Abstract

The 1970s initiated a period of restructuring of welfare policies in Scandinavian countries that would create the conditions to reduce welfare state's public responsibility. The development of activation policies in the mid-1990s shall be understood within this framework, and in this article, I will contemplate the shift towards more individual responsibility for welfare promoted by institutions, and its effects among non-national minorities living in Scandinavia., I will present evidence from interviews held with Somali refugees, reunified family members and their descendants. In lieu of a focus on the institutional and discursive aspects of the matter, my analysis concerns instances of lived experiences of social change. The aim of this article is reconnecting policies with first-hand accounts of individuals, underlining obstacles and opportunities in their implementation