Från Irak till Sverige, enkel resa- En kvalitativ studie om föreningsaktiva invandrares sociala kapital

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this paper is to analyze organization active immigrants' social relationships and how they describe it have changed since they moved to Sweden. We will also reason about possible gender differences. We have used a qualitative approach in which we interviewed nine persons from Iraq who moved to Sweden, five of them are women and four are men. We met our respondents in an organization that organizes café evenings for people who have received residence permits in Sweden. We analyzed their stories with the help of Putnam’s theory on social capital. As we can see from our respondents' statements are that they quickly after they arrived in Sweden built up a social network around them. They hang out a lot with family, relatives, friends and neighbors. They had a similar visitation pattern in the home country. They feel connected with people who share the same culture and traditions of their own and feel they can trust those with similar backgrounds, which can be attached to Putnam's theory of bonding social capital. There was less as Putnam would call bridging social capital among our respondents. Our respondents found it difficult to create relationships with the native Swedes. They tell us that in Iraq, men have greater opportunity to do different things in their spare time. There is an expectation that women should stay home and take care of home and family, especially when they are married. They were limited in the ability to socialize with friends outside the home. In Sweden, the female respondents find another opportunity to socialize with their friends because they have more freedom in this country. In Iraq, none of our respondents were active in any club, but in Sweden they joined the clubs to meet new friends.