Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging 3030367282, 9783030367282

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Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging Edited by Stefan Lund

Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging

Stefan Lund Editor

Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging

Editor Stefan Lund Department of Education Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-030-36728-2    ISBN 978-3-030-36729-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Stefan Lund 2 School Choice, We-Ness and School Culture 17 Ann-Sofie Holm and Marianne Dovemark 3 To Belong or Not? 41 Anna Ambrose 4 “Different from the Eyes of Others”: Negotiating Faith in a Non-denominational Educational System 65 Åsa Trulsson 5 To Construct Civility or Be Constructed as Anti-civil 91 Henrik Nilsson 6 Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging115 Stefan Lund Index127

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Notes on Contributors

Anna Ambrose  PhD in Child and Youth Studies, holds a post-doc position in educational studies at the Örebro University. Her main research interests are within sociology of education, school choice, school achievement, and multicultural education. Marianne  Dovemark is Professor of Education at the Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her main research interests are within sociology of education, school choice, educational policy, and ethnography. Ann-Sofie Holm  is Associate Professor of Education at the Department of Education and Special Education at University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Her main research interests are within sociology of education, gender, school marketization, school choices, and career learning. Stefan  Lund  is an associate professor in the Department of Education and Teachers’ Practice at Linnaeus University and in the Department of Education at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research interests include educational policy, school choice, school culture, multicultural incorporation, and sociology of sports. He has, for example, published School Choice, Ethnic Divisions and Symbolic Boundaries (2015) and articles in Journal of Education Policy, Sociology of Sports and Sports, Education and Society.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Henrik  Nilsson is Assistant Professor of Education and works at the Department of Education and Teachers’ Practice, Linnaeus University, Sweden. His main research interests are within cultural sociology, multicultural education, and school development. Åsa  Trulsson is Assistant Professor of Cultural Sociology at Linnaeus University and holds a PhD in religious studies. Her main research interests are related to the intersection between migration studies, educational science, and cultural sociology.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Stefan Lund

I don’t mind Swedes, but I felt like… There were only two of us immigrant girls at the inner-city school. We couldn’t make any friends. The other students didn’t want to talk to us, they didn’t even say ‘Hi’…nothing! And then I switched back to Ash Public School…and as you see, I’m still here. (Yasmina) It’s not like Swedes are bad or anything…it was just…yeah…I don’t know… different. During the break we would hang out, but after school I went straight home, never stopped to hang out. Never hung out with friends after school. The schoolyard was small and boring, and when I got back here to Bridge Valley School it felt nice; I felt at home. (Araf) Well, it feels like many people make it hard for you because you’re religious… They make you into something different. You don’t see yourself as different, but you become it from [sic] their eyes. (Sahla) I met with the students in both the home and school environments. I saw that there was a problem there […]. They sort of had two roles […]. Understanding your religion and culture gives you pride and security, which are necessary if the students are to be open to society as well as bridge the divergences between their original culture and Swedish society. (Anwar)

S. Lund (*) Department of Education, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Lund (ed.), Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9_1

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So, what are these voices actually articulating? In my interpretation, they symbolize the ongoing negotiation and reflection over what Jeffery C. Alexander (2013, p. 536) describes as the “affective and moral meaning of ‘us’”, which takes place on a daily basis in Sweden’s immigrant-­ dense school system. From this perspective, the school actors in this edited volume (students, teachers, parents, principals) reflect upon boundaries of belonging in educational practices as crucial for the development of or obstacles to friendship, recognition of cultural identities and civil incorporation. In this sense, schooling is viewed by the school actors as a practice whereby values, social characteristics, manners and beliefs are expressed and negotiated in civil relations (cf. Alexander & Tognato, 2018; Lund, 2019; Thumala Olave, 2018), and in which symbolic codes structure the boundaries of belonging in such practices. By doing so, they also prove to be conscious, skeptical and reflexive agents describing a complex and fragmented social world that goes beyond “hidden powers and deterministic homologies between language and power” (Kivisto & Sciortino, 2015, p. 12). Such perspectives have long dominated the sociology of education agenda in understanding social reproduction, stratification and counterculture (cf. Mehta & Davies, 2018). In other words, “gaining power is a matter not only of controlling resources and dominating fields, but also of performing discourses individually and collectively, of entering into the thicket of social meanings” (Alexander, Lund, & Voyer, 2019, p. 9). These voices address precisely this, namely, that feelings of belonging in educational practices are embedded in meaning structures that function as a fundamentally structuring social force for processes of both inclusion and exclusion. This edited volume draws on Alexander’s (2006) theory of immigrant incorporation, which builds on the assumption that democratic societies include a civil sphere that “defines itself in terms of solidarity, the brotherly and sisterly feeling of being connected with every other person in the collectivity” (Alexander & Tognato, 2018, p. 17). As will be discussed, civil inclusion is not primarily about citizenship or access to a welfare system or the labor market. These aspects are of course important but need to be supplemented with an understanding that incorporation into a shared we-­ ness is also defined by the core group’s values, social characteristics, manners and beliefs. Altogether, the symbolically distinct relation between pure and impure civil codes defines a binary discourse that “conceptualizes the world into those who deserve inclusion and those who do not” (Alexander, 2006, p. 55).

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Wimmer (2013), who has written a book about ethnic boundaries, argues that boundaries always have a categorical and a behavioral dimension. The former divides people into social and/or ethnic groups of “us” and “them”, and the latter tells us how these social and/or ethnic groups act and behave. Wimmer (2013) states: “Only when the two schemes coincide, when ways of seeing the world correspond to ways of acting in the world, shall we speak of a social boundary” (p. 9). In the perspective of this edited volume, such widely shared narratives of belonging are constructed within a binary discourse that specifies, for example, what are regarded as acceptable and unacceptable values, social characteristics, manners and beliefs. These narratives are expressed through inter-­ subjectively shared meanings that structure both the core and out groups’ feelings of belonging. Thus, one important theoretical starting point of the chapters in this volume is that immigrant incorporation is primarily structured through collectively shared cultural meanings in which individuals and groups define the criteria for belonging and, thus, also symbolic boundaries between “us” and “them” (Alexander, 2006). Symbolic boundaries are something we make in the subtle communication and social interactions of everyday life. Thus, they are never entirely stable but are rather continuously negotiated and contested, because “cultural structures do not determine, but rather inform action” (Kivisto & Sciortino, 2015). The mutual aim in the following chapters is to describe and analyze school actors’ negotiations and reflections regarding the symbolic boundaries of belonging in different educational practices. In doing so, the volume has an ambition to enrich the empirical and theoretical understanding of immigrant incorporation in schooling. The school actors’ negotiations and reflections around the cultural identities, civil values, social interaction and deep beliefs that take place in complex institutional practices influence their meaning-making, and will expose how feelings of belonging are formed in discourse and practice. Analyses will include both the solidaristic dimensions of incorporation and processes of stigmatization.

The Swedish Case With its roughly ten million inhabitants, Sweden is well known not only for its generous welfare system but also for its liberal migration policy. In 2015 the country received 163,000 refugees, and in 2017 18.5 percent of the Swedish population had been born outside Sweden (Statistiska

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Centralbyrån, 2018b). In total, 23 percent of the Swedish population had been born abroad or had parents who were both born in another country. Now, in 2019, 25 percent of compulsory school students (6–15 years) and 32 percent of high school students (16–18 years) were born abroad or live in families in which both parents were born abroad (Skolverket, 2019a, 2019b). The top ten countries represented in Sweden’s immigrant population in 2017 were Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, India, Poland, Iran, Eritrea, Somalia, China and Finland (Statistiska Centralbyrån, 2018a). These immigrants have moved to a country that is found at the top right corner of Engelhart’s “Cultural Map” (World Values Survey, 2017); for example, its core culture places less emphasis on religion, traditional family values, authority and economic and physical security, but celebrates rational secular values and individual autonomy. In other words, Sweden is among the most individualistic and least religious countries in the world, but on the other hand is also a country that in policy and practice regards diversity in all its forms as an important and normatively vital civil value. In this sense, Berggren and Trägårdh (2015) maintain that the state-governed Nordic model is about liberating the individual from all other forms of subordination. These civil codes, of course, have consequences for the process of immigrant incorporation. As Lund and Voyer (2019) argue: The deep moral values of equality and individualism in Swedish society have, on the one hand, opened up the borders for immigrants and refugees while, on the other hand, creating a boundary of belonging and non-belonging which makes it very difficult for immigrants and their descendants to gain full acceptance and inclusion while also maintaining ethnic group ties and identities. (Lund & Voyer, 2019, p. 180)

Immigrant Incorporation and Schooling In the last decade, inequality among Swedish schools has risen dramatically (OECD, 2015). One fundamental aspect of between-school inequality is increased school segregation, which has enhanced the differences in study outcomes between immigrant- and native-born students (Jonsson & Rudolphi, 2011). In their longitudinal study, Yang-Hansen and Gustafsson (2016) have shown that residential (socioeconomic) segregation has held steady for more than a decade, but that school segregation, in relation to immigrant background and school achievement, has

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increased during the same period. In this sense, two important factors predicting school achievement (family background and the peer composition of schools and school classes) have increased rapidly in the last decade (cf. Mehta & Davies, 2018). To a great extent, school segregation is thus partly related to residential segregation in combination with parents’ and students’ increased opportunities for school choice, which takes place on local school markets (Apple, 2004; Ball, 2003, 2007). Today, Sweden has “one of the least centralized educational systems of all OECD nations” (Voyer, 2018, p. 2), which has led to a massive increase in the number of free schools and municipality schools for students to choose from (Erixon-Arreman & Holm, 2011). Early on, in the Swedish context these educational reforms involved a political belief that market-based educational options and equal choice opportunities would contribute to both an increased quality and efficiency of public funds, as well as serve as a way to promote social mobility, which seems to be a widespread policy phenomenon (Thompson & Simmons, 2013; Windle, 2015). In contrast, sociological and educational research indicates that ethnic school segregation increased as a result of school choice and marketization reforms in the 1990s (Böhlmark, Holmlund, & Lindahl, 2016; Bunar & Ambrose, 2016; Dovemark & Holm, 2017; Malmberg & Andersson, 2019; Yang-Hansen & Gustafsson, 2016). Still, a large number of immigrant students living in stigmatized areas are moving to “better” schools with a majority of Swedish students. In previous research, this has been interpreted as reflecting hopes for a better life. For example, Kallstenius (2010) has argued that the driving force for the school movers of immigrant background involves status, learning proper Swedish and espousing the “right” values and norms in Swedish society. The school’s ethnic composition of student body affects the symbolic distinctions of good or bad schools (Bunar & Ambrose, 2016; Dovemark & Holm, 2017; Lund, 2015; Lundahl, Erixon-Arreman, Holm, & Lundström, 2014). “Good schools” are connected with middle-class Swedish students with high grades, for example, school cultures that are assumed to have an orderly study climate with calm and ambitious youth who have good language skills (Bunar & Ambrose, 2016), while “bad schools” are symbolically linked to immigrants, for example, school cultures that are assumed to have a disorderly and chaotic study climate with rowdy children who have low study ambitions and poor language skills (Bunar, 2001; Gruber, 2007; Kallstenius, 2010; Runfors, 2007). Let me give an example: research studies on school choice and the increased

