PurposeThis study probes educational leaders and practitioner’s views about social integration with newly arrived im/migrant and refugee students. A sociological perspective of education is used in conjunction with a thematic analysis of neoliberal approaches to diversity management and its social implications for the health and well-being for im/migrant students.MethodsAn interview study with 15 educational leaders and practitioners in schools and recreational centres was carried out. Thereof, seven department heads, three principals, and five educators. Data-production consisted of a semi-structured interview guide about practitioners’ views on social integration.ResultsThe results of the study indicate that there is a tendency to emphasize academic achievement and individual effort in compulsory education and in voluntary settings. The im/migrant students’ needs for help, assistance with social and psychological support are viewed as obstacles to social integration.ConclusionsFindings suggest universal approaches to diversity management in education tend to stress individual agency but fail to acknowledge individuals’ lack of control over structural factors. The organizational structure of schooling creates both affordances and obstacles for social integration beyond the control of the individual which add to the burden of social integration on the individual im/migrant students.

Despite government initiatives, political intentions, and policy formulations to create equality, social stratification between privileged and disadvantaged students is a persistent and growing concern in Sweden today (Börjesson, Broady, & Palme, 2020; Lundquist, 2017; Righard, 2022; Stadsledningskontoret, 2023; Stadsmissionen, 2022; Wolgast & Wolgast, 2021). A contributing factor to this stratification is cultural racism. Cultural racism implies that social and cultural differences are perceived as permanent and intrinsic characteristics of a social group (Essed, 2008). Although these traits arise in social interactions, they are perceived as inherent characteristics, imprinted through socialization, onto individuals and groups seen at the other in relation Swedish normativity (Pred, 2000a; Ryan, 1976; SOU2005:41). This paper examines cultural reproduction in schooling in which cultural racism is part of the school's educational activities.

All educational activities within the education system are places where the cultural reproduction of societal norms, values and knowledge are an ongoing process. Cultural production means that there are norms, values, ideals of behavior and communication patterns and official knowledge that are reproduced and recreated in teaching situations, learning activities and different types of social practices. Likewise, certain limiting norms and values related to normative Swedishness reinforce cultural racism (SOU2005:41). 

Despite good intentions to create equal education and opportunities for students in so-called vulnerable areas, my study (Lundberg, 2015) shows  how pedagogical measures, interventions and teaching practices consolidate and reinforce students' racialized and marginalized position in relation to the dominant society.

This paper condenses the three main themes from my dissertation Mind the Gap-Ethnography about cultural reproduction of difference and disadvantage in urban education (Lundberg, 2015) and develops the theoretical implications of critical race theory in pedagogical work. In this paper, three overarching themes are presented and discussed: 1) The Formulation Arena, 2) The Realization Arena, and 3) The Transformation Arena. The Formulation Arena and the Realization Arena deal with different ways in which cultural racism is expressed and recreated through compensatory pedagogical interventions. The third theme, the Arena of Transformation, concerns openings in teaching practices where it is possible to interrupt, change and transform knowledge and learning practices into more pronounced anti-racist practices where both students and teachers can develop awareness of racial diversity and racial knowledge. The chapter concludes with a discussion of racial literacy (Epstein & Gist, 2015; Guinier, 2004; Stevenson, 2014) and  recommendations for school leaders and active educators to develop a more pronounced anti-racist approach in all teaching contexts.

Aims and purpose

My research examines how educational practices reproduce a racialized social order through the selection, content, and practice of teaching. I have studied the way the curriculum is interpreted and enacted. My study shows how the pedagogic practices and pedagogic intentions at times accentuates racialized differences and reaffirms students of color marginalized social status. 

The pedagogic intentions and government interventions at the time were to alleviate and mitigate the many compound factors that created a marginalized social status due in part to race reputation and status and to the many other factors related to income, education, health, and housing.

Despite good intentions, the interpretation and enactment of the curriculum does at times cement and exacerbate social and racial inequality. This is not the pedagogic intention or aim of the enacted curriculum, but rather a result of dysconciousness (King) about the racialized social order that students of color in urban areas experience and that teachers, educators and school leaders unwittingly or inadvertently reproduce. 

Theory

Dysconciousness (King, 1991) is a term used to describe a lack of consciousness, awareness or acknowledgement about a racialized social order and structure of society that puts a premium on whiteness, and attributes value, status and power to those who can position themselves as white or Swedish.

There is a certain power in being able to assert oneself as white or Swedish without being questioned. The assumptions connected to race reputation and status are powerful because they enable a person to assign themselves to the category Swedish and un-assign, prevent or inhibit people of color from doing so. 

