tell them about a youth
project he enrolled in but could not complete. Similarly, Mohamed, Franklin, and James
would like to work with children and young people. They would like to share the wrong
choices they had made in their lives with young people so as to help steer them away from
wrong choices. Like James, many study participants narrated their love for children and how
they liked playing with them.
Closely linked with this love for children was the hope of many study participants to start
their own families and have children. Some of them believed that finding a good woman to
marry and having children would better their situation. After one of my interviews with
James, he disclosed to me that he was expecting a baby and narrated with exhilaration how he
would care for the baby and provide it with all it would need. He revelled in the prospects of
sharing a home with the child and its mother. As noted earlier, Jamal narrated how he had
tried to take his own life through overdose and would not like to bring any children into this
world. In another informal extended conversation he emphasised “finding a woman, a steady
relationship” and “having a child” and “getting nearer to God” as things he thought would
help him structure his life better. He believed that having a steady relationship “will bring
more stability to my life and make me feel more responsible”. He also talked about the
emotional and loving feelings he would have towards such a child and how this would bring
peace to his mind. He recalled that when he was growing up, he had to do things all by
himself through trial and error, by “falling and rising”. He would cherish the positive feelings
involved in guiding the child to adulthood, and the feelings of having responsibility this
would instil in him. When I asked which of the two he would prioritise, the woman or the
child, he replied “of course, the child” and intimated that the woman might go away, but not
the child. To find out if he had any masculine ideals for wanting a child, I asked him if he felt
having a child would make him feel like a real man. His answer was “I already feel like a
man”. As he narrated further, “I have always loved children and like to play with them. My
feelings for my child will be the same feelings any loving parent would have for his or her
child”.
MacLeod (2009) argued in relation to the disadvantaged youths he studied that fatherhood for
them involved the re-definition of masculinity. Fatherhood seemed to reduce the uncritical
premium they put on masculine toughness. This masculine toughness was transformed into a
new form of self-identity with fatherhood at its core, thereby engendering the capacities to
nurture and care. Fatherhood may indeed engender a transformation of masculine toughness
into a new identity, but it can also be a means of achieving emotional and psychic closure for
disadvantaged youths who struggle with an ontologically insecure existence. For study
participants like James who felt neglected by his parents and Jamal who grew up alone
“falling and rising”, fatherhood may give them the opportunity to give to their children the
love and care they never got when growing up. Moreover, “finding a woman, a steady
relationship” may also be Jamal’s attempt to redeem his lost maternal care or attachment.
Many study participants believed that having a caring woman and children would bring
normalcy back to their lives. Perhaps, it was an expression of their yearning for longevity and
symbolic immortality. However, the prospects of achieving this dream were remote for them.
Some of them also shared with me their humanitarian or pro-social ideals. Yusuf would like
to work as a volunteer for humanitarian organisations in Africa because “it is something that
will benefit me (…) the feeling of being able to help”. Jamal also displayed this humanitarian
spirit on our way to play billiards one day when we were contacted by a representative of
Save the Children, a global humanitarian organisation. Jamal decided to contribute 50
Norwegian crowns (£5) a month to their cause. He believed that his contribution would help a
disadvantaged child or young person somewhere in Africa. These acts of pro-social behaviour
or desire to pay back for their actions may be genuine, but can also be explained as shame
management efforts geared at the resurrection of a new self-image or identity.
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Some of the study participants narrated that they used drugs or alcohol in order to cope with
their feelings of hopelessness. For example, in order to cope with their anger, Ajar and Yasser
narrated that they resorted to getting drunk in order to numb their feelings. Similarly, study
participants like Liban and Leonard were dependent on cannabis in order to cope with their
daily boredom. As Liban put it, “Smoking wee takes away the pain, everything [all the pain],
from me”. Jamal started using heavy drugs at the refugee camp where he felt that he had no
help for his leg injury which he regarded as a critical event in his life. Other study participants
who were very street-involved and participated in open street drug markets narrated how they
used drugs and alcohol either alone or with their friends in order to ease their inner emotional
pains in relation to the challenges they faced in their everyday lives. Mohamed narrated how
he tried to cope with what he experienced as institutional racism in the youth shelter from
which he was expelled as follows:
It was the worst ( ) period I have ever gone through yet. Fucking neighbours. All the people
there were assholes. They didn’t like me ( ) for no reason. They [behaved] in a very racist
manner towards me ( ). I used to go out and drink any time I got irritated, and would come
back in the evening to tell them what I wanted to, you know. Take out all the irritation in me.
But I just worsened the situation by so doing.
From the above interview excerpt, we can see that Mohamed knew his drinking had negative
consequences for him, but because of the pain caused by the injustice he felt, he resorted to it
in order to cope with his situation. Mohamed stopped drinking when he got his own bedsit
from the local Nav office and attended a youth course under the auspices of Nav. The
suggestion here is that some of the study participants might have resorted to using drugs for
self-medication. This was borne out by the fact that most of them did not conceptualise their
drug use as a problem, but were more preoccupied with challenges such as unemployment,
homelessness, everyday racism and racial microaggressions and the challenges they perceived
as having with Nav. Many believed that with a steady employment and housing, they could
cope with their drug habits.
In her book titled Perspectives on Addiction, Fetting (2012, see chapter 7) gives an overview
of various psychoanalytical and psychodynamic theories that view addictions not as selfdestructive behaviours or sociopathy, but as related to the inner emotional and psychological
pains of hopelessness and helplessness addicts may feel. By using drugs, they try to selfmedicate their psychological suffering. For example, through addiction they get a false sense
of empowerment that makes them feel they are in control of their emotional experience and
lives (Dodes 2002, cited in Fetting Ibid). Many addicts also transform uncontrolled or passive
suffering into controlled or active suffering (Khantzian 1999, 2008 2011, cited in Fetting
Ibid). Most addicts do not know whom to ask for help or what to do. This causes a huge
psychological pain and emotional chaos. Drugs are used to change feelings of passive
suffering into active or controlled suffering, since the drugs deadens, quiets or excites one’s
inner emotional turmoil. It is the repeated use of this coping strategy that causes addiction.
Here, the process involved is akin to Laing’s (1990) concept of implosion in which the
individual is aware that something is basically wrong, but at a loss as to how to explore it.
Drugs are used as a coping strategy.
Another coping strategy adopted by some of the study participants was to repress the
challenges they faced by trying to distance themselves from them or to forget them. They
tried to cast them into the Sea of Oblivion (see Berg 2002). Mohamed narrated that he tried as
much as possible not to think about his challenges because he felt that thinking about them
just made him sadder and sadder, though he admitted it was difficult not to think about his
challenges. In order not to think too much about them, he tried to spend as much time as
possible out of his room, since he experienced the thoughts flooding in on him anytime he
was alone in his room. In addition to self-medication, Felix and Jamal also resorted to writing
down their thoughts and everyday experiences. Felix wrote lyrics for songs and started
writing down his life story when he was in prison. Jamal showed me a kind of dairy that he
kept in which he wrote down his experiences in poetic form. The three poems Abraham
recited to me gave me deep insights into his inner emotional pains. In one of the poems, he
lamented the pains he had caused his mother and how he pictured his mother trying to hold
back her tears. He strongly believed that a day would come when he would restore the smiles
back to her beautiful face. In the second poem, Abraham expressed how he mourned inside,
the inner emptiness he felt. He sought to know what happiness or joy really was, how it felt
like and how and where he could find it. He had searched for it all over, but could not find it.
Deploying the powerful literary device of personification, he fervently appealed to Joy or
Happiness to reveal itself to him. In the final poem, he expressed the belief that with a strong
will to carry on, he would one day find the love and affection he so missed in his life.
Through all these coping strategies, these young people tried to impose fragments of meaning
onto their ontologically insecure lives and preserve their authentic selves and subjectivities
which were under constant assault. But do these young people actively seek help or social
support from others in relation to their social, emotional and psychological challenges? I
address this question in the next three chapters.
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As I have pointed out earlier, the need for sociability or to belong is fundamental to human
life such that the kind of social relationships that young people are embedded in and the social
supports they can harvest through those relationships are crucial for their inner life, selfperceptions, dreams, hopes and life chances. This is even more crucial for young people
experiencing various forms of marginalisation and social exclusion. For such young people,
such social supports may help them to surmount their precarious existence and reduce their
risk behaviours or development of such behaviours. Through their social relations with their
families, friends, partners or peers, or significant others young people can have access to
emotional, social, or material support or resources that can have positive effects for their
mental health and feelings of ontological security. Marginalised young people may also come
into contact with societal institutions or professional agencies that offer services these youths
might need to alleviate the challenges they are confronted with in their everyday lives. Thus,
marginalised and street-involved youths can seek both formal and informal care and help.
The main focus in the next three chapters is on the study participants’ perceptions regarding
these forms of help or their subjective feelings of being cared for, esteemed or loved. As
noted by Turner and Brown (2010) perceived support is not only strongly associated with
mental health. Other elements of social support exert their impact through this perception. As
they suggested, understanding the nature of perceived support may be important in relation to
intervention efforts to reduce mental health problems. This focuses on the study participants’
help-seeking behaviours in relation to informal care.
In this chapter I describe the study participants’ general attitude to seeking help, the various
factors that influenced their decisions to seek help and the informal help they could marshal to
go ahead in life.
<<1<=,-;<7;--316/0-48
In order to find out about the social networks the study participants mobilised in order to cope
with their precarious life conditions, I asked each study participant whom they would go to
when they thought they needed help. Without much reflection, majority of them replied “No
one”. A common saying in this regard was “I try to fix it myself. If it works, it works. If it
doesn’t, it doesn’t”. Yusuf put it as follows: “I must fend for myself. ( ) I hate begging for
help. ( ) I prefer to starve to death rather than ask for help”. Also typical was the saying that
“I am my own psychologist” when asked if they would go to a psychologist for help with their
emotional and psychosocial needs. Jibril said the following when I asked him about seeking
help:
Moses: I am wondering about something. If you have something on your heart and feel like
taking it up with someone ( ), if you are worried about something, if you are sad, whom do
you go to?
Jibril: I don’t go to anyone.
Moses: Never?
Jibril: Never.
Moses: Why not?
Jibril: If I get into trouble or I am worried [about something] I consider it my own fault [or
doing]. That is what I think at times as an individual. Of course, (…) I think. I think about how
[I got involved] and what I can do [to come out of the situation].
Leonard also narrated that he would not go to anyone if he was bogged down with worries as
follows:
Moses: Whom do you usually go to if you need help?
Leonard: No one.
Moses: No one?
Leonard: No [one].
Moses: Could you please tell me why you do not go to anyone when you need help?
Leonard: I try to solve my own problems.
Moses: How do you do that?
Leonard: I don’t know. It depends on what the problem is.
Moses: For example, if you are looking for job or if you are down, depressed or sad, if you are
not very happy. Whom do you go to?
Leonard: No one. I just hold out until I become happy again.
Moses: You keep it inside.
Leonard: Yes, a lot of challenges ( ) which I don’t talk about.
Moses: I am wondering. Why don’t you go to anyone with your challenges?
Leonard: I don’t know.
Moses: Is it difficult for you to disclose the challenges you are facing to others?
Leonard: Yes. It is a [personal] weakness I have to tackle. ( ) I don’t feel that other people
should tackle my problems for me, so I try to make them my own thing.
Hassan was even more adamant that he never went to anyone if he had something on his heart
as in the interview excerpts below:
Moses: Hassan. I want to ask you something. If you have something on your heart, if you have
a challenge, whom do you go to for help?
Hassan: [laughs] I don’t know. I don’t have nobody [anybody], man.
Moses: But you have your mother, you have your (…).
Hassan: [Interrupts] No, no, no. We [he and his street involved peers] don’t go down like that
[We don’t go to such lengths] [laughing and tapping on the table].
Moses: Why not?
Hassan: No, man. You know, that’s history, man. I don’t know how to say it, but all my life, I
never went to my mother and father like “I have this problem, can you help me up [out]”. ( ) I
always take care of myself, man. Any problem, man. ( ) I want to be a man. ( ) Like a man
[you] should do everything alone.
Leonard, Jibril, and Hassan, like most other study participants, seemed to have low
motivations for seeking help in general, despite the fact that they acknowledged the need for
help in relation to the challenges they had. As noted earlier, while all the study participants
believed in the ethic of individual effort and responsibility, they also agreed that one could
encounter challenges in life for which they might need assistance. Nevertheless, majority
displayed a low motivation to seek help. Several factors might help to explain this general
level of low motivation to seek help. For Jibril, the responsibility he felt for the mistakes or
wrong choices he thought he had made detracted from his reaching out to others for help. He
would rather find his own solutions for his own mistakes rather than burden other people with
them. For Leonard, it might be the strong sense of autonomy and independence he felt that
might explain his reluctance to reach out to other’s for help. He acknowledged that he had
challenges for which he needed help, but chose to repress them fearing the shame and the
feelings of personal inadequacy that might be involved in depending on others. With Hassan,
this sense of independence or autonomy was tied to what he perceived as his masculine
gender role. In his perception, a male should find solutions to his own problems. In a similar
vein, Mohamed would feel embarrassed to ask for help from his mum or father because he felt
that as a man, he had to tackle his challenges himself for which reason he said he had concrete
plans for his future and hoped to carry them through. Thus, like the street-involved blacks
kids in Nightingale’s study, the masculine gender codes of behaviour Mohamed and Hassan
felt they shared with their peers seemed to make them feel the compulsion to repress their
painful emotions, disguise or hide them in order to protect themselves. In tandem with what
he might have considered his masculine gender role, Hassan adopted a sexist coping strategy
in relation to the periodic bouts of depression he said he used to have due to conflicts with his
mother, as he narrated in the following interview excerpt when I asked him to whom he would
go for help if depressed:
Hassan: Ooh, men (…) if you are sad and depressed, you have to find yourself a woman then.
Find yourself a girl. ( ) I used to do that back in the [those] days. When I was depressed ( ) I
went to a girl. We had sex. I would smoke weed and just chilled there, relaxing. That day was
finished, then there’s [there would be] a new day.
Moses: So this thing about going to a girl. Do you tell the girl about how you feel?
Hassan: No, no, no (…).
Moses: Or it’s just for sexual healing.
Hassan: Yeah, only sexual (…) ( ). I am not [going] to tell a girl “you know what happened
[between] me and my mum? We just argued. What should I do?” Hell no!
Moses: So that means sex was a therapy or something.
Hassan: Yeah, as a therapy, man [laughing]. I used to do that. Every people have [
Everyone has] a way to express himself [deal with their challenges]. I used to do that.
As we shall see later, several other factors such as past positive and negative experiences,
feelings that there was nowhere to go for help or that no one could understand how they felt,
the desire not to bother others, lack of knowledge about services, trust or cultural mistrust,
poor information about services, perceptions of services, sense of stigma, and so on, may all
help explain the study participants low motivation to seek help.
The data seem to suggest, however, that this low motivation to seek help from all sources,
including informal sources, might be primarily related to the study participants’ belief in own
effort or ‘self-help’ in relation to resolving the challenges they faced in their daily lives.
Irrespective of the nature of the challenges that they had, they seemed to put much premium
on individual effort. This is in line with the findings of Snell (1995). The street-involved black
males in his study were more inclined to solving their own problems. One of the conclusions
one can draw from Chapter 7 is that my study participants exerted themselves through various
coping strategies to impose meanings on their fragmented lives. In spite of their existentially
insecure lives, they depicted themselves, not as passive victims of circumstances absolutely
out of their control, but as virtuosic social agents striving for self-fulfilment and
consummation through own efforts. This mind-set, the belief in exerting oneself through selfeffort to go ahead in life, coupled with feelings of autonomy and independence run through
most study participants’ accounts of help-seeking in relation to the challenges they had. Such
feelings in turn seemed to reflect their beliefs in the Norwegian cultural ethic of self-reliance
in which dependence on others is shunned. The study participants’ belief in individual effort
to solve own problems may also be related to their sense of resilience, belief in the
intervention of beneficent forces and the hope that things would finally turn out to be fine.
For all these reasons, most of the study participants seemed to set themselves high thresholds
for reaching out to others for help. While resilience in the face of adversity might be a
positive thing, several coping strategies adopted by study participants such as excessive use of
alcohol, dependence on cannabis and other drugs for self-medication, involvement in crime
and violence, repression of feelings, reluctance to seek help, sexism, and so on, tended to have
negative outcomes for them. Moreover, the feeling that they could solve their challenges on
their own turned out to be exaggerated in some cases as was the case with Jamal. He felt that
he could exercise control over his drug addiction, but later had to seek professional help.
Other factors came into play, once the study participants decided to reach out for help or were
referred to professionals for help.
-+1,16/<7;--30-48%0-6<-:6)476>-:;)<176
The study participants narrated that they thought a lot or reflected upon their social situation
and they made concrete efforts to go ahead in life. The decision to get out of the street and
reach out for help seemed to be underlined by several factors including events the study
participants perceived as critical in their lives. Liban decided to seek help for his drug
addiction because of the death of his two close buddies through drug overdose in course of
two weeks. Moreover, thoughts about his dead father came back to haunt him filling him with
shame and regret that he had not lived up to his father’s expectations. He felt that time was
running out on him. This made him resolve to stop using drugs and took concrete steps in that
regard:
Liban: ( ) I was using drugs and time was running out. Those [I knew] who lived yesterday,
are not alive today. Friends I played with [hanged out with] four weeks ago are not alive
today. I cannot [hang out] with them anymore. Yesterday, I tried to call him [on the phone]. I
forgot that he was dead, you know. ( ) One should see it as a [bad] sign [for his own fate]. ( )
It is painful to lose people around me. ( ) I want to be a good man. ( ) I am not happy with
what I am doing. This is no life.
For Hassan, it was his traumatic experiences in Mogaditsu when his father sent him there for a
year that made him reflect more on his own life. His experiences seemed to galvanise him into
deep philosophical and religious reflections: “One day you have to leave it [thug life] behind
man. ( ) I have seen people die in front of me. I have seen blood. I have seen all that, men. I
have seen explosions [Silence]. Just talking about it makes me (…). My experience in
Somalia changed me so much”. ( ) I want to go legit”. Mohamed decided to quit dealing in
drugs and hanging around streets corners and reach out for help because he felt that the street
drug markets became “harder” and most of his street peers started using heavier drugs and
some of them became hooked on heroin, cocaine and other drugs. As he put it, “I am happy I
don’t hang out there anymore. Those who continue to hang out there have destroyed their
lives. ( ) I am not stupid”. Jamal too began to think more seriously about his drug addiction
after what he observed at the hospice for drug addicts when he was sent there by Nav. His
experiences at the hospice had an awakening effect on him. Thus, most study participants
reflected upon their lives as conscious and thinking subjects, weighing several ways of getting
out of their deplorable situations. Yusuf underscored this when he told me that he often used
to converse with himself or self-reflect when I asked him what he thought about the interview
I had with him. Archer depicts human subjects as having thinking, deliberating, intending and
believing capacities. As reflexive social agents they deploy their own personal powers to act,
influence or transform their social situation. She uses the concept of ‘internal conversation’ to
describe this personal reflexivity transcending the often caricatured and predetermined images
of human agents on offer in the media and mainstream academia. As she puts it:
…agents have to diagnose their situations, they have to identify their own interests and they
must design projects they deem appropriate to attain their ends. At all three points they are
fallible: they can mis-diagnose their situations, mis-identify their interests, and mis-judge
appropriate courses of action. However, the fundamental question is not whether they do all
this well, but how they do it at all. The answer to this is held to be ‘via the internal
conversation’. This is the modality through which reflexivity towards self, society and the
relationship between them is exercised. In itself it entails just such things as articulating to
ourselves where we are placed, ascertaining where our interests lie and adumbrating schemes
of future action (Archer 2003: 9).
Franklin emphasised, among other things, the importance of understanding how streetinvolved BME youths think, their aspirations, hopes and dreams when I asked him to suggest
how to work with such youths. As we shall see later, the positive relationships some of the
study participants had with certain professionals were informed by the ability of these
professionals to tap into these youths’ internal conversations and to engage them in a reflexive
dialog in relation to these conversations.
.
)514A)6,5)<-:6)4 0-48
As I pointed out earlier, most of the study participants narrated strong emotional attachments
to their families, even though they articulated a strong sense of autonomy and independence.
Even James, who felt neglected by his parents and hated his father decided later on to forgive
and reconcile with them. When I pressed the study participants further with hypothetical
scenarios in relation to absolute need for help, majority of them mentioned their parents,
uncles and aunts. A number of them also mentioned their girlfriends. For example, Felix
believed that his family was trying to help him secure a job. Anthony narrated the huge
material and emotional support he got from his immediate and extended family. Many study
participants also talked about being invited home by uncles and aunts for food and other
nurturing activities. The implication here is that the study participants received a modicum of
material and emotional support from their parents, extended families or friends and would
turn to them at times if they were sad, felt lonely or hurt, or if they thought they had
something pressing in their hearts to divulge to someone.
However, the parental or familial figure that most turned to was their mother. None of the
study participants narrated any helping relationships with their fathers, though by sending him
to Somalia, Hassan thought upon hindsight that his father helped him to desist from crime.
Many study participants recounted how their mothers had been a veritable source of
motivation, advice and care for them. For example, Felix felt that his mother was someone he
could talk to: “She understands me, she understands me” and felt that he could always go to
her if he had something on his heart. He also recounted how his mother tried to help and
motivate his elder siblings. Mohamed also narrated how his mother had been an important
source of motivation for him to never give up trying to go ahead in life. Though he would not
burden his mother with his problems, especially his drug and alcohol use, he said the
following about his mother: “She is very important in my life. She has taken care of me all my
life. She brought me to Norway. Otherwise, I would not have had the opportunity to come
here. She tries to do her possible best for us”. Leonard also stated that though he would not
take up very personal issues with his mother, “she gives me advice as to how to become a
better person no matter how huge my challenges are; that I must just tackle it as it is. (
)
Though I do not go to anyone in the family with my problems, I always talk to my mother
whether or not I have a problem”. Franklin would not blame his parents for his predicament
because they were always there for him and motivated him to go to school. He would not
hesitate to turn to the family for help because he had good contact with them, especially after
the shooting incidence in which he was shot several times. As he put it:
I got more support from the family than I got from society. ( ). The family, it is they who care
often. They try to support you in all ways and never give up on you because they want you to
have a good life. ( ) Had I listened to them, they would have supported me more
economically, given me advice, many, many things that I need. Clothes, love and affection, to
show that they cared for me more than others [the gang he belonged to] do.
When I asked him what he meant by “family”, he answered “mum and siblings”. Yasser and
Ajar would not go to anyone for help if they had something on their heart, except their
mothers as reflected in the following interview excerpt:
Ajar: For us, mum is God
Yasser: God.
Ajar: ( ) I don’t know how to translate it [proverb from the Arabic] Paradise is under the foot
of your mother [says it in Arabic]. (…) She is the one who gives everything [she gives all of
herself to us. She sacrifices herself for us] ( ). Without her, I would have been nothing. I
would not have been Ajar.
Yasser: ( ) She was the one who gets me going [motivates me].
Ajar: ( ) Actually, I love my mother more than my father
Yasser: The same applies to me. I don’t see my father [in the same light] as I [see my mother]
(…).
When I asked Yasser about his conception of a good helper, he answered “My mother”. A
number of study participants also mentioned their girlfriends as persons they could confide in,
though majority of them would not. For example, Liban narrated the central role his
Norwegian girlfriend played in his life. He felt that she supported him through her love and
affection, pieces of advice, encouragement and motivation. Some of the study participants
also narrated that they would have confided in their wives had they been married.
Thus, most of the study participants would turn to key women in their lives, especially their
mothers for emotional support, though they might not divulge all personal challenges to them.
They perceived these women as important sources of care, help or emotional support. In a
group discussion, one of the participants underscored this with the following statement: “They
are meeker. They understand more”. This suggests that in the perceptions of majority of
study participants, key women in their lives were more willing to listen and understand, and
could more easily give care, affection and advice they thought they needed, and less likely to
be moralising than the men who were almost not present in their lives. As noted earlier, what
Mohamed felt as an important source of shame to him were the gossips and questioning
gestures from elderly Somali men he often met in Oslo regarding cultural expectations of a
young man his age. He perceived such gestures as moralising. The fact that majority of the
study participants did not mention men in their lives as key sources of care may be explained
by their perceptions that such men were distant or tended to be sterner, moralising and
discipline oriented than the significant women in their lives.
It is, however, important to point out that most study participants would not divulge all their
personal challenges to their mothers because of the pain they felt that would cause them. They
felt the need to protect their mothers from their challenges. As Jibril put it, “It is easier for me
to talk to my mother [than my father], but I don’t like it [taking up issues with her] because I
don’t want my mother to experience the bad things that I do. I don’t want to worry my
mother. It is the worst thing I can imagine. I don’t want to make her cry.” Similarly,
Mohamed would not burden his mother with his problems because that would make her
sadder. But he was convinced that his mother was aware of his challenges anyway. Instead of
burdening his auntie and her marriage with his challenges, Yusuf voluntarily decided to
contact the Child Welfare instead, when he was 16 years old. Most of the study participants
hid their involvement in criminality and use of illegal drugs from their mothers, though like
Mohamed, some of them narrated that their mothers were aware of this anyway and advised
them against such risk behaviours.
Thus, despite the fact that the study participants came from families that experienced various
strains as noted earlier, they perceived their families, especially their mothers as a veritable
source of emotional and social support, though they were careful as to what challenges to take
up with their families so as not to overburden them. Snell (1995) observed that the streetinvolved black males in his study tried to solve their own problems or keep them in the
family, and that they were preoccupied with caring for the family. According to him, these
black youths did not view this as pathological, but as the source of strengths that they needed
in order to resist or withstand the racist oppressions they experienced in their everyday lives.
My study seems to confirm his argument.
:1-6,;)6, <0-57:)4-+7675A7.<0-;<:--<
Though they were acquainted with and hanged out with many different street peers, only few
study participants stated that they would divulge their personal emotional issues to their street
peers/friends. And those who would turn to their friends distinguished clearly between street
peers they associated themselves with and real friends who were not street-involved. Ajar and
Jibril lamented how difficult it could be to make real friends in Norway. They were careful
about whom they regarded as friends, but said they had friends they could confide in, but not
in relation to family issues, suggesting that they would rather keep such issues within the
family. Jamal had no friends and isolated himself most of the time. Jibril was ambivalent in
relation to what his friends meant for him. He dismissed the idea of having a best friend as
“Bullshit”, and was careful with whom he hanged out since he didn’t want anyone to exploit
or misuse him. He would discuss issues about girls with his friends at times, but not sensitive
issues. Apart from Yusuf who described himself as “the lone wolf” in relation to other BME
youths, study participants like Felix, Mohamed, Liban, James, Leonard, Franklin and Anthony
said they had and knew many street peers and other people who frequented open street drug
markets in down town Oslo. However, they did not regard these as friends. Moreover, they
distinguished clearly between their street peers and friends who were not involved in the
street as in the follow interview excerpt with Franklin:
Moses: Franklin, do you take up your problems and challenges with your friends?
Franklin: Yes (…) I don’t have (…) I know the whole city. I know many people, but I cannot
say all are my friends. I have say two, three friends. Two, three, four friends to whom I can
disclose my problems (…). ( ). [The others] hide their problems ( ). They are ( ) fake.
They don’t care [about you]. They have their own problems. They cannot help you. They
cannot help me (…).
Moses: But the three, four friends you can talk to, what do you normally take up with them?
Franklin: ( ) I go to the church with those who are my real friends because I know they really
care about me.
Liban also narrated the following when I asked him about his friends and what help he
thought he could get from them. I interviewed him at Riverside Youth House. From the office
where I interviewed him, we could see some street-involved BME youths dealing drugs or
hanging around the open drug market at Vaterland:
Moses: Do you have any friends here?
Liban: Just look at the [kind of] people here. There are no friends [here]. All of them are trying
to survive.
Moses: So they are not friends.
Liban: They are just buddies [who] know each other. [Imitating what they say when buddies
meet] “Hi, hi, what’s up? Are you OK? Are you surviving?” But all of them have their [own]
problems. There’s not even one person you can go to if you have problems.