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­ arketization of education have highlighted that it is the students, the m consumers of education, who have become experts in defining and sustaining the symbolic boundaries of belonging that express what values, social characteristics and beliefs are associated with different schools. Therefore, students and their informal networks (friends, older siblings, relatives, etc.) can be seen as a vital source in constructing the binary discourse that defines what kind of students fit in at one school but not another (cf. Bunar & Sernhede, 2013; Dovemark & Holm, 2017; Lund, 2015; Lundahl et al., 2014). In fact, however, immigrant students seldom have any problems “keeping up” and performing well at schools where the majority is of “Swedish” background, but the schools’ composition of student body accompanied by symbolic boundaries of belonging serves as a stigmatizing structure concerning their opportunity to fit in (cf. Lund, 2015). Moving from the suburbs can also be about the desire to be recognized and valued as a person with qualities that, through schooling, can be incorporated into the Swedish civil sphere (cf. Sundelin, 2016). When meeting the “people of Sweden”, immigrant students expect to be able to show their true self and have a deep desire that the majority of students and teachers will recognize their qualities as an asset and not a burden. In this sense, school actors express a hope that schools can serve as “interstitial institutions” that can mediate morals, values, manners and beliefs between core and out groups. Actually, Sundelin’s (2016) study shows that these immigrant school actors express a hope that the Swedish school system has a potential for civil repair (cf. Alexander & Tognato, 2018, p. 10; Thumala Olave, 2018, p. 67). A similar hope is expressed in Swedish school law and curricula. In Sweden, school policy has long had strong moral ambitions to be both a force for equality and a source of civic education (cf. Honneth, 2015; Tognato, 2018). Its emphasis on the equal distribution of knowledge, being free of charge, promoting individual choice, reducing the impact on family background and an overruling ambition to educate students who willingly “engage in public discourse and question authority” (Tognato, 2018, p.  151) has been of both ideological and practical importance in the establishment of educational policy in Sweden (Lund, 2019). By law, education should be equally distributed between regions and communities, and schools with more disadvantaged students should receive increased funding. Schools are charged with the development of children’s values and moral fitness for active and independent participation in democratic society: “respect for human rights and the fundamental democratic values on which Swedish society rests” (Sveriges Riksdag,

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2010, § 4). For decades there has been an overarching ambition to increase individual autonomy and social mobility. All education is free of charge, from primary school to university studies. The school law states that students’ grades are the only legal instrument for social selection to high school and university studies. Thus, educational policy has been characterized by a broad intention of increased solidarity between different groups in society; not only in regard to curricula, content and teaching goals but also in relation to the ambition of establishing a cohesive school where students from various backgrounds can meet and interact. As the initial quotes from Yasmina and Araf show, these hopes for civil repair are hard to accomplish in practice. When immigrant students choose to leave the schools in their stigmatized urban area for better performing inner-city schools, they often feel that they do not fit in with their new schoolmates. Like Yasmina and Araf state, their experience of being the “other”, non-belonging to the school culture, makes them move back home to schools in the territorially stigmatized area where they live. These two individual stories are intertwined with previous research that has shown that a school system driven by market principles, school choice and school competition promotes homogenization processes of not only cultural and ethnic (Lund, 2015) but also pedagogic identities (Dovemark & Holm, 2017) that work to the advantage or disadvantage of both majority and minority students. As discussed previously, in the Swedish context religion is coded as anti-­ civil, and as Sahla states in another one of the opening quotes, it is not an easy thing to be religious in a secular society, and neither so in a secular school culture. Being “Swedish” in the Swedish school system is not unproblematically compatible with being a practicing religious person. This is especially true when young people like Sahla decide to wear a hijab at school. As a reaction to these stigmatization processes in Swedish schooling, Anwar, the principal of a Muslim elementary school, argues for the importance of strengthening the children’s Islamic identity and asserts that the educational system should be supportive of such development. Children of immigrant background must be able to cope with two worlds—their parents’ home culture and the Swedish youth culture. Anwar’s arguments are to be found in previous research as well. The children do not live in a common world but rather in two different worlds, where their cultural identities must be adjusted in relation to the context in which they find themselves (Trondman, 2016). By strengthening the children’s morals and values through religion and culture, there is a belief that they will better be able to cope with the contradictions in Swedish

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society. Such arguments are posed in, for example, the study of complementary schools by Bouakaz, Lund, and Trondman (2016): “It is easier to meet the new if you are familiar with the old (p. 191)”. This wish, “to be yourself”, in institutionalized education is of course closely connected to the immigrant students’ home country and their previous experiences, traditions and beliefs. In contrast to normative researchers in this field (cf. Englund, 2018; Wahlström, 2010), who argue for the importance of neutral, secular and equal schooling without religious, ideological or economic impact, there is an alternative belief among some immigrant groups that an educational system should allow for and reinforce children’s ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In some immigrant communities, strengthening children’s religious and cultural identities is viewed as a way of reinforcing their future opportunities to be part of and contribute to Swedish society. This narrative stands in strong contrast to the civil coding in the Swedish educational system, based on individuality, autonomy, equality and independent participation in democratic society. What I have shown so far is that school choice and schooling to a great extent involve embedded meaning structures and emotions. Feelings of belonging go hand-in-hand with the lack of recognition these immigrant students experience when participating in schooling with a majority of Swedish students at secular schools. Since meaning is relational, “sacred qualities are always paired with their antagonistic opposites, opposing meanings that constitute the absence of civil capacity” (Alexander & Tognato, 2018, p. 1). The way in which students ascribe meaning to educational contexts and their feelings of belonging/non-belonging to a specific neighborhood, school culture or society at large structure their schooling processes—boundaries that in one way or the other are associated with “Swedes” and the cultural coding of “Swedishness” (Lund & Voyer, 2019). The following chapters in this edited volume all address the symbolic distinction between sacred and profane values, social characteristics, manners and beliefs that define which individuals and/or groups are worthy of incorporation and which are not (Alexander, 2006).

Symbolic Boundaries of Belonging In a previous book, Michelle Lamont (1992) interviewed professionals and managers about how they defined “worthy people” and how these symbolic distinctions established boundaries between different social classes (Lamont, 1992). Lamont (2000) has also analyzed how race and

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ethnicity among American and French workers draw symbolic boundaries between “us” and “them”. “Symbolic boundaries are the lines that include and define some people, groups and things while excluding others” (Lamont, 2000, p. 172). In an article written together with Molnár, the two scholars state that symbolic boundaries serve as a structuring force in social interaction (Lamont & Molnár, 2002). When groups of people share a common meaning system that specifies the qualities, values and identities that define we-ness, boundaries are drawn between different groups in society. Thus, symbolic boundaries “also separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership” (Lamont & Molnár, 2002, p. 168). This also means that Lamont and Molnár (2002) differentiate between symbolic and social boundaries. Symbolic boundaries are conceptual distinctions that may or may not—depending on other factors at play—manifest themselves as social boundaries. The latter are “objectified forms of social differences manifested in unequal access to an unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social opportunities” (Lamont & Molnár, 2002, p. 168). Andrea Voyer (2013, p. 31) argues that symbolic boundaries are about how “widely shared narratives establish symbolic civil boundaries that can be inclusive of immigrants (…) while clearly specifying unacceptable values and characteristics”. Voyer (2013) argues that these symbolic boundaries are based on shared and endorsed social values (e.g. commitments to democracy and equality) that turn into practices (e.g. social manners and manners of speech), truths and core beliefs. They become the reality for both core and out groups, and structure their feelings of belonging to a community and of being or not being included in the we-ness of the civil sphere. In comparison with Lamont, Voyer doesn’t make an analytical differentiation between boundary dimensions (e.g. symbolic and social boundaries). Following Alexander’s (2006) civil sphere theory, Voyer (2013) argues that symbolic boundaries are an independent structural force that regulates communication, social interaction and processes of immigrant incorporation. In a convincing way, she shows that symbolic inclusion is of significant importance in fully understanding immigrant incorporation. Symbolic boundaries are something we draw in the subtle social interactions of everyday life, which can take part independent of class and ethnic boundaries. To summarize, the construction of symbolic boundaries of belonging in educational settings consists of three interrelated analytical aspects that structure school actors’ feelings of belonging/non-belonging:

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1. Binary discourse: speech acts that demarcate which values, social characteristics, manners and beliefs define we-ness and thus separate “us” from “them”. 2. Schooling: school actors’ lived experiences of schooling that can either strengthen or weaken the symbolic distinctions made within the binary discourse. 3. Emotions: school actors’ feelings, actions and reactions that occur in relation to the binary discourse and formal schooling. My point is that the field of sociology of education often regards symbolic boundaries as “supportive” of “objective” social or ethnic boundaries. But, as argued, schooling is not merely about the reproduction of social status and knowledge but is a social, relational and intersubjective activity that is oriented toward the “development of individual autonomy, active participation and respect for minorities and cultural diversity” (Izquierdo & Minguez, 2003, p. 36). It is about the ways in which students on a daily basis reflect upon and negotiate their selves and others in relation to boundaries of belonging, and how such symbolic boundaries in schooling practices affect processes of immigrant incorporation (cf. Englund, 2018). Such a cultural sociological understanding of immigrant incorporation emphasizes the strength of symbolic inclusion and the importance of empirical studies analyzing such processes. This edited volume will highlight that the processes of immigrant incorporation within education are structured through the establishment of a meaning-making practices by which different school cultures create we-ness, and thus also boundaries between “us” and “them”. The negotiation of such symbolic boundaries also speaks to immigrant students’ sense of belonging in Sweden, “thus revealing the overlap between the educational sphere and the civil sphere”(Lund, 2019, p. 207).

Outlining the Chapters Each of the forthcoming chapters builds on independent empirical studies representing different schooling contexts in the Swedish school system. The chapters were selected after a review process, based on their both representing and in different ways nuancing the main theme of this edited volume. The volume is guided by two major themes: school choice/ethnic school segregation and religion/faith in schooling. Both of these themes provide rich examples of how immigrant school actors negotiate the symbolic codes that define boundaries of belonging/non-belonging in different

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communities. This focus will broaden the understanding of how educational practices and formal schooling works in relation to immigrant incorporation into different school cultures, as well as in the Swedish civil sphere. In the second chapter, Ann-Sofie Holm and Marianne Dovemark’s ethnographic study focuses on two high schools in one of Sweden’s larger cities. Ash Public is located in a territorially stigmatized suburb on the outskirts of the city. The great majority of the school’s students have an immigrant background, and it has a reputation for being an “opt-out” school. The other school is an independent school located in the city center. The student body of this school is dominated by “Swedish” students, and it has a reputation of holding high academic standards. The chapter exposes the reasons why high-achieving immigrant students leave their segregated schools, and why many of them after a short time decide to go “back home”. One important reason for this back-and-forth school choice process, according to the authors, concerned the immigrant students’ feelings of alienation and of non-belonging, not “fitting in” with the core culture of the Swedish schools. These feelings made them return to Ash Public, where they felt included and comfortable. In other words, it was not academic demands or studying with a majority of Swedish students that served as the driving force in these school choice processes but rather the homogenized school culture at the independent school “that was unable to enlarge its ‘we-ness’ towards a more pluralistic cultural order” that forced them back to Ash Public. Anna Ambrose’s ethnographic study, located in another of Sweden’s larger cities, analyzes the daily school practice at Bridge Valley middle school. This third chapter explores how feelings of belonging and non-­ belonging among students, parents and teachers are structured by external and internal school factors. Bridge Valley is described as a nice neighborhood, but many parents there choose other middle schools for their children. These school choice processes have turned Bridge Valley School, in a statistical sense, into a segregated school. Simultaneously, students and parents describe a collective familiarity with other residents in the neighborhood and in the school culture of Bridge Valley School. The chapter exposes that feelings of belonging/non-belonging produce an alternative and local “we-ness” that supports close relationships and enables the children to “be themselves” in their schooling and formal education. From an educational policy perspective, this positions the Bridge Valley students, who live in a stigmatized suburb and receive their schooling at a segregated school, outside the inner logic of the present school system. They

