Begging abroad in Sweden: An interview study

Abstract

Background: The occurrence of begging by poor people from other countries in the European Union (EU) is now common in Scandinavia. They have a challenging life, but there is little knowledge about their own perceptions of their stay abroad.

Aim: To explore the experiences of EU citizens begging in Sweden.

Material: A descriptive design was used. Data were gathered through individual interviews conducted in Romanian and translated into Swedish. These were analysed using conventional content analysis. Participants were 20 EU citizens aged 19–64 years with experience of begging in Sweden.

Results: The identified main category, “A hard time abroad to improve one’s life”, contained four categories – “Endurance is required to make a living”; “Exposed to others’ attitudes and kindness”; “Handling being away”; and “A better life is the driving force”.

Conclusions and significance: EU citizens who beg face occupational injustice, spending many hours in non-preferred activity of begging and with few leisure activities, although no generalizations can be drawn based on this study. The importance of a friendly attitude and environmental support when abroad was also shown. Since occupational justice is within the scope of occupational therapy, occupational therapists have the skills to contribute in collaboration with others.

Keywords:

• Conventional content analysis
• occupational justice
• vulnerable populations

Introduction

It is common today that poor people from other countries in the European Union (EU) come to Scandinavia temporarily to beg to make a living. Their exact number is unknown but, in 2015 up to 5000 such people were estimated to be in Sweden. Most of them come from Romania but there are also many coming from Bulgaria [1]. They often sit in front of shopping centres and similar places, holding a cup to collect money. EU citizens have the right to seek work in other member countries, but failure find work might put them in a difficult situation [2], and begging has been described as “an option of last resort” [3, p. 63]. It has been shown that these so-called “vulnerable EU citizens” [1] want to work instead of beg [3–5] and have tried to find a job as well as tried other income sources before resorting to begging [6]. However, it is not easy to get an employment abroad when having low level of education and limited skills in the local language [1].

Many people combine begging with other activities such as collecting bottles and selling street magazines, and it has therefore been suggested that these people should instead be labelled “street workers” [7]. The money they collect is spent on their families’ basic needs [3, 5, 6] such as food and clothes, as well as on expenses related to school and health care [3]. In Sweden the issue of vulnerable EU citizens is a topic of debate, and attitudes towards them vary, as do the suggestions regarding the kind of help they need [1]. However, there is a lack of knowledge about their situation – especially from their own perspective [8], including their perceptions of their stay abroad.

Few studies have included activities of everyday life while abroad in this population. In one of these studies [3], 1269 Romanian participants in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm were surveyed. Interviews were also conducted, but the report mainly includes descriptive quantitative results, i.e. it presents more facts about their situation than about how they perceive it. A few masters’ theses based on interviews have been conducted among Romanians begging in Scandinavia [4, 6, 9]. These do include the participants’ perceptions of their situation but, with only one exception [6], they did not put the focus on these people’s everyday lives abroad. However, taken together has several difficulties in performing basic everyday activities been described. Participants have reported difficulties finding a place to sleep [3–5, 9], and in the survey study [3] the majority of them slept outdoors. Sleeping in crowded cars or under bridges is also uncomfortable, and negatively affects the possibility to attend to one’s personal hygiene [4]. Whether one has access to shelter also affects the possibility to cook. Few had cooking equipment [3]; they ate cooked food when at a shelter, but otherwise only ate food that did not need to be cooked [4]. In another study, it was described that the participants collected wood, made fires, and cooked their meals together [6]. A scarcity of food was also mentioned [4, 6].

Begging, collecting bottles, etc., takes a great deal of time [6, 9], which limits one’s opportunities to participate in other kinds of activities, such as leisure activities. For instance, Potrache [9] mentions a participant begging seven days a week, which shows its time-consuming nature. Another issue for EU citizens who beg is other people’s behaviour. Passers-by sometimes harass them when they are sleeping [9] or sitting and begging, by “spitting on them, pouring beer or other liquids on them, beating, pushing or kicking them” [3, p. 97]. It is even more common to be denied access to shops and cafés, or to be asked to leave a public place [3]. Finally, feelings of being ashamed of begging [4, 9] and of being stressed due to their situation have been described [4, 6, 10].