Moses: So you don’t discuss your problems with them?
Liban: I am sure many [of them] have more problems than I have.
Moses: So the young people here don’t talk about their challenges?
Liban: No one talks [about them].
Mohamed too stated the following regarding having friends:
I talk to many people. I know many people in town. I have many buddies, many. I know about
all the people who live at Grønland [suburb of Oslo with high concentration of immigrants]
and about half the people who live at Tøyen [suburb of Oslo with high concentration of
immigrants]. And I know other people here and there. I ( ) know many [of them]. They call
me on the phone and I also call them. But (…) they don’t know who I am inside ( ). I will
never trust my buddies.
Thus, almost all the study participants were careful not to disclose sensitive personal and
emotional issues with their street peers or others they might regard as friends. Many were
careful whom they associated themselves with. Regarding their reluctance to confide their
personal emotional issues in their street peers, one can argue that street-involved BME youths
articulate masculine street values that dictate against showing signs of weakness or
effeminacy (see, for example, Snell 1995, 2003, and Nightingale 1993). Pouring out your
emotional pains to others on the street may be deemed unmanly and result in being picked
upon. Hence, such pains must be worn under the cloak of false or inauthentic selves. But
another explanation can also be that street-involved BME youths may not disclose their
personal emotional challenges to their street peers because they perceive such street peers as
comrades in fate, or even worse off than themselves. One can also argue, as according to
Nørbech and Farshbaf (2007), that there are no friendships to be made on the streets or open
street drug markets.
However, many study participants actually narrated hanging out with different street peers or
those they might regard as “friends” depending on the occasion. Liban was close enough with
two buddies for their sudden death through overdose to trigger in him deep self-reflections.
For example, Felix hanged out and partied with friends and lavished his money on them. He
said the following about the importance of sociability on the street and friends in that regard:
Felix: The friends that I have now [are] not friends that are (…). They are friends that are (…).
You know, we are mental beings. Human beings ( ) need contact, reciprocity; even if we
quite pretend we don’t many times. So I have those friends that will sit [I’ll sit down with:
spend time with] and have discussions, super (…), I don’t want to say superficial, but
something [discussions] that will not be heavy on my shoulders or his shoulders so we can
(…) yeah, just, just spend the day. Yeah, I have friends like that. But I have [other] friends too.
I have friends like [mentions known names] ( ).
Moses: What is the difference? Can you go to [name of one of the friends he mentioned]?
Felix: What is the difference? The friends I am hanging with now ( ) don’t expect nothing
[anything, help] from me. If they expect something from me, then it’s stupid [superficial
demands]. ( ) But if it is smoke, if it is watching a funny movie, if it is taking a couple of
beers, calling some girls up on a Friday night (…). Well that is the issue. [Silence]. [Low and
slow voice] I mean, if tomorrow I wake up and I get a job and get back to [become] who I can
be, [that is being] very responsible with my money and very visionary when it comes to ideas,
then I can go and propose something to those people I call [real] friends, propose something
tangible ( ).
Mohamed and Hassan too narrated the good times they would share with street peers they
considered as close buddies or friends. For though there are many peer and street strains
associated with involvement in street culture, that culture is also characterised by sociability,
conviviality and reciprocity as noted by Felix. Street-involved youth may not disclose their
personal emotional issues with their peers or friends. Nevertheless, they may become part of
the different and changing constellations of friendship one can identify in street culture or
open street drug markets. Such constellations of comradeship are characterised by reciprocity
or mutual obligations such as accommodating a homeless buddy, sharing joints or alcohol,
borrowing of money, partying and so on. Such acts define the moral economy of the street.
But the moral economy of the street can also be characterised by opportunism, as Mohamed
narrated in the following interview excerpt:
Some people are different. You can see it. So I talk to those who talk to me and who are nice
to me [those who are prepared to share things with me]. You will understand if you have the
brains [to read the situation: if you are street smart]. ( ) They come to me when I have a joint.
I know they will come to me. They see it when I sit [when I am making a joint]. ( ) They will
come to you. I am not stupid. I don’t deny them the joint. I share it with them. And I know
they will share [their joints] with me next time, ( ). That is the kind of buddies we have. Just
share such small things [with them], not small things [actually], but shit such as a joint and
alcohol ( ). ( ) If I see that some people want to share with me, then I share with them so I
can get from them if I don’t have. That is how it is. Just use your head [brains].
As Bourgois and Schonberg showed in relation to the injecting drug addicts they studied,
these addicts were held together by a moral economy of sharing. They described this as
follows:
This gift-giving envelops them in a web of mutual obligations and also establishes the
boundaries of their community. Sharing enables their survival and allows for expressions of
individual generosity, but gifts often go hand in hand with rip-offs … Gifts of money … and
food were the primary means – aside from sharing drugs – they used to define and express
friendships, organize interpersonal hierarchies, and exclude undesirable outsiders (2009: 6).
Thus, though street-involved youths may mistrust their street peers and find it difficult to
make “real” friends, the constellations of friendships they may be part of may make them feel
a shared sense of solidarity of resistance. Such constellations may also serve as sources of
emotional support, belonging, respect, protection and status for many street-involved youths
under different situations. Some of these constellations of friendships have a nucleus made up
of street peers or friends who have known one another for many years. Within these long
lasting constellations, peers may perceive others in the constellation as real friends and more
like brothers with associated emotional attachments and care giving. Some of these
friendships often continue into their adult lives and may become veritable sources of
emotional supports for them. As will be shown later, the constellations of friendship streetinvolved youths may establish have important implications for outreach work and intervention
strategies targeted at such youths.
755=61<A:-;7=:+-;
In addition to the familial and friendship social supports the study participants could fall on, I
explored their use of own community resources, especially community-based organisations,
significant others, priests, and Imams. A number of study participants narrated that they had
some elderly people outside the family that they could turn to for help. For example, apart
from the extensive emotional support he thought he could marshal from his parents and
extended family, Anthony narrated that he had a number of people from his home country
living in Oslo whom he could turn to if he needed help: “I can just [decide] to go to them if I
need help and they will help me if they can”. Mohamed also mentioned an elderly Somali
man who used to advise him to quit the street and stop using drugs and alcohol, though this
elderly Somalia man also hanged out a lot in the street. Though he felt that the man genuinely
cared for him, Mohamed would not like to end up like him. He did not regard him as his role
model. Apart from Anthony and Mohamed, none of the study participants narrated any other
significant persons they could fall on for emotional support. Mohamed was especially
sceptical of turning to his own community because he felt that a lot of gossip went on within
the community. Similarly, Ajar and Yasser would not turn to their communities for help.
Mohamed became a youth leader in a youth project under the auspices of CAMPCOM and
Jamal also participated briefly in the same project. Three BME youths I had informal
extended conversations with also participated in the project. They met other youths in the
project who shared similar conditions of life and had the opportunity to do activities together
and engage in dialog about issues they were preoccupied with in the presence of adult
caregivers. They were satisfied with the project. Otherwise, none of the study participants
were involved with any voluntary community-based organisation or youth projects.
Throughout the study, I did not observe any representatives of community-based
organisations reaching out to marginalised BME youths in open street drug markets in
downtown Oslo or other urban spaces used by such youths.
Many study participants narrated the importance of religion in their lives during the
interviews. Many said they prayed about their challenges and freely professed their religious
beliefs. Mekonen (2011) studied the important role religion plays in the lives of non-western
immigrants in Oslo, and the important roles that priests, Imams and other religious leaders
play in the promotion of the mental well-being of various migrant groups. I asked my study
participants if they would go to a priest or Imam with their personal emotional issues or
challenges. Majority of study participants who professed their Islamic religious beliefs would
not turn to Imams for emotional support. This included those who wanted to embrace Islam
anew. Some of them would turn to Imams, but solely in relation to religious issues or
clarifications. Petrus narrated that he eventually turned to a priest for emotional support in
relation to his father’s alcoholism. Felix too narrated that he later on called a priest in Sierra
Leone on the phone. The priest listened to him and explained to him what really happened to
his father during the genocide there. Yusuf really wanted to start going to the Mosque again
and interact with other Muslims. However, he said the following when I asked if he would go
to an Imam for help with the challenges facing him:
Yusuf: ( ) it is humiliating to fall out from the normal system [to become marginalised] (…).
Having become a criminal and drug addict like me, it becomes difficult to continue there [to
go back to the mosque: to become a practising Muslim], though it is my wish and dream to go
[back] to the Mosque; not to become an extremist, but for the spiritual [upliftment]. It would
have saved me a lot. [But] there is something, some fear; dread (…), [the] fear of failing
[again] that scares me from going to the Mosque today. I don’t know. I wish I were as scared
of going to a bar today as I am of going to the Mosque ( ).
Moses: Could you explain that to me? What you are saying is important. Are you thinking
about how people will perceive you?
Yusuf: Yes, yes. Because, you know, the Somali community there (…) ( ). People from the
Mosque used to come to us at the River [open street drug market] and on many occasions ( ) I
told them I could not follow them to the Mosque ( ). You can go to the Mosque even if you
drink alcohol. But [coughs] to be seen coming to the Mosque and later on not being able to
stay put ( ). That scares me. ( ). The fear of failing again.
Thus, though he wanted to go back to his Islamic religious practices, Yusuf harboured strong
reservations against doing so. The stigma and humiliation he felt as a drug addict and criminal
engendered in him the fear of being rejected by others he would meet in the Mosque. He must
work with the stigma of his drug addict identity first before approaching the Mosque.
However, the most important thing that hindered him was the strong sense of failure he was
burdened with because of his lived experience of prolonged marginality. He had endured
multiple failures in the face of his ontological insecurity and would not risk another failure.
The question therefore arises as to how the Mosque could reach out to him and help him come
to terms with his fears and pains. More than other drugs addicts, those with minority ethnic
background are looked down upon in their own immigrant communities in Oslo. The same
applies to marginalised BME youths who frequent open street drug markets. The feelings of
stigma and rejection these youths may harbour in relation to their communities may cut them
off from any social supports such communities can offer, and make it difficult for natural
helpers in those communities to reach them. These youths tend to reject their rejecters.
Almost all the study participants had very limited social support networks from which they
could draw social supports. They lacked spaces and sources of trust, affection, care and love
in their own communities where they could get help to come to terms with their painful and
repressed emotions. For most of them, the formal helping system represented an alternative
source of help and became their last resort in some cases.
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In their transitions to adulthood, young people can also have important relationships with
important societal institutions that offer specific services these youths might need in order to
go ahead in life. This is especially the case with marginalised youths who experience
disrupted relationships and have limited informal social networks. All my study participants
had had or still had contacts with formal or professional sources of help during the study.
Most of them had cumulative interactions with the social and welfare services and some from
a young age. The two most important formal sources of help in this regard were the Child
Welfare Service (CWS) and local Nav offices. These two institutions, among other
institutions, are important pillars of the Norwegian welfare state. They are bureaucratic
personifications of some of the central humanitarian and democratic values that undergird the
welfare state such as equal opportunity, social solidarity, social cohesion/social inclusion, and
security for all. In what follows, I centre the voices of the study participants regarding their
interactions and experiences with these two formal sources of help, as well as other
professional helpers they interacted with.
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The CWS is meant to play an important role in the transitions to adulthood of children and
young people who experience various challenges such as disruptive relationships, neglect or
abuse in Norway. This role is spelled out in the Child Welfare Act of 17 July 1992 that came
into force on January 1, 1993. The Act was subsequently amended, the most recent one by
Act of 19 June 2009 No. 45 which came into force on January 1, 2010. The Act spells out two
main objectives for the CWS: to ensure that children and young persons who live in
conditions that may be detrimental to their health and development receive the necessary
assistance and care at the right time, and to help ensure that children and young people grow
up in a secure social environment (Section 1-1). The provisions apply to children under the
age of 18. However, with the consent of the child, measures implemented before the child has
reached the age of 18 may be maintained or replaced by other measures stipulated in the Act
(Section 1-3).
The CWS is charged with both preventive activities (Section 3-1) and assistance to children
and families (Section 4-4). In terms of its preventative activities, the CWS has the duty of
closely monitoring the conditions under which children live, and to frame measures to prevent
neglect and behavioural problems. The CWS has the responsibility for bringing to light
neglect and behavioural, social and emotional problems at an early stage to avoid lasting
problems, and for instituting measures to this end. It is required to contribute to provide the
child or young person with sound circumstances and opportunities for development through
professional advice, guidance and assistance and concrete support. Such supports include the
appointment of personal support contact; ensuring that the child is given a place at a
kindergarten; providing a respite home or respite measures at home or a stay in a centre for
parents and children or other parental support measures; initiation of measures that encourage
the child to take part in leisure activities, or contribute to ensuring that the child is offered
training and employment, or an opportunity to live away from home; placing the home under
supervision by appointing a supervisor for the child; providing financial support and other
measures. The CWS is charged with implementing measures that are best for the child, at the
right time, and follow up assistance by monitoring the progress of the child and the parents,
assessing whether the assistance provided is appropriate, and if relevant, whether new
measures are necessary, or whether there are grounds for taking the child into care. All
measures shall be evaluated on a regular basis.
The responsibility and administration of the Law is divided between the central government
child welfare authorities at the ministerial and regional levels, and the municipal child welfare
service (Section 2). However, most of the measures stipulated in the Act are under the gambit
of the municipalities. The municipality child welfare administration is charged with
performing the day-to-day child welfare work, including providing advice and guidance,
making administrative decisions in accordance with the Act or recommending such decisions
if deemed appropriate, preparing cases for consideration by the county social welfare board,
and implementing and following up child welfare measures (Section 2-1). The Act also
regulates institutions for children, care centres for minors and the placement of children.
We can see from the above that the CWS can play an important role in the transitions of
young people who experience disruptive relationships or experience neglect and abuse. The
CWS can function as a haven for such young people cushioning them from their ontologically
insecure lives. However, whether the CWS is able to deliver its mandate or not depends on
how the measures stipulated by the law are understood and implemented by the various
bodies and professionals charged with actualising the Act. Moreover, how the young people
who come into contact with the institution perceive the services they are offered is crucial in
determining whether the CWS has achieved its aims in relation to these youths.
Majority of the study participants had had contact with the CWS. Felix first came into contact
with the CWS when he stole his “first car” at the refugee camp where he and his mother lived
when they arrived in Norway. The police involved the CWS when he was arrested. The
second time he came into contact with the institution was because of his criminal activities
and drug use when he moved to Oslo. Ali came into contact with the CWS because of the
petty crimes he committed with his peers at the age of 13. So did Franklin and Ajar. Liban’s
drug use at an early age brought him into contact with the CWS. Petrus first came into contact
with the CWS because of the violence his alcoholic father visited on his mother, and again in
connection with his child whom the CWS had taken into care because of the neglect the child
suffered from its mother who lived with her troubled parents. Yasser too had a brief contact
with the CWS when his parents got divorced. Salma also had a brief contact with the CWS
when she was 13, because she hanged around a lot in downtown Oslo and the school
channelled her to the institution. Hassan had contact with the equivalent of the CWS in
Sweden before moving to Norway. Among the many study participants who had had contact
with CWS, it was only Yusuf who took contact with them voluntarily. The pathways of others
to the CWS were either through written concerns from their schools and through the police
because of their criminal activities. These pathways triggered investigations into their families
by the CWS.
Franklin felt that the CWS really wanted to help him in relation to the peer strains that he
experienced. He felt that they would have helped him had he not travelled outside Norway at
that time. Liban also felt that the CWS would have helped him had he maintained contact with
them. During the brief contact he had with the CWS when he was 13 years old, he was age
tested but felt that the result was wrong. According to him, some people hid him from the
CWS until he turned 18. Yusuf also narrated how he liked the care institution the CWS placed
him in. It was away from Oslo in the mountains “But I liked the life there (
) physically
[because of outdoor activities] and mentally, and the nature ( ). So I liked it when I lived in
the mountains for three years alone with two social workers”. He lived mostly alone with two
social workers who took care of him in turns. There were other young people in the
institution, but Yusuf felt that he could not relate much to them and the other social workers
there. He later felt his privacy violated because the children of the head of the institution who
lived with their parents in the vicinity used to come to the institution and used the common
TV room. He protested and a quarrel broke out. Yusuf narrated the communication problems
that he experienced between him and some workers at the institution as follows:
Yusuf: ( ) I don’t like to be ordered by (…) [people].
Moses: Why not?
Yusuf: I can take orders from my mother, father, but not just anyone. No, no, no ( ). Talk to
me in a way, ask me [about things politely] (…). I can be a very humble person, but at times, I
become too proud [I resist being ordered].
Moses: But it is a matter of how they talk to you.
Yusuf: Yes, how they talk to me. ( ) It is not that it is difficult for me to accept rules. It is the
way people talk [to me] that is the most important. ( ) And I also had problems with how I
expressed myself. [It] was wrong that they misunderstood what I meant.
Moses: You felt they did not understand what you said?
Yusuf: Yes, yes, yes. And it’s like [I feel] some Norwegians can be irritating. ( ) They irritate
you in one way or the other. They are good at smiling, but can throw in [a dry humour] and I’ll
be at a loss as to how to respond. [All of a sudden] I’ll just retort by saying “Hell, I’ll kill
you”. ( ) Those were some of the things which happened during my contact with the child
welfare service.
On the one hand, Yusuf felt devalued or humiliated by the derogatory manner in which he
perceived the social workers at the institution as communicating rules and regulations to him.
On the other hand, he found it difficult to give them a feedback as to how he felt inside. This
often led to communication problems where he felt misunderstood. He often resorted to anger
as a defence mechanism or coping strategy which turned out to have negative consequences
for him. He felt that he could not manage his temper and the social workers at the institution
seemed not to construe his emotional outbursts as a symbolic expression of his frustrations
over his inability to adequately communicate his feelings. In this instance, we can see how the
communication problems that may unfold in a client-helper interaction can detract from
common understandings of challenges and the much needed trust in such helping
relationships. As pointed out by Paulsen et al. (2014), ensuring a good flow of information
and mutual understanding is a challenge in child welfare in general, but this can often be
experienced as even more challenging in a situation where client and helper do not share a
common language or frame of reference. Though he terminated contact with the CWS, Yusuf
did not harbour ill-feelings toward the institution. He blamed his temper.
Petrus felt that he got good help from the CWS the first time he got into contact with them.
He received professional counseling and got help to come to terms with his painful emotions
related to the violent conflicts he witnessed at home. He felt understood. He narrated his
experiences with the institution in the following interview excerpt:
Petrus: I had a lot of challenges at home when I was young. ( ) My mum and dad quarrelled
very much and it became too much for me. ( )
Moses: Did you feel that the child welfare service helped you the first time you took contact
with them?
Petrus: They helped in many ways. ( ) Things got better after I got into contact with them, but
things got worse after some months.
Moses: What kind of concrete help did you get from them?
Petrus: To talk about the challenges. They tried to understand how I felt and thought about the
situation [at home].
In relation to his second contact with the CWS, Petrus expressed his disaffection with the fact
that he was allowed to see his child “only once a month” instead of once a week as before. He
felt so because he was not complicit in the neglect the child suffered from its mother and
maternal grandparents. He narrated the injustice he felt in the interview excerpts below:
Moses: So did you get help the second time you got into contact with them?
Petrus: The process is ongoing.
Moses. Ok. What are your experiences so far?
Petrus: I think the various [local] child welfare services work differently. I think the one I have
now is doing a good job.
Moses: How? I would like you to tell both the positive and negative sides.
Petrus: ( ) They can be of help to you. But they can also refuse to be there for you. This can
have negative consequences for you. They have taken my son. ( ) They don’t try to help
young parents ( ), to help them live together. ( ) I am a young father. I don’t have a lot of
experience, but experience comes through practice, not with the theory you apply from school.
I feel it is negative that they are applying just the theory. It is the [child’s] family, father and
mother, who know what is best for the child. ( ) Why should I be punished for another
person’s actions?
Moses: But how do you feel about that?
Petrus: I feel sad. We are talking about my first child. We are talking about the love and
affection [for own child] I have not felt before. ( ) This affects my health in many ways ( ). I
am doing all I can to get my child ( ) in order to make sure that my child does not [grow up]
with a scar in his heart.
Petrus harboured the painful feeling that he did not have any say in determining what was
best for his child and felt that the CWS violated his rights as a father. They were not prepared
to understand the pain he felt inside and subordinated the nurturing emotions of love and
affection between father and son to the dictates of the law. Petrus was afraid that his first child
would suffer the same fate he endured: growing up without paternal affection. He felt that the
CWS was denying him the chance to give that love and affection to his child. He also
questioned the definitional power of the CWS as to what was his son’s best interest, a
definitional power he regarded as arbitrary. He felt humiliated by the perception that instead
of assisting him in his role as a parent, the CWS deemed lesser contact between him and his
son as being in the son’s best interest. Petrus was, therefore, bent on doing all in his power to
prove to the CWS that he was capable of giving affection to his child, and this sapped his
energy and psyche. The criticism Petrus levelled against what he perceived as the arbitrary
definitional power of the CWS over the best interests of his son and the subordination of this
to his role as a parent underscores debates about how to judge the best interests of children in
child welfare decision making. The Norwegian child welfare legislation is more child-centric
than family-focused (Krizˆ & Skivenes 2012), and the legal demand that premium be put on
the best interests of the child in making decisions are seen by many scholars as arbitrary,
subjective and ambiguous in terms of how this is defined, and how it can weaken the legal
protection of children and families (Skivenes 2010).
Yasser and Ajar also recounted their experiences with the CWS and how they perceived the
institution. Yasser narrated his experiences with the CWS as follows:
Yasser: [I came into contact with them [the CWS] because of my parents’ divorce. I was 16
[years old] and new in Norway. They asked me if I wanted to leave home. ( ) I didn’t do
anything wrong ( ). I was fine with my family. But they [the CWS] advised me to leave
home because I come from another culture, sort of (…) and that I would have a better life in
Norway. ( ) I told them I am very fine living with my family and didn’t want to lose them.
And they tried to call me after that ( ), but I ignored their telephone calls.
Moses: So it was the CWS which took contact with you.
Yasser: Yes. And how they ( ) bothered my younger siblings. ( ) My younger siblings were
afraid of them (…) very afraid. Anytime they [my younger siblings] would hear that the CWS
was coming, they would try to hide themselves. They [my younger siblings] were so strong
[put up a strong resistance to the CWS].
Moses: So did the CWS take them away from the family?
Yasser: No ( ). They [the CWS] had meetings with them [my younger siblings] and didn’t
want my mother to know what they discussed with them because they talked to them one-onone [separately from our mother].
Ajar interjected and narrated his experiences with the CWS. As noted earlier, he came into
contact with the CWS through referral from the police when he was arrested because of some
criminal activities. As he put it, “I had two or three cases with the police”. Since that time, he
felt that the CWS wanted to destroy his family. He described how his mother was scared at
the first meeting they had with the CWS. According to Ajar, the CWS wanted to find out how
he and his younger siblings fared at home. The CWS later visited them at home. He recounted
an incident that occurred on one of such visits, which Yasser also shared as follows:
Ajar: They [the CWS] came home and my mother called me to come and talk to them ( ). I
was pissed off. My brother and sister were standing beside me. We were talking and,
suddenly, they said to them [my sister and brother] “if you think, if you feel that there are
problems at home, it will be better you come with us. You will be provided with all you
want”. And suddenly she said to my younger sister, “You will get all you want ( ). You can
get a boyfriend”. I should have beaten her up.
Yasser: And she was just. She was [trying to recall her age].
Ajar: She was 11 years old. She [professional from the CWS] just said “You can (…) get a
boyfriend when you become of age”. I threw her out of the house. She had an alarm ( ). They
always came with an alarm. They called [the police]. ( ) The police came in their numbers and
took me with them.
Yasser: A similar thing happened to my younger siblings too. They came ( ) and [would] ask
my younger siblings if they wanted to take a walk, if there was something they wanted to buy,
if they lacked something. And my siblings would tell them we had everything. ( ) Our mother
provided us with everything we needed. They took them and talked to them. They tried to
engage them [in recreational activities]. But they dropped those activities. They didn’t want to
have any contacts with the CWS. They didn’t want anything from them. ( ) Nobody likes the
CWS.
Ajar: Actually, if you think about it now (…), if the CWS had taken them [remove them from
home] they would have been fucked up by now. [The] girls would have become prostitutes (
). But your [own] mother and father are concerned about you [your well-being]. They can take
care of you. The boss at the CWS cannot have the same concern for you as your mother ( ).
Yasser: That is true.
Ajar: ( ) They are so bad. They come and create problems for us ( ). That, I am sure of. I
don’t understand why they like to create problems between family members.
Yasser: ( ) Nobody likes them. Not Norwegians, and not immigrants either. Nobody likes the
CWS. I hate them a lot.
Yasser and Ajar felt that the CWS had wreaked havoc on their families and threatened to
jettison the emotional bonds that existed in their families. We have seen the family strains that
Yasser and Ajar experienced, something that might have triggered the involvement of the
CWS. While the CWS’s involvement with the family might have been for genuine
preventative purposes or to assist the families with intervention measures, Ajar and Yasser
(and their parents, perhaps) did not perceive it in such a way, but as attempts by the institution
to augment those strains, to destabilise their families. By enticing their younger siblings with
promises, they also perceived the CWS as turning their siblings against the family. Ajar also
reacted with anger to the cultural insensitivity displayed by the CWS by suggesting to his
younger sister that she could have a boyfriend in the future if she wanted to. This seemed to
threaten what Ajar perceived as his culturally defined role, as the eldest son, to protect his
younger sister. Moreover, the emphasis the child welfare workers put on the individuality and
independence of the children was perceived by Ajar and Yasser as an affront to the collective
cultural values of the family. Yasser perceived the CWS as undermining the integrity and
authority of his mother by invading their home, separating the children from their mother, and
questioning them alone, thereby disrespectfully undermining the authority structure that
existed in the family. Like Petrus, they questioned the definitional power of the CWS in
relation to their siblings’ best interests. They believed that their parents were more capable of
caring for their siblings than the CWS. More so when children in care of the CWS turned out
to develop risk behaviours, thereby defeating whatever good intentions the institution might
have in removing them from home. This puts in sharp relief their perceptions of the
differences between parental practices in their immigrant families and the mainstream
Norwegian norm. Ethical issues also arise when those who might be experiencing ontological
insecurity and in need of help perceive their helpers as threats, and so become afraid of these
helpers, as narrated by Yasser in relation to his siblings. However, Yasser underscored the
fact that ethnic Norwegian parents also encountered challenges in their interactions with the
CWS suggesting the generally negative perceptions of the CWS in Norway.
The resentment Ajar and Yasser had for the CWS also seemed to be buttressed by their
perceptions that the CWS approached their work with children and young people in Muslim
families with a specific and subjective mind-set or discourse, as they narrated in the following
interview excerpt:
Ajar: I know a [girl]. She is Iranian (…) she is called (…) ( ).
Yasser: ( ). She wanted to remain a Muslim ( ). But when the CWS took her, they
brainwashed her.
Ajar: Yes, [she went out] without hijab
Yasser: She didn’t use hijab ( ) and they [CWS] didn’t know [ask her] if she wanted to be a
Muslim or not. They didn’t care about that. But we believe that she is now thinking “Why did
I run away from my family”.
Ajar: She told me she cries every day, because her family has cut contact with her. Her parents
have gone back to Iran.
Moses: How old is she now?
Ajar: She is now 17 years old. She is looking forward to the day she will turn 18 [and cut
contact with the CWS]. But as I said, the CWS does not help people. They fuck up families. (
) I think they are against Muslims.
Yasser: Yes, yes. They think that Muslims are strict [with their children, restricting their
independence or autonomy].
Ajar: [That] Muslims are stupid and beat people [are violent].
Yasser: And they think that we Muslims beat our children and such. They think they can cater
for them [better] than we can. But they are wrong, because all can be angry with their children
one day or the other. But no matter what happens, they are still their children, right? You want
to take care of your children and you are worried for them. So, you tend to be angry with them
[if they do something wrong] in order to take care of them.
Ajar: I get mad at those people.
