This study scrutinises, from a critical perspective, how Swedish mainstream news media depict children and youths categorised as unaccompanied after the identified discursive shift in the late autumn of 2015, where a more hostile and negative reporting on refugees became even more prominent. In addition, it explores what different power structures that are made visible in the news reporting. This is made possible by scrutinising 40 articles from the major national newspapers in Sweden that have daily releases, the so called mainstream media. The critical discourse analysis is used as a method and theory in order to find a focus that is critical and questioning towards existing power structures. Additionally, it contains a focus on how borders and differences are created between certain groups of people by using theoretical perspectives on otherness and postcolonial theory. The study shows an ambivalent media picture and clearly makes unequal and hierarchical power structures visible through the use of different assumptions, accepted truths and journalistic techniques.

The aim of this study was to increase the understanding of how foster parents of unaccompanied children and youths build and maintain relations with the foster placed children. Furthermore, this study highlights the foster parents’ view of being a foster parent and the effects of the commitment of being a foster home. The empirical material data has been collected by interviews with seven foster parents’ in Sweden and the theories that have been used for the analysis of the result are systems theory and a concept from the attachment theory, called internal working models. The conclusions of this study are that foster parents of unaccompanied children and youths have an ability to establish a valuable relationship with said children, however they experience cultural and linguistic difficulties in the process of establishing a relationship with the youths and children. Another conclusion is that the foster parents’ family lives have changed in positive terms while being a foster home.