Mid Sweden University

Youth unemployment has been a controversial topic in many Swedish debates. However, youth unemployment has been studied in several different ways. There are some research that usually investigate the cause of unemployment while others highlight the experience of being out of work. This study, however, seeks to increase the knowledge about the experience of unemployment when it comes to foreign born young people, which is investigated through these research questions:How do foreign born young people experience the reactions from their social environment when they are not working?How does the social relations of foreign born young people become affected when they are not working?How do foreign born young people handle the experience of the social environments reactions?The above research questions have been studied using 6 qualitative research interviews. The results of this study shows that foreign-born young people feel labeled because of their unemployment, but also because of their ethnic background, which is associated with double stigmatization. This also affects their social relationships by simply hanging out with their unemployed friends, which leads to an exclusion from the friends who are employed. These experiences are then handled by the fact that some respondents choose to conceal their unemployment while others choose to share their experiences with others around their surroundings. These results differ from previous studies, which above all highlight the unemployed in general. For this reason, further research needs to focus more on foreign born young people's experiences by highlighting experiences of unemployment, but also other factors such as ethnicity.