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are not rational calculators, driven by a desire to support their best educational interests, but rather “humans trying to live their lives among others who recognize and value their cultural identities as a quality rather than a burden”. In the fourth chapter, Åsa Trulsson discusses one central obstacle to belonging, enriching previous analyses of core and out group relations and schooling: namely, the intersection between self-identified Muslim students’ religious beliefs/identities and the secularized Swedish society and school system. The material is based on an interview study conducted in a large and a small city in southern Sweden. Through a narrative analysis, the chapter exposes young Muslims’ complex praxis of managing religious identities while simultaneously navigating/negotiating the symbolic boundaries of belonging in schooling and society at large. On the one hand, religion is seen as a resource for these young people’s identity formation, meaningmaking and belonging to the Muslim community. Many also express that their religious beliefs are generally regarded as a strength, not only for their cultural identity and self but also in their schoolwork. On the other hand, as practicing Muslims they feel that they are carriers of undesired values, characteristics, manners and beliefs. It is discussed that “their sense of self is hence structured by a historically ascribed identity, namely Muslims as a problem”. In order to cope with this narrative of prejudice, the students try to show that they are like anyone else and exhibit their independence by stating that being a practicing Muslim is their own choice. In the fifth chapter Henrik Nilsson describes and analyzes how Anwar, the principal of a Muslim-profiled independent primary school, is negotiating and working to change the cultural meanings that define what are regarded as civil and anti-civil values, social characteristics, manners and beliefs. For a period of five years, Nilsson conducted ethnographic fieldwork at this school, located in a middle-sized town in southern Sweden. He also collected newspaper articles written about the school, accompanied Anwar in his work, and interviewed him numerous times. The results show that Anwar’s narrative of strengthening children’s Muslim cultural and religious identities through schooling stands in stark contrast to core groups’ narratives on the Swedish school system. Both by teachers working at the school and in local media, the school was described in terms of insufficient development of the Swedish language and a lack of social mixing, as well as isolation and self-segregation. Occasionally, Anwar manages to link his urgent matters to core narratives and symbols. When doing so, he draws on democratic values like autonomy, equality, individual choices

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and religious freedom. Thus, this chapter demonstrates that there is a very fine line between being constructed as civil or anti-civil. In this context, the negative or positive outcome of Anwar’s social performances is determined by his ability to merge meaning systems and narratives “into chains of already powerful symbols”. In the sixth chapter, I raise the question of what these four empirical chapters have actually articulated. In order to answer this question, I discuss three common themes (“Belonging and school segregation”, ­ “‘Swedishness’ and schooling”, and “Meaning, reflection and interpretation”) that will gradually deepen the understanding of the topic of this edited volume: namely, the relationship between immigrant incorporation, education and the boundaries of belonging.

References Alexander, J. C. (2006). The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexander, J.  C. (2013). Struggling Over the Mode of Incorporation: Backlash Against Multiculturalism in Europe. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(4), 531–556. Alexander, J. C., Lund, A., & Voyer, A. (2019). The Nordic Civil Sphere (pp. 1–11). Cambridge: Polity. Alexander, J. C., & Tognato, C. (2018). Introduction: For Democracy in Latin America. In J. C. Alexander & C. Tognato (Eds.), The Civil Sphere in Latin America (pp. 1–17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Apple, M.  W. (2004). Creating Difference: Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism and the Politics of Educational Reform. Educational Policy, 18(1), 12–44. Ball, S. J. (2003). Class Strategies and the Educational Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage. New York and London: Routledge. Ball, S.  J. (2007). Education Plc: Understanding Private Sector Participation in Public Sector Education. New York and London: Routledge. Berggren, H., & Trägårdh, L. (2015). Är svensken människa? Gemenskap och oberoende i det moderna Sverige. Stockholm: Norstedts. Böhlmark, A., Holmlund, H., & Lindahl, M. (2016). Parental Choice, Neighborhood Segregation or Cream Skimming? An Analysis of School Segregation After a Generalized Choice Reform. Journal of Population Economics, 29(4), 1155–1190. Bouakaz, L., Lund, A., & Trondman, M. (2016). Att ta skolan i egna händer. In A.  Lund & S.  Lund (Eds.), Skolframgång i det mångkulturella samhället (pp. 161–194). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Bunar, N. (2001). Skolan Mitt i Förorten: Fyra Studier om Skola, Segregation, Integration och Multikulturalism. Eslöv: Brutus Östling Symposium. Bunar, N., & Ambrose, A. (2016). Schools, Choice and Reputation: Local School Markets and the Distribution of Symbolic Capital in Segregated Cities. Research in Comparative and International Education, 11(1), 34–51.

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Bunar, N., & Sernhede, O. (2013). Inledning. In N. Bunar & O. Sernhede (Eds.), Skolan och Ojämlikhetens Urbana Geografi. Om Skolan, Staden och Valfriheten (pp. 7–24). Göteborg: Daidalos. Dovemark, M., & Holm, A.-S. (2017). Pedagogic Identities for Sale: Segregation and Homogenization in Swedish Upper Secondary School. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(4), 518–532. Englund, T. (2018). Essä: Är demokratin hotad? Om privata intressen och skolans omvandling. Utbildning & Demokrati, 27(1), 115–135. Erixon-Arreman, I., & Holm, A.-S. (2011). Privatisation of Public Education? The Emergence of Independent Upper Secondary Schools in Sweden. Journal of Education Policy, 26(2), 225–243. Gruber, S. (2007). Skolan gör skillnad: etnicitet och institutionell praktik. Norrköping: Institutionen för samhälls- och välfärdsstudier, Linköpings universitet. Honneth, A. (2015). Civil Society as a Democratic Battlefield: Comments on Alexander’s The Civil Sphere. In P. Kivisto & G. Sciortino (Eds.), Solidarity, Justice and Incorporation: Thinking through The Civil Sphere (pp.  81–95). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Izquierdo, H. M., & Minguez, A. M. (2003). Sociological Theory of Education in the Dialectical Perspective. In C.  A. Torres & A.  Antikainen (Eds.), The International Handbook on the Sociology of Education: An International Assessment of New Research and Theory (pp. 21–41). New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Jonsson, J., & Rudolphi, F. (2011). Weak Performance – Strong Determination: School Achievement and Educational Choice among Children of Immigrants in Sweden. European Sociological Review, 27(4), 487–508. Kallstenius, J. (2010). De mångkulturella innerstadsskolorna: Om skolval, segregation och utbildningsstrategier i Stockholm. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Kivisto, P., & Sciortino, G. (2015). Introduction: Thinking through The Civil Sphere. In P. Kivisto & G. Sciortino (Eds.), Solidarity, Justice and Incorporation: Thinking through The Civil Sphere (pp. 1–31). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Lamont, M. (1992). Money, Morals and Manners: Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lamont, M. (2000). The Dignity of Working Men Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. New  York: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press. Lamont, M., & Molnár, V. (2002). The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 167–195. Lund, A., & Voyer, A. (2019). “They’re Immigrants Who Are Kind of Swedish”: Universalism, Primordialism, and Modes of Incorporation in the Swedish Civil Sphere. In J. C. Alexander, A. Lund, & A. Voyer (Eds.), The Nordic Civil Sphere (pp. 177–202). Cambridge: Polity.

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Lund, S. (2015). School Choice, Ethnic Divisions and Symbolic Boundaries. New York: Palgrave Pivot. Lund, S. (2019). Immigrant Incorporation in Education: High School Students’ Negotiation of Belonging. In J. C. Alexander, A. Lund, & A. Voyer (Eds.), The Nordic Civil Sphere (pp. 203–228). Cambridge: Polity. Lundahl, L., Erixon-Arreman, I., Holm, A.-S., & Lundström, U. (2014). Gymnasiet som marknad. Umeå: Boréa. Malmberg, B., & Andersson, E. K. (2019). Do Schools Mix Students from Different Neighborhoods? School Segregation and Student Allocation in Swedish Municipalities. Stockholm: Stockholm Research Reports in Demography 2019:07. Mehta, J., & Davies, S. (2018). Education in a New Society: Renewing the Sociology of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. OECD. (2015). Improving Schools in Sweden: An OECD Perspective. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/education/school/Improving-Schools-in-Sweden.pdf Runfors, A. (2007). Lära sig sin plats: hur svenskar och “icke svenskar” skapas i skolan. In G. Arvastson & B. Ehn (Eds.), Kulturnavigering i skolan (pp. 76–84). Malmö: Gleerups Utbildning. Skolverket. (2019a). Grundskolan: elevstatistik2018/2019. Retrieved from https://siris.skolverket.se/reports/rwservlet?cmdkey=common&geo=1&r eport=gr_elever&p_sub=1&p_ar=2018&p_lankod=&p_kommunkod=&p_ skolkod=&p_hmantyp=&p_hmankod=&p_flik=G&xtra=1 Skolverket. (2019b).Gymnasieskolan: elevstatistik2018/2019. Retrieved from https://siris.skolverket.se/reports/rwservlet?cmdkey=common&geo=1&rep ort=gy_elever&p_ar=2018&p_lankod=&p_kommunkod=&p_skolkod=&p_ hmantyp=&p_hmankod=&p_flik=G&p_sub=1 Statistiska Centralbyrån. (2018a). Immigrations to Sweden 2017 and 2018 by Sex and Top 20 Countries of Birth 2018. Retrieved from https://www.scb.se/en/findingstatistics/statistics-by-subject-area/population/population-composition/ population-statistics/pong/tables-and-graphs/yearly-statistics%2D%2Dthewhole-country/immigrations-to-sweden-2017-and-2018-by-sex-and-top20-countries-of-birth-2018/ Statistiska Centralbyrån. (2018b). Summary of Population Statistics, 1960–2017. Retrieved from https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subjectarea/population/population-composition/population-statistics/pong/tablesand-graphs/yearly-statistics—thewhole-countr y/summar y-ofpopulation-statistics/. Sundelin, Å. (2016). Att skapa framtid: En analys av interaktionen i studie- och yrkesvägledande samtal med unga i migration. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Sveriges Riksdag. (2010). Skollag: SFS 2010:80. Retrieved from https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/ skollag-2010800_sfs-2010-800.

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Thompson, R., & Simmons, R. (2013). Social Mobility and Post-Compulsory Education: Revisiting Boudon’s Model of Social Opportunity. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(5–6), 744–765. Thumala Olave, M.  A. (2018). Civil Indignation in Chile: Recent Collusion Scandals in the Retail Industry. In J. C. Alexander & C. Tognato (Eds.), The Civil Sphere in Latin America (pp.  66–93). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tognato, C. (2018). The Civil Life of the University: Enacting Dissent and Resistance on a Colombian Campus. In J. C. Alexander & C. Tognato (Eds.), The Civil Sphere in Latin America (pp.  149–177). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trondman, M. (2016). Skolframgångens elementära former i det mångkulturella samhället. In A. Lund & S. Lund (Eds.), Skolframgång i det mångkulturella samhället (pp. 199–218). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Voyer, A. (2013). Notes on a Cultural Sociology of Immigrant Incorporation. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 1, 26–41. Voyer, A. (2018). ‘If the Students Don’t Come, or If They Don’t Finish, We Don’t Get the Money’: Principals, Immigration, and the Organisational Logic of School Choice in Sweden. Ethnography and Education, 14(4), 448–464. Wahlström, N. (2010). Learning to Communicate or Communicating to Learn? A Conceptual Discussion on Communication, Meaning, and Knowledge. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 42(4), 431–449. Wimmer, A. (2013). Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Windle, J. A. (2015). Making Sense of School Choice: Politics, Policies, and Practices under Conditions of Cultural Diversity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. World Values Survey. (2017). Findings and Insights. Retrieved from http://www. worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp Yang-Hansen, K., & Gustafsson, J.-E. (2016). Causes of Educational Segregation in Sweden: School Choice or Residential Segregation. Educational Research and Evaluation, 22(1–2), 23–44.

CHAPTER 2

School Choice, We-Ness and School Culture Ann-Sofie Holm and Marianne Dovemark

I don’t mind Swedes, but I felt like… There were only two of us immigrant girls at the inner-city school. We couldn’t make any friends. The other students didn’t want to talk to us, they didn’t even say ‘Hi’ … nothing! And then I switched back to Ash Public School… and as you see, I’m still here. (Yasmina) The reason why I chose Beech Ltd. School was mainly that I felt that the people I met were just like me, I fit in here. That’s the only reason why I chose this school. (Lena)

The quotations above highlight the importance of feelings of belonging for students in the process of post-16 school choice. Lena claims she chose Beech Ltd. School because she expected to “fit in” there. Yasmina, on the other hand, describes her experiences from a school where she did not “fit in” and therefore left and instead chose Ash Public, where she felt more welcome. This chapter focuses on how school choice is related to the “weness” of school cultures and how these processes construct symbolic boundaries between various student groups at two high schools in Sweden.

