Research
Peruvian Meatballs?: Constructing the Other in the performance of an inclusive school
Authors:
Anna Åhlund ,
Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, SE
Rickard Jonsson
Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, SE
Abstract
In Swedish schools, newly arrived refugee and immigrant students are provided with a language introductory programme, designed for integration into the mainstream school system. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork on classroom conversations in one such introductory programme, this study analyses how Swedish as second language (SSL) students are positioned and position themselves in everyday discursive practices. The participants strive to qualify for mainstream programmes through performing a ‘regular’ student identity. Although educational aim and the students’ investments coincide, in doing the inclusive school, the institution calls for the students to perform ethnicity. The student identities thus emerge in and through a cluster of performative effects of how they are addressed by the school as ‘ethnic’ students, and how they manage those very positionings. Paradoxically, an institutional construction of an inclusive school draws on a discourse of Otherness in which the student’s voices are invited but seem to be ignored.
How to Cite:
Åhlund, A. and Jonsson, R., 2016. Peruvian Meatballs?: Constructing the Other in the performance of an inclusive school. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 6(3), pp.166–174. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1515/njmr-2016-0021
Published on
01 Aug 2016.
Peer Reviewed
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