"Don't speak to strangers!" - A Qualitative Research about Integration Processes in Swedish Elderly Care : Refugee Workers Interaction in Meetings with Swedish Unit Manager Authority

Abstract: With an influx of refugess to Sweden the scene on the work market has changed for the last six decades. During the 1960's Italians came to work as handicraft labor, in the 1970's lots of Chileans entered Sweden fleeing dictatorship, in the 1990's the war on Balkan drove many refugess north and during the Syrian collapse in 2015 the word integration has rung repeatedly in newspapers and policy documents.  17% of Swedish population is born in another country which equivalent to 1.7 million inhabitants from other cultures (Dec 2021). This puts Sweden on the map as a multicultural country trying to understand integration processes and the political scene is dictating questions on how Sweden shall be run.  This study wants to highlight a specific area where many refugees often end up working entering the Swedish work market for the first time, in Swedish communal elderly care service. Since no prior education is needed it is an easy way in to get a job and earn a living.  Elderly care in Sweden has unit managers navigating through cultural and local regulations on how the work market shall progress. In the meetings with refugees wanting to work obstacles are at place making employment situation more strained.  In this study we find unit managers and refugee workers giving their opinions and possible solutions to a bureaucratic landscape of laws, attitudes and values. But what happens in meetings between a unit manager and its refugee worker? How do they work and what does not work? And how does this affect integration processes in Swedish elderly care? The answers to this involve unit managers pre-knowledge in multiculturalism and attitudes towards refugee workers and in what way the refugee worker is a stranger to the unit manager or not. My conclusion is the need to educate unit managers to be representative and having knowledge in multiculturalism to develop better integration processes and secure future employment in elderly care in Sweden.