This dissertation discusses how reputation, virginity and honour are made topical in the stories of the lives of Arab and Kurdish women and connected with understandings of culture and religion. The dissertation is composed of five articles, which contain the principal analysis, and five chapters that discuss the project as a whole; the development of the main topics, and choices concerning methodological, ethical and theoretical approaches. The empirical material of the dissertation consists of interviews with ten Arab and Kurdish women in Sweden, and seven legal cases of honor related violence. The interview material is analysed as a whole – focusing on the importance of reputation in women’s creation of identity, and how this may be related to cultural conceptions of divided femininity (virgin-whore) and honour (article 4). I also conduct an in-depth analysis of one interview, where meaning is created through a story, in which liberty is contrasted with constraint (article 3). In the analysis of the legal cases, I discuss the arguments of verdicts concerning honour related violence, and criticise the courts’ understanding of crimes as demarcated acts (articles 1 & 5). I also analyse the (violent) stories of the actual lives of women found in the legal cases in their contexts (articles 2 & 5). Throughout the dissertation, I aim at a constructivist attempt that sees culture and gender as creative frames of interpretation. This attempt is connected with a hermeneutic perspective, which sees a statement or an act as comprehensible only when interpreted in its context (e.g. in a cultural context of honour). It is also connected with a feminist understanding of men’s violence against women, which relates the meaning of an act of violence to culturally accepted forms of control and cultural conceptions of gender. In the analysis of the empirical material, I show how culture is created as contrast in the lives of women. ’Arab/Kurdish’ and ’Swedish’ appear as exclusive categories, and are connected with cultural conceptions of divided femininity and honour. Within these categories, a woman is either a virgin or a whore, and a woman that has been branded as a whore will be stained forever. Men’s honour will not be restored until she is extinguished. When these cultural conceptions are used in the life of a woman who lives with these highly normative demands, they may be crucial and signify experiences of violence. A woman with bad reputation may be defined as a ”Swedish whore” be her male relatives, contrasted with being an ”Arab/Kurdish virgin”. The honour of these men will not be restored until she is excluded from the family or dies: to be a virgin or a whore may be a life-and-death matter.

The purpose of the study is to illustrate partly how the definition of "honor-related violence" is used in the social welfare report and how "honors" are used in current Swedish research and in a central book. The paper examines the consequences for social security officers when "honor-related violence" is defined in a variety of ways while working to prevent the phenomenon. The empirical essay consists of different texts and research that focus on different definitions of "honors concept". Research on the issue of "honorary violence" also analyzes the work of the Social Security Officers. The method is qualitative text analysis, and the coding consists of questions that have been faced with the analysis of the material. Our authors have endeavored to have a factual and research approach in the work of this paper.Central findings in the study are that "honor-related violence" is described from cultural, historical, and intersectional perspectives. Some texts analyzed are based on cultural and historical starting points in the description of violence, and refer primarily to norms and values as a basis in society. Other research criticizes this approach and emphasizes that cultural aspects can lead to discrimination against certain groups. When "honor-related violence" is explained from a cross-sectional perspective, research takes place from different basic constructions into why violence occurs, and addresses class and gender as important prerequisites for describing "honor-related violence". The current Social Security Officer's perception of honor, then a discussion in the paper about the importance of assuming each case is unique and not drawing general conclusions to support the victim in the best possible way. / Studiens syfte är att undersöka dels hur definitionen av ”hedersrelaterat våld” används i socialstyrelsens rapport, dels hur ”heder” används i aktuell svensk forskningoch i en central bok. I uppsatsen studeras vad konsekvenserna kan bli för socialsekreterare när ”hedersrelaterat våld” definieras på olika vis, samtidigt somde arbetar för att förebygga fenomenet. Uppsatsens empiri består av olika texter och forskning som fokuserar på olika definitioner av ”hedersbegreppet”. Även forskning som belyser socialsekreterarnas arbete kring benämningen av ”hedersrelaterat våld” analyseras i uppsatsen. Metoden ärkvalitativ textanalys, och kodningen består av frågor som har ställts inför analysen av materialet. Vi författare har bemödat oss om att ha ett sakligt och forskningsmässigt synsätt i arbetetmeddenna uppsats. Centrala resultat i studien är att ”hedersrelaterat våld” beskrivs utifrån kulturella, historiska, och intersektionellaperspektiv. En del texter som analyseratsutgår från kulturella och historiska utgångspunkter i beskrivningenav våld, och hänvisar främst till normer och värderingar somgrundi samhället. Annan forskning kritiserar detta synsätt och framhåller att kulturella aspekter kan leda till diskriminering av vissa grupper. När”hedersrelaterat våld” förklaras utifrån intersektionellaperspektiv utgår man i forskningen från olika grundkonstruktioner till varför våldet uppstår, och tar upp klass och kön som viktiga förutsättningar för att beskriva ”hedersrelaterat våld”. Gällande socialsekreterares uppfattning om heder, så förs en diskussion i uppsatsen om vikten av att utgå från att varje fall är unikt och inte dra generella slutsatser för att kunna stödja den våldsutsatte personen på bästa möjliga sätt.