Colorblindness (Bonilla-Silva, 2018) is a construct directly related to King's concept of "dysconsciousness". Colorblindness refers to the reluctance, willingness, or ability to acknowledge race a pertinent and relevant social factor or identity marker. In action it is the denial or refutation that race plays a role in interpersonal interactions, or rights, opportunities, and privileges in everyday life.

Dysconsciousness and colorblindness are important precursors analytically for cultural racism which refers to accepted ways of speaking about racialized differences without mentioning race. Cultural racism is carried out by constructing and reiterating an "US versus Them" dichotomy that isn't explicitly racist but infers race and works to construct race reputation and status (Harris, 1993), particularly in regard to whiteness and white Swedish normativity.

Cultural racism (Essed, 2008; Pred, 2000b) can be understood as a social and discursive process that creates and sustains the speech of "We" and "Them". This form of racism is a type of exercise of power, which justifies defining individuals and groups as the Others and at the same time a justification to position oneself within the group "We" (Orlenius 2016). This exercise of power is clearly visible in contemporary discourses about "We" and the talk about "the Old Sweden" in contrast to the talk about "the Others" that are linked in social media to gang violence, crime, and mass immigration (Lundström & Hübinette 2020). That is, what is desirable, desirable and sustainable is attributed to "We" and the undesirable qualities and actions are attributed to "the Others". These discourses polarize and create separations based on notions of a fixed and permanent core of Swedishness and racialized white Swedish idyll (see also Werner & Björk 2014; Schough 2008; Hübinette, Lundström & Wikström 2023).

Research questions

My thesis examines the cultural reproduction of difference and disadvantage in urban education. The overarching research questions are:

How is cultural racism expressed and enacted by school leaders and educators?What are the social implications of cultural racism in schooling?How can cultural racism be mitigated and transformed?

Methodology

Critical ethnography was used to generate data about the relationship between school teaching practices and the cultural reproduction of social inequalities. This methodology was used to produce knowledge of how race and racism are constructed in school teaching practices. Data was produced between 2006 – 2009. I spent three consecutive years in grade 9. Participatory observations and interviews were conducted with school leaders, teachers, and students at Woodbridge School, which was then an F-9 school. The data production focused on classroom observations and teachers’ perspectives. The students perspectives are included in conversations and observations with the purpose to get their insights and perspective on my interpretations of the pedagogical practice. Above all I generated data to gain the teachers’ perspective on their teaching practices, the school's cultural reproduction of knowledge in order to generate knowledge about how the curriculum is racialized/racializing.

How is cultural racism expressed by school leaders and educators?

Formulations of exclusion and Otherness.

The students and Skogsbro are positioned outside Swedish society. Formulations that position students outside Swedish society refer to the different ways in which school leaders, guidance counsellors and teachers express students' ethnic and cultural affiliation as something else, outside of the white majority Swedish. The talk about race is done indirectly by using the concepts of culture, ethnicity, and background, as if these were synonyms. School leaders' and other staff's statements are put in relation to the students' perspectives and how they experience the white majority perspective and positioning as non-Swedish. 

The school in Skogsbro, and the town's multiethnic and multilingual population, which largely includes people with a migrant background, are indirectly categorized as non-Swedish. The principal and the study counsellor therefore emphasise that the pupils in Skogsbro need contacts with ethnic Swedes to succeed in school. The school worked a lot with a type of compensatory pedagogy to remedy and compensate the students for their shortcomings in comparison to the majority students and their lack of Swedishness. 

Social implications of cultural racism

The students were often on excursions and study visits to get in touch with majority Swedes. Excursions are seen as part of the compensatory pedagogy to compensate the students for their lack or lack of normative Swedishness.

However, conflicts often arose between Skogsbro students and majority students from other schools when they met. These contradictions reinforced the students' subordinate social position and marginalized status. Year nine made excursions and study visits, they visited the swimming pool, the art museum, the cinema. They also had an ongoing exchange program with an educational activity in the Middle East. They had exchange programs with schools in more affluent areas within the same municipality. Every year, all grades nine went to Denmark and to Nazi Germany's concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in Poland. The common denominator for these exchange programs, study visits and excursions was the binary "Swedes" and "immigrants", but also negative racializing incidents that confirmed normative Swedishness and whiteness normativity. 

I did not participate in all these exchange programs, excursions and study visits, but I got the teachers' stories and perspectives on racializing incidents that occurred when students from Skogsbro came into contact with people belonging to the majority society in Sweden or with people in other countries such as Lebanon or Poland.

A recurring theme was that the students were exposed to a collective stigma that reinforced their inequality and subordination as the “Other”. The students were not seen as representatives of Sweden or Swedes and, above all, they were viewed having an inadequate Swedishness that was in need of reinforcement. This reinforcement, it was intended, would take place through more contact with "Swedish society". Visitors from the Middle East also expressed a need to meet and meet "Swedish" students. Thus, cultural racism and the principle of separation are not unique to Sweden, but a phenomenon in which notions of race and nationality are closely intertwined.

