“De har mer att vinna på det kriminella livet än vad de har att förlora” - En kvalitativ intervjustudie om socialarbetares upplevelser av att arbeta med unga män som har varit inblandade i gängkriminalitet

Sammanfattning: The purpose of our study is to understand how social workers work with young men who have previously been involved in gang crime and what risk factors the social worker considers to be the basis for young men's previous involvement in gang crime. We also want to research the difficulties social workers experience while working with this group. The study was based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with seven professional social workers who work with clients that are or have been involved in gang crime. Erving Goffman's theory on stigma and Kerstin Svensson, Eva Johnsson and Leili Laanemets´s development on the concept of social workers' margin of maneuver from Michael Lipsky's theory "street level - bureaucrat" were used to help analyze the material. The results from the study shows that social workers' way of working with young men who have previously been involved in gang crime is individualized based on the young man's needs. They also say that they have a limited amount of resources in order to help these young men find jobs and education, at the same time they try to help motivate these young men not to return to gang crime and if needed give them protected identities. The study also found out that most social workers believe that the primary risk factors for young men to join a gang, were lack of a parental role or lack of functioning family relationships, low academic history, socio-economic vulnerability and the feeling of exclusion from society. The social workers explain that most of these risk factors are linked to each other and can create the feeling of exclusion which leads these young men to seek belonging within a gang. The results also show that difficulties these social workers feel are that there aren't enough resources and knowledge on the subject in order to help young men who have previously been involved in gang crime, and help prevent young men's involvement in gang crime in the future.