Syftet med den aktuella studien är att utforska hur socialarbetare upplever sin kunskap och resurser i sitt arbete med hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck. Vi genomförde en kvalitativ undersökning som baserar sig på semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem socialarbetare från två olika kommuner i Sverige, som arbetar med hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck. Insamlade data analyserades med hjälp av tematisk analys. Resultatet visade på bristande kunskap och resurser inom området, vilket resulterade i bristande trygghet på arbetsplatsen. Resultatet visade även på kopplingen mellan makt och kunskap och att dessa är förbundna och beroende av varandra. På så sätt utgör bristande kunskap i sin tur maktlöshet. Kunskapen blir därmed en livlina för att socialarbetaren ska kunna utöva den makt som behövs för att kunna hjälpa offer för hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck. Vår studie visar att det behövs mer forskning som ger nya infallsvinklar kring ett arbete med hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck. / The purpose of the current study was to explore how social workers experience their knowledge and resources in their work with honor-related violence and oppression. We conducted a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with five social workers from two different municipalities in Sweden, who worked with honor-related violence and oppression. Collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The result showed a lack of knowledge and resources in the area, which resulted in a lack of security in the workplace. The result also showed the connection between power and knowledge and that these are interconnected and interdependent. Lack of knowledge in turn constitutes powerlessness. Knowledge thus becomes a lifeline for the social worker to be able to exercise the power needed to help victims of honor-related violence and oppression. Our study indicates that more research is needed that gives new perspectives on a work with honor-related violence and oppression.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how school counselors in high schools work with students that are exposed to honor-related problems and how they experience their work with these students. We have used a qualitative method and semi-structured interviews with seven school counselors who have experience of working with honor-related issues. To analyze the material we have used previous research along with Michael Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucracy with the concept of discretion and Carl Rogers' theory of the therapeutic relationship. The conclusions we can draw after completing our study is that school counselors experience organizational and honor contextual challenges, but their discretion can help them in their work. To be able to detect vulnerable students, the school counselor uses strategies by being where the students are and asking straight questions. Another important side of the work to succeed at drawing attention to vulnerability is that there is knowledge and that all staff at the school possess this in order to cooperate in identifying vulnerable students. To help students that are vulnerable the dialogue is important both with the students but also the student's parents to be able to talk about the problem and the school counselor contributes with knowledge and information regarding human rights. When the problem is too big for the school counselor's discretion, a strategy for helping will then be to contact other street-level bureaucrats that have the knowledge and discretion to help. Having a trusting relationship is described as the key to being able to discover and help vulnerable students and there are important qualities the school counselor can possess, which increases the conditions for being able to discover, help, create relationships and meet the challenges the work requires.

This thesis aims to highlight the complexity of honor-related violence and femicide in Swedish society and how it is represented in media based on who the victim and perpetrator is depending on ethnic and religious backgrounds. The thesis will be based on a comparative discourse analysis of forty Swedish media articles concerning honor killings (hedersmord) and femicide (kvinnomord) in Swedish translated to English. The analysis focuses on what is associated with each of these words concerning the victim and perpetrator and if it is interpreted as an honor killing or a femicide depending on assumptions of ethnic or religious background in majority and minority contexts. The result of the thesis presents the dichotomy of honor killings as something belonging to practices of the “other” or “non-Swedish” while femicide, being presented as something domestic within Swedish culture it is not presented as something structural or collective as honor killings are.

The lack of knowledge and an inexplicit definition of honor related violence complicates school counselors' work against the phenomen. Current discourse tends to focus on young girls' exposure to oppression and violence. This may cause a position for victimized young boys where they won't be noticed. This study therefore aims to examine school counselors' approach to honor related violence as a phenomen and what experience they have of working with victimized boys and girls. The study is based on a qualitative method where six school counselors have been interviewed. The main questions to be answered were how school counselors describe honor related violence as a phenomen, which experience they have of working against it and what they see as their responsibility in the work against the phenomen. To answer these questions the interviews were analysed through a theme analysis and the theory of discretion. The result of the study was that all school counselors have their point of the meaning of the phenomen. Despite this it was a difference between if they included different countries and religions in the description and if they include hbtq-persons as victims for the violence and oppression. All of the interviewed school counselors had experience of meeting victimized children. The main responsibility that was expressed was to create trustful relationships with the children, be there for them as a support during the process and decide when the situation requires to involve social services. Words like complicated, complexity and foreign were repidently involved in the school counselors statements. Which shows the importance of more knowledge and comprehension of the phenomen.