Thus, in the perceptions of Ajar and Yasser, the frame of reference adopted by the CWS in
relation to Muslim families seemed to be subjective, stereotypical and prejudicial, derogatory,
islamophobic, stigmatising, culturally insensitive and unfounded. Such a frame of reference
invests such families with many individual and familial deficiencies that the CWS might
perceive as legitimating interventions. This way, they perceived the CWS as articulating
specific anti-Islamic cultural and religious discourses. According to Paulsen et al. (2014),
questions related to parenting and parental care are topical in the interactions between the
CWS and immigrants. According to them, themes relating to parental control, physical and
psychological punishment and violence, forced marriages and female genital mutilation are
often linked to concepts such as culture, honour, family structures and so on, though research
findings point to a low incidence of such forms of violence in immigrant families.
Krizˆ and Skivenes (2012) carried out a comparative study of the views about minority ethnic
children child social workers in England and Norway brought to bear on their work with these
children. They found that child welfare workers in Norway more than in England were childcentric in that “they embraced a perspective that contained an awareness of many of the
specific challenges for children as well as specific solutions, whereas the English data
displayed fewer such aspects” (Ibid: 450). Of the 22 child-centric child workers, only two
were English. They found the following about child-centric workers:
[Norwegian] workers worried that immigrant parents do not parent or support their children in
the way they should ... [and] thought that minority children did not receive sufficient support,
understanding and supervision from their parents. Workers also felt that parents acted against
their children’s interests. These worries involved several aspects, including parental lack of
supervision and understanding of minority children’s lives, and discipline methods (Ibid: 451).
As the authors noted further:
What is striking about our findings is the extent to which child-focused child welfare workers
consider minority children’s (and their parents’) ethnicity a potential cause of problems rather
than a cause of strength and resilience. The workers were also silent about the strengths and
potentially positive contributions to a minority child’s life provided by minority communities,
including cultural and religious organizations whose activities may positively contribute to the
lives of minority children. They also did not speak about the joys and benefits of children’s
ethnicity or biculturalism, which may be especially important in a globalizing, multi-ethnic
world (Ibid: 454)
These workers mentioned several other deficiencies they perceived minority ethnic parents as
having such as being monolingual and lacking knowledge and understanding of the
Norwegian society and the roles of their children in society; their disregard for the various
rights that their children have in society: “the right to be heard, to make decisions about their
lives and to be allowed to dress and behave more and more independently as they grow older”
(Ibid: 451). They also perceived minority parents as not being present in the lives of their
children as much as their children would need, and seemed to suggest that minority parents
abdicate their responsibility for their children’s life chances in Norway. They also felt that
minority children have challenges that are tied to their being multicultural, given that they
have to navigate two worlds. Minority families do not understand the value of their children’s
multiculturalism, neither do they know how to deal with it and tended to oppose these
children’s involvement with the dominant Norwegian society. Some of the workers also held
the view that minority ethnic children do not know how to behave in society. The authors
emphasised how important and fruitful it is to focus on the rights and interest of the child, but
criticised the way these child-centric child welfare workers went about it. Thus, whiles
acknowledging the importance of the child-centric approach, the authors concluded as
follows:
…these workers perceive ethnicity as a cause of challenges and problems. This may imply that
workers do not grasp the potential for change for or strength of minority children, and they
may not inquire with children about whether and in what ways their ethnicity is important to
them (Ibid: 455).
The cultural insensitivity that child welfare workers may display in their interactions with
minority ethnic children and their families is the main defining element of institutional
racism. It is the kind of racism that is unwitting or not intended and that characterises
organisational processes and professional attitudes. Though unintended, this form of racism is
discriminatory and affects service delivery to minority ethnic service users. Experiences of
institutional racism also affect the views of ethnic minority service users of these services and
professionals, as we have seen in relation to Ajar and Yasser. Moreover, the specific
discourses the child-centric social workers in Krizˆ and Skivenes (Ibid) study deployed in
their interactions with minority ethnic children and their families tends to blame the families
and children themselves for their ontological insecurities. This kind of discourse is not far
removed from the “we” and “them” reifying and Othering discourses characteristic of
mainstream media discourses about immigrants in Norway, or from the often disguised
‘underclass’ discourse in academia The discourse is akin to the moral underclass discourse or
MUD outlined by Levitas (2005) as one of the discourses used to describe social exclusion
and its causes. In the MUD as noted earlier, the emphasis is on the imputed behavioural or
moral deficiencies of individuals and groups labelled “problematic”. Such individuals and
social groups are blamed and held responsible for their existential predicaments and precarity,
diverting attention from societal forces and processes that impinge on them.
In an earlier comparative study, Krizˆ and Skivenes (2010) also found that Norwegian child
welfare workers tended to be racism blind and seeing minority parents and children as
individuals and not as a family. They also expected the parents to be bi-lingual and bicultural. The English child welfare workers articulated a more anti-racist and culturally
sensitive, holistic and defensive approach that viewed minority parents and children as clients
and as families who experience racism and prejudice in society, and did not expect minority
parents to be bi-lingual or bi-cultural. Victim blaming discourses often trigger off stringent
control strategies of various forms against individuals and social groups labelled deficient. In
turn, such labelled groups often tend to resist such labels.
Several other study participants recounted their negative experiences with the CWS. As we
have seen in his life story, Felix believed that the CWS could have helped him to go ahead in
life if they had continued with the measures implemented until he became 23, as stipulated in
Section 1-3 of the Norwegian Child Welfare Act of 1992. Felix was convinced that the CWS
decided to terminate contact with him because they felt that he was demanding too much from
them as a non-Norwegian citizen. According to him, he did not behave like the other young
people under the care of the CWS that he knew. He did not exhibit any disruptive behaviour
or indulged in tantrums that he perceived the other young people in the care of the CWS as
wont to. In his view, such disruptive behaviours made these troubled young people appear to
the child welfare professionals as typical CWS-kids to be contained. He was rather
purposeful, given to negotiations and engaging the child welfare workers in dialog about the
concrete plans he had. He made demands on them, demands he felt would enable him to fix
his life and stand on his own feet. He narrated how he related to the CWS as follows:
Felix: They kicked me out of the CWS because they knew I was going to use all the
possibilities they gave me [all the opportunities I get] to the fullest and they were scared of
that. Because before I was 18, I had applied for a driver’s license already. Before I became
18, I had applied for a programme (…) where another kid comes here and I go there [an
international student exchange programme]. I had tons of plans [emphatic with raised voice]
that I could get [could have set in motion] if I was in the CWS [if I had continue in the CWS].
Moses: That the CWS was supposed to fund?
Felix: Yeah, to fund when I was 18 ( ). But when I became 18, ( ) remember I didn’t have
Norwegian citizenship.
Moses: Ooh.
Felix: You have to have Norwegian citizenship [in order to continue with care under the CWS
[after 18]. ( ) [Unfortunately,] I had [only] residence permit [to be renewed periodically].
That says a lot [about how discriminatory the CWS can be] ( ). Maybe, I don’t know [maybe
that was why the CWS terminated contact with me when I turned 18].
Moses: So the manager [at the local CWS] did not ask you if you wanted to continue being
under care of the CWS?
Felix: Do you know? [Mentions name of local child welfare boss] came on the day I turned
18. He came with flowers to my mother ( ). He came to my [my home] at Grønland ( )
[where] they gave me accommodation without supervision. He did not even allow me to
[come] to his office where I used to meet him (…) weekly.
Moses: How did you feel [about that]?
Felix: ( ) It’s because (…) you know what? ( ) I am not a (…), but my ideas and my way of
speaking, and my [way] of doing things were not the ways they were used to. ( ) [If] you
wanna have a discussion with me, I’ll sit down and listen. But you have to sit down and listen
too. And (…) we have to meet somewhere [reach a compromise]. ( ) I knew from the go that
to be in control ( ), I have to be able to ( ) negotiate (…) the terms (…) which the [other]
kids never did. But it was my Achilles heel [silence] that got me killed [that led CWS to
terminate contact with me when I turned 18].
Thus, Felix felt that he articulated his aspirations in concrete terms and engaged the child
welfare workers in dialogic reflections over them revealing his negotiation competence or
capital. He demanded to be heard and taken seriously, to participate in decisions that affected
his life chances and to be treated on equal terms. By engaging the child welfare workers in
dialogical reflections upon his plans and aspirations, his internal conversations, so to speak,
Felix sensitised them to his willingness to take responsibility for his own life, and how they as
professional helpers could assist him in reaching that goal. He perceived the termination of
contact with him by the CWS as discriminatory because he was not a Norwegian citizen and,
for that matter, not worth treating as other youths in care. He felt treated as a worthless second
class citizen. As he noted further:
( ) They thought I was [demanding] too much and worth less to be followed up ( ) because
I saw that the other boys I was together with, whose behaviours were worse than mine,
continued to be under the care of the CWS until they became 23 [years old] (…). What is the
difference [between them and me]? [Anger and silence]. ( ) I [even] agreed to take urine tests
for one year, and I was clean.
Though not a Norwegian citizen at the time, Felix had a valid residence permit that he
renewed periodically, to which extent the provisions of Section 1-3 of the Child Welfare Act
of 1992 applied to him. The fact that the CWS did not inform him about his rights in relation
to that provision raises the question as to whether young people under the care of the CWS are
always informed about their rights as specified in the Child Welfare Act or about the basis of
decisions made by the CWS in relation to them. Felix seemed to lack that important
information. The failure of the CWS to inform Felix about his rights seemed to be a deliberate
attempt to avoid the expenditure involved in actualising Felix’s plans. This suggests that
monetary and budgetary considerations can take precedence over intervention measures that
may be in the best interest of young people under the care of the CWS. This shows how
subjective and arbitrary the conceptualisation of the best interests of such young people can
be. The termination of his contact with the CWS at the time he felt he needed the institution
most seemed to buttress his feelings of being an outsider or denizen, and the perception that
“the racism in Norway is systematic and is guilty of [responsible for] the tragedies of young
people [BME youths] in this country”.
Financial or budgetary considerations also seemed to play a crucial role in why Ali could not
be given placement in an institution outside Oslo, despite the strong recommendation by his
local CWS to that effect. Ali came into contact with the CWS when he was about 13 years old
because of his involvement in petty crimes and learning difficulties at school. Ali’s family,
especially his mother, and the Youth Outreach Agency collaborated with the local CWS for
many years without this resulting in any concrete offers to Ali. Ali always felt that he gave in
too easily to his street peers. He was easily led by them. In order to escape the peer and street
strains he felt in Oslo, Ali wanted to be placed in an institution outside Oslo. He believed that
placement outside Oslo, away from his peers, would help him to sort out his life. His local
CWS eventually agreed and made a decision to implement measures to that effect, only for
the application for funding to be rejected by the Local District Administration. This happened
just after a new payment scheme was introduced in 2001 where Local District
Administrations were given the discretion to disburse central government funding for
institutional placement of young people in care of their local CWSs. Prior to the new payment
scheme, funding for institutional placement for young people was earmarked solely for that
purpose. Given the budgetary constraints that faced Local District Administrations as a result
of increasing demands from central government for more effective use of resources and
greater financial accountability, many local administrations decided not to fund measures that
could have benefitted vulnerable youths in care of the CWS, due to other pressing financial
commitments. The local CWS terminated contact with Ali when he turned 18. Since then, Ali
was in and out of prison several times.
James never got into contact with the CWS, though he used drugs heavily at age 16 or 17. He
got into contact with the social services when he moved to Oslo, but his counsellor did not
involve the CWS. According to James, his counsellor informed him that “( ) there was a long
waiting period; there are many people [young people] who were looking for help; a lot of
such things”. For budgetary constraints and concerns would become even more paramount if
a 17 year old came into contact with the CWS the first time, making it unlikely that the CWS
would offer any intervention measures. James’ counsellor seemed to be aware of this fact.
Other study participants held negative views about the CWS and displayed a huge mistrust for
the institution. Salma had a brief contact with the institution, but did not feel that she got any
concrete help from them. Besides, she felt that the decisions taken by the CWS could be
arbitrary at times and might vary from one local CWS to another. She said she had friends
who came into contact with the CWS and came out worse off. She found it difficult to
understand why in one case, the CWS would intervene and remove all children from a home
when one of them was physical abused by her parents, but in another case allow a minor who
was addicted to drugs and involved in crime to remain at home with her parents. When I
asked Mohamed if he had been in contact with the CWS, he answered “Luckily, no”, but
added that he was acquainted with some young people who had contact with the CWS and
came out worse off.
Thus, majority of study participants had very negative perceptions of the CWS based on either
their own experiences with the institution or experiences of their friends or acquaintances.
The perception was that there is not much the CWS can offer young people who are in need
of care, and that they risk behaviours associated with such young people become worse after
contact with the institution. They did not seem to share the view that the CWS can constitute a
safety net for many disadvantaged young people in their transitions to adulthood by catering
for their practical, psychological and emotional needs. When I asked him why he hated the
CWS, Yasser narrated the following observations he made at a CWS institution for young
people:
Because I visited a friend whom the CWS removed [from his parents], and was living
in an institution. When I got there one day – no visitations were allowed on Sundays
[but I visited him anyway] – They got everything you could imagine. They smoked
cannabis in their rooms and the social workers there knew it. They drank alcohol.
They were under 18 years old, but drank alcohol there. There were many drug addicts
there. They said it was the child welfare workers at the institution who got the
cannabis for them. And the conditions there were incredibly bad.
6+):-7.<0-7:?-/1)6)*7=:)6,'-4.):-$-:>1+- )>
I have earlier on addressed the experiences some of the study participants narrated in relation
to Nav. In this section, I would like to throw some more light on these experiences, especially
on some observations I made in the field regarding interactions between some study
participants and local Nav offices. I describe the discourses and the subjectification processes
that unravelled in these interactions, and to what extent study participants perceived their
instrumental and emotional needs gratified in these interactions. I begin with a very brief
overview of the main highlights of the new Nav reforms in Norway. The Nav reforms
represent a new form of governing the socially excluded as postulated by Foucault (1991). I
describe the different ways Nav counsellors implement this new form of government in terms
of balancing between the welfare needs of clients and the systemic paternalistic requirements
for responsibilisation and economic efficiency, as well as how this influenced clientcounsellor interactional outcomes.
The establishment of Nav in 2006 represented the most important and extensive
organisational reform of the Norwegian welfare state in modern times (Lislerud 2010,
Røysum 2012, and Lægreid & Rykka 2013). NAV is an amalgam of and collaboration
between the three hitherto independently existing state insurance office, the state employment
service and the municipality’s social services. Since 2006, the resources allocated to these
three public welfare services were merged to create local Nav agencies (Røysum 2012).
According to Lægreid and Rykka (2013), the main objective of the reform was to reduce
public sector fragmentation and the delivery of public value with the users of welfare goods in
focus. As with other large reforms in Norway, the rationale behind the Nav reform was “to
deal with problems associated with increasing specialisation and institutional fragmentation in
the public sector, and with what has been called “wicked”, cross-cutting policy problems that
cross organisational boundaries and administrative levels” (Lægreid & Rykka Ibid: 4). The
focus was on “increasing management by objectives and results” (Ibid). They summarise the
overall goals of the Nav reform as follows (see also Nilssen & Kildal 2009):
1. To increase the working population and diminish the population living off social/welfare
benefits (work orientation);
2. To make services more accessible and adjusted to citizens’ needs (user orientation);
3. To create a coherent and efficient employment and welfare administration.
Through work orientation, the main aim was to move people from passive beneficiaries into work
and activity. User orientation indicated giving users more influence on how the services were
formed, and provide services that were adjusted to the individual user. More efficiency was related
to economy of scale and an expectation that a stronger coordination between the services would
prevent overlap (Lægreid & Rykka 2013: 6).
According to the authors, within this organisational framework, local Nav offices initially
became one-stop shops that coordinated many state and municipal benefit schemes such as
pensions, unemployment benefits, cash benefits, disability benefits, family allowances,
maternity leave and rehabilitation. As they showed further, the main target groups of the
reform were people with complex problems or multi-service users who received benefits from
multiple social and welfare schemes. Thus, proximity to these multiple scheme users through
a one-swing door policy was one of the cardinal objectives of the reform. According to them,
this one-door principle was modified in reforms carried out in 2008 by introducing access to
the local Nav services also through telephone and internet-based services. This “three
channels” strategy was aimed at reducing the number of service users who showed up at the
local Nav offices. Initially, local Nav offices provided minimum services such as economic
social benefits and advice, in addition to pensions and employment services. Later on, other
services such as the provision of housing and debt counselling, as well as optional municipal
services that included treatment of alcohol and drug abuse, settlement of immigrants and
refugees, psychiatric health care and child welfare were added.
As Lægreid and Rykka (Ibid) pointed out further, the integration of the hitherto independently
existing state insurance service, state employment service and parts of municipal social
assistance service resulted in a common generalist professional role that revolved mainly
around two of the main roles of the Nav reform namely, work orientation and user orientation.
Inextricably tied to this were case-work schedules and time limits. According to Røysum
(2012 social workers in the new Nav offices were supposed to work in a more standardised
and simplified ways. They must answer to expectations that demand a general, basic and
common competence for all employees in a comprehensive and non-specialised approach.
This new work-role is to be anchored in guiding clients to focus upon the development of
work-related skills and finding gainful employment. A guiding or supervising role is what is
desired, and employees are expected to abandon the more traditional casework of
administrator role. The guidance counsellor role in Nav is described as being one in which the
helper interacts with the client under a comprehensive approach, together with a quick
clarification of the problems to be addressed and a clear focus on attaining gainful
employment. Røysum (Ibid) argues that the new professional role spelled out by Nav differed
from traditional social work roles performed by professionals in the local social services. In
Norway, social workers in local municipal services assist their clients in securing economic
social assistance and other material supports, while they also have counselling, supervision
and follow-up service roles. The performance of these roles at the municipal social service
offices has been associated with different degrees of autonomy over time and has witnessed
increasing bureaucratisation, and there continues to be more detailed regulations regarding the
provision of economic social assistance, she added.
With reference to the literature, Røysum (Ibid) argues that the new “Nav offices can be
described as ‘one-stop-shops’ and are part of the international trend towards ‘active’ labour
market policies that have a welfare-to-work orientation” (Røysum Ibid: 710). In the typology
postulated by Levitas (2005) I outlined earlier, a social integrationist discourse or SID may be
said to undergird the Nav-reforms. In this discourse gainful employment is seen as the main
road to social inclusion. This represents a movement away from the redistributionist discourse
or RED which held poverty responsible for social exclusion and redistribution of wealth and
power as the main panacea to social exclusion.
Thus, while the Nav reform was user-oriented, this user-centrism had an undergirding policy
of workfare and responsibilisation. Lødemel conceptualises workfare as follows:
Programmes and schemes that require people to work in return for social assistance
benefits…The definition has three elements – that workfare is compulsory, that workfare is
primarily about work, and that workfare is essentially about policies tied to the lowest tier of
public income support. Each of the three elements conditions the way social assistance is
delivered. Used in combination, the introduction of work and compulsion tied to receipt of aid
represents a fundamental change in the balance between rights and obligations in the
provision of assistance (Lødemel 2011: 11, emphases original)
In a similar vein, Dahl (2003) observed that in “workfare”, participation is compulsory for the
claimants of social benefits. There are sanctions attached and the prime activity is work as
part of social assistance. Dahl also emphasises the paternalistic discourse (PA) that underlies
the policy of workfare. The emphasis is on behaviour in contrast to inclusionary discourses in
policy documents.
As a bureaucratic personification of the humanitarian ideal of collective solidarity for the
disadvantaged that underpins the welfare state, Nav is supposed to implement social policy in
relation to specific disadvantaged groups that experience social marginalisation and exclusion.
For these reasons, bureaucratic rules and regulations govern the access to the welfare and
social goods administered by Nav. Service users must be adjudged as qualified for these
goods and services. Hence, these service users are channelled and screened through
bureaucratic control systems of classification, registration, disclosure of personal information,
the evaluation of clients’ individual characteristics, dispositions, abilities, actions and
capabilities. Client contacts with welfare state bureaucracies, therefore, involve a kind of
bureaucratic nudity and subjectification that can be experienced by clients as humiliating and
objectifying. The emphasis on welfare-to-work also involves the stipulation of conditionalities
that is the essence of responsibilisation through activation. In what follows, I analyse the
experiences of some study participants with Nav against the backdrop of issues of
governmentality attending the new Nav-reforms, the discourses and power relations that
unfold in counsellor-client interactions, and study participants’ perceptions of the institution.
As noted in his life story, Mohamed asked me to accompany him to a number of meetings
with Nav. Mohamed approached the local Nav office for help in relation to his housing and
unemployment problems. According to him, he had applied for several jobs to no avail and
found it difficult to get accommodation in the private rental market. In the first meeting I
attended with him, Mohamed oriented the guidance counsellors on the efforts he had exerted
to get a job and his own accommodation. He had earlier on attended many courses and had
many job placements as a condition for receiving social benefits without these resulting in a
permanent job. Nevertheless, the counsellors were more interested in what Mohamed himself
was doing in relation to his housing and unemployment situation than offering him concrete
help in relation to his needs. On no occasion in course of the meeting was Mohamed asked
how he felt about the challenges confronting him in his daily life. In fact, one of the
counsellors was very confrontational and made it very clear to Mohamed that he must be
responsible for his own life. She appeared to harbour a lot of hostility toward Mohamed both
verbally and through her deportment. She was not very interested in trying to understand what
Mohamed had to say or how he felt. Personally, I felt that this counsellor behaved in a very
provoking and unprofessional manner. This was also the case at the meeting we had with the
municipal youth shelter before Mohamed got a place there. The other counsellor was almost
silent throughout these two meetings, but was more accommodating any time she spoke. In
subsequent interviews that I have collated below, Mohamed narrated his experiences with
Nav, especially with his confrontational counsellor whom he had for two years:
Going to Nav and telling them about the problems you have is like talking to a wall. They
don’t do a shit for you. ( ). They may listen to you if they are nice. They listen to you (…)
and then give you a negative feedback: “No, you must do this, you must go [here and] there,
you shouldn’t come here, you must be [behave] like this”. Comments you do not want to hear.
( ) I think having contacts with Nav can be very tiring. ( ) The way they talk irritates me.
They talk so much that I become angry and, you know, when I become very angry (…). I
leave [their office] at once when they start telling me “It is your fault, it is your fault”.
Everything is my fault. I just tell myself that they are assholes and go away from them ( ).
Otherwise, they can make me mad. I just can’t stand quarrelling with them. ( ) No, I am tired
of talking about Nav, you know [laughs and Moses joins him]. I don’t know how to describe it
[how to express how I feel about Nav]. ( ) They hurt you. You get fucked up (…) not
physically, but psychically. They use many words that only hurt you ( ), very ugly words ( ).
You’ll feel it inside if you have feelings [if your emotions are not blunted]. I don’t know how
they think. Or they think that we Africans don’t have feelings? ( ) [But] we also have
feelings. We are human beings. We cry. We laugh, you know. You get hurt often and don’t get
the help you need. ( ) I bet you, you get a headache just by talking to them.
In another interview, Mohamed narrated the following about his counsellor at Nav:
[Intense] [Take my] counsellor, for example. She is really an asshole. I would go there for help
and she would just eat my head [provoke me to anger]. She only irritates me. She tells me a lot
of shit. If you call her and tell her you have not received this or that [benefit], she would say
Norway is not (…). And she is not even Norwegian! ( ) If you complain, she [would say]
“why don’t you go back to where you come from?” and I would tell myself, what a hell! ( ).
All the time, you go to a person who is irritating. I would go there in good humour and leave
there with bad humour.
Two main related discourses unfolded in the first meeting I attended with Mohamed at the
local Nav office in relation to his housing and unemployment problems. As noted earlier, the
psychic and emotional pains he felt and his self-medication through use of drugs were related
to these problems. I described the meeting in my fieldnotes as a process of responsibilisation
in which Mohamed was reminded at all stages that he was not doing enough to get out of the
existential quagmire he found himself in. For example, when Mohamed asked the counsellors
to help him call a private rental agency, he was told by the counsellors in unison: “You must
do it yourself”. In the well-articulated discourse of responsibilisation that unfolded, Mohamed
was imputed with a specific subjectivity and the way his counsellors, especially one of them,
related to him at the meeting, was based on this conceptualisation of Mohamed. As an
autonomous individual capable of making his own rational choices, Mohamed was supposed
to solve his own problems. The role of his counsellors was to guide him on this path toward a
better life, even to the extent of advising him to adopt the clandestine strategy of telling
“white lies” to private rental companies, thereby denying his client status. Implicit in all this
was the repeated message to Mohamed that he should stand on his own feet. The whole
meeting became a paternalistic process of responsibilisation. In this process, Mohamed was
given little room to manoeuvre, and there was no time to spare getting any professional
insights into how he felt inside. The whole meeting was compressed to about 30 minutes
leaving no room for any other discussions. Mohamed told me after the meeting that meetings
he usually had with them alone never lasted so long.
As he narrated above, Mohamed felt that he was always made to feel that “Everything is my
fault” and harboured feelings of humiliation and dehumanisation because of the negative
feedbacks he got from his counsellor at Nav. As he put it “[They] always put the blame on
me, that it is my fault that I cannot get a job, that I do not look for jobs [or] because I do not
write a good application ( )”. The suggestion here is that the discourse of responsibilisation
that unfolded at the meeting with Mohamed seems to be related to another discourse that
located causes of the challenges Mohamed was facing within Mohamed himself. These two
discourses reinforced each other. As Mohamed noted above, he felt like being asked to
behave in a specific manner. This is akin to the moral underclass discourse (MUD) outlined
by Levitas (2005) and Rose (2000) above. The emphasis in this discourse is the individual’s
values and behaviour.
Resonating with the underclass and dependency discourse as articulated by Murray (1990,
1994), MUD blames socially excluded individuals and social groups for their poverty and
predicaments, especially in terms of their values and behaviours. In terms of this discourse,
benefits are bad because they undermine the ability of socially excluded individuals and
detract from their ability to stand on their own feet thereby creating dependency. As noted by
Levitas, “MUD identifies particular groups as a problem for social order, and generates
behavioural, and often, oppressive, solutions” (Levitas 2005: x).While social workers may
articulate their own opinions or views in relation to the clients they work with, it is important
not to reduce these Nav counsellors to their discourses. These discourses must be understood,
instead, in terms of the organisational or institutional logic of the Nav reforms. As noted by
Mohamed, his confrontational counsellor was not even a Norwegian. This suggests that
organisational discourses that may function as an institutional logic may be articulated by
professionals within the organisation irrespective of their ethnicity.
By articulating these two related discourses in relation to Mohamed, the Nav counsellors left
Mohamed with almost no options than to leave the office empty handed, angry and dejected.
He felt that the meeting compounded his psychic and emotional pains. The only option left for
Mohamed was to participate in, yet, another course under the auspices of Nav. But his
participation would be dependent on the evaluation of how personally motivated he was. In
other words, it was his individual responsibility to show enough motivation to participate. As
noted in Mohamed’s life story, the counsellors turned down my suggestion that Mohamed
participate in a youth project by advancing arguments about the financial complications this
might involve. Similar economic arguments were advanced by the same Nav counsellors in
relation to Mohamed having a place at a private youth shelter with a close follow-up package
under the auspices of the City Church Mission. Such economic considerations were prioritised
far and above Mohamed’s needs and well-being. This seems to suggest that the articulation of
the responsibilisation discourse is tied to economic or budgetary considerations that involve
an abdication of the responsibility of the state by shifting that responsibility to Mohamed
himself as an active and autonomous social agent.
Thus, the approach adopted by the Nav counsellors at the meeting represents a neo-liberal and
paternalistic approach to service delivery informed by emphasis on individual choice,
responsibilisation and behaviour modification. Mohamed rejected this exercise of
subjectification as one can glean from his narration above. His constant resistance of the Nav
counsellors’ exercise of their power of subjectification seems to underline the hostile attitude
from one of the counsellors who seemed to view him as an uncooperative and difficult client
to mould. Service users who are defined by social work professionals as “difficult clients”
may, therefore, find it difficult to access the social services.
