This thesis explores how migrant families in Malmö perceive their encounters with social services and how these perceptions can be understood in relation to discrimination within Sweden’s universalist welfare model. Guided by Pincus’s typology of individual, institutional, and structural discrimination, the study applies a qualitative case study design based on semi-structured interviews. Foucault’s concept of pastoral power is used to explain how welfare institutions exercise authority through both care and control. Findings show that unequal outcomes arise not only from personal bias but also from bureaucratic routines and welfare structures that reinforce dependency and mistrust. The study concludes that universalism, when grounded in identical treatment, risks concealing multiple forms of discrimination and must be re-evaluated through the lens of equity and lived experience.