The aim of this essay was to investigate children's and young people's living conditions within sects and within honor culture, and to examine similarities and differences between children's vulnerability within a context of sect and a context of honor. This was done by performing an analysis of two journalistic books that depict experiences based on both contexts. The method chosen was a qualitative content analysis of the text told by women who grew up in a culture of honor or in a sect. The aim was also to examine the efforts of social work and BRIS digital communication platform based on the vulnerability of children and young people in both sects and in honor culture. Two digital communication platforms were analyzed with the help of text analysis. Erving Goffman's concept stigma was used to gain an understanding of the deviant individual. The findings of the essay showed that norm-breaking behavior led to sanctions and punishment. The prevalence of different types of violence such as psychological violence, physical violence and sexual violence were found. Michel Foucault's concepts of self-discipline and punishment could explain how groups exercise punishment in the hope of individuals obedience. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence was used to explain the different expressions of violence and to understand male dominance in the two contexts highlighted in this essay. The largest similarities that the findings showed were the exposure to physical and psychological violence and social control. The women's stories also manifested a fear of talking about what they experienced as children. Punishments of norm-breaking behavior could mean shunning and exclusion from the group. Distinctive values regarding virginity occurred in both contexts although consequences of not following the norms in a context of honor could result in gruesome punishments. One difference between expressed vulnerability in both contexts was the focus on demons and the devil from a context of sect, which did not occur in the stories from an honor culture. A second difference was who perpetrated the violence. Within stories from sects, it was clearer that the family and the group had the role of the punisher, while in an honor context it was the family and relatives. The fear of losing God or being punished to death by the same was recurring in stories from sects, while the fear in an honor context was mainly about losing the reputation and, by extension, the person's honor.

Sammanfattning Denna studie handlar om socialsekreterares uppfattningar kring begreppet hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck och vilka förutsättningar de har i sitt arbete. Studien fokuserar på att lyfta fram socialsekreterarnas definition av HRV och vilka möjligheter och utmaningar de upplever i sitt arbete. För att besvara studiens syfte och frågeställningar har intervjuer genomförts med ett antal socialsekreterare. Dessa intervjuer visar att hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck är en komplex problematik, som förknippas med familjens heder, kultur och kollektivt tänkande. Studiens resultat visar att det inte finns en sammanhängande definition av hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck, men samtliga socialsekreterare håller med om att det handlar om heder, kultur och patriarkala synsätt. Socialsekreterare upplever många utmaningar i sitt arbete med hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck. Resultatet av studien lyfter fram att socialsekreterare upplever att det är svårt att komma fram till utsatta personer och erbjuder det stöd som de behöver. Dessutom kommer offren ofta från familjer som präglas av ett kollektivt tänkande och de har svårt att fatta sina egna beslut och söka hjälp. Studien visar att det behövs en mer omfattande definition av hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck samt att erbjuda mer information om hur socialtjänsten kan stödja och hjälpa personer som har blivit utsatta för HRV. / abstract This study concerns how social workers perceive the concept of honor-related violence and oppression, and how they relate to that in their work. The study focuses on highlighting the social workers’ definition of honor-related violence and oppression, and the possibilities and challenges that they encounter in their work. To answer the study’s main questions, interviews were conducted with 6 social workers. The results of the study show that the social workers have varying definitions of honor-related violence and oppression. However, they all agree that it is closely related to honor, culture and patriarchal views. Social workers experience many challenges in their work with honor-related violence and oppression. The study’s results highlight that social workers find it difficult to reach people exposed to such violence and provide the needed support. Moreover, the victims of honor-related violence come from families with a collective mentality and they find it hard to make their own decisions and ask for help. The study indicates that a broader and clearer definition of honor-related violence and oppression is needed. Apart from that, the social services need to offer more information about how they can support or help people that have been victims of honor-related violence and oppression.