As I pointed out earlier, many other study participants narrated negative experiences with
Nav. For example, Petrus felt that the professionals at Nav could be very slow in their work,
especially in relation to processing important documents. He felt that it was very difficult for
him to get the necessary information from the Nav call centre about the prospects of
participating in a work-training programme with a company. He was anxious to know if his
counsellor had given the company requisite information it wanted. In the absence of his
counsellor, he called the Nav service centre several times, but no one seemed to know about
the case’s status. Some of his telephones calls were not returned as promised. When he called
the call centre another time, he was informed that he had been assigned a new counsellor who
was yet to look at his case. Petrus described how difficult it could be to get access to the Nav
office in the following interview excerpt:
Moses: So what do you think about this?
Petrus: I think it was poor service. I think they should return calls, even if they are hard
pressed with time because that is what they are paid for, to help people. And if they don’t help
people [laughs], it becomes difficult for them to go ahead [in life]. ( ) I think they didn’t take
it [my enquiries] seriously, and I think this is what destroys the reputation of Nav.
Moses: But don’t you have direct access to your counsellor?
Petrus: They [Call centre] say that that is not allowed.
Moses: But it was possible to have direct contact with counsellors at the social service before
[before the new Nav reforms].
Petrus: ( ) You can only have direct contact if you have an appointment. It is unlikely that
they have time to see all who just drop in.
Salma also narrated how difficult it could be to navigate the Nav system. She applied to Nav
for unemployment benefits and felt that this involved not only paper work, but the risk of
being “lost in the Nav system”. Acknowledging the fact that frontline workers at Nav could
experience stress and get bogged down with huge caseloads, she narrated her experiences of
navigating the bureaucratic system of Nav as follows:
I applied for unemployment benefits at Nav. ( ) there were a lot of application forms to fill. I
filled all the forms and sent them to Nav [for processing]. And you just get a request that “We
need this information [more documentation], this and that (…). I eventually dropped out of
their system because I got sick. ( ) I have to start the process all over again [new application
and documentation]. I am still waiting for an answer [from Nav]. I have waited for about two
months. ( ). I don’t have any counsellor right now, my case file has just been going back and
forth, roundabout, and I have not spoken with anyone (…) either on the phone or had direct
contact [with a counsellor]. So it is not easy there [with Nav]. ( ) I now understand how the
system works [fails it clients], why many people complain all the time.
Salma also felt pity for the clients she observed at her local Nav office:
(…) when you come there and see many people who are so worn out and who do not get the
help they need (…), grown up women with their children. About half the people you meet
there are sick. You just look at them. [They are sick] not only physically, but [also]
psychically, [because of] the fact that people do not get good help. But as I said, it is probably
because the counsellors don’t have much time [have heavy caseloads]. That is the major
problem.
In relation to the accessibility of Nav, a study participant stated in a group discussion that “I
do not see my counsellor often. She is either sick or away on holidays. She is a ghost (
)”.
As pointed out by Lægreid and Rykka (2013), in addition to the “one-door” policy, the Nav
reforms of 2008 introduced access to the local Nav services also through telephone and
internet-based services. Issues related to technology and e-government were also part of the
reforms involving the use and integration of separate ICT-systems. According to them, while
these reforms resulted in less pressure on frontline professionals at Nav, it at the same time
hindered client access to Nav and caseworkers. Regarding the consequences of ICT problems,
they remarked as follows:
Overall, the new organization had problems delivering on the goal of user orientation because
of complexity problems. Clients struggled to find their way round the new organisation and
lost contact with their former caseworkers. Call centres were not working well, and ICT
systems and staff struggled to achieve optimal coordination (Ibid: 13).
Majority of study participants felt that it was difficult to access or navigate the Nav-system
because of several reasons: experiences of the subjectification, responsibilisation or clientblaming discourses their counsellors might articulate; difficulty in getting access to important
information; documentation requirements and feelings related to bureaucratic nudity; feelings
of not being taken seriously; disaffection with workfare programmes; lack of proper
communication regarding their rights and obligations; and other experiences they might
regard as untoward,. They felt that they did not get the services they thought they were
entitled to from the institution. As a result, they tended to carry negative impressions about
Nav as can be seen in the following quotes from a group discussion:
“Anytime I go to Nav, I feel that I am not well treated”.
“They just mess around [with clients: they don’t take clients seriously] (…).”
“They just mess up with [clients’] rights”.
“You are not given information about your rights. You become a shuttle ball”.
“There is a lot of cost cutting in Nav. You don’t get all the rights [all you are entitled to]”.
“Nav [offices] in Oslo don’t believe what you tell them”.
“Nav Tøyen hides everything from you [they don’t give you any information about your
rights]. They don’t tell you anything”.
Some of these descriptions of Nav might be out of the study participants’ lack of knowledge
or access to information concerning how the local Nav services work. For example, most of
the study participants thought that it was the responsibility of Nav to provide them with
permanent jobs. Others expected to be paid fully for participating in workfare programmes
and to automatically acquire permanent jobs after such programmes. The implication here is
that most of the study participants were not very clear about what their rights and obligations
were and what kind of help to expect from Nav and what not to expect. Lack of such
important information negatively affected their perceptions about Nav, perceptions which in
turn impacted their interactions with the institution. Other study participants like Yusuf
experienced feelings of stigma in their contacts with Nav prior to his contact with his current
counsellors. He described these feelings as follows:
Do you know how shameful, how hellish it is to go there [Nav office]? And you are a nigger,
a Somali. It isn’t that I feel more worth than a Norwegian or an Iraqi or anyone else [who is a
client]. But ( ) to go the Nav office, fill out application forms (…) it just destroys my head
[psyche] more.
Some of the study participants cut off contacts with Nav and others had intensions of doing
so because of the humiliation, shame and stigma they felt they experienced in their contacts
with the institution. It was a way of resisting what they perceived as their negative
subjectification by frontline professionals at Nav and their feelings of being engulfed or
swallowed up.
We have noted in relation to Mohamed that his counsellor articulated a dominant neo-liberal
discourse of individual responsibilisation and the technology of behavioural modification it
entailed. The data, however, suggest that there are different ways in which counsellors at Nav
articulated this dominant discourse of responsibilisation. Regarding Mohamed, the
articulation of these two related discourses of responsibilisation and MUD resulted in a tense
and heightened conflict between him and his counsellor that raged on for two years. I argue
that such heightened conflicts and how multi-needs clients perceive Nav are related mainly to
how professionals in the new Nav system tackle the tensions involved in balancing the needs
of their clients who experience multiple and prolonged marginality and the system
requirements for a paternalistic client responsibilisation and economic efficiency.
The fact that different counsellors seem to adopt different responsibilisation strategies
couched in different discourses became clear in the way another guidance counsellor related
to Mohamed at another meeting I attended with him. The meeting was about finding out
which work-training programme to offer Mohamed. As I pointed out in Mohamed’s life story,
this counsellor adopted a resource focused discourse (RES), was educative, gave positive
feedback to Mohamed for his efforts to go ahead in life, used humour, role models Mohamed
could identify with (cultural sensitivity), and in a polite way communicated to Mohamed his
awareness of the fact that Mohamed made some wrong choices in life. He was interested in
knowing what Mohamed perceived as his needs and engaged Mohamed in a dialogical
reflection that centred Mohamed’s internal conversation - his dreams, hopes and aspirations or
life projects - and the real prospects of achieving them. He was, nevertheless, instructive and
made concrete demands on Mohamed, while orienting Mohamed on how Nav could assist
him in his efforts to go ahead in life. He emphasised several times that it was the
responsibility of Mohamed to stand on his own feet and that Nav could only assist him to do
so. Here, the Nav counsellor articulated a resource focused discourse (RES) or empowerment
discourse that acknowledged the strengths of Mohamed while at the same time articulating a
discourse of responsibilisation that posited Mohamed as an autonomous, virtuosic and choicemaking social agent responsible for his own life. He imbued Mohamed with a positive and an
affirmative subjectivity. After the meeting, I interviewed Mohamed about how he felt as
follows:
Moses: Yes, Mohamed. ( ) You have been assigned a new counsellor. What do you think
about the meeting?
Mohamed: Yes. The guy we met was good at communicating with people. (…) He was very
nice. He was more honest than the other counsellors at Nav, you know. The others lie to you
and you also lie to them. But this guy, it looks like he really wants to help me. He is doing his
job. But the other counsellors don’t do their jobs. Most of them cast Nav in bad light.
Moses: Why?
Mohamed: Because they don’t talk to you in a nice manner. They are not helpful. Even though
they are not helpful, they don’t talk to people politely. They don’t even pretend to be helping
you. They are just like “you must do this, do that, you must go here, you must (…). But that
guy ( ) he behaved like a decent person who understands other people.
Moses: And he said many good things to you.
Mohamed: Yes, yes.
Moses: How did you feel?
Mohamed: It feels like [smiling] (…) you know, knowing something good about yourself and
(…) and hearing it [from someone else] are not the same. When you hear it (…) you become
surprised. [You say to yourself] Yes! So I am [really] so and so, ok [excited]. And when you
really think about it, you say to yourself that you are good in this and that and so on, man. You
don’t know it before you hear it from someone else. So it feels good.
Moses: And the fact that he gave you positive feedback.
Mohamed: Positive feedback, though he doesn’t know me. That was the first day [meeting].
He was so (…). He behaved as if he knows me very well, who I really am. Yes, and he
understood my needs too ( ). It made me begin to think. It becomes more interesting, it
becomes more interesting for me to continue to sit there. ( ).
Moses: How often do you hear people saying positive things to you?
Mohamed: Not often [laughing].
Moses: So how would you evaluate the meeting?
Mohamed: It was a very good meeting. ( ) The meeting lasted for a long time, but for me it
felt like being there for five minutes. Yes, because I hate going there [the local Nav office]. It
is boring and the time drags along [at the meetings]. But [this meeting] went very fast [the
time went so fast] because it was good to listen to [what he said]. ( ) I liked a lot of things
that he said. I hope he is able to fix me the job as he said. ( )
Moses: But do you trust him?
Mohamed: Yes, yes. I trust him.
Moses: Do you think he is going to help you?
Mohamed: ( ) I have seen him many times at Nav and ( ) I trust him. I don’t think he lied
about what he said today. ( ) He was different than the others ( ) I usually meet at Nav. He
spoke with clarity, was more serious than the others. But let’s wait and see if he is who he
portrays himself to be. ( )
Moses: You have a good feeling.
Mohamed: Yes, [the meeting was] a good start. ( ) I have never had such an experience with
Nav before.
Thus, Mohamed experienced a heightened sense of self-esteem or self-worth in his reflective
dialog with this frontline professional. The self-doubt that he harboured because of his lived
experiences of multiple and prolonged marginality seemed to have been dispelled by the
respect, affirmation and recognition he felt he received from his new counsellor. He felt
understood and taken seriously. Feeling recognised and his needs and aspirations understood,
he could open up to his new counsellor and enter into a trusting relationship with him, which
is the bedrock of any meaningful client-helper relationship. In this short encounter, Mohamed
felt that the professional addressed his psychosocial and emotional needs. He felt that he
received social support. Ali also experienced this heightened sense of emotional support at the
first meeting we had with his new elderly counsellor who had decided to transfer Ali’s case
from another local Nav office to the local office where he worked. At this meeting, the
counsellor listened to Ali and acknowledged the challenges Ali was having, especially with
drug addiction. He engaged Ali in a motivational dialog in which he sensitised Ali to the
considerable obstacles he was going to meet in his bid to go ahead in life. He was clear about
what Ali could expect from Nav, but emphasised that Ali had the onus of responsibility to go
ahead in life. Ali said after the meeting that “I like him. I think he is going to help me”. In
course of an interview I was having with Ali the next day, the counsellor called Ali to inform
him about how far he had come with processing his application for social benefits and asked
if Ali could come over to the office the next day. Ali marvelled and said: “It went fast”.
Yusuf also narrated how he was “lucky finally to get two counsellors at Nav who were very
understanding”. They made demands on him, but not as the “system [that] pushes you too
hard”. He narrated the important role these two frontline professionals at Nav played in
motivating him to seek treatment for his drug addiction and how they worked to link him up
with other sources of professional help. Similarly, though Jamal felt that his counsellor at Nav
could be “bitchy at times”, he was positive about her. He felt that she understood and cared
for him and was a person he could relate to. Anthony also narrated the good relationship
between himself and his Nav counsellor as follows:
I can go to my counsellor at Nav and he can give me advice. ( ) I can discuss anything with
him. We are open with each other, and we know each other well. So If I need help or think
there is something I don’t understand, I can call him.
The resource focused and motivational approaches adopted by these frontline professionals
suggest that while still articulating the dominant neo-liberal and paternalistic discourse, some
frontline workers may balance between system requirements and the welfare needs of their
clients. In other words, frontline professionals in the Nav system do not always abdicate the
welfare needs of their clients through excessive focus on conditionalities and
responsibilisation. Some adopt approaches that may focus their clients psychosocial and
emotional needs making their clients feel respected, motivated and empowered and making it
easier for these clients to open up to them, though beneath the resource focused discourses of
these professionals lurks the policy of client responsibilisation and pastoral power. These
professionals carry out their subjectification and responsibilisation roles in a motivational and
resource focused way. Such professionals relate to their clients as autonomous, resourceful
and competent individuals with aspirations and life projects and engage them in reflections
and negotiations to arrive at concrete steps to achieve realistic goals. Thus, the overarching
policy of responsibilisation that underpinned the Nav-reforms may be better effectuated by
such resource focused frontline professionals who are able to make their clients feel
empowered by involving them in decisions that affect their own lives than professionals
whom clients may find too demanding and client-blaming. Such clients may resist such
exercises in subjectification. Therein lies the beauty and power of empowerment as pastoral
power in new forms of government. We shall examine how Janus-faced the ideology of
empowerment can be later in the next chapter.
$--316/!:15):A-)4<0 ):Through the Norwegian Primary Health Services Act of 1982, primary health care for the
general population was established in Norway as a right. The local municipalities are charged
with the responsibility of providing primary health care in the form of care and treatment of
all persons in the municipality. This includes health promotion and prevention, emergency
care and immigrant health care. Healthcare in Norway is carried out at the municipal level and
through specialist health care services (Norwegian Directorate of Health 2009). Health care at
the municipal level includes regular General Practitioners (rGP), casualty clinics, and mental
health services in the form of public health nurses, educational psychological services,
psychiatric home care, activity centres and accommodation.
The District Psychiatric Service (DPS) and psychiatric hospitals are specialist services. Other
specialist services include private practitioners who have been contracted by the Norwegian
health authority (Norwegian Directorate of Health 2008). The DPS provides short-term
inpatient treatment and long-term outpatient treatment. Though treatment at DPS can take the
form of medication, treatment is usually carried out through various forms of conversation
therapy and through information to patients about the mental health problems they present
with (Norwegian Directorate of Health Ibid). In 2002, the responsibility for specialised health
services was transferred from the counties to the central government. Access to the specialist
services is mainly through referrals. Section 3-3 of the Norwegian Mental Health Act allows
for and specifies conditions for compulsory mental health care in psychiatric institutions.
It is important to emphasise that the overall goal of the Norwegian health care system is to
ensure equity in health care. As noted by Goth and Godager (2012), this implies absence of
systematic disparities, and with increase in immigration it is important to focus on
accessibility to health care services and use patterns. This is also important in relation to BME
youths who experience marginalisation.
&;-7. :-/=4): -6-:)4!:)+<1<176-: :!
Following the introduction of a regular general practitioners’ scheme in 2002, all legally
resident individuals in Norway were given the right to choose one general practitioner as a
family doctor.
The General Practitioners are private practising doctors who have been
contracted by the municipality and are required by agreement to have regular patients
(Norwegian Directorate of Health 2009). As part of the agreement with the municipality,
regular GPs also render their services in health clinics, municipal nursing homes, the prison
health service and casualty or emergency clinics on part time basis. Patients who have the
right to a regular GP can choose a practitioner in any municipality and have the right to
change their regular GP two times within a calender year if dissatisfied with the GP
(Norwegian Directorate of Health Ibid). The regular GPs play an important role as
gatekeepers to the specialised health services, co-ordinating various health-related and social
services (Goth et al. 2010). As noted by Goth et al. (2010), the regular GP scheme ensures
ready access to primary health care, increases choice exercised by the patient, reduces costs
and is associated with improved health outcomes and patient satisfaction.
Only few study participants had a regular GP during the time of the study. Majority of them
answered “No” when I asked them if they had a regular GP. Some of them had not seen a
regular GP for many years. Many were not even aware of the existence of the regular GP
scheme. For example, Jamal never accessed a regular GP after he was granted a stay in
Norway, but always contacted the casualty clinic any time he had recurring problems with his
knee. Majority of the study participants had unstable accommodation and led fragmented
lives, which might result in lack of access to information about their assigned regular GPs
sent to their last registered official addresses in the Norwegian Population Register. It also
appears that many were not given adequate information about the regular GP scheme in their
cumulative interactions with the social services. Moreover, as noted by Goth et al. (2010),
materials sent out by Nav to its users about the regular GP scheme are only in the Norwegian,
which immigrants may find difficult to understand. I informed study participants who said
they did not have regular GPs about the scheme, how to find out about their assigned regular
GPs and their right to change assigned regular GPs if they became dissatisfied with their
services. Other study participants terminated contacts with regular GPs they were dissatisfied
with, but were not aware of their right to change these GPs.
For example, Francis narrated that he used to have a regular GP whom he did not hesitate to
consult anytime he was sick. However, he decided to terminate contact with him after the last
consultation because his GP told him that he was seriously ill without telling him exactly what
the problem was. He was referred to a teaching hospital in Oslo where he was immediately
isolated because he was informed that he had tuberculosis. He felt betrayed and tricked by his
doctor for not disclosing the nature of his sickness to him. Francis’ GP might have referred
him outright out of suspicion that Francis had tuberculosis for which he needed immediate
screening and treatment. He might also have harboured the suspicion that Francis would
refuse treatment if he knew that he had tuberculosis, thereby risking spreading the disease.
Thus, considerations of general prevention might have overridden Francis’ right to
information in the GP’s decision not to disclose the diagnoses to him. However, Francis did
not perceive it this way, but as breach of trust and his right to information. He therefore
decided to terminate contact with his regular GP. Francis decided, therefore, not to disclose
his innermost feelings to any GP. How Francis perceived his GPs role seemed to differ from
the role expectations of his GP in relation to infectious diseases. Francis had not had contact
with any GP since. In this case, one can see that lack of congruency between role expectations
and lack of information led to the termination of a professional-patient relationship and
feelings of mistrust. Salma too had a regular family GP whom she was dissatisfied with. She
would not disclose personal issues to her family GP because of her negative experiences with
him. She described these negative experiences as follows:
He does not do anything [for me] anytime I consult him. He is really (…) lazy, so I am going
to change him. He irritates me at times. I was sick one time with infections and I thought he
would prescribe medicines for me, but he didn’t. I also needed sick leave, but he was cheeky
about it. He wouldn’t help with that. He’ll not refer me to a specialist if I am worried over my
health. A very bad regular GP. ( ) He is the family doctor, and has not been very good at
referring my mother to the specialist. So she has not received any help from specialists. She
could have gotten better help if she had seen [been referred] to a psychiatrist [or] psychologist.
Though Salma “heard” that she could change her family GP, she did not know how to go
about it, but narrated that “I am going to change him ( ), I’ll find out about it”. Salma’s
negative perceptions of her regular GP seem to be related to the lack of concrete help in the
form of medication, sick leave or referral she expected in her and her mother’s interactions
with their family GP. This might in turn be related to differences in her and her GPs
understanding of the symptoms she and her mother presented with. Such a negative
perception might also be related to lack of information about how the Norwegian health
system is organised, what the coordinating or collaborative role of the family GP entailed, and
the difficulties GPs might encounter in actualising that role. In relation to the coordinating or
collaborative role of the regular GP, for example, Goth et.al (2010) found that assigned
regular GPs felt that they encountered problems with collaboration with Nav regarding
sharing of information, especially in cases where regular GPs were not aware of the
cumulative interactions that some patients had with Nav. In such cases, GPs found it difficult
to perform their gatekeeping and collaborating roles. Goth et al. (Ibid) also found that some
Norwegian assigned GPs felt that some immigrant patients expected their assigned GPs to
attend to their unrealistic requests regarding prescribed treatment or medication or to address
symptoms without patients taking responsibility for their own health. It is important to point,
however, that a significant finding of Goth et al. was that GPs defined non-western migrants
in terms of socio-cultural difference rather than their legal status. Such patients were seen as
having language problems and having different expectations of the assigned GPs roles and
that these perceived differences created problems in relation to communication and
understanding. Their findings applied more to recently arrived migrants, but may help shed
some light on the interactional challenges narrated by some study participants like Salma and
Francis. These challenges may also be related to lack of clarity about role expectations and
general lack of knowledge about how the Norwegian health system works.
Other study participants narrated positive experiences with their assigned GPs not only in
terms of their physical health, but also personal emotional challenges. For example, Leonard
could not contemplate the idea of consulting a psychologist regarding his personal psychic or
emotional issues, but would not hesitate to take up these challenges with his regular GP.
Leonard recounted how he consulted his GP with an injured arm that resulted from a street
fight and how his GP took the street fight as a point of departure to explore his life story and
inner emotional world. Feeling that the GP showed genuine concern for him, Leonard poured
out his heart to him regarding the challenges he was facing and “how life is crowding me ( ),
and a whole lot of things I had to bring out [that I had repressed]”. As he narrated further:
So he asked me what my dreams are (…) and why I cannot achieve them, what is keeping me
away from achieving them. So I told him [that] I had all the support I needed from my father,
and [how] now that he is not here, things have become very difficult for me. [How thoughts
about his sudden death] hold me back (…) and, at times, have given me grounds not to live
any longer. ( ) He said that the best thing for me to think about is what my father would have
wished me to do were he still alive. So, I should rather pursue my dreams [as if my father were
still alive]. Instead of thinking about his death negatively, I should rather use it in a positive
way to do something (…). ( ) I have a good friend in my GP.
Leonard felt that his GP was not only concerned with his physical injuries but took pains to
understand how he felt emotionally and psychologically, especially in relation to what he
considered the most critical incidence in his life. His regular GP was not interested in only his
physical health, but also his psychic and emotional health. He felt that his GP related to him
as a whole person. The comprehensive and holistic approach to health articulated by his
regular GP, and the concrete encouragement and pieces of advice he gave him answered to
Leonard’s emotional needs and engendered a trusting relationship. Due to the trusting
relationship he had with his GP in which he could disclose his personal challenges, he felt no
need for a psychologist, as he narrated in relation a question from me relating to consulting a
psychologist:
The thought of going to a psychologist has not occurred to me. That I should sit down and talk
to a psychologist. ( ) It is difficult for me to believe that I’ll [ever] go to a psychologist. ( )
Talk about my problems to a normal person whom (…) I have not known from before, have
not seen [before] all my life (…) someone to disclose all about my childhood to. ( ) I don’t
talk often to people I don’t know (…) I am good at keeping it inside [repressing my
challenges].
Anthony and Yusuf also narrated positive experiences with their regular GPs. Yusuf narrated
that he had lots of contact with his regular GP and felt she understood his health needs. He
emphasised the important collaborative role he felt his regular GP played in relation to his
counsellor at Nav and his psychologist at DPS (see below). He felt that his regular GP got
adequate information about his health status through this collaboration. According to Yusuf,
following the advice he received from his counsellor about the importance of professional
collaboration in Norway, he opened up himself to his regular GP. More so, because he knew
from his time with the CWS that like other professionals, GPs as medical practitioners were
guided by the Norwegian confidentiality law. He narrated how he viewed the importance of
the collaboration between his counsellor at Nav, GP and psychologist at DPS, and how this
helped him to navigate the Norwegian health and social welfare system as follows:
(…) They are my support persons [social support]. To be honest with you (….) I have my
family, I have my brothers and sisters, I have my mother, but somehow they [Nav counsellor,
rGP and psychologist] are the family I have in the system. ( ) They are my family in the
system ( ) who protect me from the system (…), because the system here [in Norway] can
[make] you give up easily. ( ) If you don’t have any support from a GP, a psychologist or
someone who has, at least, - what is it called now? (…) - authority in the system, if you don’t (
), it can be difficult to fight [navigate] the system.
According to Yusuf, he received various forms of help from what Finstad (1990) described as
the “salaried family” or paid family he had in the system: counseling and dialogic reflections
on how he related to drugs, issues related to how to get a job and function on it “and my
private personal relationship to myself and how I can plan [take responsibility] for my life,
not because of the demands they made on me, but also out of my own demands [volition or
will to work for my own good]”. Thus, Yusuf felt that his physical, emotional and
psychological needs were met through the close collaboration between his Nav counsellor,
regular GP and psychologist. He felt his privacy and autonomy respected and protected. As
we shall see later, this collaboration resulted in his decision to seek residential treatment for
his drug problems.
Like Yusuf, Anthony did not focus solely on his experiences with his regular GP, but narrated
the close collaboration that existed between his Nav counsellor, psychologist and GP.
Regarding his GP, he narrated the concrete help he was receiving from him as follows:
I can go and talk to my GP ( ) if I have some [challenges] (…) because it is important that
you have contact with your GP when you are in the Nav system. So, my GP helps me if there
is something I need through Nav. They [Nav counsellor and GP] contact each other and help
me as good as they can. ( ) He has helped me to write a letter to Nav, so that I can get
rehabilitation benefit. ( ) And because of my mental health problems, he is helping me to get
disability benefit, but it is taking a long time and the outcome is not certain. But he is (…)
working with it.
Thus, the positive experiences study participants like Anthony and Yusuf narrated about their
regular GPs seem to be based on the close collaboration between their GPs and other
professional helpers in the system and the pivotal role their Nav counsellors might have
played in sensitising them to the systemic importance of such professional collaboration and
setting it in motion. Moreover, like Leonard, these positive perceptions were related to their
feelings that their GPS addressed not only their physical health needs, but also their psychic
and emotional ones.
@8-:1-6+-;?1<0 +);=)4<A+4161+;
As far as I know, there are no studies in Norway on where street-involved youths who do not
access assigned regular GPs go for medical help. However, as noted by Johansen et al. (2009),
casualty clinics and emergency units are viewed as places where health workers are likely to
meet people who present with drug misuse and associated disorders. They pointed out further
that there is a general belief in Norway that patients who present with psychiatric problems or
drug misuse relate poorly to their assigned GPs, and often consult casualty clinics for various
medical problems.
Some study participants who said they did not have regular GPs usually sought help at the
main casualty unit in Oslo, especially in relation to what they perceived as serious injuries for
which they needed urgent medical attention. For example, Francis consulted the casualty
clinic when he was assaulted on the street by a group of white youths on the eve of the
Norwegian Constitutional Day resulting in a gushing wound on his forehead. He was drunk
and the Norwegian youths were drunk. As noted earlier, though he thought he was bleeding
profusely when he got to the casualty clinic, he did not feel that he was attended to as an
emergency case, but was asked to join the queue. Feeling that he needed immediate help, he
tried to force himself into a consulting room, but was physically restrained by security guards.
He decided to leave the casualty clinic and self-medicate. In other words, under the influence
of alcohol, Francis seemed to express his pain in a behavioural manner that was perceived by
security guards at the casualty clinic as threatening to the staff. His behaviour obstructed any
help that he could have been given. In a similar vein, Mohamed took contact with the casualty
clinic with a swollen eye that resulted from a street fight the day before. He described the
writhing pain he was in as follows: “( ) It was painful, I stand like this [demonstrating the
difficulty of seeing with the bad eye] when I want to light my cigarette [or joint]. It is painful
to see the flame [from the lighter]”. Mohamed was asked to sit down and wait. He waited for
a long time and felt that he was being by-passed in the queue. He narrated the following in
relation to the “injustice” he felt being by-passed in the queue:
After three hours, I became bored, ( ) doctors came and called out the names of different
patients, and I was still waiting. I said [to an attendant] “Hello, I am also here to get help, and
you attend to people who are either in front of me or who came after me”. I became angry ( ).
I asked them to please look at my eyes. They acknowledged the [seriousness] of my injury, but
still did not do anything. They would go and fetch another patient whom they would attend to.
