Earlier studies from the Nordic countries have shown that youth from immigrant backgrounds are more likely to be exposed to parental violence compared with non-immigrant youth. However, few studies have investigated differences on a more detailed level and analyzed the risk after parents’ country of origin. Moreover, to what extent cultural, psychosocial, stress and resource-based factors can account for a relationship between parents’ country of origin and youths’ exposure to violence has not been investigated in a Norwegian context. Therefore, we first examine the prevalence of fear of and exposure to violence among young people from different immigrant backgrounds. Then we control for various factors that can be related to country differences. We use data from the Young in Oslo survey from 2018, a school-based self-report study conducted among youth aged 16–19. In the analyses, we distinguish between youth from major immigration countries and those from other geographic regions. Overall, and in line with earlier research, we find that a higher proportion of youth with immigrant backgrounds fear violence and have been subjected to violence by someone in the family, compared to youth with two Norwegian-born parents. However, the results show large variation in the level of exposure after parents’ country of origin. In addition, the results indicate that this variation is largely related to families’ socio-economic resources, but also, to some extent, family structure (parents living together or not). Few socio-economic resources and a weak economic situation indicate a higher exposure risk for all youth, including those with Norwegian-born parents. Even after controlling for socio-economic resources, family structure and religious affiliation, there is a higher risk of violence among youth with origin from some countries and regions.

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Researchers are increasingly interested in why people want to participate in qualitative interview studies, particularly what they hope to gain from participating. The present paper contributes to this research agenda by analysing the motivations of victims of interpersonal violence: a group that is considered ethically challenging to involve in research, given their history of being intruded upon. The analysis is based on 174 qualitative interviews from three separate studies: two on intimate partner violence and one on sexual assault. A key finding is that many victims welcome the opportunity to participate and often use the interviews for their own purposes. We identified three different ‘participant orientations’, or ways victims relate to the interview and the research, including ‘telling for oneself’, ‘telling for others’ and ‘telling for the researcher’. We discuss how these orientations imply different ethical contracts between the participant and researcher and their links to recruitment methods.

This article discusses the relation between civil and religious marriage, at the interface between the state’s legal discourse and the discourses and practices of Norwegian mosques. A central question is what kinds of effects the governance of Islam in Norway has had in the field of marriage. Against the background of political debates on the system of marriage authorization of faith communities, the analysis draws on interviews with public officials and administrative leaders of mosques, the majority of whom are authorized to perform legal marriage. While the Norwegian state concept of marriage authorization is based on a separation of the civil act and the religious act, mosque administrators rather highlight the similarity and continuity between the two. Contrary to state concerns, though, the analysis suggests that the civil marriages have affected the religious, rather than vice versa. What is interesting is that this reasoning actually results in Norwegian marriage certificates replacing or suppressing the Islamic marriage contract, although agreements on mahr (dower) are still made more informally. Thus, our findings suggest that there has been a secularizing effect.