To summarise, it seems clear that vulnerable EU citizens who beg abroad have a very challenging everyday life. Thus, it is highly possible that their occupational needs are not met and that they face occupational injustice [11]. However, the lack of research on this group’s own perceptions of their situation has been recognised as a knowledge gap [8], and the importance of occupational therapists recognising “inequities in access to human rights and to full participation in social life” has been stressed [12]. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to explore the experiences of EU citizens begging in Sweden.

Method

This study has a descriptive design and is part of the project “Perceptions of everyday life, health and future in vulnerable EU citizens”. The project was carried out in a large Swedish city region [13] in collaboration with a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) supporting vulnerable EU citizens (the vast majority from Romania) for most of the year by offering breakfast and evening meals certain days of the week, clothing, and the possibility to shower. The researchers were not part of the NGO. From December to March, the NGO also offers shelter opportunities in small cottages based on a queue system. The main goal of the NGO, however, is to enhance vulnerable EU citizens’ opportunities to stay and make a living in their home country by collaborating with aid organisations working there.

Data collection

The following inclusion criteria were used: an EU citizen with experience of begging in Sweden, at least 18 years old, and able to communicate in Swedish, English, or Romanian. Potential participants were informed orally about the project at a meeting at the NGO held by three of its members. Two members presented the information while the third, a native Romanian speaker, served as the interpreter. All three NGO members have university degrees in socially related areas, are used to meeting the group of participants, and are well known to them. The NGO members were in close contact with the researchers during the time period for interviews and had been instructed to follow procedures developed by the researchers in line with the Helsinki Declaration and Swedish law.

Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews, one with each participant, conducted in a separate room at the NGO between December 2015 and June 2016. An interview guide was developed and piloted, and it included questions about the participants’ stay in Sweden. Examples of questions were: “What do you do during an ordinary day here?” And “What do you think about being here?” Follow-up questions were also asked.

Before each interview began, oral and written information was again given about the study, voluntariness etc and thereafter, the informed consent form was signed. The participants also answered some background questions including age, education, family status, gender, and number of previous visits in Sweden. The audio-recorded interviews varied from an hour and 15 minutes to two hours and 30 minutes, and all participants spoke Romanian in the interviews.

Participants

Twenty EU citizens aged 19-64 years participated, of whom 60% were men (Table 1). Their educational backgrounds varied, as did their family situations, but in their home countries most of them lived in a household with several people – e.g. children and other family members – in small living spaces.

Table 1. Participant characteristics (n = 20).

Participants
Gender
Men n	12
Women n	8
Age (in year)
Min-max	19–64
Mean (SD)	33 (11)
Median	30
Education (in year)
Min-max	0–13
Mean	6
Median	6
Previous visits to Sweden (n)
0–4	10
5–8	7
9–	1

Data analysis

The first and second authors transcribed the interviews verbatim, and the first author analysed the interview transcripts using conventional content analysis [14] with the other authors providing feed-back during the process. Relevant meaning contents were extracted, coded, and abstracted into subcategories and categories [14] that reflected the content of the interview data, as exemplified in Table 2.

Table 2. Example of the analysis.

Meaning unit	Condensed meaning unit	Code	Subcategory	Category	Main category
I wait for people to come and give me money. I: Are you there from when you arrive until you leave, or do you take walks or eat something? [I] only [leave the place] when I need to go to the toilet. People give me food and I sit there until eight in the evening.	Waits for people to give, sits until evening	Long days	Spending many and long days is necessary	Endurance is required to make a living	A hard time abroad to improve one’s life
There are young people who want to talk to me when I’m sitting, but I bow my head because I feel ashamed and don’t want to talk.	I bow my head because I feel ashamed	Shameful to beg	Begging is demanding	-II-	-II-

This was an iterative process in which the earlier interviews were re-read in the light of the information from the later interviews, to ensure that nothing was missed. Informative quotations included in this article were translated into English to reflect their content, rather than being translated verbatim [15].