A.-S. Holm (*) • M. Dovemark Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Lund (ed.), Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9_2

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Introduction Sweden’s education system has undergone extensive changes in recent decades. There is now a state-regulated school, with public and private actors competing on highly exposed local quasi-markets (Lundahl, Erixon Arreman, Holm, & Lundström, 2013, 2014). Today a large number of schools, public as well as private (hereafter called “independent schools”), compete for high-achieving students and dedicated teachers, in order to gain a good reputation. Even though the privatization trend is most evident in urban municipalities, research shows that the increased competition between schools has an impact on the daily life of all students, teachers and principals in high school (e.g. Holm, 2013; Holm & Lundström, 2011). The Swedish education system is said to be a collective social project, aiming at equality and participation. The curriculum underlines the importance of school as a venue, a meeting point, between different social and cultural groups, whereby school is seen as an institution supporting solidarity and fellowship. However, research shows inequalities and segregation (e.g. Beach & Dovemark, 2007; Bunar, 2008, 2010) as an effect of the liberal freedom of choice reforms implemented in Sweden in the early 1990s. The increased competition between schools causes significant between-school and within-school differences (Söderström & Uusitalo, 2005; Swedish National Agency for Education [Skolverket] 2012, 2018; Yang Hansen & Gustafsson, 2016). In this chapter, we intend to describe and analyze such differences. Our aim is to analyze how the relation between schools’ student body composition, rumors, and ways of defining acceptable and unacceptable values and social characteristics structures students’ feelings of belonging or not belonging to a specific school culture. This interest enables us to enrich previous explanations of how homogenous school cultures are constructed and maintained in a highly market-oriented and school-segregated educational system. The study focuses on the two high schools mentioned previously by Yasmina and Lena. Both schools are located in the same city, one in a territorially stigmatized suburb on the outskirts and the other in the high-status inner city.

School Choice Although post-16 education is voluntary in Sweden, a majority of all young people who have completed compulsory school continue to high school (Wallström, 2018). The education is tax-financed and free of charge. Students are allowed to apply to schools all over the country, and

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costs are covered by the student’s home municipality. Student mobility has hence increased, particularly movement from the peripheral to the central regions (Fjellman, 2019; Östh, Andersson, & Malmberg, 2013). As students tend to choose schools based on gender as well as social and ethnic background (Barmark & Lund, 2016; Dovemark & Holm, 2015, 2017), schools have become more homogenous, a development confirmed by OECD: School systems with low levels of competition among schools often have high levels of social inclusion, meaning that students from diverse social backgrounds attend the same school. In contrast, in systems where parents can choose schools, and schools compete for enrolment, schools are often more socially segregated. (OECD, 2014)

Between-school differences have grown during the 2000s, mainly in municipalities where the expansion of independent schools has been the greatest, that is in the urban cities (Böhlmark, Holmlund, & Lindahl, 2015; Holm & Lundahl, 2019; Yang Hansen & Gustafsson, 2016). Lund (2015) summarizes research criticism of school choice reforms, pointing out that (i) school choice mainly supports white middle-class families, (ii) the marketization of the educational system has led to pedagogical enclosure, and (iii) the reforms give rise to “cream skimming”. Cream skimming operates at both the “top” and the “bottom” of society, with the middle class often voluntarily “self-excluding”. These processes of exclusion at the top and bottom are interdependent of the way privileged families avoid schools with students from poor and/or immigrant families (e.g. Gudmundsson, Beach, & Vestel, 2013; Söderström & Uusitalo, 2005). Free school choice is positively associated with increased school segregation between immigrants and natives (cf. Böhlmark et al., 2015; Forsberg, 2018). This corresponds with what Whitty (2001, p. 290) claimed already 20  years ago: freedom of choice often turns out to entail sophisticated ways of reproducing existing hierarchies of class and race. Many high school choices are based on the school’s admission scores and grade results, as this is seen as an indicator of the quality of education and level of difficulty at a school. The Swedish National Agency for Education (2012, 2018) describes the pattern of academically motivated students, regardless of social/ethnic background, choosing the same kind of schools as “hidden segregation”. Education capital tends to be particularly important for immigrant students’ possibilities to bridge the dominant position of native students (Forsberg, 2018).

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According to Hodkinson’s and Sparkes’ (1997) career choice theory, students make pragmatic and rational career decisions within their “horizon of actions”; that is, both structural possibilities and individual social and cultural dispositions are important for their decisions. This is confirmed in most Swedish research on school choice. Students tend to choose the most convenient or safe option in their view, while for others the choice of high school seems to be a well-thought-out decision (Lidström, Holm, & Lundström, 2014). Schools’ geographical location, information from significant others, personal interests and ambitions are also very important (Skolverket, 2013). Not least, students’ perceptions of identity and status are strongly influential, resulting in a form of self-selection (Bunar & Ambrose, 2018; Dovemark & Holm, 2015; Holm, 2013; Lund, 2008). For many students, the choice is seemingly rather random and built on “hot knowledge” (i.e. informally conveyed information about a school’s reputation, status, social networks) rather than “cold knowledge” (i.e. grade statistics, number of educated teachers, resources, special education, etc., provided through formal channels) (Ball & Vincent, 1998), which is often claimed to be the case. Many students do not seem to have any choice at all, due to low grades or limited access to public transport (Beach & Dovemark, 2019; Fjellman, 2019; Holm & Lundahl, 2019).

We-ness and Processes of Homogenization In a previous study (Dovemark & Holm, 2017), we illustrated homogenization processes by focusing on how high schools construct various pedagogic identities through their offered programs and marketing. Through a Bernsteinian lens, we explored how schools promoted themselves and what student identities they appealed to. The findings indicated that the school actors jointly created various forms of pedagogic identities, depending on their feeling of belonging (or not belonging) and how they wanted to be perceived (Bernstein, 2000). There is a reciprocal relationship between a school’s status and the social status of its students; that is, student identities are reflected in the institution and the institution is reflected in its student identities (cf. Dovemark & Holm, 2017; Harling, 2019; see also Reay, David, & Ball, 2005). The homogenization of schools is strengthened when principals and owners control their schools’ intake by appealing to certain groups of students. The more a school directs its marketing towards specific students, the more homogeneous student groups it will recruit, and the more subtle, underlying factors linked to

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class, race, and gender are involved. Students’ choices are sorted into educational pathways via schools’ different brands (Dovemark, 2017; Harling, 2019). These brands construct particular moral dispositions, motivations, and aspirations in students, embedded in particular explicit performances and practices. This has a major impact on the social project of education in the way students’ careers are relayed in institutional settings (Bernstein, 1999, 2000). As we concluded: “Schools and students seek perfect matches, flocking together like birds of a feather” (Dovemark & Holm, 2017, p. 529). In this chapter we will explore these types of homogenization processes more in depth using a cultural sociological perspective. Alexander (2006, 2013) argues that categorizations of gender as well as social and ethnic background are of importance in constructions of feelings of belonging and not belonging. But feelings of belonging are not just about social and ethnic boundaries; we-ness is about specifying acceptable and unacceptable values, manners and student characteristics, for instance at a school. Narratives about “us” at our school are always described in relation to the “others” at their schools. This binary discourse produces symbolic boundaries that guide and restrict students’ school choices. These types of symbolic classifications of “we-ness” (us) and “other-ness” (them) are strong structuring forces for the inclusion and exclusion of students in educational practices (Lund, 2015). Our theoretical starting point is, thus, that students’ school choice processes are structured in the relation between: the schools’ location; its social/ethnic composition of student body; and the symbolic boundaries that specify acceptable and unacceptable values, norms, and social characteristics.

Method The chapter focuses on two high schools in a large city called Bay City.1 The first, Ash Public, is a public school located in a territorially stigmatized suburb on the outskirts of the city, and the second, Beech Ltd., is an independent school in the inner city. The schools were selected to represent two different contexts regarding ownership, educational achievement levels, and geographic location. The selection was based on the theoretical argument that various structural preconditions shape various symbolic boundaries. 1

 All names of places, schools, and individuals are fictional.

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With the purpose of getting an overall picture of Bay City and the municipality’s educational organization and strategies, we used statistical data and conducted formal interviews with three municipal representatives (two officials and one politician),2 but also used material from local media. The questions focused on the stakeholders’ experiences of Bay City as a school market, their perceptions of the competition between schools, and the image of schools and students in the municipality. In order to get acquainted with the two selected high schools’ local contexts, we visited their open house events and the annual regional school fair in Bay City. During these events, we made observations and had conversations with school leaders, teachers, and students, all documented in field notes. In addition, the two schools’ websites and marketing prospectuses were analyzed. However, the main empirical data involves classroom observations (approximately 10  days at each school) and ­semi-­structured as well as informal interviews with 35 students (22 at Beech Ltd. and 13 at Ash Public), 18 teachers (10 and 8, respectively), and two principals (one at each school). The interviewed students were in their first or second year in the high school’s higher educational preparatory programs3 (either Economics or the Social Sciences). The teachers represented various programs at the schools. Separate interview guides with relevant questions for each respondent group were used. The principal and school staff were asked questions about their experiences of Bay City as a school market, their perceptions of the competition between schools, and the image of their schools and students. The student interviews focused on the choice of high school and their experiences of everyday life at school. In accordance with ethical guidelines, all participants were informed and asked for consent prior to the fieldwork (Swedish Research Council, 2011). The formal interviews (in total 27) lasted 30–60  minutes, and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The students were interviewed in gender-­mixed groups of two to four students, while the staff and municipal officials were interviewed individually. All empirical data, including 2  The empirical data was collected in 2014 within the Swedish research project Inclusive and competitive? Working in the intersection between social inclusion and marketization in high school (2012–2015), financed by the Swedish Research Council. 3  In upper secondary education in Sweden, there are 18 national programs: six higher education preparatory and 12 vocational. In addition, there are five introductory programs for students who are not eligible for a national program.

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marketing materials and transcripts of the interviews and field notes, was read and coded with respect to elements recognized as important and interesting in relation to the aim of this chapter. The analytical approach was informed by Alexander’s theory of constructions of symbolic boundaries and we-ness. In our case, we were specifically interested in how the relation between the social composition of student body and symbolic boundaries could explain the segregation between the Ash Public and Beech Ltd. schools. Quotations from the respondents are used to illustrate the analysis, and have been selected to reflect the “common view” and provide especially descriptive examples. In the following part of the chapter, we first briefly present Bay City’s local school market and then the structural preconditions offered by the two selected schools separately. Then, we describe how we-ness is defined in the different school cultures, and how this in turn affects students’ feelings of belonging or not belonging. Finally, we conclude and discuss the analysis overall.

Bay City and the Studied Schools Bay City is a major city in Sweden, with more than half a million inhabitants. At the time of the study, the 2013/2014 school year, students could choose between almost 50 high schools (two-thirds of which were independent schools) within the city and even more in the whole region. In line with the national pattern, the public schools were quite large (about 1000 students) while the independent schools were smaller (about 300). A common trend in Bay City, as well as in the whole country, was that students commuted from the peripheral areas into the city center (Fjellman, 2019; Skolverket, 2013). One of the interviewed municipal representatives described the competition on Bay City’s local high school market as “razor sharp”, which forced schools to market themselves quite aggressively. Each year there was a large school fair in the city, where all the region’s high schools “fought” to recruit new students through offerings of, for example, fringe benefits such as free computers, school trips, different schedules such as half days, various school profiles, etc. (see Dovemark, 2017; Harling, 2019; cf. Lidström et al., 2014). The gap between rich and poor as well as between various parts of the Bay City municipality has widened in the last decade. There are also increasing differences between schools regarding study results and status. In 2013/2014, the proportion of ninth-grade students eligible for further

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high school studies ranged between 39 and 100 percent at the least and most successful schools in Bay City. Some of the interviewed school actors describe the situation this way: Certain student categories gather in particular schools or particular programs (…) the composition of students has become more homogeneous (…) the polarization between different schools, purely on a socioeconomic basis, has been reinforced. (Municipal representative, Bay City) It’s obvious when you look at the SIRIS and SALSA results [national statistical data] … The media talk about good and bad schools. But the schools with bad results, they’re all located in the same neighborhoods. It’s obvious that the socioeconomic aspects underlie … a very clear pattern. But actually, no one makes much of an effort to change it. (Teacher, Ash Public)

We can conclude that Bay City is a segregated city with great differences between its schools according to status, student backgrounds, and grades.

