Perceptions and Experiences of Social Integration among Adult Immigrants

Sammanfattning: A sense of social belonging is an important factor for integration. The different experiences that immigrants face towards social integration were of major interest to the authors. The authors conducted a qualitative study based on the experiences that immigrants went through as well as their perceptions of social integration. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four immigrants, ranging between 31- 42 years of age. The themes found during the analytic process were: Swedish language, social networks and information, identifying yourself and culture. The most important findings were that social workers and other persons in authorities were important for establishing contacts with native-born, as they introduced them to activities that led to interaction with native Swedish. Social activities, in particular, seemed to play an important role in establishing contact with native-born and creating a social network.