The purpose of this thesis work is to investigate how research on honor-related violence is structured and how this can potentially affect social work. The scientific problem we see is about the fact that the polarized debate regarding honor-related violence is a growing problem, not only in Sweden, but also in other Nordic countries. Honor-related violence is an effect of when the honor becomes affected and the person who is subjected to honor-related violence is controlled by the family´s norms and rules, this can lead to sanctions in the form of mental and physical violence. Our research question aims to investigate how research on honor-related violence in Sweden is structured and how the polarized explanations of culture and intersectionality can influence the social work on honor-related violence. We argue that the polarized and shifting explanations of cause for the honor-related violence affect the social work and the education of social workers. The research question and the related issues have been studied through a qualitative inductive research approach and the empirical material has been analyzed based on Laclau and Mouffe’s social constructivist discourse analytical instruments. We analyzed seven research works written by researchers in Sweden. What we intend to study is how these researchers portray and structure honor-related violence based on the two causal explanations of culture and intersectionality. The result shows that the cultural explanation model is more prevalent than the intersectinal line of argument regarding the honor-related violence. The empirical material define the nature of honor-related ciolence in a similar way, but that the explanations of cause separates them. Our conclusion is, among other things, that we see how one cannot relate to honor-related violence without looking at culture, but that the intersectional analysis of violence also is necessary in order to be able to absorb all surrounding influencing factors. The intersectional perspective on honor-related violence, however, emphasizes that the cultural explanation becomes a fact when research has not succeeded in solving how social work practice should deviate from a cultural stereotyping when it comes to the issue of honor-related violence. / Syftet med detta uppsatsarbete är att undersöka hur forskning kring hedersrelaterat våld är strukturerat och hur detta potentiellt kan påverka det sociala arbetet. Det vetenskapliga problemet som vi ser föreligger handlar om att den polariserade debatten om det hedersrelaterade våldet på politisk nivå även går att urskilja på en forkskarnivå. Hedersrelaterat våld är ett växande problem, inte bara i Sverige, utan även i andra nordiska länder. Hedersrelaterat våld är en effekt av när hedern blir drabbad och den som blir utsatt för hedersrelaterat våld blir kontrollerad av familjens eller släktens normer och regler, detta kan leda till sanktioner i form av psykiskt och fysiskt våld. Vår forskningsfråga ämnar att undersöka hur forskning om hedersrelaterat våld i Sverige är strukturerad och hur de polariserade orsaksförklaringarna kultur och intersektionalitet kan påverka det sociala arbetet kring hedersrelaterat våld. Vi hävdar att de polariserade och skiftande orsaksförklaringarna kring det hedersrelaterade våldet påverkar det sociala arbete och socionomers utbildning. Forskningsfrågan och de tillhörande frågeställningarna har studerats genom en kvalitativ induktiv forskningsansats och det empiriska materialet har analyserats utifrån Laclau och Mouffes socialkonstruktivistiska diskursanalytiska instrument. Vi har analyserat sju stycken forskningsverk skrivna av forskare i Sverige. Det vi ämnar att studera är hur dessa forskningsverk porträtterar och strukturerar hedersrelaterat våld utifrån de två orsaksförklaringarna kulturförklaringar och intersektionalitet. Resultatet visar att den kulturella förklaringsmodellen är mer förekommande än den  intersektionella argumentationslinje gällande det hedersrelaterade våldet. Alla forskningsverk definierar det hedersrelaterade våldets art på liknande sätt, men att orsaksförklaringarna går isär. Vår slutsats är bland annat att vi ser hur en ej kan förhålla sig till hedersrelaterat våld utan att se till kultur, men att den intersektionella analysen av våldet också är nödvändig för att kunna ta in alla omkringliggande påverkande faktorer. Det intersektionella perspektivet kring hedersrelaterat våld poängterar dock att den kulturella förklaringen blir ett faktum då forskning inte lyckats lösa hur en inom det sociala arbetets praktik ska avvända en kulturell stereotypisering när det kommer till frågan om hedersproblematik.

The school must work to detect, prevent and provide protection in case of emergency situations to students who are exposed to honor-related violence and oppression. The research about how schools should work with honor-related violence and oppression is lacking. The aim of the study was to investigate how school staff work with students who are subjected to honor-related violence and oppression. The study is based on six qualitive interviews with school staff: principals, school counselors and teachers. The result showed that the schools are working to create relations with students and their parents, the schools have an action plan, offering counselling from the school counselor and the school staff is organizing boy groups where they discuss masculine standards, girl groups where the school staff strengthens the girls by talking about women’s rights and parent groups where the school staff supports the parents in their parenting roles. We can see differences in the work based on the school staff's own interest and knowledge. / Skolan ska arbeta med att upptäcka, förebygga och ge skydd vid akuta situationer till elever som är utsatta för hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck. Det saknas tillräckligt med forskning för hur man ska arbeta med hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck i skolan. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur skolpersonal arbetar med elever som är utsatta för hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck. Studien grundar sig på sex kvalitativa intervjuer med skolpersonal: rektorer, skolkuratorer och lärare. I resultatet framkom det att skolorna arbetar med att skapa relationer till elever och deras föräldrar för att kunna upptäcka elevers utsatthet, skolorna hanterar problematiken med en handlingsplan samt genom att erbjuda samtalsstöd från skolkuratorn och det förebyggande arbetet består av att skolpersonalen anordnar pojkgrupper där de diskuterar maskulinitetsnormer, flickgrupper där skolpersonalen stärker flickorna genom att prata om kvinnors rättigheter och föräldragrupper där skolpersonalen stödjer föräldrarna i deras föräldraroller. Vi kan se skillnader i arbetet utifrån skolpersonalens eget intresse och kunskaper.