SOSV3131 Child Welfare from a Migration and Minority Perspective Course description

Through the course, students will achieve increased competence in social work and child welfare work with ethnic minorities such as indigenous people, national minorities, and children and young people with immigrant and refugee backgrounds.

Students will develop skills to critically reflect on structures and power relations that affect relations between social workers and minority ethnic families. Furthermore, they will acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes that stimulate increased tolerance, understanding of and knowledge about the situation of ethnic minorities in a majority society and how different migration-related experiences can affect mental health and everyday life.

The course builds on knowledge and experiences the students have acquired earlier in the course of their education.

Language of instruction is Norwegian.

The student must have passed all exams in the first and second year of the programme. 

After completing the course, the student should have the following overall learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

The student has knowledge of

• how majority - minority relations in a historical, social and political perspective is related to the production of knowledge and power
• of how socioeconomic conditions, marginalization processes, racism and discrimination can impact quality of life and integration
• the importance of identity, language and cultural continuity for children and young people's development
• migration in a life-course and transgenerational perspective
• trauma, stress and adverse experiences related to forced migration and potential impact on mental health, social relations and the risk of developing mental health problems

Skills

The student can

• analyze structural, cultural and individual power relations and be able to apply this in anti-racist social work
• analyze and critically reflect on how cultural attitudes, values and behaviors can affect work with children and families in the welfare state.
• analyze conditions at the individual, group and societal level that may inhibit and promote health, development and social participation, for people with a history of migration, trauma and adverse experiences.

General competence

The student

• has gained an understanding of how cultural variation, migration histories and power relations have an impact on the needs and everyday lives of children, young people and families.
• has knowledge that stimulates reflection on the social and child welfare workers' positions of power both as representatives of public authorities and as representatives of a majority culture.

The teaching takes place with in-person attendance on campus. The teaching methods are lectures, plenary discussions, group work and own reflection. Students will also work on specific theoretical and methodological issues related to their own experiences and will be given an opportunity to discuss them.

No coursework requirements or compulsory activities.

The exam in the course is an individual supervised exam of 5 hours.

No aids are permitted.

Grade scale A-F. 

All exam papers are assessed by one internal and one external examiner.

Jennifer Drummond Johansen

Marianne Rugkåsa (co).