Det osynliga våldet - En kvalitativ explorativ studie om hur sex professionella som arbetar nära unga uppfattar våld i ungas parrelationer

Sammanfattning: This bachelor thesis explores the perceptions that exist – and how these are created – among six professionals who work with violence in relationships between young people. To understand how the perceptions are created, the study uses Charles Tilly’s (2003) theory of how social categories is created and defined. The study also sheds light on how these perceptions can be understood from a feminist standpoint theoritcal perspective (Carmody 1997, Mattsson 2013) and theory of how young people's problems are made invisible (Högström, Tagesson & Gallo 2021). The method used was semi-structured interviews with professionals in various fields, in which they came into contact with young people. The findings present that the perceptions are primarily created through encounters with young people and secondarily through transferred knowledge from other areas. The professionals tended to reason in terms of, and view the violence in young relationships from, a feminist approach. Sometimes their perceptions can however also be viewed as problematic on the basis that they in some instances recreated anti-feminist patterns where young girls are seen as responsible for ending up in violent relationships. Young people as a group were also occasionally deemed as unable to act according to what is ‘right and wrong’. The findings show that, on one hand, the professionals, in the way they perceive violence in young people’s relationships, can brush past or veil issues and experiences particular to youth in their discourse. Thus, they render youth invisible in certain forums within various social work fields. On the other hand, by viewing the violence as a structural problem where the responsibility lays with the perpetrator or society, the professionals can be viewed as working with and against violence as feminist agents of change.