How are children’s rights to housing, safety and protection implemented in practice in Malmö?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine how the rights of homeless children to housing and protection in accordance with articles 27 and 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are upheld in Malmö. The two research questions that are of particular interest in relation to this objective are firstly whether the Swedish parliament's decision to incorporate the Convention on children's rights into Swedish law has had a concrete effect on the implementation of children's rights to housing and protection, and secondly how new guidelines that were introduced in Malmö in 2019 have had an impact on the same. The study is qualitative and employs an ethnographic approach based on conversations with 14 girls and 6 boys, which proceeded from photographs the children had taken of their housing situation and daily lives. The results show that homeless children and their needs and rights remain largely unseen in the work of the social services. The situation of this already vulnerable group has also worsened since our conversations with the children, since a majority no longer are part of the social services' target group according to Malmö's guidelines regarding homeless persons. It may be argued that such a result provides an indication both of society's approach to children located on the extreme margins of society and of the way in which welfare provision has developed in Sweden.

Hemlösa barns delaktighet vid ansökan om boende

“…26 Det finns omfattande forskning inom hemlöshetsfältet, men få studier belyser vad det innebär att stå utan hem när man är barn, särskilt utifrån svensk kontext. 27 Denna studie har fokus på hur barnkonventionen beaktas i boendeutredningar där familjen är hemlös. Att empiriskt analysera sociala akter kan vara förenat med vissa svårigheter, inte minst utifrån en avsaknad av enhetliga definitioner och begrepp i akterna.…”