Ethical considerations

Because the participants were in a vulnerable situation, it was of utmost importance to stress the voluntary nature of participation in the study and the possibility to withdraw without consequences. The fact that their choice to participate or not to participate would not impact their relationship with the NGO was also emphasised. The information they received addressed the study’s aim, what participation entailed, the confidentiality in data handling, and that the results would be presented only on the group level [16]. The project received approval from the Regional Ethical committee in Linköping (2015/270-31).

Results

The participants were in Sweden alone or together with relatives. At the time of the interview, some had access to the NGO shelter and some did not (because the shelter closed in April). The latter participants had to find sleeping arrangements themselves, and they described sleeping in the forest (with or without a tent), or in a car with other people. Most participants had been in Sweden several times for similar reasons before the visit during which they were interviewed, and they were all in Sweden temporarily and had their home in Romania.

The analysis revealed the main category, “A hard time abroad to improve one’s life”, as underlying the descriptions of their stay in Sweden, exemplified below:

I want to rise up out of this! I don’t want to beg because I want to be at home with my children. But I have to be here because we need to have money for my family to manage.

Four categories and eleven subcategories were also identified (Table 3). These are described below.

Table 3. The categories identified.

Sub-categories	Categories	Main category
Spending many and long days is necessary	Endurance is required to make a living	A hard time abroad to improve one’s life
Begging is demanding
Help and good relationships but also harassment	Exposed to others’ attitude and kindness
Threat of insufficient collection
Living with the longing	Handling being away
Continuing engagement from a distance
Reality intrudes
Supporting everyday needs	A better life is the driving force
Long-term improvement for the children
Building a better future
The importance of resources

Endurance is required to make a living

The first category relates to begging and other ways of making a living. The participants wanted to work and had tried to find work by asking people or by using signs, and some described how they had been able to obtain limited periods of informal or formal work. Some played a musical instrument or made crafts to sell, while others combined this with begging. Selling a street magazine was sometimes another alternative to begging. The begging was also often combined with collecting bottles – either before, after or interspersed with the begging, or as something to do when they had not collected enough money by begging. One participant was solely collecting bottles at the time of the interview.

Altogether, though, begging was the participants’ main source of income in Sweden: “I sit there, outside the store, on my belongings, and say hello to people.” It varied in how certain the participants could be of having a place to sit to do this. Some had their own special spot, e.g. outside a store, while others did not:

I’ve been outside the store for three years … everybody knows me. So if someone else wants to sit here, they know the spot belongs to us [the family].

I don’t have a fixed spot to beg. I got this spot from another person, and now I have to leave because that person’s coming back.

The participants needed endurance to make a living, and this category includes the subcategories of “Spending many and long days is necessary” and “Begging is demanding”.

Spending many and long days is necessary

The participants spent a great deal of time collecting money, often from morning until evening. It varied whether begging was conducted six or seven days a week, sometimes with fewer hours during the weekend. Some solely collected bottles on Sundays and did not beg while others described taking Sunday off to rest and/or go to church:

I come around 10.30 am and stay until 6 pm. I go by bus.

I: Do you do this every day?

Not on Sundays.

I: What happens on Sundays?

I beg then too, but not on the same spot.

[On Sundays] I go to the church, drink coffee, and listen to music.

I: Is this how you want your days to be?

Yes, when I’m here. We never beg on Sundays.

It also varied whether their begging spot was within walking distance or if they had to take the bus to other areas, but both options sometimes took a long time. The many hours spent on acquiring an income left little time for other voluntary occupations, as described by one of the younger participants: “I don’t think anything is fun here [in Sweden]. I have to sit and beg every day.” Few leisure occupations were described, besides visiting church and the NGO but playing football was mentioned. Furthermore, an example of doing something else, once, when having grown bored with begging was also given: “Sometimes I get so, whew, I had enough [money collected], so I didn’t go back. I went to the library and went on the Internet.”

Begging is demanding

Begging was described as mentally demanding because the participants did it despite it being something they felt ashamed of doing and would prefer not to do: “I feel ashamed, sitting all day as a man… I’m a person who can work; instead of sitting you can work.” Begging was also described as taking time from other activities, and as making time go slowly. Both of these aspects are shown below:

I don’t want to stay [in Sweden] actually… you lose time. If we had what we needed, I wouldn’t have to be here.

