“Juste, fasen – jag läste ju socionomprogrammet!“ – En kvalitativ studie om nyexaminerade socionomers professionsidentitet

Sammanfattning: Swedish social workers are generalists and on the broad field of work are often employed with different titles. The profession of social workers is therefore considerably difficult to define. What does this mean for the social workers’ professional identity at large? The aim of this study was to give account to how newly graduated social workers experience and reason about their professional identity. We wanted to gain an understanding for how the professional identity has developed for these social workers, their thoughts of its importance in social work and what they think could strengthen it. The chosen methods were qualitative semi-structured interviews with seven different social workers who had graduated from Lund’s University from the spring semester 2020 to the spring semester 2021. To analyze our results we used Social identity theory and Motivational theory with a self-determination perspective. Our study found that the respondents expressed a need for an enhanced status of the profession. They expressed that the status could be influenced by higher jurisdiction for the profession and the political discourse. They also expressed a need for a more clear distinction between social workers and other professions and a greater understanding of the profession, both from the general public and the social workers themselves. The respondents expressed that a combination of these factors could strengthen the social workers professional identity.