Collaboration and conflict over measures against violent extremism

The purpose of this project is to study how schools, social administration, police and civil society actors work together locally to implement the national coordinator's directive - and how different actors perceive and manage their own role in this activity.

The focus is on how different understandings of the assignment, interests, local conditions, organizational cultures, goal conflicts and logics affect the organizations' work. The professional groups that collaborate in the work against violent extremism are governed by partly different interests, goals and organizational cultures. The meeting between them can create innovative forms of cooperation as well as potential conflicts of interest. There are also a number of possible goal conflicts between crime prevention work and other central societies objectives for young people's social conditions and socialization. For example, the school's mission to safeguard freedom of expression and create trusting teacher-student relationships may conflict with efforts in which teachers are required to pass on information about students who express opinions that suggest radicalization. The project closely studies local efforts against "violent extremism" in three Swedish municipalities: Gothenburg, Malmö and Örebro.