I: What do you think of when you’re sitting there?

I think of home, the children, if I had a job that would be great; things like that.

I: Does time pass slowly or quickly?

Very slowly! The days look as long as this…

Simply sitting, such as when begging, was also described as problematic because of negative thoughts that could overcome the participants:

The bad thing is that I can’t keep difficult and sad thoughts out of my head when I’m sitting there, because I don’t have anything to do that requires me to think about instead. The worst thing I think about is that I can’t be at home with my children and don’t have money to improve our life at home.

Begging was also described as physically demanding, with the participants spending long days sitting still when doing it: “It’s not very comfortable to sit outside the store. Every bone in my body hurts”. Some also sat outdoors in all kinds of weather and it varied as to whether they could do something to improve their situation or not:

If it’s cold I have a blanket on me. But I can take that, it’s not a problem. If it’s hot, I protect myself in the shade. If there’s no shade, I sit in the sun. At [the spot where I sit] there’s no shade.

I: How do you manage this?

[I do] nothing, I just sit there.

The participants handled the demands they faced by reminding themselves of the reasons they were abroad and of the needs they were trying to address by collecting money:

I think, “That’s why I came here - if I can’t work I’ll beg to get money.” I think like this. It helps.

I: How do you manage to sit there even though it’s cold and you’re in pain?

When I think of my children I don’t feel the cold.

Exposed to others’ attitudes and kindness

This category concerns the relationship between the participants and their surroundings in Sweden. It shows a variety of approaches, with some people being nice to them and others not, and includes the following subcategories: “Help and good relationships, but also harassment” and “Threat of insufficient collection”.

Help and good relationships, but also harassment

The participants appreciated the kindness shown by people, as they received money and sometimes also food or gifts. Swedes were described as merciful:

I’m so grateful for the Swedes; may God give to them what they want because they’re still giving us money. Many also have children here, and I pray to God that he will bless them all.

Some participants had developed relationships with people in Sweden over time, and the same people regularly supported them: “It often happens that people buy food for us, roast chicken. I have a friend who buys a pizza for me almost every day”. This was not the case for everyone, though: “Sometimes [people give food], but not regularly. If they don’t give, I have to buy it”. A good relationship with the staff at the store where they had their begging spot was also described: “People know me and help me because they’ve seen me there [outside the shop]. The manager of [the shop] is very kind, and he also gives me food”. Such relationships were valued, and the participants stressed the importance of showing themselves to be reliable and helpful:

It’s very important [to have a good relationship with the shop]. They can trust me, and if I need something they help me. When they see me in the shop, they’re not afraid of me.

When there’s dirt around the shop we sweep, and we also return the shopping carts people have used.

However, the participants also faced harassment and mean comments: “There are people who spit in my cup [used for collecting money], give me the finger, or use bad language, like ‘Fuck you, Romania’.” The strategies for handling this treatment varied, with some participants describing how they tried to ignore it so as not to make it worse. Others described that the situation was not easy:

It doesn’t feel good [when people are mean], but I don’t continue to talk to that person and I walk away from them… If they continue, I go inside the shop; the cashier girls know me.

I feel bad, stupid, ashamed, I move, go somewhere else so I won’t meet the same people. After a while, I move back.

The importance of people’s attitudes was also described by a participating woman:

If someone smiles at me, I feel better. If someone isn’t nice, I feel worse. The children are nice, and they make me happy when I watch them. There are people who are mean to me; others are kind, and they make me happier and time passes more easily that way.

A final example of the importance of help from one’s environment is shown in relation to shelter and other support during the stay abroad. For instance, the participants’ routines shifted depending on whether or not they had access to the NGO shelter at the time of the interview (depending on the month) and thus had a more or less easy time handling their personal hygiene, etc. This is shown below, where first a participant with access to the NGO shelter and then a participant without access describe their mornings:

I wake up around 7:30-8, make some coffee. In the morning, if I have material for the crafts, I make some to sell. I clean the room a little, and we eat something if we have it.