Ash Public Ash Public School is located near a shopping center in a territorially stigmatized suburban area with a high proportion of immigrants. Many families in the area are unemployed and live under harsh conditions, both socially and economically. The school is a large single-story building of traditional design from the 1970s, with long, wide, winding corridors, and is unlocked during the school day. Having previously housed about 2500 students, at the time of the study there was plenty of room for its current 750 students. Ash Public offered three higher education preparatory programs as well as one vocational and one introductory (language orientation) program. Almost all its students came from the surrounding area and were—according to the principal—“of foreign origin, newcomers to Sweden, including several war children, incredibly traumatized”. More than a hundred languages were spoken at the school, with one student describing it as “very mixed” with “different kinds of people”. Despite this diversity, Ash Public students were often, by both others and themselves, categorized as a single homogenous group—“immigrants”. The school’s level of educational achievement was far below the Swedish average. However, the achievement among the students varied widely. Some carried with them many years of education from their home countries,

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while others had had no previous schooling at all. Two teachers describe these two extremes in the following way: Many of our students come here with extensive knowledge in Math, for example … a much higher level than we have in Sweden. They know a lot, but they have to learn the Swedish language to succeed. (Teacher, Ash Public) If they have any education at all, it’s been from a Koran school for maybe a year. So we get students who may have been shepherding camels in the desert since they were ten … and they come here and are supposed to fit in within a school environment. (Teacher, Ash Public)

The school was struggling with low grades and a negative reputation for being criminal and located in “a dangerous immigrant area”. Its location in the city’s outer area further complicated this: “No one outside the stigmatized suburb finds their way here … if the school were located elsewhere, of course we’d attract more Swedish students”, as one teacher put it. She described the competition from other schools as “devastating”. Another teacher felt dejected at the unfair situation, claiming that Ash Public had a much more difficult mission than the schools in the city— “Our students live in another reality”: Even though we do all we can to cope with the situation to be a school for everyone… we work with gender equity and equal values and equal treatment and all this (…) We know what reality we live in, we know what kind of students come here. Of course, we don’t stare ourselves blind at the ranking systems and grades… or try to compete with the prestigious schools in the city. (Teacher, Ash Public)

The students at Ash Public said they were aware of the school’s bad reputation, but claimed that this did not reflect the real situation. They attended a school they loved and felt safe in. As some of the students put it: “It’s great here, you never feel alone”; “You feel at home”; “The teachers are nice and it’s easy to make friends”. A sense of security and fellowship were expressed as important aspects when choosing a school. Recommendations from friends and relatives proved to be important as well: I live in the neighborhood and I know a lot of people who have studied at the school and liked it. I chose the school because my cousin was here (…) I feel welcome here. (Student, Ash Public)

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Getting help with schoolwork was another aspect of why students at Ash preferred their school: “It’s a good school, you get a lot of help”. The collective was viewed as positive and desirable, and was described as a prerequisite for succeeding in the future (cf. Öhrn, 2011, 2012). Many of the students we met were anxious to learn the Swedish language, and regarded their school as a great source of support and help in this ambition: The language… they offer… Swedish (…) Ash Public offers more opportunities than I would have had at other high schools. (Student, Ash Public)

The students saw the school as their chance to integrate into Swedish society. Many of the students were struggling very hard. A great part of their day was devoted to school: “You can’t sit at home… you need … and have to do it here” one of the students explained. Another one told us that it was impossible for him to study at home: “I’ve got five brothers and sisters… we live in a three-room apartment… no space, no computer”. Since many of the students needed a great deal of help, the school had created a “Teaching Center”, which was open all day as well as some evenings and during shorter holidays: Many of our students carry a social backpack … they live in cramped homes and it’s difficult to get peace and quiet for studying… and if there’s a computer at home… maybe it’s shared with five siblings. (…) The Teaching Center is totally occupied by students after lessons … students receive help during lessons as well, and then they can go back to their classes again … they don’t want to miss anything there. Many of our students are very motivated to study (…) they’re prepared to invest in their future. (Teacher, Ash Public)

The staff placed great emphasis on encouraging the students regarding their future. This was also highlighted in the school’s marketing brochure, which stressed concepts like “Common learning” and “Everything is possible!”. A completely different picture emerged than the negative reputation the school had gotten, for instance in the media: When I tell people I work at Ash Public (…) they get an idea of chaos… trouble… a mess. And then I think: ‘They should be here!’ They’d really see something they didn’t have a clue about … a tremendous ambition (…) our students get sad if we cancel a lesson. They’re sad when it’s Friday and the weekend’s starting… no school (…) School becomes really important to them. (Teacher, Ash Public)

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Teachers spent a great deal of time and effort on the students’ possibilities to learn and enjoy their time at school. One of the teachers claimed that the category of teachers at Ash Public had “a social pathos” and, in comparison to teachers at many other schools, were not as “focused on quality and evaluation systems”. The teacher’s compensatory role was stressed: A certain category of teachers is required here (…) people who really want to work here, who think segregation is unfair, who want to help this category of students to be integrated into society (…) other schools only focus on teaching…here we have another mission. We’re not social workers, but we have another kind of task involving the students… to teach them…and also help them into Swedish society. (Teacher, Ash Public)

For many of the students at Ash Public, their teachers were the only native Swedes they ever met during the school day. “It’s a double issue for me: I’m their teacher, but I also represent the Swede”, as one put it. However, the school’s principal stressed that the school needed to combine this compensatory role with a more performative approach, stressing the importance of grades for the students: “We also work hard to strengthen their self-confidence; they should be proud of themselves and their culture, language…” When Ash held its open house, only seven parents attended. They sat in a row listening to the information, and asked few questions. Ash Public was seen as a so-called “opt out-school” (Bunar, 2010). Many students from the local area wanted to escape the suburbs and commute to more popular schools in the city center. It was primarily high performers and academically motivated students who left: “The successful and confident ones… students who have learning difficulties stay”, as the principal described it. However, many of the leaving students returned to Ash Public after a time, which was a recurrent pattern year after year: “There were four students [in the Social Sciences program] when the semester started (…) it wouldn’t surprise me if there were around 30 by Christmas”, one teacher told us. According to one of the municipal representatives, the number of “returners” was as large as “about 100 to 150 each year”. He presumed that the students left schools in the city center and returned to Ash Public because “they didn’t feel comfortable there, they didn’t fit in”. This image was verified by several students at Ash. They said they dreamed of “starting at a school in the city center” and “catching the bus in the morning and getting away from the suburbs into a high-status school in

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the city center”. Some of them did choose a school in the city center, but realized quite frankly that: “There was no one like me there”; “No one had my style”; “I didn’t feel at home”: I know many people who have attended other schools…they swapped schools all the time, but finally they came back to Ash. They said they felt lonely at the schools in the city center … I think one explanation is that the schools didn’t help them into the student body. (Student, Ash Public)

Yasmina, the girl quoted in the introduction of this chapter, had briefly attended one of the most prestigious independent schools in the city center, but soon decided to leave because she felt the school had a “strange way of studying” and “everybody was a Swede”. Yasmina and her friend were the only immigrant girls at the school, and “the other students didn’t want to talk to us, they didn’t even say ‘Hi’”. The majority norm at the inner-city school made Yasmina and her friend feel they were excluded. Therefore, she preferred to return to Ash Public, where she felt welcome. Other students described similar feelings in relation to native Swedish students: I was born in Sweden, you know, I’ve studied at a Swedish school. But when I’m with Swedish girls I just feel like an immigrant… because I’m not the same [as they are], I don’t have a Swedish family or such things (…) But that’s normal, because I’m a Turk (…) I’ve been in preschool with immigrants like me. In compulsory school there were no Swedes in my class (…) so it was always like this …Somalis and Arabs and so on. I’ve never had a Swedish friend. (Student, Ash Public)

The students quoted above stress the symbolic boundary of who “fits in” and who does not; that is they visualize a cultural structure that defines the we-ness of Ash Public School. Students from the stigmatized suburb with enough merit points could apply to and be admitted to more prestigious and high-achieving inner-city schools—however, this did not automatically mean they would be symbolically accepted or included (Lund, 2015). They were formally allowed to be there, but they didn’t feel they fit in. Other students described frustration at being “cheated”, as they did not get the support they needed at their chosen city center independent school. Some of them told of not getting a computer, locker, or bus card like the school had promised. They returned to Ash Public with explanations like “Here [at Ash], the teachers help you a lot and give you a second chance; they offer you possibilities to improve”.

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To sum up: The student body composition at Ash Public was highly related to the school’s geographical location in the suburban area, where many families lived under harsh conditions. The school’s reputation was highly related to the students’ ethnical and social background as well as poor results, disorderly manners, and criminality. As a consequence, Ash Public was regarded as an “opt-out” school by native Swedish students as well as high-achieving immigrant students. However, many of these high-­ achieving students returned to the suburbs after a time as they did not feel they “fit in” at the inner-city schools. They all missed the we-ness of Ash Public, with a school culture they described as being characterized by security, familiarity, and collectivity. Ash Public School was also seen as a venue for including pedagogy and learning, and as preparing them for future citizenship and integration.

Beech Ltd. As a contrast to Ash Public’s bad reputation, on its website Beech Ltd. presents itself as “one of the most popular independent schools in Bay City”. It is a limited liability company with about 750 students, divided among three different locations in the city center. The school location studied here had 250 students at the time, and was housed on the third and fourth floors of former business premises in an old building on a narrow pedestrian street among small cafés and restaurants. Only a small sign with the school’s name revealed that the building housed a school. Its front doors were always locked, and to enter the stairwell a passcode was required. Beech Ltd. offered roughly the same range of national programs as Ash Public did, three higher educational preparatory and one vocational program, but lacked any introductory programs. The school had a sports profile, and its lessons were scheduled for half days. The school’s level of educational achievement was far over the Swedish average. According to the principal, the school recruited “high-performance and highly motivated” students, from “ethnic Swedish wealthy families from Bay City’s more wealthy parts…students from the suburbs do not come to Beech”. One student added that “many students at school are middle-class, higher middle-class”. Unlike Ash Public, Beech Ltd.’s open house showed to be popular and was well-attended by parents. Several questions were asked concerning, for example, students’ career paths and the school’s economy. The school’s owner emphasized the success of the school, winning awards in both knowledge and sports competitions: “Our students are really motivated and engaged”, she repeatedly pointed out.

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The conditions and the competitive situation were quite different at Beech Ltd. compared to Ash Public. The principal at Beech Ltd. stated that he did not experience any competition from other schools, as Beech Ltd. managed to attract students without spending a great deal of money on marketing. The reason for the school’s successful recruitment was its central location in the city center and its good reputation. The principal pointed out that the best marketing a school could have was “word of mouth”. He added, quite frankly: The students are our best marketers. That’s why it’s so important that the school maintain its high quality and also keep its promises… It’s about doing a good job … and students and teachers circulating it. (Principal, Beech Ltd.)