I became really angry. I was cooking inside [repressing my anger]. I asked myself ‘what is
happening?’ and felt that this had to do with racism. When I asked them again why I wasn’t
getting help, they told me they had a backlog from Friday. What happened on Friday had
nothing to do with it. I could not see that anyone there was injured. I was more injured than
them. I was angry, and I wanted to hit [a female attendant]. I hit the wall [instead] and left. It
was good I left ( ). Even if I had gone in to see a doctor, he would have asked me to use eye
drops. I would not have gotten any help anyway. I could use eye drops myself instead of
paying and wasting so much time. ( ) It was good I left. Otherwise, there would have been
chaos there. If you make any troubles there, they would press a button and the police would
come and take you, if it is your fault or not. ( ) I experience so much injustice. There is a lot
of injustice here [in Norway]. I bet you.
Both Francis and Mohamed seemed to feel that the health workers at the casualty clinic did
not perceive their pain or understand their anxiety regarding their injuries as they themselves
did, showing a mismatch between their expectations and the kind of care they thought they
needed that was not forthcoming. The way they expressed their pain and anxiety and need to
receive urgent medical attention seemed to be threatening to the health workers. Jamal too
recounted the several visits he made to casualty clinics with the knee injury he sustained in a
trial match arranged by an elite football club in Oslo not long after he arrived in Norway and
lived in a refugee camp. According to him, the recurring knee injury deflated his dreams of
becoming a professional footballer and sparked off his gradual descent into drug addiction as
self-medication. He too felt that the physical and emotional pains he had about the injury was
not taken seriously by health workers at casualty clinics he accessed. As he put it, “I got shot,
I got stabbed, I got beaten [up] by 20 guys ( ) back home [in Somalia]. All that is nothing, I
swear God, compared to [the pain I feel] from this little thing [knee injury]”. In one of our
interviews, he stated that the help he needed was “Simple. A good doctor (…) a good doctor
[who can help me fix my knee], and I would have given it my time [instead of self-medicating
with drugs]”. He too felt that the medical help he needed was not forthcoming because he was
black. His perceptions of not receiving the help he thought he needed engendered in him a
repressed bitterness towards health workers that he occasionally vented out verbally.
According to Johansen et al. (2012), casualty clinics see patients who present with a serious
general condition. They cited several studies that seem to suggest that abusive and aggressive
behaviour pose a challenge to casualty clinics underlying worries over own security as a
major issue in out-of-hours primary health care. This view is shared by Joa et al. (2012) who
suggested that patients who consult emergency units present with acute illnesses or needs for
help and some of them may be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, creating a tense
situation for health workers. In their study on violence towards personnel in out-of-hours
primary care in Norway, they found that a high proportion of health workers reported that
they experienced occupational violence in casualty clinics in the form of verbal abuse, threats,
physical abuse, and sexual harassment. They found verbal abuse of nurses and physicians to
be the most common form of undesirable behaviour.
Health workers perceived drug
intoxication and mental illness as the most perceived causes of occupational abuse. According
to them, very few of their study participants perceived anxiety and pain as the reasons for the
problematic behaviours patients presented with. They referred to a Dutch study (Giesen et al.
2008) in which anxiety, sorrow, pain and depression were found to be associated with close to
50 % of cases of verbal abuse or aggressive behaviour towards triage nurses during telephone
consultations in out-of-hours GP care. Commenting on the differences between their findings
and the Dutch findings, Joa et al. suggested the following:
The differences might be attributable to cultural differences in explanatory mechanisms related
to the same phenomenon. Expressed anger might, for example in a Norwegian culture, be
explained as drug-induced behaviour or mental illness symptoms, while in another culture the
same phenomenon would be explained as caused by pain (Ibid: 29).
Cultural differences in emotional expression of pain experience may even be more
accentuated in relation to patients with BME backgrounds. As observed by Callister (2003)
with reference to the literature, pain experience may be complex and related to many factors.
However, the perception of pain and behaviours associated with pain may be influenced by
the sociocultural contexts of the individual experiencing the pain. In cases such as those of
Francis and Mohamed, cultural differences associated with perceptions and expressions of
pain may also be compounded by street-involved patients’ articulations of a street culture
oriented posture or mode of expression that may be regarded as threatening by health workers
at casualty clinics.
We cannot dismiss the real dangers posed by the threat of verbal or physical abuse to the
mental health and job satisfaction of health workers in out-of-hours casualty and emergency
units. However, as suggested by Giesen et al. (2008), exploring the expectations, needs and
worries of patients may result in improved communication. As they suggested further, this
calls for the re-examination of training outcomes in communication with patients who are
worried, anxious and tend to be emotional. Failure to do so in a culturally sensitive way may
result in institutional racism and predispose some patients, especially those with varying
cultural backgrounds, like my study participants, to self-medicate resulting in disparity in
health outcomes for them. Some of these patients may explain the lack of medical attention
they experience with racism given the frustrations and sense of injustice such patients may
feel.
76<)+<?1<0 5-6<)40-)4<0;-:>1+-;
The services guidance counsellors at Nav provide their clients include those related to
treatment of alcohol and drug abuser problems and mental or psychiatric health care through
referral to specialised services. This is especially in relation to clients with dual diagnoses or
who present with co-occurring drug use and mental health problems.
Some study participants had contacts with specialist health care services including DPS and
drug and alcohol treatment institutions. Their pathways to these specialised health services
were either through referral from Nav or the criminal justice system or own effort. Liban, Ali,
Jamal, Mohamed, Yusuf, Anthony, James, Petrus, Salma and, to a certain degree, Ajar all had
contacts with these services. In what follows, I describe the experiences and perceptions of
these study participants regarding some of these institutions. Some study participants had not
had contacts with these specialist services. Nevertheless, they seemed to perceive seeking
help from these specialist services in a certain light, especially seeking psychological help. I
describe some of the factors that might account for their perceptions.
Mohamed was referred to the DPS through Nav. He kept four or five appointments with his
psychologist at DPS and decided to terminate contact with the institution. In an interview, I
asked Mohamed why he got into contact with the DPS and he narrated the following:
Moses: You said you were referred to DPS. What happened?
Mohamed: Nothing, you know. They asked if I would like to [get help] to detoxify if they paid
the costs involved and blah, blah, blah [imitating mumbling by Nav counsellors], and I said
yes. It costs 300 crowns [£30 per consultation] ( ). I went there several times. But they were
not able to help me. They [therapists] asked me to tell them what I do [drug habits]. They only
wanted information [about me] (…). ( ).
Moses: Were they psychologists?
Mohamed: Yes, ( ) those who help drug addicts.
Moses: But were you the one who told the counsellors at Nav that you have drug problems?
Mohamed: Yes, I told them that I smoked heroin (…) to (…), what can I do? I have to do it in
order to forget [my] problems. ( ) You know, it [smoking heroin] makes you happy. So, I
told them [Nav] about what I do [my use of drugs]. You know, you go to Nav many times and
they don’t give you the help you need and this makes me angry, and they tell me I am angry
because I am under the influence of drugs, blah, blah, blah. I admitted it just to end the
conversation and get the help [social benefits] I needed ( ). So, I agreed to be sent for
detoxification, so I can quit drugs. ( ) I went there four or five times, but had to pay for the
consultations myself. And I said what a hell! I am not going back there. They [counsellors at
Nav] lied to me that they would pay for me [pay the cost of therapy].
Thus, in pursuance of their responsibilisation role in which Mohamed’s behaviour and
motivation for change came under scrutiny, the welfare needs of Mohamed and his resistance
to the subjectification processes that unfolded at the mandatory meetings he attended were
blamed on his drug use. In other words, Mohamed’s needs were defined by his counsellors in
terms of what they perceived as his habit of abusing psychotropic substances. He, therefore,
needed assistance in order to get off drugs. However, Mohamed did not consider his drug use
as a problem, but as self-medication. What he needed was a permanent job and his own
accommodation. With these basic human needs in place, he felt he could take responsibility
for his life. For Mohamed, his drug use was related to the psychic and emotional pains
resulting from his unemployment and homelessness. His anger was undergirded by these
psychic and emotional pains. He used heroin and other drugs for momentary psychic and
emotional closure. He agreed to subject himself to drug therapy only because he risked losing
his social benefits by not doing so. Moreover, because he was not given adequate information
about his share of the costs involved, Mohamed did not only feel coerced to get drug therapy,
but also felt that his counsellors tricked him into paying for a drug therapy he did not need
and was not really motivated for. He terminated the therapy because given what he perceived
as his real needs, the therapy was not helpful and too expensive. What Mohamed perceived as
his real needs became apparent in the following interview excerpt when I asked him about his
perceptions about the drug therapy itself:
Moses: And what do you think about the help you were given [at the DPS]?
Mohamed: I didn’t get any help. They just talked with me. They were just interested in getting
information about me; what I do; about my experiences in life; the kinds of drugs I use. I told
them everything. And they said “Ok, good we have another appointment next Friday” and
blah, blah, blah. They asked me to fill something on paper [Diagnostic questionnaire] with a
lot of different questions [such as] Are you sick? Are you aggressive? Are you this and that? I
said [answered] no, no, no, no and finally the appointment was over and I left. And I was
wondering why they didn’t pay me for sitting there for one hour and, instead, asked me to pay
300 crowns just talking nonsense. I don’t think it was [worth] anything. I don’t think it is help.
( ) They asked me things I have done [the past], not about my present situation [present needs]
(…). ( ) What had happened had happened. You [We all] experience things in life, you know.
I don’t think they help [drug therapists/conversational therapy]. ( ) I started [using drugs]
myself. Why can’t I stop [using it myself? [I can stop using it myself] because [I know] it
harms me, it fucks up my body and my life, ( ) my health and so on. And she [psychologist]
didn’t give even one advice. She just wanted to hear what I had to say.
Moses. But what kind of help were you expecting?
Mohamed: That they should help me another way to stop smoking [heroin and cannabis]
Moses: But how?
Mohamed: I don’t know. They are (…) the ones who work with it [drug treatment]. If I wanted
it [to stop] I would have done it myself. But since it is their job, I thought they knew more
[about how to help people quit drugs]. But after talking to them, I realised that they didn’t
have (…) they didn’t know more about drugs than me.
Moses: But in relation to the drug problems you have, what kind of help do you think you
need? What can make you stop using it [drugs]?
Mohamed: [Reflective silence] I can stop it [using drugs] if I get a job. For example, when I
wake up early in the morning to go to work [and] come back from work, and [when I] have an
apartment. Then I can go and train [go to the gym] after work. Do something. Then I will not
have time to smoke and do something stupid. I will not have sleeping problems in the night
either because I would have been exhausted having woken up early in the morning to go to
work ( ) and having trained [after work]. I don’t need a shit after that. ( ) I can stop.
Mohamed was not unaware of the dangers involved in using drugs less than he felt his drug
therapists or psychologist were. Prior to the therapeutic contact, he considered them experts
who could weaned him off drugs by “helping” him. But after his experience of the talk
therapy involved, the realisation dawned on him that his drug therapist did not know more
about the harmful effects of drugs than him. This undermined any modicum of trust he must
have held for her as an expert and for the institution she represented. He felt that his therapist
was too focused on his drug use, something he felt he could easily exercise control over if
what he considered his real needs were met. Thus, he experienced incongruence between his
perceptions of his needs and those of his therapist. He felt that he could not change what had
happened in the past. He was present and future oriented and more interested in getting help
to exercise control over the future. He did not experience that help forthcoming. Hence the
therapeutic resistance he put up. Moreover, he perceived the therapy as coerced therapy or
conditionality for social benefit.
In her study of why some drug addicts with BME backgrounds terminated drug treatment,
Berg (2002, 2003) made some important observations which are relevant to understanding
Mohamed’s therapeutic resistance. Berg underscored the centrality of what she describes as
“Talking Cure” or talk therapy in the subjectification processes integral to drug treatment in
Norway. Central to this strategy of governance is information gathering, especially about
clients’ past experiences. In this strategy, the understanding is that the inner psychic and
emotional turmoil clients present with are related to clients’ drug use dispositions. These
clients are viewed as independent and autonomous individuals who have problems with
themselves. Drug therapists, therefore, see it as their role to help these clients change
themselves through talk therapy. For the drug addicts in her study, talking about drugs
involved shame and humiliation in that their identities as drug addicts became confirmed.
This undermined their feelings of who they felt they really were: father, son and a man. They
experienced such talk therapies as foreign to their experiences. They were more preoccupied
with needs related to job, housing and restoring their families’ trust in them. Besides, the talk
therapy involved a kind of therapeutic nudity or public self-confession that they rejected
because of lack of sufficient trust in such treatment institutions as expert systems. They would
rather forget about their drug problems and cast them away into the Sea of Oblivion. Lack of
common understandings of the help the clients needed and how to arrive at that help resulted
in conflicts in communication and termination of therapy by the clients. Thus, the frames of
reference clients and therapists bring to bear on the therapeutic relationship have important
implications for therapeutic outcomes.
Mohamed’s resistance to therapy may also have stemmed from the likelihood that he was not
given adequate information about what to expect from the DPS. As Berg pointed out,
treatment in welfare expert systems are alien to clients with minority ethnic background that
may come into contact with such systems in Norway. Many such clients or patients may,
therefore, lack information or knowledge about such experts systems and misconstrue the help
they can get from them. When Liban was referred to DPS by his counsellor at Nav, he
wondered for many weeks what “the psychologist/psychiatrist” would do to him. He
postponed several appointments at the DPS. He asked me if I could accompany him if he
arranged an appointment. According to him, “the psychologist” called him a number of times,
but he was afraid to meet up. Liban’s fear of what to expect was very real in his mind because
he could see that some of his peers in the open street drug market that he frequented at
Vaterland Park became “mad” after going to their psychologists/psychiatrists. He believed
that their psychologists gave them “pills” that made them crazy. Liban used the nouns
“psychologist” and “psychiatrist” interchangeably during the interview. This suggests that he
did not know the difference between the terms, or that some of his peers might have gone
through psychiatric institutions. James was one of his acquaintances he recalled. He described
his feelings about seeing a psychologist as follows:
I don’t want to end up like them. I am strong [healthy] and have a goal in life ( ). I just want
to work in a warehouse like a normal human being ( ). I don’t have the need for a
psychologist. He [the psychologist] will ask me what my problem is. I know what my problem
is. I just need a solution to it and that is what I am doing attending courses [under the aegis of
Nav in order to get a job]. Psychologist, what do I need a psychologist for? ( ). I have had
several meetings with my counsellor and she wrote down things I told her. So the psychologist
has access to that. He knows all [about me] (…). So there is no sense in him playing with my
brains, right?
Thus, Liban seemed not to have been given adequate information by his counsellor at Nav
about how psychologists work or what to expect from his psychologist at DPS. He lacked the
requisite knowledge in that regard apart from the gathering of intimate information about him
he thought the interaction would involve. He, therefore, mistrusted and was suspicious of the
psychologist at DPS. He also believed that his counsellor and the psychologist at DPS shared
registered information on him for which reason other talk sessions were redundant. Here too,
one can surmise that Liban was not informed that his consent was needed for his counsellor to
share such information with his psychologist. This mistrust was buttressed or confirmed by
what he perceived as the negative experiences of some of his street peers who had therapeutic
interactions with psychologists or psychiatric institutions. Eventually, he summoned the
courage and kept an appointment with his psychologist at DPS. He narrated his experience
with the encounter as follows:
The psychologist said that I am not a maniac [schizophrenic]. ( ) She said I am perfectly
healthy [mentally]. ( ) What happened was that I was hearing voices [having hallucinations]
whenever I got very high on drugs. ( ) She said I was not psychotic. I just needed to exert
more efforts and fix one or two things. She said what I need is more action. ( ) I also told her
I would not have any medicine, and she said I have to be mad [schizophrenic] in order to be
put on medication.
Liban felt that the psychologist understood him and affirmed that he was a normal person. He
felt positive about the fact that he received concrete professional advice.
Similarly, what made Jamal doubtful about seeking treatment for his dual diagnosis by his
local DPS was that for many weeks, he went about wondering what the term “treatment”
[behandling in the Norwegian] or “rehab” meant. Both his counsellor at Nav and a
psychologist at a local DPS whom he consulted in relation to diagnosis and assessment of his
treatment needs used the term in relation to the help they thought he needed for his heavy
drug use. Jamal first came into contact with a psychologist when he was in prison. He
solicited the contact himself as a coping strategy for alleviating the pains of imprisonment he
felt. He feigned the need to see a psychologist and got an appointment. He counted himself
very lucky to have the chance to talk to “a very attractive and young female psychologist”.
As he put it, “Come on, you sit in jail [your cell] for 23 hours [a day] ( ) and you get to sit
next to a woman. It was jackpot!” He narrated the sexual fantasies he had about her
throughout the consultation, and how he did not really listen to or follow most of what she
said. The psychologist referred him to a local DPS. He had consultations with a psychologist
at the DPS when he was released from prison. Jamal too felt that the psychologist talked too
much about his drug dependency. He was more preoccupied with his knee injuries that he felt
deprived him of his dream of being a professional footballer. Moreover, he wanted to move
away from Oslo and find a job. He narrated his consultation with the psychologist as follows:
We talked about everything under the sun and earth (…) When I don’t wanna talk about
something ( ) we changed it. He told me about my “extreme use of drugs” and I told him
‘Well, that I know from before. What else?’ ( ) I told him the drugs were comforting me. ( )
The psychologist said “we shall refer you to treatment”. I said “ok, what is treatment?” I have
not heard about it [before]. He said ‘Well treatment is this, is this, is this ( ) you will go to this
place and [they] gonna clean your body from [the drugs] and you are going to stay there for a
while. You can use drugs’. All that seems nice. ( ) One day, I was walking by Grønland and
I asked one junkie I know – I hate to be with them [junkies]. I asked him, ‘What is rehab in
this country?’ ( ) He tells me to do it (…). He tells me you get 9000 or 10000 crowns (£9001000) and you are fine. It’s like the payment is fine. I didn’t stop there. ( ) I asked a woman
who was a drug addict ‘What is rehab? I have to go to rehab (…). How am I gonna be when I
come out? What am I gonna do?’ And then she said ‘Don’t go there’. I asked why? And she
said ‘The day you go there is the day you are marked’. Then I went [back] to prison. So when
I was in prison, I met this guy and he kind of gave me [threw] a lot of light on it (…).
Thus, the failure of his counsellor at Nav and the psychologist at DPS to explain to him in
plain words the technical or medical terms they used in relation to detoxification and
institutional drug assisted treatment or rehabilitation made Jamal turn to other drug addicts on
the street. These drug addicts could not give him any sound professional advice, but their own
personal and contradictory perceptions of what rehabilitation entailed. This did not help him
much, especially when “rumours had it [on the street] that it didn’t go very well with a lot of
foreign people [minority ethnic drug addicts] who were offered rehab”. The local DPS did
apply for a place for him in a treatment institution for young people with dual diagnosis.
Jamal had some doubts about going through treatment. He felt suspicious about the real
intentions behind treatment because of the cultural mistrust he harboured for white people. He
described these feelings as follows:
It was crazy. I mean, you don’t expect to tell somebody who doesn’t believe in God [that]
there is God. I never believed that there was treatment or [that] I had a drug problem. They
told me ‘Hey, you have to go there’. I am like [in his mind] I am not sick. Fuck you guys. I
thought once again, the system is fooling me.
Jamal did not like life at the institution in the beginning and could not relate much to the
mostly white patients there. He had a number of sessions with “a young and beautiful female
psychologist”. He did not only fantasise about her, but also felt that she could not open up to
such a young female professional and asked for another psychologist who was elderly. He
later developed a trusting relationship with the psychologist and a social worker who were to
play an important role in his life. He later described the social worker as “the mother I didn’t
have” and the psychologist as “someone who made me realise that I was a racist”. Through
the help of these professionals whom Jamal felt understood him and “knew how the system
works” he got the medical assistance he needed for his knee injuries. He later had a knee
operation. He got a close follow-up upon graduating from the institution. Jamal felt that in
addition to his counsellor at Nav, these women played an important role in his life. Jamal later
told me about “How powerful psychologists are in Norway”.
Some of the study participants would not hesitate to seek help from psychologists. As noted in
chapter 7, majority of study participants narrated experiences that seemed to indicate various
forms of anxiety or depression. Many experienced inner psychic and emotional pains. Hence,
I asked them if they would go to a psychologist for help in relation to these challenges,
especially if they were depressed. Though Salma would not go to an Imam with her personal
issues, she could think of going to a psychologist. She felt that she had a good experience
when she was referred to the PP-service for diagnostic assessment in relation to ADHD. In
relation to the bouts of depression she said she experienced from time to time, she would not
hesitate to go to a psychologist:
If I feel that it is destroying my life and affecting others [around me]. But so far, so good. But
it would have been good to see a psychologist (…) [laughs] ( ) It would have been good to
see a psychologist in relation to how Nav is irritating me now [laughs], good to get a help
from someone. Otherwise, it’s ok. I can manage this”.
When I asked her what kind of help she thought she would need from a psychologist, she
answered as follows: “Tips, advice and what I ought to do further. But I don’t really know
how a psychologist can help me because I need help to get back to school and get a job. So I
don’t know how much they [psychologists] can be of help”. Petrus too felt that he got good
help from the PP-service and this helped him to learn and speak Norwegian better. He would
not have any problems going to a psychologist in the future should the need arise. Anthony
too had contact with a psychologist whom his regular GP referred him to for diagnostic
assessment for ADHD. He had consultations with him about three times. He felt that his
psychologist was good “because I think he understands people’s problems. And can […] help;
give advice if he thinks you need it. ( ) I think he is [a] good [psychologist]”. Anthony would
not hesitate to go to a psychologist if he thought he needed psychological assistance. Yusuf
too had contact with DPS and felt that the psychologist he consulted there was very good, but
bemoaned how expensive talk therapy was in Norway: Regarding the cost of therapy, he
narrated the following:
She was good, to be honest with you. She is called [Mentions her name]. She is a woman who
is very understanding. And [long silence] I am happy to have talked to her, the conversations.
But then, I became scared, scared (…), this damn system (…), of what would happened after if
I became dependent on talking [talk therapy with a psychologist]. What would happen to me if
I had to pay [for talk therapy] myself?
Though he felt seeing a psychologist would help, he would not seek psychological help in the
future because of the cost involved. Two years after he was shot and nearly killed, Franklin
had not consulted a psychologist as advised by his regular GP, but had plans of doing so. He
felt he needed professional advice.
Those study participants who narrated positive experiences with psychologists emphasised
how they felt that the psychologists understood their problems and stressed the concrete
pieces of advice they thought they received from the psychologists. They did not consider
such consultations as mere talk therapy. Due to their prior positive experiences, they would
consider consulting a psychologist in the future. Moreover, these study participants would not
take into consideration the ethnic background of the psychologist should they decide to
consult one. When I asked Salma if the ethnic background of the psychologist would weigh in
her decision to seek psychological help, she answered by saying “It doesn’t matter. Only that
he [the psychologist] is good ( )”. She emphasised the importance of getting concrete advice
and not a situation where “They only ask questions all the time. I think it can be irritating if
they ask only questions till the appointment is over”. Anthony too did not feel that the colour
of the psychologist mattered: “I prefer to go to him (…) He talks to me as an ordinary person
and I don’t think he treats people differently because of the colour of their skin. I think he is
good. ( ) I can trust him”.
For these participants, therefore, ethnic match would not seem to weigh much in their
decisions to seek mental health care. The concrete help or advice they could receive from a
psychologist who would be prepared to listen to them and show understanding for their
challenges, and whom they could trust, would be paramount in their decisions to seek help in
the future. It was only in the interview with Jamal that the sex and age of the psychologist
seemed to matter a lot. Salma, Yusuf and Petrus grew up in Norway and Anthony had lived in
Norway for many years. This seems to suggest that psychological acculturation might have
some influence on their attitudes towards seeking psychological help. Leonard too grew up in
Norway, but would not consider consulting a psychologist due probably to the trusting
relationship he had with his regular GP to whom he could divulge his innermost feelings. It is
likely that he would not hesitate consulting a psychologist if his GP advised him to do so. One
can speculate that psychological acculturation or adaptation, adequate information and the
trust dividend that may result from professional collaboration or a good relationship with a
professional social or health worker may play a crucial role in decisions of street-involved
youths to seek mental health care.
Majority of the study participants would not go to a psychologist or seek mental health care,
however. Most of them narrated that “I am my own psychologist” or “Only crazy people go to
psychologists”. James’ pathway to psychiatric institutions in Norway was mainly through the
criminal justice system. On no occasion in the interviews and extended conversations I had
with him did he mention positive experiences within psychiatric institutions, except the help
he said he got after throwing himself in front of a high speed train and became paralyzed from
the waist down. He gave a vivid recollection of how he was strapped and forcefully removed
and transported from prison to a psychiatric hospital and how he thought he was going to die.
He felt that he had been misdiagnosed, mismedicated and used as a guinea pig within the
psychiatric system for many years. Yasser and Ajar too had negative views about
psychological help. Recall that Yasser and Ajar narrated the anger they felt inside and their
suicidal ideations. Like Yusuf, Ajar was referred to a psychologist for anger management
when he physically assaulted a teacher. He attended the mandatory meetings but put up a
therapeutic resistance by not revealing anything about himself to the psychologist. As he put
it: “Why would you go to a psychologist?” and Yasser interjected: “What shall we use them
for?” In the following interview excerpt, they narrated some of the reasons they would not go
to a psychologist:
Ajar: I have a psychologist ( ) but I don’t talk to him. I don’t want to see him. ( ) He would
ask me “How are you?” ( ) I just wait for the time to be up, so I can go.
Yasser: They don’t understand us at all.
Ajar: They don’t understand your problems. What you have inside. No one can understand.
Moses: Why do you think they cannot understand?
Yasser: Because (…) they have never helped anyone. Nobody goes further in life after talking
with a psychologist, especially those [patients] who come from war zones. ( ) You talk to a
person who cannot even follow what you are saying. You’ll just talk, talk, talk, talk and the
appointment is over ( ). It’s like we don’t trust them. As for me, I don’t trust those people.
We have a lot inside us that we are not able to express. But all shall come to pass. ( ) We are
going to be fine.
Ajar: We don’t have psychologists [where we come from]. We are not used to it. And you
know, if someone gets to know (…) if we call Kurdistan and say we are seeing a psychologist,
[people will say] “ooh, you are crazy, you are crazy”. They will call you crazy and a coward.
Yasser: It is only crazy people who don’t take care of themselves, who don’t think; mad
people.
Moses: But how can you get it [what you have inside] out?
Yasser: I would have cast it away long ago if I knew where to cast it [both laugh]. I don’t have
contact with a psychologist. I didn’t want it, though I was asked [if I wanted to speak to a
psychologist].
Moses: You were asked?
Yasser: Yes, but I didn’t want to. Because I know that they (…), nobody can understand me.
Nobody has experienced what I experienced. How then can they find solution to what I feel
inside? We shall die with it. We have many secrets in our hearts and we have been predestined
to die with them.
Moses: Who has predestined it?
Yasser: God.
When I pressed them to tell me what kind of help they thought they needed, Yasser said the
following: “We need someone who can understand how we feel inside. Someone who can
help us to bring it out [cast it away], forget it. Do you know what? I heard about a pill one can
take and forget everything thing. I bet you, I just want to get hold of that pill and forget
everything”.
The interview excerpts above suggest that like the minority ethnic drug addicts in Berg’s
(2002) study and some of my study participants, Yasser and Ajar would like to cast their past
experiences away into the Ocean of Oblivion and felt that conversational therapy would only
make them relive the painful memories that they had repressed. Ajar and Yasser also seemed
to suggest that it is only professional therapists who had experienced war and its devastations
themselves that could be of help to them, professionals they could identify with and whom
they felt could understand them better. However, the fact that trust could be one of the
dominant factors in determining whether they would seek help became apparent when I asked
them if they would prefer to seek help from a psychologist who shared their ethnic origin. The
answer was a vehement “No!”, signifying that they also mistrusted their own countrymen.