I wake up around 6, keep the same clothes on that I’ve slept in, and only put on my shoes. We put the seats up so it doesn’t look like somebody sleeps in the car. Everything’s put in the trunk. I use the toilet at the NGO and wash myself.

Furthermore, the participants with access to the NGO shelter described cooking their evening meals, while for those without access it was most common to only eat cold food on the days that food was not provided by the NGO. This is exemplified by a woman approaching the end of the shelter provisions:

As long as we’re at [the shelter] we cook, but when we go to the forest we’ll only eat cold food, not cooked food. What can we do, it is what it is.

The participants without access to the shelter were also careful not to draw attention to themselves, because camping in cities is not allowed: “[In the evening] every person lies in their place. We don’t talk to each other so as not to make any noise, so nobody will hear that we’re there.” Not having access to a shelter also made some, though not all, participants feel unsafe:

It’s very hard [sleeping outside]. You don’t feel safe; someone can pass by and hit me; I don’t feel safe. My life is exposed, very difficult. If I’m alone or with my family it’s the same, the same insecurity.

Threat of insufficient collection

Another aspect affecting the participants was people’s willingness to give and the uncertainty related to how much they would be able to collect. They described how they collected less than before: “People don’t give money like before; maybe they’re tired of us.” In addition, the insecurity made them feel stressed: “It’s the stress that’s the worst. When I sit outside the store, I pray to God all the time and I’m happy when someone gives me something”.

Handling being away

This category shows how the participants handle being absent from their homes and families in Romania. They had left their homes and often their family, travelled a long distance, and were often away for months, and they experienced all of this as demanding. The category includes three subcategories: “Living with the longing”; “Continuing engagement from a distance”; and “Reality intrudes.”

Living with the longing

The participants missed their homes and families, especially their children, some of them so much that they often cried.

I: When you’re longing for them [the family], how do you manage to stay here?

I cry until I feel calm.

I: How often are you sad and cry for this reason?

Every day.

The participants without children also described feelings of missing their home and wanting to be there instead of here: “Sometimes I think how it would be if I were at home with my family…I imagine I’m with my friends in my village.”

Continuing engagement from a distance

The participants tried to maintain contact with their families while they were abroad and their mobile phone was important for this. To call their children often was described as a way of handling their own homesickness as well as to hear that the children were doing well. Other reasons mentioned for calling home included checking on the health of a sick relative and getting news from home:

On the way to my spot where I sit during the day, I talk to the children on the phone. I ask if they’ve made a fire in the stove and if they woke up on time. I ask the ones who go to school if they’ve put themselves in order, brushed their hair and fixed their clothes before they leave.

Reality intrudes

The participants described it as difficult to be abroad and they thought about problems at home or worried about their family, health issues or debts:

I don’t sleep so well, because I think about my family at home in Romania. I think about those at home, if they have money for food. I send money to those who aren’t here. Whatever I can collect.

A better life is the driving force

The last category identified shows the participants’ strong desire to improve lives for themselves and their families, especially their children, from both a short-term and long-term perspective. It includes the following subcategories: “Supporting everyday needs”; “Long-term improvement for the children”; “Building a better future”; and “The importance of resources”.

Supporting everyday needs

The participants described lacking resources at home, as well as the expenses related to everyday living, health issues and school, which they addressed with the money collected abroad. The goal was to have an easier life, with access to basic amenities, for themselves and their families, as exemplified by this participant:

I don’t want to build another house or buy a car or similar, just to have what’s needed each day. To take care of my children, have enough for school, clothes, and what they need. So my children won’t want for anything – if they do need something, it should be possible to give it to them: food, clothes, money.”

Long-term improvement for the children

The participants also described a wish to make their children’s lives better from a long-term perspective, and they wanted them to have a better life than they themselves had: “I don’t want my child to have it as difficult as I do”. They recognised that their demanding time in Sweden was a way for their children to have a better future. For this, education was considered very important:

I’d rather die than not have the children in school… If they can manage school they’ll have a better start in life, a better workplace, income, etc. They’ll have a job instead of begging.

