Religion som copingstrategi : En kvalitativ studie om gudsrepresentationen hos ensamkommande flyktingbarn

Sammanfattning: Unaccompanied minors are an increasing group of people, especially this year in Sweden and other European countries, because of different wars. The purpose of this assignment is to study the religious experience of these young people, to see the way they cope with religion in traumatic events. For example leaving their home country and families to build a new life in foreign country. I have interviewed three young unaccompanied minors from three different countries outside of Europe. I asked questions about their religiosity and how they used it to cope with problems during the escape from their home countries, and how they use it for the stay in Sweden. The result from the interviews has been compared to and analyzed with in relation to previous research on religious coping. I have also connected it to Rizzuto’s god representations theory to understand their personal relationship with god.   The final result showed that all the minors used god as a coping method, but in different ways. Most common was praying or just being in a religious building. It did change for one boy, who completely dropped the whole active religious life from living a daily religious life to be less active. I also discovered that religious coping was connected to the image of god through the personal experience of god.