Ajar and Yasser also had culturally defined stereotypical conceptions about seeking mental
health care. They feared being stigmatised or even ostracised if they did so. They imputed
negative characteristics to persons who seek mental health care. These negative and
stigmatising preconceptions detracted from their trust in psychologists. They also articulated
culturally defined notions of masculinity that dictate that men should be strong and stoic in
the face of calamities. The scepticism and cultural mistrust displayed by Ajar, Yasser and
majority of study participants seem to confirm findings in Norway that various minority
ethnic groups attach stigma to mental illness, and may experience reduced self-worth and feel
stigmatised in their contacts with mental health services (Guribye & Sam 2008, Fangen &
Hjelden 2006, and Grønseth 2007). This seems to be buttressed by religious beliefs held by
study participants such as Yasser and Ajar. However, it appears feelings of stigma, cultural
mistrust and religious beliefs alone cannot explain the reluctance of Ajar and Yasser and other
study participants in seeking mental health care. Feelings that no one could understand how
they felt, that there was no help out there may also constitute a formidable barrier to accessing
mental health care.
The therapeutic resistance that Mohamed and Ajar put up may also be explained in terms of
the coercion they felt was involved in their referrals. Yusuf also put up a similar therapeutic
resistance when he was referred to Alternative to Violence (ATV) as part of his sentence
when he physically assaulted a teacher and was arraigned before a court as a minor. ATV is a
research and treatment center for violent offenders and persons exposed to violence. He
described how he resisted the subjectification process involved in the anger management
therapy as follows:
I understood [that] the aim was to influence me so I can come to terms with my temper. But I
was just using the time to understand the tactics he [the psychologist] was using against me,
instead of allowing him to influence me. I have a different way of thinking (…), not to allow
anyone to decide for me who I should be. That’s the more reason I don’t like people to give
me orders. So, ( ) I just sat there and studied his tactics. It was more (…) like stealing it from
him ( ).
The negative experiences James also narrated about being misdiagnosed and mismedicated
may also be explained in terms of the coercion he felt was involved in his many admissions to
psychiatric institutions. Thus, the compulsion some of the study participants might have felt in
relation to their referrals to specialist mental health care may have detracted from the trust the
might otherwise have had for these expert systems. Many study participants tended to view
therapeutic outcomes as positive in non-coercive therapeutic situations where they felt
understood and where concrete help in form of advice was forthcoming.
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Apart from Jamal, it was only Ali and Yusuf who received drug treatment in professionallybased residential rehabilitation institutions. Liban eventually quit drugs, but on his own.
According to Liban, when he decided to quit drugs after his two buddies died of overdose in
course of two weeks, he took contact with the local psychiatric casualty clinic from where he
was referred to a detoxification center. According to him, he was able to endure the terrible
withdrawal symptoms. After his discharge from the detoxification center, he managed to quit
his drug habits by using buprenorphine (Subutex) which he bought on the streets. He was not
qualified at the time for the subutex programme for drug addicts awaiting admission to
medicine-assisted rehabilitation. He felt that his drug use reduced and his life improved
considerably. He was able to focus more on looking for jobs. Liban looked well-kept during
the second interview I had with him and I commended him for that. He relied on self-help
with the help of Subutex and it seemed to work for him.
Ali was admitted to a treatment institution scenically located in the mountains far away from
Oslo as an alternative prison sentence in line with the Prison Act of 12 December, 1998, no. 7
under supervision from the Prison Service. The treatment institution utilise group therapy,
work teams, common group activities and individual follow-ups in accordance with an
Individual Plan related to the promotion of both the physical and mental health of their users.
The aim is to assist the patients in coming to terms with their drug use, so as to shed their drug
addict identities and way of thinking that are tied to the drug addict street culture. Through
group therapy and activities, the patients share a sense of belonging, learn how to open up to
others and be honest in their dealings with them. They give one another social and emotional
support. They also learn important social and life skills that they can fall upon after treatment
in order to lead a drug-free life. Patients are also given the opportunity to work with their
relationships and future plans, how to structure their daily lives, plan their economies and
work towards acquiring accommodation after completing the rehabilitation programme. Ali
liked the scenic environment of the treatment institution and the various leisure activities it
afforded him and other users during the winter and summer months, the group activities and
the comprehensive or holistic approach to the needs of patients.
The main aim of the treatment regime regarding Ali was clear from the very beginning. He
was supposed to be assisted by the drug therapists at the institution in changing his attitudes.
The aim was to motivate him for change and making him realise the important role he himself
had to play in that change process. Since he wanted to win back his family’s trust, he accepted
the subjectification and responsibilisation regime of the treatment institution. At one of the
supervisory meetings I attended with Ali, he was commended for being motivated for
treatment and willing to learn new skills. However, Ali could not resist drug offers from
younger user in care of the CWS who were in residential care in the same institution. As
noted in his life story, Ali’s treatment was terminated and he went back to prison. He was
blamed for not completing the treatment. As Ali lamented afterwards, “Why would they admit
those silly little kids in care of the CWS in the institution?” Upon reflection, one wonders
whether Ali would have completed the treatment had there been no cannabis available in the
treatment institution and if, to that extent, the institution was equally to blame. Perhaps, with
the introduction of medical marijuana and reduction in legal and social prohibitions against
cannabis use, patients like Ali can experience positive outcomes from drug treatment and
have more meaningful lives.
Through a close collaboration between his counsellor at Nav, his regular GP and psychologist
at DPS, Yusuf was motivated for treatment at a professionally-based therapeutic community
not far from Oslo. Yusuf emphasised the patience exercised by his counsellor in relation to his
motivation to seek treatment. He felt that the professionals around him gave him ample time
to reflect upon whether he was motivated for change. He felt also that they involved him in all
decisions that had to do with his life. Central in his mind was his thoughts about failing again.
According to Yusuf, he had been very strict with himself in relation to seeking treatment. He
did not want to disappoint himself by not completing drug treatment. So he bid his time.
When he finally decided to go in for treatment, he meant to complete it. He was admitted into
a professionally-based and hierarchically structured therapeutic community which was based
on similar principles as the institution Ali went through. According to Yusuf, his experiences
there had an awakening effect on him. The treatment programme was mostly group-based and
comprehensive and holistic. He improved his communication skills and relationship with
other patients. He did not use drugs in a period of ten months. However, he was kicked out of
treatment as he lamented below:
Yusuf: I was kicked out because I quarrelled and I came back to Oslo. It was a heavy burden
[to carry].
Moses. How?
Yusuf: After I was kicked out I became very angry with myself. ( ) It felt like hell.
Moses: Can you describe how you felt?
Yusuf: [long silence] I became depressed ( ) A big, big, big [very serious] depression which I
have never experienced before.
Once again, Yusuf’s temper hindered his efforts to go ahead in life. Though neither Ali nor
Yusuf completed their drug rehabilitation regimes, they liked the therapeutic approaches
adopted by these treatment institutions. They considered them comprehensive and holistic.
Though the onus of responsibility rested on Ali and Yusuf, that responsibilisation came with
the opportunity to participate in meaningful social relationships and collectivist group
activities which nurtured their sense of belonging and being recognised. Besides, they had the
opportunity to learn life skills that they could fall upon to lead a life of sobriety.
Thus, if made more flexible, the comprehensive, collectivist and holistic intervention
approaches, coupled with close individual follow-up adopted by these therapeutic
communities to the complex social, psychological and emotional needs of their users, as well
as the sense of self-esteem, belonging and recognition they can nurture, may be crucial in
intervention strategies targeted at marginalised BME youths with complex psychosocial and
emotional needs.
'*( / &%**- *$+% '# .&+*)(, )
In this chapter, I describe the experiences and perceptions of the study participants including
those I had extended informal conversations with regarding some municipal youth services
that target marginalised and street-involved BME youths. I also describe how professionals
from these municipal youth services perceived the needs of these youths and the challenges
characterising their work with them.
In the field of social and youth work, marginalised and vulnerable street-involved youths who
present with risk behaviours such as substance use, violence and criminality, and who
participate in deviant milieus are often labelled as ‘hard-to-reach’ youths. They are so labelled
because most of these youths may not be willing to access available social welfare and youth
services for various reasons. Such as reasons, as we have seen in this study, may include lack
of knowledge or information about services, fear of self-disclosure, past negative experiences,
feelings that there is nowhere to go for help, or that no one can understand how they feel,
cultural mistrust or interracial dissonance, sense of stigma, lack of clarity about role
expectations that may result from differences in frames of reference between professional and
helper, and so on. This label is applied especially to marginalised street-involved BME
youths because of the cultural mistrust they may articulate in relation to mainstream white
institutions.
However, attempts are made by some youth services to reach out to them on the street or to
provide low threshold services or projects that they can easily access. Two such institutions
found at the street level in Oslo are Uteseksjonen (hereafter the Youth Outreach Agency or
the Agency) and the Riverside Youth House (hereafter Riverside) which are municipal
services. I interviewed professionals from these two services. I also had an interview with one
of the two professionals engaged in a municipal youth project called Ny Sjanse (New Chance)
which targets marginalised BME youths, most of whom are street-involved and share many
indicators of marginality associated with my study participants.
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The Youth Outreach Agency has carried out outreach work in downtown Oslo for about 46
years now. One of the target groups for the agency’s outreach work are marginalised and
vulnerable street-involved young people up to 25 years old who use downtown Oslo as their
main recreational arena or participate in different milieus, including open street drug markets,
which social and health workers at the Agency view with professional concern. The Agency
also targets adult street drug addicts, young Travellers and undocumented minor asylum
seekers. These groups are outside the ambit of this study. Through outreach work, social
workers at the Agency try to establish contact with vulnerable street-involved young people in
their own social arenas, establish trusting relationships with them, orient them on available
services, and refer them to other social, welfare and health services that they may need and
which the Agency have close collaboration with. The Agency develops concrete methods in
its efforts to reach these vulnerable youths on the street. The Agency also provides a
counselling service and low threshold drop-in centre to its users which are located at its
premises. Young people get assistance in relation to job applications, finding accommodation
and in accessing other services such as the CWS and Nav. The Agency is also mandated to
send concern reports to local CWS offices about minors that frequent open street drug
markets and to look out for young people under 18 years old reported by various local CWS
offices as runaways.
The Youth Outreach Agency carries out its outreach work every day and night throughout the
year. The outreach work the Agency carries out in downtown also are described at the Agency
as “patrols”. The Agency has a policy of carrying out a minimum of 35 such patrols every
week. Every patrol consists of two professionals. A minimum of three outreach patrols are
carried out during the day, four during the evenings every week day, three on Saturdays and
one patrol on Sundays. Those in the Agency’s target groups who are observed, greeted or
given various forms of follow-up or practical help during such patrols are registered after each
patrol. The Agency also runs externally funded projects for vulnerable young people from
time to time. These projects are important methodological tools for reaching vulnerable
youths described as “hard-to-reach”. At the time of the study, two projects were in operation:
“Out of the Haze” course (which is now permanent) for cannabis users who are motivated to
stop using the drug and a peer education project that targets EMO youths who are referred to
as “Alternative Youths” at the Agency. Thus, the Youth Outreach Agency may be regarded as
an important gateway for marginalised and vulnerable street-involved youths for accessing the
social, health and welfare services available for them, with assistance from highly qualified
and experienced professionals with broad knowledge about these services and how to access
them.
As part of their mandate, the social workers at the Outreach Agency follow up closely and
map out developments in downtown Oslo regarding recruitment to and changes in the various
milieus frequented by its target groups. Detailed descriptions of these developments are
reported up in the municipal administrative system and to the political authorities. In addition,
social workers at the agency disseminate their experiences and observations in downtown
Oslo at seminars and conferences attended by other social practitioners, and at different
collaborative fora. One of these fora is SaLTo, which is a model for collaboration between the
Oslo Police District and the City of Oslo in relation to crime, drug and alcohol abuse
prevention among young people in Oslo. Thus, how social and health workers at the Agency
perceive and describe the challenges and needs of the young people, including the BME
youths they come into contact with not only influences how they relate to these youths on the
streets, but can also influence youth policy and have serious political repercussions for these
young people, and can inform police action.
At the time of the study, the Agency had 40 workers most of whom were professional social
workers holding a Bachelor’s degree in social work. 3 nurses and a psychologist also worked
at the Agency at the time of the study. Out of the 40 professionals, 3 (roughly 7.5 %) had
BME backgrounds. According to the Head of the Agency, majority of vulnerable streetinvolved young people the Agency has registered various forms of contact with are
marginalised street-involved BME youths. These registered contacts include young people
who get follow-up and those who are not actually service users or “clients”, but who are
observed often on the streets or whom outreach workers talk to or exchange greetings with
during outreach work. These youths, whom the professionals at the Agency are not actually
following up, constitute the majority of marginalised street-involved youths registered by the
Agency. I took part in 5 outreach patrols with professionals from the Agency during the study.
As I pointed out in Chapter 3, I worked as a youth worker and directed a project targeted at
marginalised and street-involved BME youths at the Agency before becoming a full-time
researcher.
#1>-:;1,-(7=<07=;Riverside is a low threshold youth centre for young people between 15 and 22 years old. It is
located at the bank of the Aker River in Grønland/Vaterland in downtown Oslo, in an area
that has over the years been notorious for open street drug markets organised mostly around
the sale of cannabis or hash. Marginalised and street-involved BME youths have been very
active in and dominated the open street drug markets in the area since 2001. Non-active and
active adult injecting drug users and alcoholics, mostly ethnic Norwegians, also hang around
the Vaterland Park, a stone’s throw away from the Youth House. Riverside may be described
as an island of virtue, hope, and sociability that protects most of its mostly BME youth service
users from the pressures of the open street drug markets outside.
Riverside is a glass building of three floors. The reception is on the first floor. Here, young
people can surf the internet, engage in informal conversations with social and youth workers
and play various games. Young people can get assistance in writing job applications, in
relation to finding accommodation, and challenges in relation to school and health issues.
Riverside also offers its young users courses on the second floor in web and graphic design,
ICT, filming, catering, and Photoshop. Unemployed young people who offer these short
courses may qualify for social benefits from Nav. Thus, Riverside collaborates with Nav in
relation to apprenticeships for social benefits. Offices are located on the third floor. On a
“quiet day”, about 20-25 young people come to Riverside and between 40 and 50 on a “busy
day” to access its services.
Depending on availability of funding, Riverside also offers various activities such as tours,
canoeing during the summer, film evenings and so on. It is a hub for many youth activities.
Riverside has a Youth Team that gives close follow-up to young people or refers them to
other services, and an Outreach Team that carries out outreach patrols. There was no outreach
work undertaken by Riverside during the study, due to lack of funding. Though Riverside is
run by the borough of Gamle Oslo, its services are open to all young people in Oslo between
the ages of 15 and 22. Some of the youths who access the center use cannabis and sell the
drug on a low key. Riverside has a Zero Tolerance policy in relation to using drugs at the
youth center. Known BME youths who are heavily involved in selling and using drugs are
marginalised in relation to the services provided there. The workers also take concrete steps to
ask those dealing in drugs within its vicinity to go elsewhere, though this continues to be a
formidable task for the professionals.
According to the social workers there, about 90 % of young people who use Riverside’s
services are BME youths, mostly with background from Somalia and Afghanistan. From the
Riverside building, one can observe BME youths selling cannabis outside and adult
alcoholics, drug addicts, Travellers, and undocumented foreigners hanging in the area or
dealing in drugs, especially during the summer months. Two of the four entry/exit points to
the Grønland subway station are behind the glass building that houses Riverside. The third
entry/exit point lies about 25 meters across the street from the main entrance to the youth
house. These three entry/exit points have been hotspots for drug dealing. The Stargate Pub is
located just three meters from the third entry/exit point to the subway station. This pub has
received a lot of attention from the police and social workers over the years. At the time of the
study, Riverside had 15 workers with various educational backgrounds including Bachelor’s
degree in social work. 50 % of the workers there have BME backgrounds. I spent three weeks
at Riverside during the study interacting with the professionals and young people who came
to access the services provided there. They were all informed about the study.
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A7=<0;
One can glean from the above that most of the young people professionals from these two
important municipal youth services work with are marginalised and street-involved BME
youths who present with various indicators of marginality. These services constitute important
gateways for most of these youths to other social and welfare services. How do these frontline
professionals conceptualise the challenges facing these BME youths?
All the professionals I interviewed emphasised the point that the marginalised and streetinvolved BME youths they work with are not representative of all BME youths in Oslo or
Norway. However, they articulated specific discourses about BME youths they considered
vulnerable or experiencing marginality. A professional at Riverside conceptualised the
challenges facing these youths as follows:
They have challenges that all youths have. They don’t know exactly what they want in life.
They feel it is difficult to complete upper secondary school, difficult to get a job if they want
to work and, of course, insecure about the future. In addition, those with minority ethnic
background present with immigrant issues where they feel that they do not belong [to the
Norwegian society] and [so] associate [only] with immigrants. [These are] immigrant youths
who hang together with other immigrant youths and live at Grønland, where there is a high
concentration of immigrants. It is my view that this explains why they misunderstand the way
ethnic Norwegians regard them. They [immigrant youths] also have wrong views about
Norwegians. It goes both ways. I have asked many of them why [they hold these views] and
they said their views about Norway and Norwegians are moulded by how they [immigrant
youths] are depicted [negatively] by the media.
The perception of this worker seems to be that BME youths present with common challenges
that most youths in postmodern risk societies face, especially in relation to the meritocratic
requirements of the school system and the difficult school-to-work transitions many young
people may face. However, BME youths also have challenges related to integration into the
larger Norwegian society and feelings of not being accepted and negatively represented in the
media. Cut off from the larger Norwegian society by virtue of living in areas with high
concentration of other immigrants, they tend to misconstrue how Norwegians feel about them
and vice versa. The negative concentration effect that may ensue from living in areas of Oslo
with a high percentage of non-western immigrants and the social integration challenges this
may be perceived to engender seem to be prominent in some professional discourses about the
challenges facing BME youths. Another social worker at Riverside registered his views about
the ethnic composition of some of the schools these young people attend in their local
communities as follows:
Those [BME youths] that I meet ( ), those who grow up in the local communities her [at]
Tøyen and Grønland, can go through the elementary school and lower secondary school
without knowing even a single white Norwegian. So they don’t know much about the
Norwegian society within which they will go out to work. This is a problem because they
[BME youths] get the “we” and “them” feeling which I think is not constructive
The catalogue of challenges that some professionals perceived these young people as having
was succinctly summarised by the Head of the Youth Outreach Agency as follows, when I
asked him how he would define the needs of these youths:
The young people we come into contact with through our outreach work often have extensive
problems in many areas. ( ) It can be problems related to their own families, family dynamics
in relation to domestic violence ( ). This does not apply to all. The problems can be
cumulative. They have problems being in a position to make good use of the opportunities
schooling can offer. They often find themselves in the process of losing out on schooling,
training or jobs, or on the way out such that they often stand in a marginal position to the
school, in relation to the ( ) family, [and have problems with] tackling challenges facing
them. I think often that ( ) they are in the process of experiencing an outsiderness that they
cement, among other things, by frequenting downtown Oslo where they become involved in
crimes and experiment with drugs, [and] often come into conflict with other adults, with the
police, with security guards, with the social and welfare services, and with the school. There
are variations, but those that we work with have a lot of cumulative problems ( ) and maybe
also [harbour] distrust for the adult world and the social services.
When I asked him further what he thought might be the reasons for these challenges, he
narrated the following:
I think that there are many Norwegian youths with minority ethnic background who fare very
well, but I think many of those we meet come from that part of the population that, to start
with, have other socio-economic problems [such as] low participation in the labour force, poor
economy, who move house frequently, [experience] cumulative social problems and also live
in areas where there are cumulative social problems ( ). ( ) They are not well articulated
linguistically like other Norwegian youths with minority ethnic background. ( ) We have
often observed that they come from families with many children ( ) and happen to be the
power brokers in the family controlling information to their parents who do not have
command of the Norwegian language.
In an answer to the same question, a social worker at Riverside stated the following:
The reasons are many and [vary from one young person to another]. Many lack knowledge
and skills in order to participate in the Norwegian [society]. Many speak and write poor
Norwegian and have little theoretical knowledge, so it is difficult for them to get a job. They
don’t have formal qualifications. Moreover, there are many who have not learnt how to selfpresent, how to take initiative in relation to employers. They do not master the [societal and
cultural] codes and they don’t have the [social] network which ethnic Norwegian youths have
and whose parents grew up here in Norway and know people here and there. So if you have
parents who do not speak the [Norwegian] language, know people here and have a [social]
network necessary for getting the first job, then [it becomes easy] for many to stand at the
back of the queue. And then there are some who do not grip the chance when they get it, who
get a job and miss the chance [to keep it] by not meeting up, not keeping the rules in working
life ( ) and will not allow anyone to tell them what to do. ( ) Some of them display opposition
to authority. That is a bad starting point, making them lag behind in the work situation.
It is important to emphasise that the professionals who registered these views are committed
social workers with many years’ experience working with marginalised BME youths. They
really work hard to help these young people have a less traumatic transition to adulthood in
Norway. However, the discourses they articulated in relation to the challenges they perceived
as facing these young people seem to be located mainly within what they considered as the
dysfunctional or pathological local communities within which these youths live, within their
dysfunctional or pathological families, and within the young people themselves or their
individual pathology. While acknowledging the feelings of outsiderness these youths might
harbour because of negative media representations, the main thrust of the discourse seems to
be that most of these youths have themselves to blame for dropping out of school. They are
unable to find or keep a job because of their disrespect for authority and self-presentation in
various situations that disqualify them from meaningful participation in the Norwegian
society. This discourse is akin to the moral underclass discourse (MUD) (Levitas 2005)
discussed earlier. It focuses on their behaviour and the crimes some of them are involved in.
Rarely were structural factors or processes that might impinge on the local communities
within which these youths grow up and/or on their families explicitly thematised. Moreover, it
is rarely that structural and institutional processes that may unfold within the school system,
the labour and the housing markets are addressed in this social exclusion discourse. Neither
are emotional and psychological issues related to experiences of social exclusion topicalised.
In fact, the Head of the Youth Outreach Agency bemoaned the fact that the Agency has not
been good enough in thematising the mental and emotional issues some of their users might
have. Some of these professionals did not lose complete sight of these structural factors, but
seemed to downplay or deprioritise them, as narrated by the Head of Riverside as follows:
If we decide to focus so much on the fact that one cannot [finds it difficult to] get a job [and]
to get housing, then I don’t think we can [work] consistently. Of course, it is clear that
structural factors make it difficult for some of them to participate [in society], which excludes
them. However, I think we should make things easier for the young people instead of focusing
on the bigger issues. Focusing on the bigger issues can make the young people feel that they
cannot do anything about it [and lead to resignation] resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy. I
am not trying to say that we should sweep the problem under the carpet. I can see that
[structural exclusion] exists and it is important to do something about it, but it becomes very
difficult when one must focus on the bigger issues all the time.
While acknowledging the importance of how structural factors may constrain the chances of
these young people to go ahead in life, he, nevertheless, put more emphasis on individual
effort and motivation in the face of these structural forces as follows:
( ) Blaming it on discrimination (and racism) can be too superficial. I have met many
immigrant youths who have lived in Norway for three or four years, but who managed to get a
job and others who have lived here for many years who have not managed to get a job. It is
not always a matter of having the wrong name. ( ) There are many who manage well, many
who are motivated. Many young people from Sweden, both black and white, [who have come
to Norway to find job] come to us. I think they are more motivated than Norwegian youths.
They are more bent on getting jobs. They come here, write 50, 60 job applications and within
a week, they get a job, whiles immigrant youths [who live in Norway] apply for two or three
jobs and lose motivation if they don’t get them.
Absent in this discourse is the possibility that young people from Sweden or other European
countries might be willing to accept lower wages than other youths, as Mohamed noted in
relation to regional labour migrations. However, these same professionals from these two
youth services narrated that the main challenges the BME youths themselves say they have
relate to housing problems, difficulties in getting a job and challenges facing them at school.
They, nevertheless, tend to blame the young people themselves, especially their lack of
motivation and involvement in crimes, for these challenges. This emphasis on individual
pathology becomes even clearer in relation to how a social worker at Riverside explained why
some of the youths they work with do not keep appointments they have with them for followups:
It might be because they stand to lose something by changing their lives. It costs them to
wake up early in the morning; it costs them [something] to read [to study hard], [and] if they
have to do something [they find] boring. They would like to have immediate gratification.
Maybe, they are not used to doing something that is boring in order to achieve positive results
in the long-run. So it is easy for them not to keep appointments.
Since the indicators of marginality associated with these BME youths seem to be mostly
located within their own individual pathologies, changing their motivations and attitudes
through a process of subjectification and responsibilisation becomes an important aspect of
how some professionals at Riverside approach their service users. This process of pastoral
power is couched in a resource focused discourse and empowerment ideology in which the
emphasis is on what is identified as the strengths of these young people and assisting them to
develop these, and channelling them to other services they might need. Regarding this
approach, the Head of Riverside noted the following:
( ) The professionals on the first floor are very clear about [our] values, attitudes and how we
would like things to be, different strategies one can choose to go ahead in life, ( ) to have an
independent life. That is the basic premise. ( ) The philosophy [we practice] in the youth
house is that of empowerment. We focus on resources, what one can do, what opportunities
one has, which strengths one has and how to develop these. The focus is on what is good and
not on what is negative.
Some professionals I interviewed articulated discourses that reflected what the youths
themselves present as their challenges. A professional who worked at the Youth Outreach
Agency narrated the following in relation to challenges BME youths presented in his contact
with them:
The young people I meet on the street, especially those who push drugs, openly express what
their needs are. Usually they say work, jobs and housing. When we try to tell them that they
should find alternative activities other than pushing drugs which is a criminal activity, they
usually say “give me a decent job and I’ll quit”. My experience is that they mean it. They
mean it. All indicate [that] they have tried and failed. ( ) The many young people I talk to
have an ambition to go to school and to educate themselves. I have hardly met an African
young man who didn’t mention education and a decent job. ( ) Many of them also express that
they are feeling lonely. [It is about] belongingness. They lack meaningful social networks.
That is what the young people I talk to tell me. They lack meaningful networks, and the street
is an alternative network. Again, young people say that they don’t have even offers for
meaningful recreational activities. They do not have access to social activities and pastimes
that could help them to develop their networks and become part of the Norwegian society. ( )
It is nice that the welfare arrangements in Norway are universal. We have a very good welfare
system, but there is much to be done in relation to vulnerable groups.
When I asked him why he thought these youths find it difficult to get jobs, the professional
answered as follows:
One thing these young people tell me is that they lack a social network. In Norway, more than
60-65 % jobs are acquired through social networks [and not through] formal job applications.
So this means that young people who are marginalised and don’t belong to strong networks
lose 65 % of their chances of getting a job. That means they are left with a 40 % chance. Their
chances of getting a job are reduced. The other thing is that the Norwegian labour market is
not that open. It is not even open for highly educated and experienced intellectuals with ethnic
minority background. Thus, unexperienced school drop-out minority ethnic youths have even
more difficulties in getting jobs.
Another professional who had worked at the Youth Agency for many years narrated the
following regarding the needs of the marginalised street-involved youths she had contact
with:
All of them would like to be like normal people. They would like to get jobs and education, of
course. Maybe, jobs more than education. They would like to have their own accommodation
and their own families and children. ( ) They find it difficult to attain these goals because they
have other challenges. They have a lot of baggage that is not always good. I have a friend who
works with older newly arrived refugees and we use to discuss issues related to some of the
baggage they might have carried with them to Norway that we do not know about. When I
would tell her I think they need help to deal with their traumas, she would say “No, I don’t
think that is important. We should forget about these traumas and just focus on the future”.
But then, they have all these experiences from the past lying deep within. ( ). Young people
who have witnessed their parents killed or imprisoned. Things we do not know anything
about. Not all of them say or are willing to say anything about such experiences. So these are
topical issues that are not thematised. It is difficult to get the [formal] support system to
understand that these young people have needs. And it is difficult for the young people to
understand the bureaucratic language used by the formal support system. I really hope that
something is done about this. Most of these youths talk about the difference between going to
Nav alone and being accompanied by professionals. I experience on many occasions that the
counsellors at Nav tend to believe that the young people understand what they tell them,
especially in relation to conditionalities set for [receiving] benefits, when, in fact, these young
people do not understand the counsellors.
