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During the past ten years the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking refugee children has dramatically increased in Sweden. Some of them are permitted to stay in the receiving country, but some are forced back to their country of origin. Social workers and police officers are involved in these forced repatriations, and such complex situations may cause stressful working conditions. This study aimed to bridge the gap in knowledge of the relationship between general mental health and working with unaccompanied asylum-seeking refugee children who are due for forced repatriation. In addition, the role of psychosocial job characteristics in such relationships was investigated. A questionnaire including sociodemographic characteristics, the Swedish Demand-Control-Support Questionnaire, and the 12-item General Mental Health Questionnaire were distributed nationally. Univariate and multivariable regression models were used. Poorer mental health was associated with working with unaccompanied asylum-seeking refugee children among social workers but not among police officers. Psychological job demand was a significant predictor for general mental health among social workers, while psychological job demand, decision latitude, and marital status were predictors among police officers. Findings are discussed with special regard to the context of social work and police professions in Sweden.

The aim of this cross-sectional study is to increase our understanding of job satisfaction in Swedish police officers by taking into account work-related stress, and sexual and gender-based harassment. Data were collected from 152 police officers working in vulnerable areas in Stockholm using sociodemographic questions, the Police Stress Identification Questionnaire (PSIQ), Sexual and gender-based harassment questions, and Job Descriptive Index (JDI). The obtained results indicated that male and female police officers reported the highest satisfaction in “people on your present job.” The lowest score of job satisfaction in both male and female police officers was related to “opportunity for promotion” and then “pay.” There were no significant differences in the subscales of job satisfaction between male and female police officers. The older and more experienced officers, the less satisfaction was reported in “job in general” and more satisfaction reported in “pay.” Comparing job satisfaction between patrol officers and those officers who worked in internal services showed police patrol officers had higher job satisfaction in “job in general,” “work in the present job,” “opportunity for promotion” and “supervision” compared to their counterparts in internal services. There were not any significant differences between the subscales of job satisfaction between male and female police officers. There was not any significant association between job satisfaction subscales and having experience of sexual or gender-based harassment. Among various subscales of police stressors, organizational stress was in negative relation with three domains of job satisfaction; “job in general,” “pay” and “supervision.” Also, hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed organizational stress was most often of predictive impact related to various job satisfaction domains in police officers.

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Citation for the original published paper (version of record):Hansson, J., Ghazinour, M., Wimelius, M. (2015) Police officers' use of discretion in forced repatriations of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children: balancing efficiency and dignity. AbstractMany countries in the European Union (EU)-among them Sweden-are engaged in accelerated removals of refugees, including unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children. Based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), international directives and national policies prescribe that the dignity of refugees must be respected when they are forcibly repatriated to their countries of origin. Simultaneously however, the government demands that police services improve their efficiency by continuously increasing the number of forced repatriations, something that prompts a question on the relationship between efficiency and dignity. To what extent is there a conflict between these two goals? Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is to explore and analyse how Swedish police officers perceive their participation in forced repatriations of unaccompanied, asylum-seeking refugee children. Interviews with police officers were conducted and analysed drawing on Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy perspective. The findings show that police officers use discretion to create individual perceptions of what constitutes an efficient and dignified repatriation. One main conclusion is that they perceive no conflict between efficiency and dignity. The police officers' own interpretations of what dignity is make it cognitively possible for them to combine efficiency and dignity.