VÄG, VAL OCH VILLKOR : Individer som tidigare begått kriminella handlingar berättar

Sammanfattning: This thesis, titled “Change, choice and conditions”, is written by Lina Skantze and Bianca Zandén. The study explores the process in which individuals’ attempt to end their criminal career, focusing on the interplay between path of life, choices, and conditions. The method is qualitative, and the empirical material consists of interviews with four young adults that all have experience of criminality. The empirical material is analyzed within a theoretical framework based on social construction, Antonovskys “Sense of coherence, SOC” and Giddens “Structuration theory” as well as existential philosophy. The authors suggest a theoretically and empirically based model illustrating the change process. The model, developed through abduction, suggests that the process in changing ones life radically includes a number of steps such as; distance to everyday life and its habits, existential choices, new conditions, reflection around former situations and experiences, formulating a life story, new habits and routines, new and/or re-established social relationships, orientation towards new goals and a sense of meaning in life, as well as hopes and ideas about the future. The authors conclude that there are no absolute turning points in the lives of the interviewees. Instead change happens in a complex process best described as incremental, consisting of small – and sometimes incoherent – steps. However, certain situations during the process are crucial and offer opportunity for fundamental existential choices.