The discourses articulated by these two professionals have elements of the redistribution
discourse (RED) outlined by Levitas (2005). In this discourse, structural inequality is held to
be the main thrust of social exclusion. Thus, unequal opportunities that may unravel within
the educational system, the labour market, the housing market, and in relation to recreational
activities for young people as well as difficulties in accessing social and welfare services are
central. Moreover, mental health issues related to migration seem to be central in the
discourses articulated by professionals who emphasised structural explanations.
The data also suggest that it is professionals who have had very close contacts with these
youths who thematised the mental health issues that preoccupied the youths. As noted by the
Head of Riverside:
They ask for practical help when they come here: help to write job applications, CVs, and to
acquire accommodation. As we become better acquainted with them [and gain their trust] they
present deep personal [emotional] problems related to drug addiction, family situation, psychic
challenges, or [challenges] related to forced marriage, both boys and girls. Some use our
services over a period of time before presenting their personal [psychic and emotional]
problems. But you can easily see that some of them have these [emotional] problems.
%0--?0)6+-8:72-+<.!%)
Focus on the psychic and emotional needs of marginalised BME youths they work with is
central in the work done by professionals running the New Chance project. The project is
under the auspices of the borough of Gamle Oslo and is financed by the Immigration and
Integration Directorate (IMDI). The project targets marginalised BME youths in the borough.
Most of them have backgrounds from Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. They present with many
indicators of marginality associated with my study participants and some of them are streetinvolved. These youths are referred to the project by the Youth Team at the Nav office in the
borough and there is close collaboration between Nav and the two professionals running the
project. According the professional I interviewed, these are youths the Youth team at Nav
finds it difficult to help find jobs and whom they do not have much time to follow up closely.
The professional described the needs of these youths as follows:
Their biggest challenge as I see it right now is that they lack motivation. They have to whip up
their motivation. They have become passive because of the fact that they have not received the
assistance they needed to begin with. So they fall out and are finding it difficult to lead a life
that will enable them to contribute to society. No one likes to remain passive. Some of them
have other challenges too related to the baggage they carried with them to Norway. It is likely
that some of them have mental health challenges. Some of them also have drug problems and
some of them have simply not found their place in the Norwegian society, whiles others are
very motivated but lack the tools, say, to find a job. ( ) Most of them are interested in things
happening in the society and they like to sit down with us and talk about them.
Thus, professionals in the New Chance project perceive these youths as wanting to be like
normal people in society. They display a keen sense of political curiosity. They want to
participate fully in society. However, they lack the assistance they need in order to surmount
the hurdles they meet on the way. Like many study participants, they encounter several
obstacles related to the labour and housing markets and the educational system. The
challenges they meet in different social and institutional arenas have sapped their psyches and
sense of humanity, self-confidence and motivation. These experiences aggravate any
traumatic psychic or emotional experiences some of them might have carried with them to
Norway. Many feel ontologically insecure and, like many study participants, some of them
use drugs to self-medicate. As the professional noted further, “It is difficult to achieve
stability in life if your basic human needs are not met”.
With this conceptualisation of the needs of these youths, the professionals in the project adopt
a holistic approach in their work with them. They assist the young people in finding jobs. The
young people get assistance to write job applications and their CVs. Those who have dropped
out of school are motivated to go back to school or undertake various courses to improve their
skills. They also assist the few who attend upper secondary school with the challenges they
meet at school by following them up through close collaboration with school counsellors. The
professionals make concrete efforts to find job placements for the youths in the project. They
have a specific policy in relation to job placements as narrated by the professional as follows:
They go through recruitment placement, the aim being to give them a short-cut to the labour
market. We set up meetings with employers and ask them to test the young people to see how
good they can work. We demand from the employers that the young people be offered the
chance of getting [permanent] jobs afterwards. So we do not want to place the youths without
the knowledge that the placement will bear fruit.
The professionals in the project also make a conscious effort to attend to the psychic and
emotional needs of the youths they work with. Regarding the mental health challenges the
young people present with, the professional narrated the following:
We are not experts, but what is good about working in a project like this is that you have good
time at your disposal to sit down with the young people, listen to what they have to say. I feel
that it helps them a lot. It is surprising how easily they can open up themselves to us when we
sit down and ask them about what they have on their hearts. They often tell us what they have
experienced before [coming to Norway], their aims in life and the dreams they have. Some of
them have been abused, some have experienced war, and others have been victims of forced
marriages. They have many [emotional] challenges. Some have also suffered neglect from
their families. ( ) Some of them have already had psychological help, whiles we connect
others at times to psychologists. It varies and is very individual. And it is not all who need a
psychologist either, but who only need motivation and more self-confidence.
According to the professional, it is hardly that a young person in the project says no to the
professionals’ suggestion that they talk to a psychologist. This is because they give the young
people relevant information about the role of psychologists, as he narrated as follows:
If something happens in the project, we talk to the young person first and inform him that we
are not competent to tackle the issue, but know others [other professionals] who have the
competence. If you want to get a job [or] go back to school and you have other challenges
[emotional and psychological issues] then that need to be cleared out of the way first and the
psychologist is probably the best person to help you with these challenges.
Thus, in relation to the psychic or emotional problems they may present with, the
professionals in the project take pains to explain to the young people the important role of
psychologists and their therapeutic goals. They also explain to them the law of confidentiality
and how psychologists are bound by it. Some of the youths in the projects who were willing
to talk with psychologists registered their dissatisfactions in relation to difficulties in getting
appointments and feelings that the psychologists did not have time for them.
The professional I interviewed also emphasised the importance of cultural sensitivity in
relation to working with these youths, especially in relation to understanding modern urban
youth cultures and the challenges they can pose to different groups of young people growing
up in Oslo. He also underlined the importance of empathy, engaging them in dialogic
reflections upon life in general and the challenges they may face in their daily lives. Besides,
it is important to nurture their hope. He narrated the following:
I feel that most of the young people find it easier to open up to us since those of us working in
the project are young. In my case, I was born and grew up in Oslo. I know what’s going on in
downtown Oslo. So I know what Oslo has to offer and the different challenges. ( ) I know
how the macho culture works in Oslo. I was born here and observed it when I was growing up.
So we [the young people and I] have a common frame of reference, a good point of departure
for talking about things. ( ) I am not a professional social worker, but I have a larger picture
of society. I like people and talking to them and I think that the young people like that. ( ) At
times, we just sit down and talk with them about life in general. How they are doing and how
we are doing. We cannot relate to them as if they were robots. We are also human beings. We
also have problems. ( ) If they get to know that we have also passed through some of the same
processes they are passing through, then it becomes more realistic for them to begin to believe
that things can turn out well. ( ) If they meet people who have time to talk with them, have
time to listen to what they have to say, then there will be no grounds for them to have negative
feelings about the formal support system. The basis for help is that you can come around and
talk to someone who is ready to listen to you and understand you. Then there will be no
grounds for you to be angry or be down-spirited.
The professionals in the project do not make any conscious effort to thematise issues of
racism unless the young people themselves take them up. When they do, the professionals
engage them in dialogic reflections upon what racism is and what it is not. They give the
young people tips as to how to tackle racist encounters and their racist experiences. In
addition to the close follow-up the young people receive in relation to the individual
challenges they present with, the professionals organise group activities for them once a
month. The group activities include film evenings, bowling, making food, going on tours and
so on. The young people are involved in the planning of these activities making them feel that
they own the project. Through the group work, they develop feelings of belongingness and
fellowship, and have the chance to reflect upon the common challenges they have in the
presence of adult caregivers. Those young people who have been able to find a job give
information to others if there are vacancies where they work.
Thus, the New Chance project adopts a holistic approach to working with their project
participants. The professionals address the challenges facing the young people at both the
structural and individual levels, including their psychic and emotional challenges, and
combine one-to-one working with group work and activities. They also work to raise the
political awareness of the young people by engaging them in reflections upon the topical
issues in society that preoccupy them. The project is also resource-focused, with liberative
empowerment as the underlying ideology. The professional described this resource-focused
approach as follows:
As I see it, these youths have resources, but can find it difficult to bring them out. The
resources become dormant in them. They need people to help them develop them; people to
make demands on them; people who can give them a little push. So we make hard demands on
them.
The professionals in the project can make demands on the youths they work with because of
the trusting relationships they have managed to establish with them, and their ability to affirm
the strengths of these vulnerable youths and to nurture their dreams and hopes.
According to the professional, about 75 % of the young people who participated in the project
the year prior to the interview graduated from the project either to the labour market or back
to school. The project is evaluated at the end of each year through anonymous questionnaires
filled out by the young people in the project, so they can have the chance to evaluate the
professionals and the work they are doing. The aim is to find out which methods have worked
and which have not and how to improve these methods. The results have been very good.
They get very positive feedbacks from the young people. The professional attributed these
positive feedbacks to the comparisons the young people may make between the help they
receive from the project and other sources of help they may have accessed without getting the
close follow-up afforded them by the New Chance project. He also attributed the success
factor in the project to the fact that though the project is carried out under the auspices of the
borough of Gamle Oslo, the project is not entangled with bureaucratic rules, regulations and
instructions. The two professionals who run the project have enough room to manoeuvre and
be creative. Besides, the young people who come to the project observe the many
professionals with BME backgrounds who work in the municipal building in which the
project is located. This helps to nurture their hopes of entering the labour market one day. The
young people receive social benefits from Nav for participating in the project, but do not feel
any compulsion participating in the project. The project pays out these benefits to the young
people on behalf of Nav.
$<=,A8):<1+18)6<;C8-:+-8<176;7.5=61+18)4A7=<0;-:>1+-;
How did the study participants perceive the Youth Outreach Agency and Riverside, the two
youth services that carry out their operations in downtown Oslo and within the milieus
frequented by these youths?
The general perceptions of those study participants who had had or had contact with Riverside
were mostly positive. Study participants like Petrus, Salma, Jibril, and Franklin perceived
professionals at Riverside as caring, understanding and ready to listen. Other young people I
had informal extended conversations with, both on the street and during the three weeks I
spent at Riverside, perceived the Youth House as important in their lives. This may be related
to the fact that Riverside is a hub for youth activities. Many youths who come to the youth
house lack access to recreational activities elsewhere. Most of these youths use Riverside
actively and go there about four days a week or more to meet their friends, get assistance in
relation to Nav, to write job applications, to look for housing, or to get assistance in relation to
their applications to the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) for residence permits.
They are also offered free food on certain days. Besides, professionals at Riverside organise
special activities for its users (for example, during the celebration of Eid and Christmas)
during which dishes from different countries are served. The atmosphere on the first floor,
where most of the youths spend their time, is very inclusive in terms of the ethnicity of the
professionals the young people meet there. For most of these BME youths, Riverside is the
only youth service they access in Oslo. Petrus narrated his perceptions about Riverside as
follows:
Petrus: What I know about Riverside is that the workers there are highly qualified; they have
the means of helping you. They help young people in all ways. They talk to young people
about their personal problems, counsel them and coach them, help them through tough times
with what they [the resources Riverside] have at their disposal. They are there to support you
all the way as best as they could. Actually, the best with the professionals at Riverside is that
they have a good knowledge [about the formal support system] and manage to connect young
people [with these systems]. And they have very good offers [services] that can help young
people to go ahead in life.
Moses: So can you talk to them if you have a challenge or something very close to your heart
to tell someone?
Petrus: Actually, I can talk to them about everything.
Salma also narrated the following in relation to Riverside:
I like the fact that there are people [professional caregivers] here who can help me when I need
help, who can give me advice as to what I can do if I don’t know what to do. And I have been
in contact with Riverside since I was 15. So I know most of the workers there and I had
apprenticeship here, met many friends here. I took part in many activities here and got help in
relation to finding jobs and many different things. I like everything about Riverside.
The positive perceptions these BME youths had about Riverside also seem to be related to the
high level of informality that characterise the interactions between the young people and
professionals who work on the first floor. These professionals play games with the young
people, crack jokes with them, and use a lot of humour. I observed joking relationships
between some of the workers and the young people they had close relations with. This helped
to deflate potential conflicts and contributed to strengthen the informal relationship between
the workers and the young people The professionals use humour as a powerful informal
social control strategy to set limits, to communicate rules and maintain order on the first floor,
though the young people can be noisy at times and the social workers can lose control
sometimes. The professionals also seem to be flexible in relation to rules and regulations
governing the use of the services Riverside offers. A professional displayed this flexibility
when Ahmed, aged 13, came to the reception desk one afternoon and asked to use one of the
computers. The following conversation ensued between him and the social worker at the
reception desk:
Ahmed: Please can I borrow one of the computers?
Social worker: How old are you?
Ahmed: I am 13 years old.
Social worker: You have to be 15 in order to use the facilities here.
Ahmed: But the board outside reads that the service is for youths.
Social worker: Yes, but the age limit is 15.
Ahmed: But I really have to check my mail and Facebook.
Social worker: Ok. You can borrow a machine for 5 minutes.
Ahmed: Thank you.
After 40 minutes, Ahmed went back to the reception desk and asked to make some
telephone calls.
Ahmed: I would like to make some important phone calls.
Social worker: Are you still here?
Ahmed: It took a longer time than I thought.
Social worker: You can make one phone call and that’s it.
Ahmed: ok.
Ahmed made a number of calls. He felt very much at home, assertive and sounded very
resolved on the phone. But then, he had a problem with the phone and went back to the social
worker. The social worker helped him to fix the problem and he made two more calls, after
which he went back to the reception desk and thanked the social worker. The social worker
reminded him of the age limit and he left The professional realised the importance of internet
and Facebook as forms of communication in the lives of young people and was prepared to
bend bureaucratic rules in relation that. Thus, the informality and easy accessibility of
Riverside, the diverse activities on offer and the cultural sensitivity and inclusive attitudes
displayed by the workers there seem to be crucial in the positive perceptions the study
participants had about the youth service.
Riverside Youth House is a low threshold service for youths and maintains a very informal
atmosphere and the professionals are flexible in implementing the rules. But do the social
workers who work there actively engage the young people who come to Riverside in one-toone conversations about their aspirations, dreams, triumphs, joys and challenges in life? Or do
they expect the young people to initiate such conversations in the name of voluntarism? While
the social workers there assisted the young people with job applications and when they had
problems using the computers, I did not observe any intimate one-to-one conversations
between them and most of the young people who came in to use their services. Take the case
of a 16 year old boy from the Gambia. He sat in front of the computer quietly for more than 2
hours without any contacts with the social workers or other youths. I went over to him, and
introduced myself and research to him. I asked him if he went to school. He did, but was on
autumn holidays. I asked him if he ever had contact with the CWS and he said yes, he still
had. Would he like to talk with me about his experiences at school and with the CWS? He
would think about it and contact me. I gave him my telephone number.
The challenge the professionals at Riverside face in relation to having active conversations
with the young people who come there is related to the fact that they are very few and have
capacity problems. As noted earlier, between 20 and 50 BME youths with various indicators
of marginality come to Riverside daily and spend time on the first floor. However, only two
professionals work there at any given time making it often difficult for them to engage the
young people in one-to-one conversations as they would like to. Lack of funding for projects
and capacity problems have been the main challenges facing Riverside. As noted earlier, at
the time of the study, the Outreach Team was out of operation because of lack of funding.
Moreover, the Youth Team which gives close follow-up to the youths who need it was staffed
by only two professionals instead of four as before due to lack of resources. Thus, lack of
resources detracts from the important work professionals at Riverside do with many of these
BME youths.
Jamal, Leonard, Francis, Anthony, James, Felix, and Mohamed had had some form of contact
with the Youth Outreach Agency. Leonard participated in the youth project I directed at the
Agency some years before this study and he recalled the youth project as very important in his
life at that moment as follows:
Those in the [youth project] were black youths who have the same challenges as me. We met
there and came into good contact with positive people [caregivers] and other young people
who were positive and wanted to change their lives for the better. I have only positive
experiences from the project. We did many things together. It [participation in the project]
made me reflect more [upon my life].
Mohamed also recounted his positive experience with the Youth Outreach Agency in terms of
the birthday “party” the youth project threw for him. He was aware that the social workers at
the Youth Outreach Agency “help young people who have problems”, but had never sought
any help from them. Mohamed held the view that outreach workers from the agency were
reluctant to take contact with BME youths in open street drug markets. Felix recounted the
practical help he got from the Agency to get accommodation during one of his releases from
prison. He also took part in the youth project over a period of time, but had to go back to
prison. He too was satisfied with the youth project and the follow-up he got from the Agency
over a period of time. Otherwise, he had not had much contact with the agency apart from
saying “hello” to the Agency’s outreach workers during their outreach work. James also
recalled the close follow-up he received from the Agency over a period of time and the
practical help he had received from the Agency when a worker he had contact with provided
him with food when he needed it. Anthony had participated in open street drug markets in
downtown Oslo for many years, but had never had close contact or follow-up from the agency
apart from exchanging greetings with them during their outreach work. Francis tried as much
as possible to avoid contact with workers from the Agency. This is because he recalled two
professionals from the Agency assisting him to navigate the Nav system some years back, but
he later decided to cut off contact with Nav. He harboured the feeling that he had disappointed
the professionals and felt ashamed of this. Jamal had cumulative contacts with the Agency for
many years and developed a very good relationship with his contact persons who had given
him close follow-up. He found his contact persons very caring and understanding and felt that
they would always be available to assist him. But Jamal always harboured a huge shame
anytime he relapsed and started using drugs heavily again. He would avoid contact with his
contact persons at the Agency as a result. One of his contact persons at the agency described
the frustrations he felt regarding Jamal as follows:
The work with him has been challenging because he would disappear from the street and
isolate himself for long periods of time. ( ) I feel that he feels ashamed of himself for
disappointing me. He tells me he cannot take contact with me when he is in bad shape [using
drugs heavily]. He tells me he feels very ashamed and embarrassed when I see him in bad
shape. I tell him I prefer to see him when he is in bad shape than vice versa.
Thus, a number of study participants had been in contact with the Youth Agency and
recounted positive experiences with the agency in terms of the practical help they received,
and in the case of Francis, James and Jamal, the close follow-up they had received. These
follow-ups related to professionals at the Agency assisting these youths in navigating the Nav
system and other welfare services in close collaboration with other professionals in the formal
support system, as well as addressing the youths’ personal emotional challenges. A BME
youth I had an informal extended conversation with at a youth shelter also recounted the close
follow-up he received from his contact persons at the Youth Outreach Agency. He recalled
the visits his contact persons paid him in prison when he served a long prison sentence and
how important this emotional support had been for him. The data suggest that those study
participants and young people I had informal extended conversations with who had had close
contact with the Youth Outreach Agency perceived the agency in a positive light. Jamal’s and
Francis’ narrations suggest that some marginalised street-involved BME youths may avoid
contact with outreach workers because of the feelings of shame they may harbour for earlier
“disappointing” these outreach workers. Such feelings may detract from their help-seeking
efforts in relation to these agencies.
However, most study participants and BME youths I had informal extended conversations
with were unaware of how the Youth Outreach Agency works. Many carried the impression
that the agency works with drug addicts and these youths do not consider themselves as drug
addicts. Others carried the impression that the Agency collaborated with the police. This
became apparent from the informal extended conversations I had with them while hanging out
with them at Vaterland Park during the summer months. The young BME youths who
frequented Riverside did not have much information about the agency either, but a vague idea
that the Agency works with drug addicts. On the whole, like Mohamed, most marginalised
and street-involved BME youths who were active at the open street drug markets at Vaterland
Park and around the Riverside building felt that outreach workers from the agency avoided
contact with them. In my interview with the head of the Outreach Agency, I oriented him on
how the young people perceived the agency and he advanced the following reasons:
We often experience that they identify us with other professionals within the formal support
system whom they know and maybe do not trust very much. It can be the CWS. It can be the
police or the control apparatus, because we have a similar civilian deportment. So for the
young people [ours] can be a diffuse role [in relation to] who we really are and who they are
really talking to. ( )
He narrated how “hard-to-reach” street-involved youths are in general as follows:
In the first place, this is a group [of young people] who do not come and ask for help. We have
to ask them [about their challenges through contact with them] and they shun [contact] with us
quite a lot. So we have to exert ourselves in order to gain their full trust. We perform a control
function in collaboration with the CWS [in relation to those under 18] and they are against it
because they are runaways. ( ) So it is not a relationship that has arisen because they came to
ask for help. We have invaded them [their social arena] because they happen to participate in
risky environments in downtown Oslo we view with [professional] concern. So we become
part of the control apparatus. So we have to work hard to gain trust.
He emphasised the point that the distrust marginalised street-involved BME youths might
display in relation to outreach workers in general is a common feature with all street-involved
youths, whether black or white. According to him, most street-involved youths have suffered
many disappointments at the hands of adults. They, therefore, tend to project this distrust onto
other adults such as outreach workers. This can make these youths hard to reach and difficult
to cultivate trusting relationships with. I experienced how distrustful most street-involved
youths could be of the representatives of the social services during my fieldwork at Vaterland
Park one summer afternoon. A Somali youth I knew from my work at The Youth Outreach
Agency made some sceptical remarks about the social services and recounted his negative
experiences with the CWS and the police. He believed that the Youth Outreach Agency
collaborated with the police and that “black brothers” like me are accomplices in this act of
betrayal. Francis, whom I had earlier interviewed, stepped in and defended me and explained
to him “the important work” he thought I was doing and the positive experiences he had with
the Youth Outreach Agency. We broke the ice and the Somali youth gave me a hug. I wrote
the following in my fieldnotes:
Street-involved youths can be very mistrustful of the social services and their representatives,
including those that are black. ( ) This mistrust can stem from perceived negative experiences
with these institutions and the fear that the social services collaborate with the police. This
mistrust might also emanate from lack of knowledge about how the various agencies work.
This represents a formidable challenge to outreach workers in particular, and demands new
strategies as to how to reach out to these youths with information. It is important to point out
that there were no representatives of the Youth Outreach Agency to be seen in course of the
four hours I spent at Vaterland Park today.
Thus, street-involved youths can be distrustful of social workers. However, this emphasis on
the general mistrust that most street-involved youths may display towards outreach workers
may gradually give way to another discourse that emphasises the violent dispositions or
comportment that marginalised street-involved BME youths may be perceived as articulating
on the streets. This discourse was articulated by the Head of the Youth Outreach Agency as
follows:
I carry the impression, in between, that there is a power struggle in relation to specific street
areas [corners] [where] certain individuals within these youth groups control [access] to these
areas. We come in [we are perceived] as contenders and they [these individuals] try to show
others that they have control over us too. In several instances, this lead to tense situations
which can be quite threatening and difficult for our employees, extreme behaviours in relation
to threats and so on. ( ) I don’t know, but it appears to me that this is a kind of behaviour that
is accepted (among them), which [they feel] pays off in their interactions with the outside
world, and they play on this. Sveinung Sandberg and Willy Pedersen write about how they
[street-involved BME youths] play on the gap between the minority and majority population
and the negative stereotypes and all that [the majority population has about them], having a
tough appearance (…). But we know [for fact] that some of these youths we work with have
debuted with different types of crime, [and still] commit serious crimes. And this thing about
violence, threats, street wisdom and all that stuff [tough masculine posture]. That is some of
the things they are good at. In a way, they take this with them from their local communities in
which they live and articulate it on the street in downtown Oslo.
This moral underclass discourse not only involves a territorial stigmatisation of the local
communities in which these youths live. It is also behaviouristic because it emphasises the
perceived predisposition of marginalised BME youths to crime and violence and an
articulation of a tough masculine street posture. It is a discourse that permeates media
discourses and some academic discourses on marginalised BME youths, as I outlined in
Chapter 2. As pointed out by Dominelli, black youths, especially those who live in inner cities
areas, often carry the stigma of white society as threats. As she notes:
Everything about them – their lifestyles, relationships with one another and with authority – is
defined as problematic by white people. White social workers working in inner city areas
incorporate these definitions of the ‘problem’ into their work, thereby pathologising the young
black population (Dominelli 1988: 113).
The emphasis in the discourse articulated by the Head of the Agency is on the violent street
habitus, “street capital” (Sandberg & Pedersen 2006), “street wisdom” (Anderson 1990) or
“protest masculinity” (Connell 1995) perceived to be internalised and articulated by these
youths in street culture. For white professionals who uncritically articulate this discourse, the
challenges involved in reaching these so-called “hard-to-reach” marginalised and streetinvolved BME youths are not methodological challenges. These challenges are not perceived
as related to how to develop new and creative methods and strategies so as to reach these
youths with comprehensive services, as well as provide them with culturally sensitive
information about how these professionals and other agencies work. Rather, the challenges
are construed as how to ensure the safety and security of white professionals who come into
contact with marginalised BME youths on the street, esssentialised, criminalised, and
stigmatised as these youths are as a risk category. Hence, the reluctance of most white
outreach workers from the Youth Outreach Agency to actively take contact with this group of
vulnerable youths on the streets of Oslo. As a professional from the Agency put it, “There are
many of them we just greet on the street, but not take concrete contact with. (
)”. The
reasoning is that it is difficult to take contact with them because they are actively involved in
dealing in drugs and have a “threatening appearance”. This way, the important gateway to
other social and welfare services that the Youth Outreach Agency represents is closed to
many marginalised and street-involved BME youths.
The extent to which criminalising professional discourses can impact practical professional
actions became clear on one of my outreach patrols with two white social workers from the
Youth Outreach Agency during the study. We met Abraham in course of the patrol. Recall
that Abraham had a low status among his street peers and was often picked upon. Recall also
the three poems he recited to me, giving me rare insights into his painful emotional world. He
was high or drunk most of the time. As we approached Abraham, one of the outreach workers
kept his distance. He lagged behind and was visibly scared of Abraham as he walked towards
us drinking from a beer can. Abraham approached me and the other professional and hugged
each of us. We had a short conversation with him and went further as two mounted policemen
approached us, asked him to empty the beer can and engaged him in conversation. As we
continued our outreach patrol, the hesitant professional said he believed that Abraham was
very violent and would not be surprised if he committed murder one day. We disagreed with
him in unison. For we have known Abraham for many years as a very vulnerable young man
who needed help and understanding.
Thus, the deficit models of street youth agency or negative stereotypes that academic concepts
such as “street wisdom”, “street capital” and “protest masculinity” breed often prevent white
professionals from making sustained efforts to establish trusting relationships with and
explore the painful emotional and psychic worlds of vulnerable street-involved BME youths,
and to help them come to terms with their inner pains. The question, therefore, arises as to
whether it is the Youth Outreach Agency that is hard-to-reach for marginalised streetinvolved BME youths or vice versa? The inability of many white professionals to reach out to
these BME youths because of the negative stereotypes they bring to bear on their outreach
work can be described as street-level institutional racism. A professional who had worked at
the Agency described the meaning of reaching out as follows:
To reach means to have relations with those young people. ( ) We observe them on the street
and know that they are on the street. That is what our reality is. ( ) These black youths in
downtown Oslo and open street drug markets are observed and the system knows that they are
on the street, but they are left on the street. For that reason, I would say they are not reached.
Methodological issues were central in the interview I had with the Head of the Youth
Outreach Agency, as the following interview excerpt illustrates:
Moses: What is the Agency doing about the mistrust which these marginalised BME youths
display towards the Agency? Which concrete plans does the Agency have in reaching out to
these youths?
Head of Agency: We have been doing a lot of outreach work in the area for some time now
because we think it is important to establish contact with the young people there. We used to
have (…). You have worked at the Youth Agency before. We had a project that targeted these
youths. I am not saying this because you led that project. And that project, the Thursday Club
(Torsdagsklubben), was one of the successful projects we have had. We do not have such a
project now.
Moses: Why not?
Head of Agency: It is simply for the reason that – what was the reason why we terminated the
project? – We did not get external funding ( ). We evaluated the project and recommended
that it should be continued, but should be localised at Riverside.
Moses: Why not at the Youth Outreach Agency?
Head of Agency: The Agency can develop good things [intervention methods], but we don’t
need to implement them. We think Riverside can implement it because it is localised within
the borough of Gamle Oslo. They [Riverside] have a building around the area where many of
these young people live.
Moses: So you mean that the Agency’s main mandate is to do outreach work and refer young
people further to the formal support system. That is your mandate.
