De första invandrarbyråerna : Om invandrares inkorporering på kommunal nivå åren 1965-1984

Immigration to Sweden increased during and after the Second World War. Initially the in-crease consisted of refugees, but after the war labour migration became the dominant form of migration to Sweden. The immigrants were expected to manage the adaptation to the Swedish society on their own, possibly with the help of voluntary organizations or the company they worked for. This situation began to change in the 1960s. The immigrants’ situation received public attention and different actions were taken to reduce the risk of marginalizing the immi-grants. Many of these actions started on a local level, in the municipalities, prior to the devel-opment of the first national immigrant policy in 1975. The first local public administrations for handling immigrant incorporation developed approximately ten years before. These or-ganizations, soon to be called Immigrant bureaus, were among the first public initiatives, on both state and local level, to actively take measures to incorporate the immigrants. The licen-tiate thesis is a comparative case study of five Swedish municipalities which started Immi-grant bureaus in the middle of the 1960s. The objective of the thesis is to study the creation and development of these organizations up until 1984. Thereby, the study gives an image of the creation and development of a specific local public administration for immigrant incorpo-ration. It describes and analyzes the common features of the bureaus as well as the unique character of each individual bureau. Accordingly, a theoretical perspective which stresses the early development in an organization’s history and accentuates the importance of specific contexts for understanding different organizational developments has been used. The result shows that the immigrant bureaus were initiated by different local actors, such as the public administration, labour unions and educational associations which meant that the purposes were somewhat divergent. Yet another consequence was not only variation in development between different bureaus, but also within each of them over time

Kommunalt mottagande av invandrare och flyktingar – 40 år av utmaningar och erfarenheter

Artikeln handlar om uppkomsten och utvecklingen av ett nytt kommunalt ansvarsområde – inkorporeringen av invandrare och flyktingar – från mitten av 1960-talet och fram till 2010. Materialet består i huvudsak av fallstudier från åtta kommuner. Resultaten visar att kommunernas arbete har kretsat kring frågor om huvudmannaskap, verksamhetsinriktning, personal- och kompetensstruktur samt målgrupper, vilka sammantaget utgör vad jag kallar organisationernas ”inkorporeringspraktiker”. Runt dessa frågor har det kommunala arbetet kretsat utan att finna bestående svar på frågan om hur inkorporeringen av invandrare och flyktingar ska organiseras

Experiences of nurses educated outside the European Union of a Swedish bridging program and the program’s role in their integration into the nursing profession : a qualitative interview study

Background: Countries all over the world are experiencing a shortage of registered nurses (RNs). Therefore, some countries, including Sweden, have tried to solve this by recruiting internationally educated nurses (IENs). Countries offer bridging programs as educational support to qualify IENs for nursing work in the destination country. However, there is little research on IENs’ experiences of bridging programs in European countries and how these programs facilitate their integration into the world of work and their new society. The aim of this study is to explore the experiences of nurses, originally educated outside the EU (European Union)/EES, of the Swedish bridging program and of the program’s role in facilitating their integration into the nursing profession in Sweden. Methods: A qualitative descriptive design was used to explore the topic based on 11 informants’ perspectives and experiences. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants at one university in Sweden. Data were collected by individual interviews using a semi- structured interview guide during the year 2019 and were analysed using an interpretative thematic approach. Results: Two main themes emerged from the analysis: 1) Return to nursing, and 2) The bridging program as a tool for transition to nursing in Sweden. The first theme includes conditions and experiences such as personal motivation and determination, and support from others that the participants described as important in order to achieve the goal of re-establishing themselves as registered nurses in Sweden. Furthermore, the second theme describes the participants’ experiences of the bridging program as mostly positive because it led to new learning and achievements that were valuable for the transition to nursing in Sweden; however, the participants also emphasised the challenges of their transition into the nursing profession, which were related to instances of misrecognition of their professional competence and the uncertain outcome of the program. Conclusions: This study found that the bridging program facilitated integration into the nursing profession for nurses educated outside the EU/EES, especially knowledge gained in clinical-based training. Thus, it is important to recognise and value the IENs’ experience and previous knowledge and training when developing the bridging program’s curriculum