Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This research focuses on the displacement of families in the Western Cape during apartheid within the context of its slave past.The transmission of intergenerational trauma has been based on research on holocaust survivors. Aboriginal academic writers in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US found that initial studies of intergenerational trauma did not take into the account the historical trauma of colonialism which they believe has left its mark on aboriginal communities today. In South Africa writers from the Apartheid Archives Project have started to focus on the intergenerational trauma of apartheid. These are mainly academics from psychology and not social work. The Apartheid Archives Project and social work discourse do not focus on the historical trauma of slavery. Historians believe that slavery has still left a mark on its descendants in the Western Cape. The families in this research are descendants of slaves and they were also displaced as a result of the Group Areas Act during apartheid. Qualitative research using a postcolonial indigenous paradigm was adopted in this study. Life histories, semi-structured interviews and focus groups were the primary sources of data collection. The research design was a multiple case study which consisted of 7 families where each family was a case and 3 generations in each family were interviewed. The families had typical slave surnames and at least one generation was displaced as a result of the forced removals when the Group Areas Act (1950-1985) was implemented during apartheid. Thematic analysis, narrative thematic analysis and case study analysis was adopted .In addition narrative therapy theory and collective narrative practice was used to decolonise the conceptual framework and methodology. The trauma of displacement and historical trauma of slavery was not acknowledged as traumatic by the dominant society because South African society was based on institutional racism. The grief and loss of the trauma therefore became unresolved and disenfranchised. The findings indicate that disenfranchised grief, silence, socialisation in institutional racism and shame have been the main mechanisms in which the historical trauma of slavery and trauma of displacement has been transmitted within the families. The effects such as intimate partner violence and substance abuse and community violence in the form of gang violence are forms of internalised oppression which has also been transmitted intergenerationally. In addition overcrowding, poor housing and poverty has been transmitted via socialisation which is a societal mechanism of trauma transmission. vi The research findings indicate that the trauma of displacement and historical trauma of slavery was transmitted because the trauma was not included in the social discourse of society. In order to prevent the transmission of the historical trauma of slavery and displacement, the real effects of institutional , cultural and interpersonal racism need to be understood and the counter-memories and counter-histories of slaves and their descendants need to be included in social discourse. A framework to assist social workers in engaging with trauma transmission in families has been proposed in order to interrupt the trauma transmission in families.

Syftet med studien är att utforska den narrativa arbetsmetoden Livets träd som karriärvägledningsinstrument och i vilka sammanhang metoden är som mest användbar inom vägledning. I undersökningen har vi använt en kvalitativ ansats med fyra enskilda intervjuer som datainsamlingsverktyg. Respondenter delar gemensamma drag angående det grundläggande syftet och utvärdering av metoden Livets träd. De menar att metoden bidrar till att stärka individers tro på sin egen förmåga. Genom bättre självkännedom får individen även en meningsfullhet i tillvaron och större möjligheter till att utforska sig själv och sina drömmar. Metoden i sig beskrivs som både filosofisk och kreativ, vilket gör att metoden inte passar alla, både vad som gäller deltagare och personal. För att arbetet i metoden ska ge bästa utdelning krävs det att man arbetat upp en trygghet inom gruppen. Det handlar om att både delge av sina egna tankar likväl som att få respons av de andra deltagarna. Metoden anses ha störst utvecklingsmöjligheter i arbetet med barn, vilket även är metodens ursprungliga målgrupp. Metoden passar även unga vuxna utan sysselsättning, ungdomar som lever i svåra familjeförhållanden, ensamkommande flyktingbarn, nyanlända invandrare, ungdomar som på grund av olika anledningar misslyckats att nå fullkomliga betyg på grundskola eller gymnasiet som tänkbara målgrupper och sammanhang för metoden. / The purpose of this study is to explore the application of the narrative method The Tree of Life as a career guidance instrument and to investigate the career counselling contexts in which the method could be most usable. As research strategy, we have chosen to perform a case study without intervention with four individual interviews as data collection method. The results show that the interviewees share common features regarding the fundamental purpose and the evaluation of the method The Tree of Life. They argue that the method helps to strengthen individuals’ belief in their own abilities. Through better self-knowledge individuals may perceive their life as more meaningful and they may get more opportunities to explore themselves and their dreams. The method itself is described as both philosophical and creative, which means that it cannot be applied automatically by all the counsellors and within every kind of target groups. The study shows that the method’s potential is better exploited when the counsellor succeeds in creating the appropriate sense of safeness within the group so that the participants can fully share the stories of their lives and get feedback from the others. According to the collected data, the method is considered to have its greatest potential for development in the work with children, who on the other hand have been its peculiar target group, since the method was developed in 2005. Nevertheless, the interviewees could see the method as applicable also within other target groups. They have referred in particular to young people who are neither in education nor in employment, to young people who live in a difficult family background, to unaccompanied refugee children, to newly arrived immigrants, and to youth who for various reasons are not able to fulfil their course of education.