Head of Agency: Yes; and also to develop [new] methods. We have done that in relation to the
Thursday Club. We got both municipal and government funding for it. And the Agency has
mandate to do outreach and referral work. We have full funding for that. To develop new
methods, we need to have funding from the state. What we have started after the Thursday
Club is “Out of the Haze” cannabis course [which is permanent now] and it is appropriate for
many ethnic minority youths. We have not continued with the Thursday Club, but it is an
[intervention] strategy we recommended.
Moses: Do ethnic minority youths participate in the Out of the Haze course?
Head of Agency: I don’t have the figures. ( ) But we do not recruit participants to the course
from our outreach work. Participants are private persons, or those referred [to the course] by
parents or kin and we collaborate with the suburbs. One thing about the course is that to
complete it successfully, one should have fewer problems. Our experience with [streetinvolved] ethnic minority youths is that they have accommodation problems. They are housing
nomads. They earn a lot of money from their criminal activities, but they don’t have the
stability in their lives needed to engage in a change process.
Several conclusions can be drawn from the interview excerpt above. A professional municipal
agency is mandated to function as a gateway to other social welfare services and to develop
strategies to reach out to so-called “hard-to-reach” street-involved youths, including BME
youths. However, the Agency does not see any moral or ethical problems with abdicating
responsibility for an intervention strategy it has developed and evaluated as effective in
reaching marginalised street-involved BME youths in downtown Oslo. The recommendation
that another youth service should implement such an intervention strategy because it is
located within an area where many marginalised BME youths live understates any arguments
about lack of external funding. More so when at the time of the study, the Agency was
running an externally funded youth project for EMO youths who are described as “Alternative
Youths” at the Agency. They are all street-involved white youths who experience
marginalisation and use downtown Oslo as their main recreational arena. This project
incorporates key features of the Thursday Club project and is effective in reaching these
vulnerable white youths. As a professional at the Agency lamented in relation to the BME
youths she comes into contact with, “There are many we just greet on the street, but not take
concrete contact with. ( ) We do not have anything concrete to offer them. ( ) As at now,
the Youth Outreach Agency is working concretely with a group of EMO youths, white youths
who feel treated like outsiders [in society]”.
One also wonders why marginalised youths should be excluded from a cannabis project being
run by a municipal agency whose main target group are marginalised street-involved youths,
for the reason that they do not have enough stability in their lives to engage in a positive
change process. Given that most of the participants in the “Out of the Haze” course are also
white Norwegians, one wonders
whether a municipal agency like The Youth Outreach
Agency is practising a kind of conscious institutional racism, or what Griffith et al. (2009)
described as intraorganisational racism, in its dealings with marginalised and street-involved
BME youths. This question is pertinent because, as I observed earlier, most of the white
professionals at the agency are reluctant to come into contact with these youths on the street
and these youths seem not to be represented in the current projects run by the Agency.
Besides, we have seen the kind of negative stereotypes used to describe them. The Head of
the Agency underscored the institutional racism one can identify in municipal services as
follows:
Generally, we can see that though we come across many minority ethnic youths in the
different milieus we work in, this is not reflected in the formal support system, the changes we
are seeing in the population [increasing immigration] (…). It may happen that people with
minority ethnic backgrounds become excluded from services [or projects] because we have
not changed in tandem with changes in the population. ( ) And the fact that young people
with minority ethnic backgrounds are overrepresented in figures from the CWS, [and] in our
own figures, but not in relation to those we actually offer good [intervention] measures. ( ) It
appears we have a long way to go.
The observation made by the Head of the Youth Outreach Agency is accurate. Apart from the
projects the Youth Outreach Agency was running during the study, in which only white
youths were represented, only 3 professionals out of the 40 working at the Youth Outreach
Agency had BME backgrounds. None of them was in a management position. In relation to
why so few professionals with BME background within an Agency where majority of those
registered as “clients” or “contacts” are marginalised BME youths, the Head of the Agency
lamented recruitment challenges facing the Agency as follows:
Head of Agency: I think it is necessary for us to recruit more employees with minority [ethnic]
background. This has always been our focus, but the competition for them is hard. We do not
manage to keep efficient employees with minority ethnic background we have recruited
because they get other job offers very fast. Having professionals with minority ethnic
background has helped us a lot. It has always [helped]. To get [professionals] who can be door
openers to the various milieus. And they afford us with important perspectives in the work we
do and the fellowship her.
Moses: So you mean having employees with minority ethnic background has relevance for the
work you do?
Head of Agency: Yes, because we would like to have a workforce that reflects the population
out there. It is confidence-building in itself. Having a workforce that is white middle class
working [doing outreach work] in a city that is multicultural is not a good match.
Moses: Why is it that the Agency does not manage to keep employees with minority ethnic
background?
Head of Agency: That is a good question. The reason is that all services are after professionals
with minority ethnic background from the professional group [social workers] we recruit from.
All are after them. They are popular. And the social workers at the Agency do not work here
for a long time. ( ) Most of them want to work here for between 5-7 years in the beginning of
their careers and go further to other jobs in the professional field.
The recruitment and retainment challenges facing the Agency in relation to BME
professionals are interpreted not in terms of their working conditions, prospects for career
advancement within the Agency, or opportunities they are given to implement “important
perspectives” or to develop and implement creative intervention strategies. Rather, these
challenges are attributed to the popularity of professionals with BME backgrounds in the
formal support system in Oslo as “door openers” to various immigrant milieus, and the
legitimation they can give these municipal services with a multicultural profile.
%0-4)+3 )6,-<061+5167:1<A ;7+1)4?7:3-:C;*=:,-6
The popular conception that BME professionals can be important door openers to different
immigrant milieus can lead to serious consequences for many such professionals, especially
those working with marginalised and street-involved BME youths. These vulnerable youths
tend to identify with these BME professionals and seem to believe that these BME
professionals can help them overcome the power blocks they meet in their everyday lives. The
challenges facing these youths, as I have outlined in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, are complex and
many committed social workers, both white and black, can find it difficult to help them
surmount these challenges. In the face of the structural and institutional hindrances many
white professionals may encounter in their attempts to help these youths and the negative
stereotypes some of them may bring to bear on their practice, many may be reluctant in taking
active contact with these youths and working with them systematically. In the face of such
professional reticence, BME professionals may assume responsibilities that are far above
those that their professional roles may entail. They may not only be under pressure to initiate
contacts with these youths and wean them off the streets, but also face an uphill task in trying
to sensitise their white colleagues to the psychic and emotional needs of these youths. A black
social worker I interviewed shared his frustration regarding working with marginalised streetinvolved BME youths as follows:
I should put it this way. ( ) Unconsciously, I feel that I am responsible. I feel that I have a job
to do apart from my professional duty. [Black] social workers I have worked with are also
frustrated as I am. We have [share] a lot of things in common with these youths. I am a visible
minority. I am a Black social worker and I am a visible minority as well in the eyes of the
majority [population]. ( ) I feel that I have to do something to bring about change. And when
I experience that the change I wish, the ambition I have for these young people to change their
lives, cannot be realised because of systemic challenges, then I really become frustrated. It is
really frustrating. The other thing is that my [white] colleagues think that the social
background you have can be a resource for working with certain vulnerable groups. So the
expectation is that because I have experienced life [as a visible minority], the same life history
[experiences of marginalisation as a refugee], the same life course, my colleagues may believe
that I have more chances of coming closer to these young people and to help them. And again,
when I fail, it really [silence] pains. ( ) Several young people have shared their history with
me. They have entrusted me with their history and really wanted help. We try to work
together. We fail together when the young people fail in their plans to get a job and I couldn’t
help them because of the system. Even though I am trying to help, I see that I am not in a
position to help these young people.
Another BME professional narrated how easier it could be for him as a BME professional to
come into contact with these youths on the street because many might identify with him as an
ethnic minority and feel that he could understand their challenges better. He exerts his efforts
to help these youths to go ahead in life, but narrated the challenges and extra responsibility
involved as follows:
The young people get to know me better, more easily. They can identify themselves with me.
They feel [that] maybe I’ll understand them better; that I know what it is like to be an ethnic
minority in Norway; how it is like to feel like an outsider. ( ) I understand them very well,
because I have also experienced similar challenges, how it is like to be young in Norway and
be poor without any social support behind you. ( ) I really try to help as much as I can. Not
just to channel them through the system, but also give them information and try to teach them
how the system works, so that they can also become independent and help others. I feel I am
contributing something positive. Because it easier [for me] to establish contact with
them, they often stop me on the street even if I am not working. It is difficult for them
to distinguish between when I am at work and when I am not. So I have to set
boundaries for myself and them and explain to them that I’ll take contact with them
when I am at work (…) At times, they take contact with me when I am in the company
of others who tend to ask [me] who they are and how they got to know me.
This professional also felt that working with marginalised BME youths entails more
responsibility for him than for his white colleagues as follows:
Yes. I feel more responsibility [than my white colleagues] because I feel that they [these
youths] find themselves in a situation where others [white professionals] find it difficult to
reach them. So that comes with the feeling of having more responsibility than my white
colleagues. For them it is just a job. It is a job for me too, but a job plus something more,
More than other committed social workers, the frustrations BME professionals may feel
working with marginalised and street-involved BME youths may engender deep psychic and
emotional scars in them for which they may need counselling in order to come to terms with.
Many white managers or supervisors are often unaware of these challenges and may find it
difficult to understand them and give their BME workers access to the professional
counselling they may need. While most of these BME professionals may try as much as
possible not to take their experiences at work with them home, the extra concern and
responsibilities they may feel towards marginalised BME youths they work with may make it
difficult for them to do so. Hence, many may experience burnout and vicarious
traumatisation. With reference to the literature, Pross (2006) outlines symptoms associated
with burnout and vicarious traumatisation. These include apathy, rapid exhaustion, feelings of
hopelessness, melancholy, experience of work as a heavy burden, feelings of failure, a
tendency to blame oneself, and cynical and uncaring attitudes to clients. Many committed
white professionals may also experience these symptoms, but the extra burden of
responsibility BME professionals may feel working with these youths tend to make them
more exposed to these feelings. In the absence of any professional counselling, they may turn
to other BME professionals for emotional support, as narrated by one of them as follows:
I have shared my history [experiences] with my fellow social workers, those who shared the
same feelings [have the same challenges], black social workers. I have talked to them about
these issues and they have [also] shared their feelings of frustration and failure, the feelings of
a helper that cannot help [because of] the structural difficulties. I have shared my experiences
[with others], and had reflections, but not into the depths [of my frustrations].
Many BME professionals may need professional counselling, in addition to the reflections
they can have with their fellow BME professionals upon the emotional content of the work
they do with vulnerable BME youths.
%0-5)<1;)<1767. :)+1;5)6,)6<1:)+1;<8:)+<1+An important aspect of the interviews I had with professionals from these two youth services
related to the extent to which they thematise racism in their work with the BME youths they
come into contact with. As I noted in Chapter 7, narratives of racism proliferated in the study
participants’ accounts when I interviewed them or had informal extended conversations with
them. According to the professionals at Riverside, some of the young people who use their
services take up issues related to their racist experiences, but these are not issues that are
perceived as topical by the professionals. These issues are trivialised and the explanatory
value or potential of racism in relation to marginalisation undermined. As noted by the Head
of Riverside:
Head of Riverside: We don’t talk so much about it. I carry the impression that it is not a topic
the youths take up. Some of them talk about it, but not many. I think that it is those who grow
up in the eastern suburbs of Oslo [with high concentration of immigrants] who are
preoccupied with discrimination and racism than others with minority ethnic backgrounds who
grow up in other areas in Norge.
Moses: So you don’t think that anti-racist practice is something you can use here?
Head of Riverside: If we thematise it? I don’t know. ( ) we try to (…).The philosophy [we
practice] in the youth house is that of empowerment. We focus on resources, what one can do,
what opportunities one has, which strengths one has and how to develop these. The focus is on
what is good and not on what is negative.
The Head of the Youth Outreach Agency narrated the following when I asked him if racism is
thematised at the Agency:
Head of Agency: ( ) I prefer to talk more about anti-discriminatory practice. Racism is not an
exclusive topic we focus on. I will [I prefer] support anti-discriminatory practice, and the idea
of racism is part of it. So it [racism] is a topic we ought to take up (…). We focus [reflect] a lot
about on our own practice.
Moses: But is racism a topic you take up here at the Agency? I am asking you because many
study participants talked about it in my interviews with them.
Head of Agency: I think the youths themselves should take it up with us in dialogue with
them. Their experiences of racism and injustice due to their having a different [ethnic or
racial] background: experiences with the police and such. [Then] it will become a part of the
natural dialog with our outreach workers.
Moses: How do your employees tackle issues of racism which the youths take up with them?
Have you had workshops about how white professionals can tackle issues related to racism
which the BME youths take up?
Head of Agency: We have not had any workshop on it. We have a professional platform here
where we take up different topics [related to our work] and, in fact, the plan was for me to take
up precisely this topic about anti-discriminatory practice and say something about my
expectations [as the Head of the Agency] as to how it should be understood. Some of our
employees undertake further courses in outreach work, and anti-discriminatory practice has
always been part of the course. So this is a topic many are specially schooled in. And we
would like to take up [the topic] here, but we have not done so because of reasons I don’t
remember. But we have not had it as a systematic topic with the workforce, for example,
through a workshop.
A professional from the Youth Outreach Agency said the following in relation to anti-racist
practice:
I don’t think the Youth Outreach Agency is good at taking up the issue of racism (…), to have
anti-racist work as a theme. We don’t thematise it, but we should. And I don’t know the
reason. Maybe, it is difficult to take up
In their study of child welfare professionals referred to earlier, Kriz and Skivenes (2010)
found out that Norwegian child welfare workers tended to be racism blind and less culturally
sensitive than English child welfare workers who articulated a more anti-racist, culturally
sensitive, and holistic approach that thematised the experiences of minority parents and
children of racism and prejudice in society. Similarly, in her comparative study of social work
education in Norway and England in relation to how challenges posed by ethnic diversity are
understood, Østby (2008) found less emphasis on racism, anti-racist and anti-oppressive
practice in social work education in Norway than in England. The emphasis in social work
education in Norway regarding ethnic minorities is more on adopting a cultural approach to
minority-majority relations in which multicultural or cross-cultural understanding is central.
In this approach, the power relations that unravel in minority-majority relations at the
structural, institutional and individual levels in society are less thematised.
The interview excerpts above confirm the blindness to racism that many Norwegian
professionals working with BME people, in this case with marginalised street-involved BME
youths, may articulate. These professionals seem to deny the existence of racism in Norway.
This eloquent denial and silence about racism make it difficult for such professionals to
understand how racism unravels as a structural factor in the marginalisation many BME
youths may experience in Norway, and the negative psychological and emotional
consequences such experiences can have for these youths. Such professional denials of and
blindness to racism as a structural factor impinging on BME youths may stem from these
professionals’ articulation of the moral underclass discourse (MUD) that locates the
challenges these young people face, or the indicators of marginality associated with them,
within the young people themselves, their families or local communities. Where social
problems associated with BME people are explained as the pathologies of individuals,
families and local communities, racism and structural power relations become relegated to the
background. Untrained in anti-racist practice, such professionals may find it difficult to
address not only racist issues that may be raised by marginalised BME youths they come into
contact with, but also racist practices that may characterise their own individual and
institutional practices. For anti-racist practice is more than acquiring theoretical knowledge in
school or through further courses. As Dominelli pointed out, “Anti-racism is a state of mind,
feeling, political commitment and action” (Dominelli 1988: 16). Dominelli advised further:
It is important that white social work practitioners and educators create a theory of racism
contextualizing social work within the state apparatus, understand the dynamics of racism in
both its covert and overt forms, recognise its legitimation through social processes and
institutions outside social work structures, and relate these to their everyday practice in social
work – in what they do and what they don’t do (Dominelli 1998: 17).
This move to make white social workers develop an anti-racist work ethic must start from
management as suggested by Dominelli as follows:
…at the outset key managers must necessarily undergo anti-racism-awareness training to
become sensitive to how their own attitudes can perpetuate racism. Anti-racism awareness
training should be related to the impact of discriminatory practice on day-to-day decisionmaking processes of higher- and lower-level managers alike, resulting in managers and indeed
practitioners developing the requisite skills and appropriate attitudes in relation to the black
population (Dominelli Ibid: xi.).
Equipped with an anti-racist frame of mind, these managers can be in a position to re-evaluate
their organisations’ racist and discriminatory policies, internal climate, practices and
procedures. They can also assist their white employees to critically examine the negative
stereotypes, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours and the racist academic discourses in which they
are couched +8. brought to bear on their work with marginalised BME youths. As observed
by Thompson (2006), by relying on racist stereotypes, social workers can reinforce and
reproduce wider and oppressive societal forces even if these professionals themselves are not
racist. As he argues, “If we are not sensitive to such issues, if we do not attempt to swim
against the tide of racism, then we will be carried along by the strong current, knowingly or
otherwise” (Ibid: 92). The salience of racism and its psychological and emotional
consequences for BME youths need to be taken seriously by white professionals who come
into contact with them. Dominelli underscores the salience of racism for BME peoples as
follows:
Whilst both black and white working class people experience deprivation because of class,
only black people are denied power and resources because of their race. The connection
between class and race accounts for the disparity between them. Recognition of such
differences and the points from which they stem is essential in promoting racial equality
(Dominelli 1988: 38).
Multicultural awareness is important in working with BME peoples. However, it should not
be at the expense of a conscious effort to understand how power relations unfold in structural
and institutional contexts. It is likely that white professionals would become more culturally
sensitive if they adopted anti-racist orientations in their interactions with BME people. It may
also turn out to be difficult for white professionals without an anti-racist frame of mind to
enforce the ideology of empowerment in a truly liberating way in their professional practices
with marginalised BME peoples.
As noted by Baistow (1994: 34), though empowerment has become a palatable term, there is
“a noticeable lack of analysis of the meanings and practices that are associated with
empowerment”. As she argues as follows, the way the concept is conceptualised and practised
may have regulatory or liberating consequences for practitioners and those targeted for
empowerment:
An analysis of the implications, for recipients of ‘empowering practice’ and for the
professionals concerned, suggests firstly, that empowerment involves a more complicated set
of processes than its invocation as a moral imperative implies. Secondly, though it may have
the potential to free citizens from a network of professional, bureaucratic regulation,
empowerment is also becoming a social project that is intimately connected with the exercise
of government (Baistow 1994: 35).
Empowerment can be liberative. However, it can also be regulatory if the power to empower
others increasingly rests in the hands of professionals, and if the point of departure for
empowering others is a definition of their needs in terms of what are perceived by these
professionals as their individual pathologies. In other words, if social work professionals
invoke the ideology of empowerment because of the moral underclass discourses and negative
stereotypes they may articulate in relation to marginalised BME youths where the challenges
they meet in their everyday lives are attributed to individual pathologies or moral deficiencies,
then empowerment becomes a new form of governing through pastoral power. It becomes a
technology of behaviour modification in which subjectification and responsibilisation of
disadvantaged individuals viewed as morally deficient are central tenets. This may lead to the
empowerment of the professionals (regulative empowerment) rather than disadvantaged
individuals (liberative empowerment).
For it to be meaningful for those to be empowered, empowerment should proceed from their
own definitions of their needs and how they feel they can be empowered to fully participate
in society by successfully tackling the individual and structural challenges as well as their
inner psychic and emotional pains without any coercion. Empowerment outcomes must also
be evaluated from the point of view of those being empowered so that their voices regarding
their experiences of the empowerment process can be centred. Otherwise, the empowerment
ideology will become a mere rhetoric or linguistic tool for professionals to legitimate and give
moral credence to their institutional practices in the face of the increasing deregulation of the
welfare state within a neo-liberal economic, political and managerial climate. In relation to the
legitimating role the ideology of empowerment can play, Baistow argues as follows:
At a time when professional expertise and skills are under persistent scrutiny, empowerment,
as both a professional task and duty, may provide policy-makers and practitioners in health
and welfare with …affirmation, for it is both ambiguous and flexible enough in its meanings
to allow many possible interpretations whilst, at the same time, carrying with it a stamp of
ethical credibility that rubs-off on those who ‘empower’ (Baistow 1994: 45).
It is in terms of these considerations that the New Chance project can be described as a
liberative empowerment practice.
%0-8;A+01+)6,-57<176)4?7:4,;7.5):/16)41;-, 4)+3)6,5167:1<A
-<061+ A7=<0;5)<<-:
Franklin was positive when I asked him about his experiences with Riverside. As he put it,
“Riverside is a good place [to be]. Riverside is good”. However, he felt that “they ought to
help young people in a more positive way”. He felt that professionals should spend more time
to talk with the young people who come there and get to know them better. In that regard, he
advised that an effective way of working with young people is to understand how they think,
their aspirations, dreams and hopes, life projects and the challenges they encounter in their
daily lives. He also emphasised the importance of not moralising these young people or
bringing negative stereotypes to bear on the work with them. He narrated his views as
follows:
They ought to have simple conversations with these youths ( ), not judge them for the wrong
things they have done. They don’t help the young people if they do that. [They ought to talk
with them] so they can understand the wrong choices they might have made and suggest
alternative solutions. They have to make the young people feel that they are aware of their
vulnerability ( ), because they are not fine inside. They are just pretending [to be tough]. ( )
They think they are five metres tall, but they are just a metre and a half [tall]. They are
cowards.
Thus, Franklin emphasised the importance of engaging these young people actively in
dialogic reflections in relation to their internal conversations. By so doing, professionals can
go beyond their tough masculine postures, which are mere masks or inauthentic selves-forothers, and explore their painful inner psychic and emotional worlds in a non-moralising or
pathological way in order to understand who they really are.
This piece of advice from Franklin needs to be heeded also by criminologists who study
marginalised street-involved BME youths. Focusing on the psychic and emotional worlds of
vulnerable youths can enable us to understand the motivations that underlie their behaviours
making it possible to develop more effective and non-punitive intervention strategies that can
help these youths to come to terms with their psychic and emotional pains.
All the study participants emphasised the importance of being listened to, understood and
taken seriously and treated with respect as well as being given information and advice as
important ingredients of “good help” and in their feelings of being cared for. These feelings
determine their perceptions of how attractive and accessible services are. The feelings of
being cared for that they may harbour are crucial for the trust they can have for professionals
or adults they come into contact with. Marginalised and street-involved BME youths can only
open up themselves to professionals they can trust and with whom they have good relations.
For many of them, having good relations with adult caregivers they feel genuinely care for
them, and whom they can turn to for advice and information in times of need may be the
“help” or “care” that they seek – a shoulder to lean on in challenging moments in their lives.
Also central in the positive perceptions some of the study participant had was the close
collaboration that existed between the various professionals they came into contact with and
the assertive follow-ups they received through these professional collaborations.
Establishing good relations with these youths should start from the street and through creative
strategies. There are many such strategies outreach workers can use. For example, a sustained
effort to reach out to them on the street can start from an identification of the different
changing constellations of friendship a careful observer can find among them and the key
figures in these constellations. Rather than thinking that central persons in these constellations
work to cement their influence by displaying their power over social workers, systematic
efforts can be made to establish contacts and build trusting relationships with these key
personalities. Outreach workers can then give them accurate and true information about what
kind of help they can give and cannot give, so these key personalities can relay this
information to others they associate with. It is also important to give them information about
the roles of other agencies such as the CWS and the police and how these roles differ from
theirs, as well as other sources of help available and how to access them. Many streetinvolved youths may not understand the law of confidentiality and may need more
information regarding this law, exceptions or limitations to the law, and the consequences for
professionals if they don’t abide by it.
Outreach workers can also collaborate with such key personalities in relation to concrete
projects. Such projects tend to gain more credibility in the eyes of street-involved youths if
persons they look up to on the street are involved. These projects can be used to give
culturally sensitive information to these youths by inviting representatives from different
agencies to have dialog with them in a neutral and safe arena as to how they work. The power
differentials that may exist between the youths and professionals in other contexts may be
neutralised in such group contexts the young people may regard as their own. The young
people can have the chance to orient representatives of such agencies to challenges they have
with these agencies. Thus, through group work, outreach workers and other professionals can
help dispel the deep cultural mistrust most of these youths might have for them and other
social and welfare institutions they do not have any information about. In turn, this may make
these institutions and services more attractive and accessible to the youths.
Group work with these youths needs to be combined with close individual follow-ups or what
French et al. (2003) describe as assertive follow-up in accordance with concrete plans the
youths regard as their own. BME professionals can help dispel the interracial dissonance
marginalised BME youths may feel in their interactions with overly white institutions such as
the Youth Outreach Agency. However, such BME professionals should not be regarded
merely as competent “door openers”, but should be given equal chances for career
advancements to managerial positions within municipal agencies. Seeing BME professionals
in managerial positions can lend credibility to such Agencies in the eyes of marginalised
BME youths. BME professionals should also be afforded the chance to implement creative
methods, models and projects in association with their committed white colleagues for
reaching these youths.
As noted earlier, while most of these street-involved BME youths may use drugs for selfmedication, they do not consider themselves drug addicts. Many identify the Youth Outreach
Agency as working with drugs addicts. The Agency has an image problem with these youths.
It is, therefore, important that the Youth Outreach Agency tones down its focus on drugs in its
dealings with these youths. According to the Head of the Agency, concrete steps are being
taken in that direction. The Agency has taken concrete steps to focus more on the mental
health issues or challenges that marginalised street-involved youths may have by employing a
psychologist and having plans to employ another one. It is important that these psychologists
are familiar with the emotional and psychic challenges that may be peculiar to BME youths
and the symbolic manners in which they can express the pains associated with them. The
psychic and emotional challenges facing all street-involved youths due to their ontologically
insecure condition of marginality need to be reported up the municipal administrative system
and systematically politicised. All the professionals I interviewed mentioned lack of
accommodation or housing as the greatest obstacle facing them in their work with
marginalised street-involved youths, especially BME youths. I have already described the
structural nature of these housing problems in Norway, especially in Oslo. It is important that
such structural challenges are problematised and politicised through the media, at seminars,
conferences and different fora and through professional associations. Raising the political
consciousness of these marginalised street-involved youths regarding these structural
challenges should be an important aspect of the work done with them.
As noted earlier, many outreach workers articulate negative stereotypes and academic
concepts in relation to marginalised street-involved BME youths and may deny the existence
of racism in the lives of these youths. Hence, only those professionals who have displayed a
keen motivation and commitment to work with marginalised BME youths and/or who are
trained or willing to be trained in anti-racist practice should be allowed to work with them. A
professional emphasised the importance of commitment for working with marginalised BME
youths as follows:
I think that people who work with these youths should really have chosen [themselves]
to work with them and not randomly placed [assigned to work with them]. They
should be recruited with a declared intention to work with marginalisation and a
conscious understanding that racism is there [exists], and that they are really interested
in ( ) counteracting this racism that is hidden (…). There is a hidden racism [out]
there [in society].
Bringing an anti-racist frame of mind to bear on work with marginalised BME youths is
important because of the need to help these youths develop a healthy and positive racial
identity as BME youths. Their identity as BME youths is constantly under attack through their
experiences of everyday racism or racial microaggressions and other negative stereotypes they
must contend with in their young lives. The fact of being black and the feelings of
misrecognition, reification and dehumanisation involved have many emotional and
psychological consequences for many BME youths, as I have noted earlier. Only
professionals with a keen anti-racist orientation can understand their pains and help them
come to terms with these in safe social arenas.
Moreover, rather than bringing negative stereotypes and concepts to bear on their work with
marginalised BME youths, professionals ought to display a sensitive understanding of the
psychic and emotional closure these youths may seek to find on the streets: sociability,
belongingness, affirmation, acceptance, recognition, status and respect that they cannot get
elsewhere. These are fundamental and basic human needs we all share and seek to gratify.
Professionals need to reproduce these psychic and emotional goods in their interactions with
these vulnerable youths. Concrete projects that may target these youths also need to reproduce
conditions that can help them gratify these psychic and emotional needs in a safe
environment. By connecting these vulnerable youths to committed caregivers, both black and
white, who can nurture their hopes and provide them with safe spaces of trust, affection, love
and understanding, and who can also help them meet other needs related to housing,
employment and challenges they may face at school, these youths can receive the care they
need. They are in search of respect on the street. But they are also in search of care.
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