Abstract
Abstract The study presented in this paper focuses on three evangelical churches in Sweden and their engagement with migrants. The goal of the study is to explore how professionals engage with migrants in their everyday work in a multilingual environment. To this end, data from interviews with church professionals are triangulated with video-recordings of their interaction with migrants in a variety of church settings. The analyses demonstrate how different dimensions of belonging are enacted in multilingual encounters through practices that allow the professionals to perform social work in an activity context where empathy is of great importance. These findings highlight the role of the church within the public sphere under the changing conditions of globalization.
Highlights
Through the social and global development related to migration and mobility the modern workplace has become multilingual
The study presented in this paper focuses on three evangelical churches in Sweden and their engagement with migrants
This study investigates how professionals in three evangelical churches in Sweden engage with migrants in their everyday work
Summary
Through the social and global development related to migration and mobility the modern workplace has become multilingual. The professionals in focus in the present article are working with pastoral care in multi-ethnic, suburban environments. In 2015, the number of asylum seekers to Sweden was the highest ever, over 160,000 people (National Bureau of Statistics). This huge influx may represent a challenge for the receiving society, which is called to provide the newly-arrived migrants with shelter and food, and to offer some practical solutions for facilitating their integration. In 2015, when the state organizations in Sweden were overwhelmed with the number of migrants and could not adequately respond to the challenges at the time, the civic society, churches among others, helped the reception centres and eased the process of providing welfare services (Wagndal 2016)
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