ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how migrant parents from Lithuania experience the Norwegian Child Welfare Service (NCWS) and how this influences their family life in Norway. Our starting point is Lithuanian parents’ stories about fear of the NCWS. This seems to define their parenting in Norway. Since register data shows that parents most afraid of the NCWS do not receive disproportionate attention from the NCWS, we try to understand how this fear is constructed and what it means to the parents, as well as how it relates to the construction of national concepts of respectable parenthood. Data from our ethnographic fieldwork shows that fear of the NCWS among Lithuanian migrants affects family life and deepens their mistrust towards Norwegian society. The data also shows that migrant parents are unfamiliar with the NCWS and its ideologies, and that this creates insecurity and mistrust towards social institutions. The fear, from the Lithuanian parents’ point of view, is related to the feeling of being met with suspicion and mistrust.