Summary of findings

I have observed that cultural racism and everyday racism are common aspects of students' experiences and contacts with the dominant society. Teachers were aware of the collective stigma of students but lacked tools and strategies to deal with and respond to everyday racism.

I have observed that the school's teaching conveys normative whiteness and normative Swedishness, but that there is the opportunity and potential to create space in the regular teaching to take advantage of the students' own knowledge and experiences about race, racism, and whiteness and at the same time challenge and problematize whiteness norms.

I have observed that students are aware of and question the collective stigma they experience in their encounters with majority Swedes and when they encounter different places in public contexts.

Despite good intentions among teachers and school leaders to improve students' knowledge of and contact with majority Swedes, this type of compensatory pedagogy can lead to reinforcing a subordinate position as non-Swedish or perceptions of not being sufficiently Swedish. 

This type of compensatory thinking and pedagogy, I believe, is a form of institutional and cultural racism that can be countered by an awareness of race, racism, and whiteness as normal every day and structural phenomena and that can be counteracted by developing a racial awareness and by developing racial knowledge, i.e. knowledge about race, racism and whiteness.

Discussion

From Cultural Racism to Racial Literacy: Moving beyond cultural racism by developing racial literacy in the curriculum.

This part is about CHANGE There is a great potential and opportunities to gain an understanding of and knowledge about racism in its contemporary forms. The change in teaching practices is about making use of the space for what is possible but "not yet conceived" (Lundberg 2015, p. 185). Through critical questions and reflections on race and whiteness, the teacher, together with the students, can open for alternative perspectives and invite a variety of voices, especially when it comes to official school knowledge.

Change is about the opportunity to change teaching practices and introduce insights into race and racism as objects of knowledge.

My suggestions for mitigating cultural racism in the curriculum are:

·                     Contact and create collaboration with the principal, school development leader, educators and those responsible before study visits.

·                     Students can also initiate contact with activities and places to visit. They can ask direct questions about the companies' policy on discrimination and offensive actions.

·                     Build up a knowledge object or learning object that is linked to norms and norm awareness regarding race, racism, and whiteness.

·                     Create assignments where students explore norms related to race and whiteness? Who is represented? How many? By whom? In what ways? Why?]

·                     Evaluate all study visits. Do student evaluations and find out about their personal experiences. How do the excursions, exchange programs, study visits contribute to knowledge about race and racism? How do students experienced the treatment they receive?

In all subjects, there are opportunities to develop racial literacy (Laughter, Pellegrino, Waters, & Smith, 2021) that is, knowledge of racial diversity and racism. My focus here is on pedagogy and didactics, i.e. what and how teaching practices are organized and what social implications they can have. 

References

Bonilla-Silva, E. a. (2018). Racism without racists : color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (Fifth edition. ed.): Rowman & Littlefield.

Börjesson, M., Broady, D., & Palme, M. (2020). "In Our School We Have Students of All Sorts" : Mapping the Space of Elite Education in a Seemingly Egalitarian System. In M. P. Francois Denord & R. Bertrand (Eds.), Researching Elites and Power : Theory, Methods, Analyses (pp. 179-191). Cham: Springer.

Epstein, T., & Gist, C. (2015). Teaching racial literacy in secondary humanities classrooms: challenging adolescents' of color concepts of race and racism. Race, ethnicity and education, 18(1), 40-60. doi:10.1080/13613324.2013.792800

Essed, P. (2008). Everyday racism. A companion to racial and ethnic studies, 202-216. 

Guinier, L. (2004). From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Divergence Dilemma. Journal of American History, 91(1), 92-118. doi:10.2307/3659616

Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707-1791. doi:10.2307/1341787

King, J. E. (1991). Dysconscious Racism: Ideology, Identity, and the Miseducation of Teachers. The Journal of Negro Education, 60(2), 133-146. doi:10.2307/2295605

Laughter, J., Pellegrino, A., Waters, S., & Smith, M. (2021). Toward a framework for critical racial literacy. Race, ethnicity and education, 1-21. doi:10.1080/13613324.2021.1924130

Lundberg, O. (2015). Mind the Gap-Ethnography about cultural reproduction of difference and disadvantage in urban education. (No 378). [Diss.] University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Retrieved from https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/handle/2077/40715/gupea_2077_40715_5.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y (378)

Lundquist, Å. (2017). Jämlikhets rapporten 2017. Skillnader i livsvillkor i Göteborg. Retrieved from https://goteborg.se/wps/wcm/connect/1c7c56fb-9ec5-4995-821e-9fda232cec06/jamlikhetsrapporten2017_sammanfattning.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