The principal went on to stress that Beech Ltd. could not affect the school’s intake but that, in the end, it was students with the highest merit points who attended the school. This could actually create “a very competitive atmosphere and rivalry among students at the school”, as he expressed it. In comparison to Ash Public, the teachers at Beech Ltd. used a more performative and highly competitive approach, with a strong focus on performance. According to the observations, the teachers took a rather distanced stance towards students: “It’s tougher and more focused on studies here [compared with other schools]”, as one of the teachers said. The teaching was highly directed towards personalized learning and individualism. Field notes confirmed the picture of discipline and efficiency in terms of studies, as well as teaching directed towards future national tests and exams (cf. Asp Onsjö & Holm, 2014). The teachers said they liked teaching at Beech Ltd. because it was “easy to be a teacher” with “such ambitious and talented students”. However, some of the students there were critical of the performative approach, which they even connected to the school’s marketing: Teachers at independent schools seem to only care about students getting high grades so they [the school] can get a good reputation… There’s a lot of focus on the national tests and they want us to perform (…) the principal wants us to study a lot so it [the school] will look as good as possible. (Student, Beech Ltd.)

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They promise a lot because they want us to choose this school. Of course, they promised you extra help and… you really trusted them… however, I feel like I haven’t gotten the support I need. (Student, Beech Ltd.)

One student even mentioned that the school had been accused of so-­ called “grade inflation” (Wikström & Wikström, 2005): “It’s bad for the school’s image of course, but it’s not bad for myself as a student [who gets the good grades]”. Students at Beech Ltd. also argued that the school’s image seen from “outside” was better than what they perceived from “inside”. They expressed criticism of, for example, small and crowded school premises, bad food, lack of support from teachers, and a stressful study situation. Some of them argued that the school’s marketing material promised too much: And they [the school] make a big deal out of the small size of the school, and it’s supposed to be genuine, and that students get so close to each other and teachers… and they claim that everyone at the school knows each other… That’s not true; you don’t know anyone outside your own class. (Student, Beech Ltd.)

Beech Ltd. profiled its school strongly based on its schedule structure, with “lessons only in the mornings” and without “short breaks and unnecessary cavities” (Beech Ltd.’s website). This caused students there to organize their schoolwork completely different from how those at Ash Public did. Instead of using the school as a venue for learning, the students at Beech saw home as a venue for learning and school as a place of distributing studying tasks. According to interviews and observations, several students at Beech Ltd. spent as little time as possible at school. It was unusual for all students to attend classes: “It rarely happens that everyone’s gathered during lessons”, one student said. As students came to school to get information about their work and tasks and then returned home to do them, there were few opportunities for collective work: Well, I do all my schoolwork at home. I come to school to get the tasks and to be registered for attendance. Sometimes I don’t even have the strength to come here. … well I guess you’ve seen students skipping out … That’s common in our class (…) If I know what I’m supposed to do in the coming week, I may think ‘Well, I don’t need to come here on Monday, because there’s nothing important; I know what to do’. That’s how it works. (Student, Beech Ltd.)

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Some students pointed out that the small, crowded premises of Beech Ltd. did not make it inviting to stay at school. Lack of space and seating made them choose to go home for lunch or do their studies. As a ­consequence, the possibilities for collective discussions or work were limited: “There’s actually no place for the whole class to sit together to lunch and socialize”. Some students expressed that they had chosen Beech Ltd. because they were only scheduled to attend school in the mornings: “You chose school after their schedule… half days are super”, one of the girls said. The short school day gave them the opportunity to engage in sports of various types: I thought Beech was great… because I do my sport during my leisure time … the schedule’s great … I ride horses and that takes a lot of time … that’s why it was convenient to choose this school … (Student, Beech Ltd.)

In addition, many students at Beech Ltd. stressed the importance of having the chance to study with schoolmates similar to themselves as a basis for their choice: You usually choose schools where the students are equal in behavior and opinions and so on. And this school is equal with me, I think. (Student, Beech Ltd.)

Similarly, Lena, the girl quoted in the introduction of the chapter, claimed that as she had wanted to make a well-informed education choice, she had “visited about 20 open houses”, all offering the program she wanted to attend. Nevertheless, the only reason why she ended up at Beech Ltd. was that its students were “just like” her and she felt she “could fit in there”. Notable is that Lena’s and other students’ expressions of “fitting in” at Beech Ltd. were often connected to performance: “I think many students apply to schools based on their grades… These class differences decide which school you end up at”. Some students expressed that the exchange value of education (cf. Beach & Dovemark, 2009, 2011) was one important criterion for their choosing Beech Ltd. The school’s reputation of preparing for future university studies was well known, and the school marketed itself as a school for students who “want a little more” (Beech Ltd.’s website). According to the students, a school’s or specific program’s admission scores reflected its reputation.

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A low admission score suggested an education for students with poor grades and was associated with specific characteristics: There is a huge difference between students who have good grades and those who don’t (…) and they also behave differently (…) it’s completely different kinds of people. There are those who are lazy and don’t want to do anything. (Student, Beech Ltd.)

Less high-performing schools or schools with a high number of immigrants—such as Ash Public—were constructed as the “others” and “losers”, and their students were accused of “smoking a lot”; being “disruptive and screaming”; being “messy”; and “not really being interested in studying”. These attitudes were mainly based on rumors and so-called “hot knowledge” (Bunar & Ambrose, 2018), and had affected the Beech Ltd. students’ willingness to apply to such a school: I’ve never been to Ash Public, so I don’t know what it looks like, but it’s not a school I would choose. Because I’ve heard that there’s a lot of trouble and fighting and things like that. (Student, Beech Ltd.) It has lower status … It’s because there are so many immigrant students, I guess. Then maybe you don’t want to choose that school … they’re not so engaged (…). If a Swedish person starts there maybe there will be some gossip about that, like ‘Aha, why is he starting at that school?’. It’s a bit weird… (Student, Beech Ltd.)

As indicated above, certain students were expected to choose certain schools. If someone broke the expected pattern, they could be regarded as atypical. Constructions of the “others” as different and dangerous also strengthened the feelings of belonging and we-ness among the students at Beech Ltd. (Alexander, 2006, 2013). To sum up: The student body’s social composition (middle-class, Swedish, rich families, high study achievement) and Beech Ltd.’s location in the city center resulted in a good reputation. The we-ness of the school culture was centered around performativity and an individualistic and personalized approach. Prejudice regarding other schools and students (immigrants, low performers) was part of the construction of this school culture. Although the students perceived Beech Ltd. as a stepping-stone for the future, the home rather than the school was the venue for learning.

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Discussion This chapter has focused on how school choice produces segregation and homogeneous school cultures. The aim was to analyze how the relation between a school’s compositions of student body, rumors, and ways of defining acceptable and unacceptable values and social characteristics structured students’ feelings of belonging or not belonging to a specific school culture. In our interviews, as well as in the observed educational practice at the two schools, we could see how symbolic boundaries were created based on binary discourses of we-ness and other-ness. By extension, the expressed feelings of belonging became a structuring force for the students and their processes of social inclusion and exclusion (Alexander, 2006, 2013). School choice can be seen as a mutual process whereby students and schools try to “find each other”. In our study, there was a reciprocal relationship between the school’s reputation and the social status of its students; that is, the student identities were largely reflected in the school culture and vice versa (Bunar & Ambrose, 2018; Dovemark & Holm, 2017; Harling, 2019). In our data, the school’s reputation might help explain why the white middle-class students did not apply to the suburban schools—but the reputation of Beech Ltd. did not prevent immigrant students from applying to this or other inner-city schools. According to the school management at Ash Public, every year numerous immigrant students from the segregated suburbs applied to and were accepted at prestigious inner-city schools, dominated by study-motivated Swedish middle-class students. Thus, it was not the reputation of being at a high-­ performing school with “Swedes” that constrained their school choices, but rather their experiences of being an outsider in the homogeneous school culture at Beech Ltd. that pushed them “back home”. Alienation and feelings of not belonging, not “fitting in”, at the city schools made them return to Ash Public, where they felt included and comfortable. The homogenous identities that emerged in our analysis partly, but not solely, had to do with the students’ social and ethnic background. Also, norms and values formed distinctions regarding how to be and act in order to belong. Thus, it was particularly the homogenized school culture at Beech Ltd. that was unable to enlarge its we-ness toward a more pluralistic cultural order. The downside of such social processes is that they not only constructed homogenous schools with homogenous student groups, but also paved the way for prejudice and stereotypes concerning the “other”.

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While Ash Public, situated on the outskirts of the city, was frequently encumbered by a negative reputation, the opposite was generally true of the inner-city school, Beech Ltd. (cf. Lindbäck & Sernhede, 2013). However, in line with previous research (Bunar, 2008, 2010, Lindgren, 2010), our analysis indicated that the image presented from “outside” school differed from the one perceived and described by the actors from “inside”. There was a mismatch between the experiences expressed by students and the schools’ “public reputation”. Although Ash Public had a bad, and in many senses disastrous, reputation, its students and staff described a picture of warmth, friendship, and security. Students at Ash Public were actually positive regarding education, and they regarded it as their opportunity for a promising future. The students saw their school as a venue of learning, fellowship, and solidarity. The more privileged and high-performing students at the highly ranked Beech Ltd. expressed more criticism, and rather preferred the short school days. Doing most of their schoolwork at home allowed them to spend time on and develop their private interests (cf. Beach & Dovemark, 2009, 2011). In this sense, Beech Ltd. became a distributor of tasks, which the students performed individually at home (i.e. home as a venue for learning). The Beech Ltd. students expressed the private and individual as an important reason why they chose this particular school. They seemingly took a rather pragmatic stance, regarding school as a stepping-stone to university studies. The students at Ash Public mentioned the collective and the community within the school as positive, and as a precondition for learning and success. They felt at home and safe there, which showed to be the most crucial aspects of their school choice. We would argue that the environment at Beech, more than at Ash, served to construct competitive educational identities and to consolidate divisions between successful and less successful students both within and outside the school. Feelings of other-­ness were produced and spatially related to a mix of social, ethnic, and educational dimensions (Lindgren, 2010, p. 84). Symbolic boundaries were drawn between those from the inner city and those from the territorially stigmatized suburbs (cf. Dovemark, 2013; Gudmundsson et al., 2013). The Swedish Education Act (SFS, 2010, p. 800) stipulates that education should provide equal access to education, irrespective of a student’s gender or their social or ethnic background. It should also be of equal standard, regardless of ownership and geographical location. In addition, the Swedish curriculum underlines the importance of school as a venue, a meeting point, between different social and cultural groups, with the

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school seen as an institution supporting solidarity and fellowship. However, this is not the case for the two schools in our study. There, the tendency is instead that the students never meet. We had two schools, one for immigrants in the stigmatized suburbs and one for white middle-class students in the city center. In line with other research, our analysis confirms that free school choice does not pave the way for social interaction between ethnic groups. According to our study, Swedish schooling today does not offer such possibilities for integration, full citizenship, or social transformation. The urban Bay City’s social, mental, and physical boundaries emerge as real obstacles to meetings and contacts between students at Ash Public and Beech Ltd. Although the two schools are located in the same city, in many ways they seem to be “worlds apart”.

References Alexander, J. C. (2006). The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexander, J.  C. (2013). Struggling Over the Mode of Incorporation: Backlash Against Multiculturalism in Europe. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(4), 531–556. Asp Onsjö, L., & Holm, A.-S. (2014). Governance by Marks: An Ethnographic Study of School Achievements and Gender. In A.  Arnesen, E.  Lahelma, E. Öhrn, & L.  Lundahl (Eds.), Fair and Competitive? Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Nordic Schooling (pp. 61–81). Tufnell Press. Ball, S. J., & Vincent, C. (1998). ‘I Heard It on the Grapevine’: Hot Knowledge and School Choice. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 19, 377–400. Barmark, M., & Lund, S. (2016). How School Choice Leads to Segregation: An Analysis of Structural Boundaries at Play. In E.  Harvey (Ed.), Secondary Education: Perspectives, Global Issues and Challenges (pp.  67–86). New  York: Nova Publisher. Beach, D., & Dovemark, M. (2007). Education and the Commodity Problem: Ethnographic Investigations of Creativity and Performativity in Swedish Schools. London: Tufnell Press. Beach, D., & Dovemark, M. (2009). Making Right Choices: An Ethnographic Investigation of Creativity and Performativity in Swedish Schools. Oxford Review of Education, 35(6), 689–704. Beach, D., & Dovemark, M. (2011). Twelve Years of Upper-Secondary Education in Sweden: The Beginnings of a Neo-liberal Policy Hegemony? Educational Review, 64(4), 313–327. Beach, D., & Dovemark, M. (2019). Equity and Choice for Newly Arrived Migrants. In M. Dalstedt & A. Fejes (Eds.), Neoliberalism and Market Forces in Education. Lessons from Sweden (pp. 33–48). New York: Routledge.