Building a better future

Another way the participants wanted to improve their life was by, literally, building a better future; i.e., building a house or adding more rooms because it was often the case that many people lived in just a few rooms. A wish to contribute to their children’s houses was also described.

The importance of resources

Finally, the participants recognised the importance of resources for making the improvements they wanted. Money was one resource they mentioned, and language skills was another:

You need money to have such a business, capital. The money I make now is enough to take care of my children, but not to have any capital.

If I knew the language, I could find a job [in Sweden].

Discussion

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of EU citizens who are begging in Sweden. Taken together, our results support earlier studies, adding the participants’ own descriptions and showing a challenging life abroad as well as occupational injustice.

The participants spent long hours and many days begging, which is similar to earlier results [6, 9]. Begging was also considered demanding and non-preferred by our participants. Therefore, considering that begging is their main source of income in Sweden and that it takes much of our participants’ time despite the fact that they clearly stated that they preferred not to beg, they can be said to face several aspects of occupational injustice abroad. According to Hammel and Beagan,” Occupational injustice surely exist when the rights and freedoms of an individual, community, or population to participate in occupations that contribute positively to individual or collective well-being are violated” [17, p. 65]. For instance, the participants described that they were deprived of meaningful occupations [18] while in Sweden because they wanted to work instead of begging, as noted earlier [3, 4, 6]. However, due to their low level of education and limited skills in the Swedish language, they often end up in begging instead. Only a few of them described having experienced access to short-term work, which is also similar to earlier findings [3]. Begging took most of their time, and few descriptions of leisure activities were given. Consequently, their extensive begging did not lead to occupational balance, i.e. a perception of the right mix of occupations [19], as was clearly shown by our participant who said that nothing is fun in Sweden due to begging. Furthermore, the finding that they often found it humiliating to beg [4, 9] supports the indication of injustice. Moreover, the fact that they had no control over how much they would collect, despite the many hours spent begging, added to their challenges.

Our participants aimed to contribute to their families current and long-term needs and wanted their children to have a better life than they themselves did, supporting earlier findings [5]. Their children’s education is one example. The importance of education has been described previously [3], and the relationship between begging and education – as well as the possibility that begging might support education by providing the means for the expenses related to attending school – has been discussed. Our participants also described such expenses as something they wanted to address with the money they collected. Another similarity to earlier results [5] was the fact that several of our participants described a wish to build a home, or expand their existing home, in order to improve their living conditions.

Moreover, the importance of their environment and its support and attitude was shown, and the participants often expressed gratitude to the people in Sweden. However, as shown before [3, 5, 9], our participants were also sometimes harassed when they begged, by people saying mean things to them or spitting at them. It is rather surprising that their presence can be so provocative that “ordinary people” behave in such ways. Some of the findings in a master’s thesis [20] in which 30 inhabitants of Stockholm were interviewed about their perception of begging might shed some light on this. Hansson [20] found that some participants described it as provocative when people who beg simply sit “passively” hour after hour. Some of his participants also described that the presence of beggars, and their need, is disturbing. However, no example of harassment resulting from this disturbance was described [20]. Furthermore, a difference from the results from a Norwegian study [5] is that our participants did not complain about the police or security guards.

The lack of access to a shelter, a place to cook or wash themselves, etc., which is similar to earlier findings [3, 4, 9], adds to their vulnerable situation even though the NGO offers some support in these matters. Thus, these participants lack some of the prerequisites for health [21], such as food, shelter, income and social justice. This has been recognised and Sweden has been criticised for not providing this population with access to clean water and sanitation [22]. The United Nations also recently emphasised the importance of not discriminating against this group in Sweden [23].

