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As few studies have investigated how pre-school children produce and negotiate social positions when powerful positions are claimed, this study explores how 3–5 year-old children construct the social order of peer play when balancing the power game within the interaction. This is a video documented ethnographical case study where the methodology used is inspired by conversation analysis. The findings are that young children, just like older children, can build up and maintain asymmetrical relations during play by jointly co-constructing status positions through their use of language, body space and objects. The subordinates display legitimation of power when their superior playmate utilizes obvious tools to act and maintain their high-status position. However, positioning themselves in power play may imply that they have to endure unpleasant and unfriendly treatment, and this experience provides knowledge of how to dominate others and act from subordinate positions, where some are ‘marginalized and others privileged’.

A previous study conducted in Sweden showed that criminal investigators who participated in a 6‐month course, including a systematic and extensive training program based on a flexible protocol and during which they received extended supervision, were able to reduce their use of option‐posing and suggestive questions and used more open‐ended questions at the end of the training. However, that study did not determine whether the participants continued to employ preferred interview techniques in the months after the course concluded. In the present study, therefore, we evaluated interviews conducted by 66 Swedish criminal investigators who were given the same training as the previous participants. They attended four different courses between the autumn term of 2013 and the spring term of 2015.The present study specifically focused on changes in interview quality from before the course started, to the final interview at the end of the course and interviews subsequently conducted four months after the course was completed. The coding distinguished between open‐questions (invitations, directives) and risky questions (option‐posing and suggestive prompts). We found that, over time, the participants made increased use of recommended types of questions (invitations and directive questions) and reduced use of risky question types (option‐posing and suggestive questions). This suggests that the training program enhanced the investigators’ interview behavior and that they maintained their good practices after completing the course. This is an important finding because inappropriate interviewing can undermine the legal rights of both alleged victims and suspects.

This study explores how 3–5 year-old children negotiate participation rights during peer play in a preschool in Sweden. The interest is on how they build relations moment-by-moment. I specifically analyze how they negotiate participation rights with a focus on how they include and exclude each other in the ongoing activity. This is an ethnographic study, and the method is inspired by conversation analysis where the verbal and non-verbal interaction is studied sequentially. The findings are that even very young children are capable of advanced social acts when playing together. Such capacities may include face-threatening acts but also solidarity towards one or more participants. It is important that face-threatening strategies are recognized and addressed as soon as possible because children can need help to find alternative ways to behave when in conflict with one another. Otherwise there is a risk that such strategies, when repeated, cause harm to those children exposed.

This study explores how juvenile offenders in Sweden between the age of 15 and 17 are interviewed by police officers when suspected of homicide crimes. The quality of question types was assessed in 47 authentic interviews. The findings show that the police officers used option-posing and suggestive questions most frequently and social pressure was used in three predominating ways: to confront, to challenge and to appeal for a confession. The conclusion is that the police officers’ question style to a large extent contradicts recommendations for how to interview children. There is therefore a need to develop an evidence-based interview practice for interviewing young suspects.

Research on asylum-seeking children tends to disregard those in parental care. In particular, little is known about children’s own perspectives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden, this article explores the ways in which accompanied children experience and seek to overcome challenges posed by asylum reception. The focus is on children’s ambition and ability to form their everyday life, given their ambiguous position of tentative emplacement. Theoretical inspiration is sought in Ortner’s ‘agency of personal projects’ and de Certeau’s concept of ‘tactics’, analysed through the prism of liminality. The study found that while some tactics aimed at avoiding situations and settings that made children uncomfortable, others involved influencing their situation through pursuing ‘personal projects’. Many children’s strivings were directed at creating ‘a normal life’ and a place for themselves in Swedish society. The findings challenge the idea that accompanied children are more protected from difficulties and responsibilities than those seeking asylum alone.

We do not know enough about how legislators from different political parties make sense of their ambitions and experiences in relation to the development of asylum policy. In this study we wanted to find out how political discussions can create conditions for legislative change. The present study therefore explored how the Swedish 2005 Aliens Act and the new system for appeals and procedures (NSAP) were negotiated and perceived by 15 legislators of the parliamentary Committee on Social Insurance (COSI) that considered this new legal framework that is effective since 2006. The participants were openly interviewed about their experiences of negotiating migration policy via their committee work. The study is inspired by interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as it can reach an understanding of how research participants’ attempt to make sense of their lived experience. First, the interview transcripts were transcribed verbatim and then independently coded by the first two authors. Thereafter they collaboratively refined the themes and sub-themes and discussed them with the third author. The overall finding is that the preceding political negotiations can be one of the reasons for unclear aims when politicians’ propose new legislation. This is because directives can consist of many divergent perspectives and considerations. The specific findings are that the period under consideration was described as dramatic and stressful with the presence of uncommon political collaboration between political parties as well as the pushing of legislation via budget negotiations. In addition, they said that the suggested changes in asylum policy and implementation were mainly based on other policy aspects, such as fiscal considerations and state-municipality relations. Participants also viewed that identified problems with asylum decision-making have not been sufficiently resolved by the new framework. Even though this study was conducted in Sweden, its findings can be relevant