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Holm, A.-S., & Lundahl, L. (2019). A Stimulating Competition at the Swedish Upper Secondary School Market? In M.  Dalstedt & A.  Fejes (Eds.), Neoliberalism and Market Forces in Education. Lessons from Sweden (pp. 141–155). New York: Routledge. Holm, A.-S., & Lundström, U. (2011). “Living with the Market Forces”: Principals’ Perceptions of Market Competition in Swedish Upper Secondary School. EducationInquiry, 2(4), 601–617. Lidström, L., Holm, A.-S., & Lundström, U. (2014). Maximising Opportunity and Minimizing Risk? Young People’s Upper Secondary School Choices in Swedish Quasi-markets. Young, 22(1), 1–20. Lindbäck, J., & Sernhede, O. (2013). Divided City  – Divided School: Upper Secondary School Students and Urban Space. In G. Gudmundsson, D. Beach, & V. Vestel (Eds.), Youth and Marginalization. Young People from Immigrant Families in Scandinavia (pp. 155–179). London: Tufnell Press. Lindgren, J. (2010). Spaces of Social Inclusion and Exclusion. A Spatial Approach to Education Restructuring and Identity in Sweden. Education Inquiry, 1(2), 75–95. Lund, S. (2008). Choice Paths in the Swedish Upper Secondary Education: A Critical Discourse Analysisof Recent Reforms. Journal of Education Policy, 23(6), 633–648. Lund, S. (2015). School Choice, Ethnic Divisions and Symbolic Boundaries. New York: Palgrave Pivot. Lundahl, L., Erixon Arreman, I., Holm, A.-S., & Lundström, U. (2013). Educational Marketization the Swedish Way. Education Inquiry, 4(3), 497–517. Lundahl, L., Erixon Arreman, I., Holm, A.-S., & Lundström, U. (2014). Gymnasiet som marknad. Umeå: Boréa. OECD. (2014). When Is Competition Between Schools Beneficial? PISA in Focus 2014/08. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisainfocus/PISA-in-Focus-N42-(eng)FINAL.pdf Öhrn, E. (2011). Class and Ethnicity at Work: Segregation and Conflict in a Swedish Secondary School. Education Inquiry, 2(2), 345–357. Öhrn, E. (2012). Urban Education and Segregation: The Responses from Young People. European Educational Research Journal, 11(1), 45–57. Östh, J., Andersson, E., & Malmberg, Ö. (2013). School Choice and Increasing Performance Difference: A Counterfactual Approach. Urban Studies, 50(2), 407–425. Reay, D., David, M. E., & Ball, S. J. (2005). Degrees of Choice. Social Class, Race and Gender in Higher Education. London: Trenthams Books Limited. SFS. (2010:800). The Swedish Education Act. Stockholm: Ministry of Education. Skolverket. (2012). Likvärdig utbildning i svensk grundskola? En kvantitativ analys av likvärdighet över tid. Rapport374. Stockholm: Fritzes. Skolverket. (2013). Det svåra valet. Stockholm: Fritzes.

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Skolverket. (2018). Analyser av familjebakgrundens betydelse för skolresultaten och skillnader mellan skolor. Stockholm: Fritzes. Söderström, M., & Uusitalo, R. (2005). School Choice and Segregation: Evidence from an Admission Reform. Working Paper. IFAU (2005:7). Swedish Research Council. (2011). God Forskningssed. Vetenskapsrådets Rapportserie1: 2011. Wallström, H. (2018). Gymnasielärares mentorshandlingar. En verksamhetsteoretisk studie om lärararbete i förändring. Göteborg: Acta: Gothenburgesis Universitatis. Whitty, G. (2001). Education, Social Class and Social Exclusion. Journal of Education Policy, 16(4), 287–295. Wikström, C., & Wikström, M. (2005). Grade Inflation and School Competition. An Empirical Analysis Based on the Swedish Upper Secondary Schools. Economics and Education Review, 24(3), 309–322. Yang Hansen, K., & Gustafsson, J.-E. (2016). Causes of Educational Segregation in Sweden – School Choice or Residential Segregation. Educational Research and Evaluation, 21(1–2), 23–44.

CHAPTER 3

To Belong or Not? Anna Ambrose

At all the schools where I’ve been a student there’s been mostly immigrant students, but there [at the inner-city school]most of the students were Swedes and they weren’t mean to me or anything like that. They were nice, but I don’t know… [hesitates and sighs]…it felt kind of weird… They didn’t say “What’s up, buddy?” like we do. They said, “Hello” or maybe “Hi”. It’s not like Swedes are bad or anything… it was just…yeah… I don’t know…different. During the break we would hang out, but after school I went straight home, never stopped to hang out. Never hung out with friends after school. The schoolyard was small and boring, and when I got back here to Bridge Valley School it felt nice; I felt at home. (Araf, 7th grade, Bridge Valley School)

This quote highlights the importance of a strong relationship between schooling and students’ feelings of belonging. This is notable particularly for students like Araf, who has experience of being a student at two different schools, one in the inner city and one in his immediate neighborhood, Bridge Valley School. When Araf talks about his experiences from the inner-city school he describes feelings of non-belonging, based on the

A. Ambrose (*) School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (HuMUS), Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Lund (ed.), Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9_3

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other students all being “Swedes”. Because the students at the inner-city school behaved differently from him in their speech and manners, Araf felt like an outsider, like he did not belong there. When he speaks about his experiences he makes it very clear that nothing bad happened; he just experienced the differences between him and the other students. They were not like the students he was used to, those from his old school. The feelings of non-belonging at the inner-city school made Araf return to Bridge Valley School, where he felt included and was comfortable among his peers. In other words, in relation to school choice, Araf expresses what cultural sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander (2013, p. 536) highlights in relation to a multicultural society: “The affective and moral meaning of ‘us’—what might be called ‘we-ness’—is a fundamentally structuring social force.” This chapter examines the notion of an expressed we-ness and otherness at a school in a territorially stigmatized suburb with an aim to explore how school actors’ feelings of belonging are enacted with place as well as residential and school segregation. Further, the chapter aims to analyze how such boundaries are negotiated in daily school practice, and the ways in which they structure students’ and parents’ school choices.

The Study This chapter focuses on students (and their parents) and teachers at the Bridge Valley compulsory school, which serves students aged 6 to 16. Bridge Valley School is located in Bridge Valley, a suburb in one of Sweden’s larger cities, hereafter referred to as The City. A closer description of Bridge Valley, its school, and the structural conditions will follow later in the chapter. The data in this chapter is part of a research project around local school markets (see Ambrose, 2016).1 In order to understand the context of the local school market, where Bridge Valley School was one of three studied schools, statistical data, local media, and narratives around the neighborhoods were collected. Two of The City’s municipal educational represen-

1  All names of schools, participants, and places in The City are fictional. The empirical material in this chapter is part of a larger set of data. A total of 108 interviews (53 with students, 40 with school staff, and 15 with parents) in three school settings were carried out, along with extensive fieldwork at the three schools, for a period of one academic year.

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tatives were interviewed with a focus on their thoughts and perceptions around the organizational level of the local school market. In order to get a better understanding of the schools in question, in this case Bridge Valley School, the school’s website and information leaflets were analyzed. However, the main empirical data comes from visiting the schools and participating in the daily routine of two classes (7th and 9th grades—junior high school) over a period of one academic year (2012/2013). During my visits to the school, I took field notes and conducted informal interviews. I also collected artifacts such as notes, drawings, and texts made by students, all with the purpose of illuminating the daily practice, with a specific focus on the importance of revealing thoughts around schools and school choice. At Bridge Valley School I conducted 38 semi-structured interviews: 10 with staff members,2 21 with students, and 7 with parents. The parental interviews included both parents of children attending the school and those living close by who had chosen to send their children to school other than Bridge Valley School. In general, the interviews lasted 30–75 minutes, and in most cases the students were interviewed individually. After a request from the participants, three of the interviews with students and one of the parental interviews were conducted in pairs. All staff interviews were conducted individually. All material, written as well as audio, has been retained and secured, and all the material used in this chapter has been anonymized. All the participants were informed about the ethical codes applying to social science studies, and all gave their consent to participating in the study prior to the interviews and fieldwork (Swedish Research Council, 2011).3 I started all the interviews with a question, asking the participant to describe him/herself as a student or teacher. I also asked the participants to describe their school in their own words (Hammersley & Atkinson,  Principal, teachers, student care, guidance counselor, and leisure-time staff member.  As many of the informants are aged 13–16 years, it is important to point out that consent to participate was obtained from both the students themselves and their guardians. I did not use any specific methods based on the informants’ age: the overall challenge was instead to adapt the research methods so they would resonate with the young people’s concerns and routines. This could involve adapting the language, conceptualizing words and meanings, and so on. I also want to point out the importance of not seeing young people as a homogeneous group, feeling, experiencing, and acting in one certain way. Like all other informants, they are all individual agents with different personalities and skills that must be taken into account when interviews are conducted (see Christensen, 2004; Christensen & James, 2017). 2 3

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2007). The intention was to encourage the use of storytelling, to allow the participants to describe how they see themselves as a student or teacher and how they make meaning of their school setting (cf. Geertz, 1973). The strengths of using storytelling are that the method allows for multiple truths, and participants can describe the same social context in several different ways. I also asked questions about the participants’ backgrounds, including details such as country of origin (if applicable), educational background in the family, and parental occupation.

Belonging, Non-belonging, and Symbolic Boundaries The analytical approach in this chapter draws on the concepts of belonging, non-belonging, meaning-making, and constructions of symbolic boundaries. The chapter has a special interest in when and where the students feel they belong and, further, why and how they construct symbolic boundaries within their own context and practices. Lamont (1992) describes symbolic boundaries as conceptual distinctions that make it possible to create categories of objects, people, and even time and space. Furthermore, symbolic boundaries presuppose inclusion (what is desirable) and exclusion (what is repulsive or impure), as well as a gray zone, the elements of which are seen as indifferent. At a school where the majority of students and teachers share a common understanding of what kinds of values, norms, and social characteristics are appreciated, symbolic boundaries could be understood as a school culture, as school culture can easily be described as a set of shared manners, values, and thoughts (Lund, 2015; Trondman, Krantz, Pettersson, & Barmark, 2012). The school culture creates meaning in the social world of the school. Furthermore, actors who share a school culture—a set of shared manners, values, and thoughts—tend to develop strong feelings of “we-­ ness”, of belonging to that specific school. This we-ness can become a structuring force for the symbolic boundaries, and also give fuel to the processes of inclusion and exclusion. Symbolic boundaries define who is pure and included, and who is impure and therefore excluded. As discussed in the previous chapter, the respective student bodies at Swedish schools have become more homogeneous since the introduction of the school choice policy. Previous studies (see e.g. Dovemark & Holm, 2015; S. Lund, 2015 and Lundahl, Erixon-Arreman, Holm, & Lundström, 2013; Lundahl, Erixon-­Arreman, Holm, & Lundström, 2014) show that students have become experts in expressing what kind of personalities or student characteristics are associated with a certain school. This “expertise”

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is also used in selecting one’s school of preference (Ambrose, 2016; Bunar & Ambrose, 2018; Kallstenius, 2010). Furthermore, the National Agency for Education states that there are increasing differences between schools based on parental educational background. Parents with a higher educational background are sending their children to the same schools, which is widening the gap between schools (Skolverket, 2018). To fully understand how school choice operates on a school market and what an increasing homogenization of the student body means, beyond marketization and competition, it’s important to analyze the symbolic boundaries, we-ness, and otherness that often more or less unconsciously influence parents’ and children’s meaning-making in relation to education and school choice. Or, as Lund (2015, p. 87) argues, “school choice is a process that enacts young people’s way of understanding and defining themselves in relation to others”. In the following parts of the chapter, I will start with a closer presentation of The City and the school in the study, Bridge Valley School, with the purpose of contextualizing the school’s structural boundaries. After that, I will describe how students at the school express love for their neighborhood and how important this love is for their understanding of what might define a good school and a good school choice. I will then describe different feelings of belonging, how they interplay with teachers’ expectations and students’ achievements, and how students negotiate these feelings through jokes. Finally, I will conclude by discussing why it is important to understand feelings of belonging and non-belonging in regard to school choice and schooling in this era of marketized education.

