Socialnämndens yttranden för killar och tjejer : En kritisk diskursanalys gällande ansökningar om tvångsvård enligt 3 § LVU

Sammanfattning: In this study, we examined how social workers through committee described the young person in secure care of youths, and whether there ere any differences between the sexes. The theoretical starting point was the gender perspective and social workers discretion. The aim of our study was to analyze how social workers through committee were describing the youths in law, and if they produced and reproduced eventual gender constructions and norms. Our empirical work was based on 20 LVU court cases, 10 girls and 10 boys. These court cases were examined by using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to find keywords and eventual patterns in writing. The results and the analysis consist of five different themes with some examples from the court cases related to previous research and theories. The results showed differences in the discourses between the sexes. One of the discourses we found was ’victim or perpetrator’, which manifested itself in girls being described as more responsible for their actions rather than having control of their situations, while boys were described as more responsible for their actions. Our ambition was to stimulate interest for upcoming further research. We found that social workers possess a great room for action through regarding the way they chose to write about youths. Therefore, it was important to shed light on the role of the discourse and how it can affect legal certainty.