Epistemic notions of trust and distrust in institutional encounters with forced migrants in Finland and Sweden

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines epistemic notions of trust and distrust in institutional encounters from the perspective of forced migrants settling in the changing welfare states of Finland and Sweden. While there is an emerging body of research on the forms, antecedents and directions of trust among forced migrants, the epistemic notion of trust is still under-researched. This article draws on interviews with forced migrants settling in Finland and Sweden. The theoretical framework combines theoretical understandings of trust and epistemic interactions. In the analysis, I show how epistemic notions of trust and distrust, which entail being trusted or distrusted as a knower, emerge as central in understanding trust shaping in institutional encounters. The article illuminates the role of intermediators in epistemic trust and distrust trajectories, as trust-shaping processes also involve actors other than street-level bureaucrats. In addition, the article introduces the concept of epistemic scaffolding to show the importance of supporting service users with a forced migration background as knowers to be. Thus, the article contributes to scholarly discussions around the multifaceted and dynamic phenomenon of trust and its various directions among forced migrants in the context of institutional encounters in the Nordics.