Hegemoniska och icke-hegemoniska maskuliniteter - En kritisk diskursanalys av politiska texters och unga mäns perspektiv på våld i utsatta områden

Abstract

There is a lack of consensus within politics on how to deal with the so-called youth problem that exists in vulnerable areas. The politicians' positions are communicated in speech and writing and influence the majority society's attitude to children in vulnerable areas. Children are at the same time a vulnerable group in society. They are dependent on adults and need their guidance and support throughout their upbringing. In vulnerable areas live children whose health is affected by social and economic vulnerability and discrimination from the outside world. By looking into how hegemonic masculinity as norms are formulated in Swedish political documents, in relation to experiences of stigmatization and violence among children from vulnerable areas, this study wishes to examine if children’s right to a life without violence is being respected in vulnerable areas. The main sources for the essay are four different political documents and two semi-structured interviews with young men who grew up in vulnerable areas. The analytical framework is intersectionality and social constructionism, with a focus on hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinity, stigmatization and post-colonialism. The methods applied to analyze the findings were Critical Discourse Analysis, using Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model. This study compares the politicians' discourses with those of the interviewees and identifies if they challenge the prevailing power relations in society or reproduce them. By studying politicians' messages about youth problems in vulnerable areas and contrasting them with young men's own experiences of stigmatization and violence during their upbringing, this study investigate how masculinity norms, stigmatization and power relations affect children's right to a life without violence in vulnerable areas. The main result is that the political texts make a difference between children's right to a life free from violence in the rest of Sweden and those who live in vulnerable areas. The politicians reproduce discourses in which society's power structure is not challenged. However, those who were interviewed challenged the prevailing discourses by showing evidence of an analytical ability that defied society’s power relations.