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The purpose of this paper is to present some of the main findings from my thesis (Lundberg, 2015) that concern the policy formulation and implementation of bilingual education in a multi-ethnic lower secondary school in an urban suburb in Gothenburg, Sweden. This school was strategically chosen for its pedagogical approach towards social and linguistic diversity1. This article examines the formulation and appropriation of a bilingual and bicultural education program and what obstacles exist with regards to implementation of bilingual education in the realization arena. The theoretical impetus comes from the sociology of knowledge which examines how social policy connects to social practice by applying the concepts of formulation, realization and transformation (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000). Data was derived from interviews and participant observations between 2006 and 2009 with three different ninth grade classes from same school. The results show that in the formulation arena the policy was in favor of active bilingualism (a holistic and comprehensive approach throughout the curriculum), strong support for mother tongue education, and creating in students a bicultural identity. However, in the realization arena, the bilingual education program was reduced to the employment of bilingual teachers who provided mother tongue tuition. Support for the bicultural and multilingual development of students’ language and culture was never fully incorporated into the ordinary teaching and instruction. This was due in part to obstacles in the formulation and realization arenas (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000). Five types of obstacles to the appropriation of bilingual education were observed. Two primary obstacles in the formulation arena were 1) a strong separation of languages, and 2) bilingual teachers as representatives of diversity. In the realization arena the following three obstacles were observed: 1) teacher resistance to polylingual education, 2) insufficient study support for mother tongue tuition, and 3) a monolingual norm. In sum, the overriding obstacle is an overall lack of consensus about the aim and purpose of bilingual education. The discussion develops issues concerning the gap between what should be versus what could be in both the formulation and realization arenas (Lundberg, 2015).

This paper examines the property functions of whiteness in urban educational practices in Sweden. Whiteness can be understood as racial privilege and racialized knowledge. Cheryl Harris’ theory on whiteness as property is applied in order to discuss critical incidences in the pedagogical discourse in which whiteness functions as a form of property in terms of reputation and status related to Swedishness and the right to use and enjoy public spaces. The analysis is drawn from ethnographic data from a study of ninth grade students and teachers at an urban compulsory school in Sweden. The results show that the status of Swedish is racialized and remains elusive to students of colour, whereby entitlements to take part in, use and enjoy Swedish society are truncated by the premise of white normativity.

According to the national framing of the Swedish preschool system, educators are expected to act as mediators of the dominant language while simultaneously promoting multilingualism. Previous research shows that educators display an insecurity as well as a lack of knowledge of how to implement this dual undertaking. This article examines educators’ dual undertaking of linguistic diversity (changeability), on the one hand, and a national standard (stability) on the other, based on ethnographic data from three preschools with socioeconomic differences. The data are analysed employing concepts from pedagogic theory and linguistic diversity. Bernstein’s competence model with weak classification and framing accommodates translanguaging, giving room for the children’s own linguistic initiatives. Translanguaging is understood from a local as well as a global perspective; the local is based on global norms and global norms relate to local practices. The results show that educators support children as linguistic and multilingual beings. Unlike previous studies showing that middle-class children benefit from the competence model, this study shows how children with different socio-economic backgrounds benefit from the competence model. The diversity of language practice in Swedish pre-schools has the potential to create opportunities for new forms of agency and identity for children.

Compensatory pedagogy is in theory a strategy used to manage social and cultural diversity (Sleeter, 2007) by providing extra resources or special treatment for socalled deprived groups. A problem with this particular kind of approach to social and cultural diversity is that it lacks critical awareness of the way social differences (i.e. race, gender, class and language) are constructed (Hall, 1997). This article examines how teachers use different strategies to compensate and minimise ethnic differences and why these strategies fall short of intended purposes. More specifically, the purpose is to understand how pedagogy that takes compensatory approach can reaffirm the construction of racialised social differences (Bonilla-Silva, 2005) and how this approach can be counterproductive to the intended purpose of creating social equity between so called `ethnic Swedes´ and the marginalised ethnic `other´. The study is based on ethnography carried out at a secondary school in an urban area with a large multi-ethnic population. Analysis of the data is informed by theory from postcolonialism and critical race (Leonardo, 2009; Loomba, 1998; 2005). The results suggest that compensatory strategies are inadequate because they are based on a deficit perspective of the working-class and racialised ethnic `other´. [1]. (Banks, 2008). In sum, this approach tends to be an affirmation of 'otherness' rather than an equaliser because of the uncritical approach to the construction of `race´, class, gender and language norms. A critical awareness of norms is needed in order to transform education practices into more equitable, representative and culturally democratic forms (Banks, 2005).