The present study investigated how Swedish district court judges assessed child victims' credibility and the reliability of their testimony in cases of alleged human trafficking for sexual purposes. Court files from 12 different cases, involving 16 alleged child victims (aged 13–17 years old), all of them girls, were qualitatively analyzed with particular attention paid to how the judges described credibility and reliability. Results indicated that, although the judges' assessments to a large extent were based on the Swedish Supreme Court's criteria for credibility and reliability, they were applied somewhat arbitrarily and subjectively. They were also applied as if obvious and grounded on shared experiences, although their meaning was never explored. The way that credibility was assessed may also reinforce gender and victim stereotypes. Moreover, there seems to exist a confusion surrounding the credibility and reliability concepts, as they were sometimes used interchangeably despite the intention that they are two different assessments. Overall, an apparent need exists to increase judges' awareness that their subjective impressions should decrease when legitimizing judicial decisions.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore how individual legislators perceive unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, their life situation, needs and best interests. Design/methodology/approach– The total number of participants were 15. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was used in order to identify and analyze patterns in the interview data. The authors focused on their responses to the questions about the best interest of the child in migration policy and practice, and how this principle was related to unaccompanied children seeking asylum. Findings– The main finding is that chronological age becomes a key sign for how legislators understand the life situation, needs and best interests of unaccompanied children. Also, the findings from this study suggest that the moralizing welfare ideology of the past is still present in political discourse and social planning, construing unaccompanied minors as an ambivalent category between civilization and savagery. The findings from this study indicate that legislators enact reforms of importance for unaccompanied children without considering them as agents of their own future, with their own motives and reasons to seek asylum. Practical implications– The findings from this study indicate a need to adapt the understanding of the existing Aliens Act (SFS 2005:716) to the knowledge that unaccompanied minors need to be assessed on their own terms. Originality/value– This study contributes to increasing the understanding about how the subjective values of legislators may have influenced migration reform in Sweden that can be valuable to both legal and social research, as well as policy planners.

This study explores the informativeness of 24 adolescents exploited in sex trade in Sweden when they were interviewed by police officers about their experiences. The questions and responses were analysed using coding types developed for research on forensic interviews. Qualitative analyses of the questions resulting in evasive responses and the court files were also done. The findings show that the adolescents were informative yet evasive, specifically when asked open questions. Experiences of violence and interviews conducted soon after the police intervention may result in higher levels of evasiveness. Concurrently, evasiveness seems to be intimately connected to unique circumstances in each case.

Research points to the importance of involving children in social investigations, since their perception of their own situation and needs may differ from what others take to be the case. There is however no specific recommendation of how children’s voices should be inscribed in such investigations. This study explores if and how children’s voices are represented in the final part of the social investigations where social workers argue in support of their decision. It has a specific focus on how children’s voices about their health are included when, at the point of initiating an investigation, concerns have been raised about their physical and psychological well-being. Inspired by a social constructionist and discursive analytical approach we analyzed 60 arguments in as many social investigations. The findings are that children’s psychological-, physical health or general well- being was mentioned in 46 of the 60 argumentations. The child’s own thoughts about his or her health were represented in 12 of these 46 arguments. Instead, children’s health was mostly represented by referrals to other persons. In those 12 arguments where children’s views are presented they were reported in different ways. Their view could, for example, be sparingly reported and be used in order to confirm a previous statement or opinion. Two of the cases go more into details about what the children actually have said about their health. We conclude that if the representation of the child’s own voice is excluded it is difficult to understand if and how a children’s perspective of their health has been taken into consideration in the decision process., At the time for thesis presentation publication was in status: Manuscript

Depicted as someone without agency, with no free will and completely in the hands of the trafficker, the ideal trafficking victim can be seen as diametrically different from the guilty prostitute. By analysing how responsibility and victimhood are negotiated in forensic interviews with alleged adolescent trafficking victims, this article scrutinises this image by asking how victim-status is handled when questions turn to sex and prostitution and which interactive and narrative conditions, related to agency, stake and interest, apply for talk in this specific institutional setting. Our findings suggest that in order to sort out the "real" victims, the interviewer need to pull apart the two categories victim and prostitute even if there may be substantive problems with this clear-cut distinction since the categories tend to blend together. Further, talk about sex can be problematic for the interactants as it may undermine the victim narrative instead creating a subject with interests.