Several participants described having built relationships with people who supported them in terms of kindness, gifts and food, and a similar situation as this has also been described in Norway [5]. The same was often said of the personnel at the shops where the participants had their begging spots. The latter finding, in which the shop personnel are described in a positive way, is new and it contrast earlier studies that have described problems related to shops, such as being denied access to them [3, 5]. However, when we look at the results of the earlier study conducted in three Scandinavian capitals, this phenomenon of having problems with the shops was the least frequent in Stockholm [3]. It can also be noted that the city in the present study was much smaller than a capital city, and none of our participants described such negative experiences. On the other hand, it cannot be ruled out that they simply preferred not to talk about any bad experience they might have had, and it has been discussed previously that this group prefer to talk about kindness [3]. However, no clear logical rationale can be seen regarding why our participants would not exemplify some negative event related to shops because they did give examples of other bad behaviour. Further information is needed about the relationship between begging EU citizens and “their shops”, especially considering that their presence outside the shops is extensive. A future study interviewing shop managers and staff would thus be interesting.

Altogether, our participants’ situation was constantly stressful for them, which is similar to Gaga’s finding [4]. They also risked poor health due to their situation [24], striving towards what could be considered only modest improvements in their own and their relatives’ lives. However, vulnerable EU citizens are not a group currently meeting occupational therapists in Sweden even though the knowledge of this profession might contribute to easing their situation. Related to a short-term perspective, during their stay in Sweden, it has been proposed that NGOs could extend help to this group by providing a health-promotion programme addressing common problems for the group such as pain, dental problems, and long-term sedentary behaviour in order to prevent decreased health situation during their stay [24]. Occupational therapists, among other professionals, could make a significant contribution to such a programme. In a long-term perspective, the situation is complex for this group because their occupational problems are caused by poverty and lack of inclusion and need explanation and solutions that go beyond the individual level

Methodological considerations

The present study has some issues that need to be addressed concerning its population, data collection and sample. Regarding the population, people begging in order to make a living form a vulnerable group [25]. However, the lack of knowledge about their own perceptions of their situation [8] serves as a rationale for interviewing them. Also, in order to improve their situation, and to drive social change [26], further knowledge is needed of how they perceive their everyday life abroad.

Moreover, our participants were in contact with the same NGO members who informed them about the project and conducted the interviews, which could be questioned. The decision to do this was based on the fact that this population is not easy to get in contact with [3, 6, 10]. Trust and the value of being known by the participants have been highlighted [4], and this was the case in our interviewers and contributed to the decision in the present study. Related to this was the choice to use a native Romanian NGO member instead of a formally educated interpreter. However, it should be recognised that this choice might have affected the translation during the interviews.

A potentially more severe issue was the fact that the sample was limited to those who were in contact with an NGO, which has also been the case earlier [4, 6, 10]. In their survey, Djuve et al. [3] found that only about half of their sample in Stockholm had knowledge of NGOs. The authors discussed this as being related to the fact that the majority of their participants were there for the first time (while most of our participants had been in Sweden before). It should be noted that other findings might have been identified if participants without NGO contact had also been included and this highlights again the need for further research.

Conventional content analysis [14] was chosen as appropriate because it is based on the participants’ descriptions and not on pre-existing theory. However, the credibility of the study would have been strengthened if the participants had been given the option of member check [14] which was not the case in this study. However, the analysis was conducted in discussion with all authors which could be considered as peer debriefing and thus strengthening the credibility of the results [14]. Finally, it should be recognised that the present study, like studies before it [3–6, 9], had solely Romanian-speaking participants. However, there are vulnerable EU citizens coming from other countries as well; thus, further studies involving people from different countries are warranted.

Conclusion

The present study aimed to explore the experiences of EU citizens begging in Sweden. EU citizens with experience of begging in Sweden described their stay and the results identified the main category “A hard time abroad to improve one’s life” as well as four categories and eleven subcategories describing their experiences. Together, they give a picture of a very challenging situation for vulnerable EU citizens begging abroad, and of the prerequisites for health not being met although no generalisations can be drawn from this study. Vulnerable EU citizens also face occupational injustice, spending many hours begging which is considered humiliating and non-preferred, and having few opportunities for leisure activities. The importance of a friendly attitude as well as support from one’s environment when abroad is also shown. Occupational therapists, if given the opportunity, have the skills to contribute to resolving problems among this group in collaboration with the group as well as with other actors and further research in this regard is needed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The present study received financial support from the Swedish Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) project “Digniti Omnia: A life of dignity for all” and from Futurum, the Academy of Health and Care.