The City and Bridge Valley School The City—one of Sweden’s largest—is, like many other larger cities, highly polarized socio-economically and ethnically. Housing segregation, based on migration status and income, has long existed and been on the increase in The City (Andersson, 2008; Andersson, Bråmå, & Hogdal, 2007, 2009; Lilja, 2011). Housing segregation influences local compulsory schools through the catchment area principle, but previous research states that school choice reforms have also contributed to increased segregation between schools (Böhlmark & Holmlund, 2011; Östh & Malmberg, 2013; Yang-Hansen & Gustafsson, 2016). For the year the study was conducted, the median income in Bridge Valley was $20,300–20,4004 and 4

 200,000–210,000 SEK.

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the unemployment rate over five percent, and almost 80 percent of the area’s inhabitants lived in housing developments. Bridge Valley School, located in an area seen by many as a poor, stigmatized, migrant area, is one of the schools where parents’ ability to make a choice has had an impact on the student body. As discussed in Chap. 2, school choice policy has increased differences between the student body compositions in Swedish schools. Both high schools and compulsory schools have become more homogeneous when it comes to students’ parental backgrounds. At the time of the study, 2012–2013, students within The City were allocated to the compulsory school nearest their residence if their family did not exercise their right to make a school choice. In Bridge Valley, over 50 percent of families living in the local catchment area of Bridge Valley School had chosen another school for their children from the early school years (aged 6–7), while the average for The City was around 20 percent. Using the right to make a school choice is especially noticeable if the family’s educational background is higher (cf. Böhlmark, Holmlund, & Lindahl, 2015; Skolverket, 2018). This factor had an effect on the student body composition at the school. The proportion of residents with a post-secondary education (college degree) living in Bridge Valley was 35 percent; among the students’ families, the same figure was 29 percent. The percentage of foreign-born living in Bridge Valley, or residents whose parents had both been born outside Sweden, was 65 percent. This can be compared with 84 percent of the students at Bridge Valley School.5 The outflux of students, primarily those whose parents have a university degree and are Swedish born, makes Bridge Valley School an opt-out school (Bunar, 2010)—a school that students and their parents do not choose. The principal at Bridge Valley School confirms this notion of the school as one that is not Number 1 among the parents, stating: There’s an idea among parents that this school—or this applies to schools located in the suburbs, where very few “Swedes” live—that “my children can’t attend that kind of school”. 5  In the year of the study, 36 percent of the students at the school had been born outside Sweden, 48 percent had parents who had both been born outside Sweden, and 16 percent had been born in Sweden and had parents who had both been born in Sweden. These figures can be compared to those for The City, where 30.7 percent had an immigrant background and 56.4 percent had an upper-secondary education. Immigrant background means: foreign-born resident, or resident whose parents were both born outside Sweden.

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One of the parents who had used the right to make a school choice for her children is Maggan, a university-educated, white middle-class mother, working at a publishing company. She explains her choice as follows: We do love to live in Bridge Valley; it’s green and beautiful here. And we live close to the subway, but like many other parents living here in Bridge Valley, we’re quite aware [in Swedish, hyfsat medvetna]. We’ve chosen to put our kids in a school other than Bridge Valley School; we don’t think the schools here are good enough.

According to Maggan, it is the “aware” parents who use the school choice policy. Further on in the interview, she says this counts both for parents with a native Swedish background as well as for immigrants. She continues, saying she does not think “the kids at the Bridge Valley School have the right values”; that “their families are from cultures that don’t share my family’s values”. Previous research has also shown that school choice policy is used to a higher extent if the closest school is described as an “immigrant school”. Furthermore, parents tend to select a school where the student body’s ethnic and social structure matches their preferences (Ambrose, 2016; Bunar, 2009; Bunar & Ambrose, 2016; Kallstenius, 2010; Lindbäck & Sernhede, 2012; Östh & Malmberg, 2013; Trumberg, 2011). When I asked the school staff “What students attend Bridge Valley school?” the most common answers involved versions of “immigrant students” and “students who might not have the best home environment”. Magda, one of the teachers, illustrates this: It’s mostly immigrant students. There’s not as much unemployment as there used to be; most of the parents do have jobs, I think—that’s improved since before, but they [the parents] don’t have any higher education. Of course, there are those who don’t have work. Alternatively, they might be single parents and have a hard time because of that. They’re not that motivated to help their children [with their homework], but they think we do a good job and they let us do our job; they think it’s good if we help them with homework and I think they’re positive to schooling but aren’t particularly interested. They might not even check their children’s grades.

In this teacher’s reflections on what kinds of students attend the school, some clear distinctions become visible. There is a distinction between who sends their children to the school and who does not. The dividing lines are “immigrants” and “Swedes”, and “aware” or “don’t care”. Few of the teachers mentioned more structural reasons for a more homogenized student body.

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The school choice policy has created an educational market of “producers” and “consumers” of education (Ball, 2003; Reay, Crozier, & James, 2011). In the area surrounding Bridge Valley, a local school market has emerged with clear alternatives for the “consumers”, with physical proximity between the schools. Students and their families living in Bridge Valley have over 30 schools within reasonable traveling distance6 to choose from. With easy access via the subway, students can also travel into the more central parts of The City, which leads to an outflux of students from Bridge Valley School. This has led to Bridge Valley School being seen as a school “you don’t send your children to” if you are an “aware” parent. However, its closeness to The City, and to more “Swedish” areas, might also lead to benefits for the school, a factor I will discuss in the next two section along with students’ declarations of love for Bridge Valley.

Love for the Neighborhood and Feeling of Belonging to the Neighborhood and School Bridge Valley was built as part of a Swedish welfare program for housing projects in the 1960s and 70s (in Swedish: miljonprogrammet).7 Over a period of ten years almost a million apartments were built, most of them in the larger cities of Sweden, in a project aiming to deal with the housing shortage (Hort, 2014). The area was built rapidly, consists mainly of undiversified multistory houses and, like many areas with less expensive apartments, has accommodated mainly working-class families and families that have more recently arrived in Sweden. The housing project drew a great deal of criticism for its monotonic and uniform environment (Andersson, 2008; Ristilammi, 1994), and the central parts of Bridge Valley, where Bridge Valley School is located, are no exception to this. Bridge Valley epitomized the criticism of the housing program; more established families moved away from the apartments in its more central parts, and the quite cheap apartments became the homes of newly arrived  Requiring no more than 15–20 minutes walking or biking time from home.  Word choice is important here. Using the term “housing project” or the Swedish “miljonprogrammet” could potentially give readers certain notions of a place’s spatial capital, which could increase the stigmatization of these places. This is not my intention. This transition of spatial capital is described by several of the informants in this study, and I would like the reader to consider the choice of words and the risks I am taking by using words that might reflect already contentious images. 6 7

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immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s, which led to Bridge Valley coming to be known as an “immigrant area”. The school’s reputation is highly affected by the fact that the area is described as “poor” and an “immigrant area”. Its students and their teachers have to deal with, to use Wacquant’s term, a territorial stigmatization of both their neighborhood and their school (Wacquant, 1999). The school’s principal explained: …if the papers write something bad about Bridge Valley, something like now this has happened in the neighborhood…or that children are at risk in Bridge Valley, it affects us. We’ve actually thought of changing the school’s name so we’re not so connected to the neighborhood.

Among parents and teachers, the relation between the school and the neighborhood is seen as problematic and negative. However, among the students their love for the neighborhood is a factor that makes them love their school, despite the knowledge of the bad reputation and territorial stigmatization. The students state that they “feel a great love” for the neighborhood as well as their school. Gabriel, a ninth grader, illuminates this: It’s the people who live in Bridge Valley, Bee Valley [an area close by, also territorially stigmatized; see further in this chapter] and places like this. It’s hard to explain, I don’t know how to explain it, but here we have more of a kinship than just being ordinary friends. We’re more like brothers and sisters. That’s how I see it, anyway. We come from the same kinds of countries, we have the same religion, we all have the same manners, and so on.

The students all express a high level of what Back (1996) calls neighborhood nationalism; a neighborhood nationalism that also becomes loyalty to the local school. For most of the students, there is no alternative other than to attend Bridge Valley School. Being from the neighborhood, and belonging to it, makes you want to attend the local school. They feel like they belong to each other, to the area of Bridge Valley and furthermore to the school, despite knowing how people living outside their local community see them. Many of the students at the school have their family backgrounds in other countries. Several different languages are spoken at the school. Despite the mix of origin and diversity, the students are most often referred to as “immigrants” or “immigrant students” among themselves and by

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their teachers. When the students are asked “What kinds of students attend this school?”, the most common answer is something like Yonas, seventh grade, says, stating that “it’s a big school with people from many countries”, or like Araf’s answer, that “it’s an immigrant school”. Rafya, a seventh grader, gives another example: Bridge Valley School…yeah…it’s a school located in the suburbs, where not many [students] will go very far. Well, students get out of here with good grades and so on…but because the school is in the suburbs people think it’s full of suburban kids who’ll get nowhere because we live in the suburbs and are immigrants.

Similar to Araf in the initial quote, several students claim that the fact that Bridge Valley School is an “immigrant school” is why they feel like they belong to the school. They know they would feel lost in another school setting, where most of the students were “Swedes”; they would not feel “at home” there. Belonging seems to be highly connected to both a love for the neighborhood and the fact that the school is perceived as an “immigrant” school. The expressed love and kinship make the students feel like they belong. However, they are also highly aware of the school’s bad reputation and how this affects people’s school choices. To some extent, the school is seen as “a school you don’t choose”, even among the students there. However, as will be discussed in the next section, this is beginning to change.

School Choice and the “Domino Effect” As in many larger cities, a single street can demonstrate the polarization in The City. Closely located to Bridge Valley, divided by only a street, there is a residential area, here called Bay Valley. The respondents in this study regard Bay Valley as a “wealthier” and more “Swedish” area. Statistics confirm the picture of Bay Valley as a more affluent area, with a median income of $43,000–44,000,8 an unemployment rate under two percent, and more than 80 percent of its residents living in houses. Most parents living near the local school in Bay Valley send their children to Bay Valley School, which is also a very popular school for families living outside the immediate area. 8

 430,000–440,000 SEK.

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The affluent area of Bay Valley and the popularity of Bay Valley School have a direct effect on Bridge Valley School. Its closeness to Bay Valley leads to an influx of students from areas further from town than Bridge Valley, areas that several respondents in this study see as even more stigmatized than Bridge Valley. One of these areas is Bee Valley, an area the respondents in this study describe as “insecure”, “rowdy”, and “dangerous”. As in Bridge Valley, Bee Valley’s bad reputation affects the schools there. However, it also has an effect on Bridge Valley School. Being located very close to the “Swedish” area of Bay Valley, Bridge Valley School suddenly becomes an opt-in school for families living in Bee Valley (compare with Bunar, 2010; Kallstenius, 2010). Once again, the principal of Bridge Valley School says: There’s some kind of common trend. You [parents] strive to get into town or closer to town, along the subway line. Moreover, when students [from the suburbs] attend the inner-city schools, the students at the inner-city move further on to free schools. So this creates spaces that are filled by students traveling into town, and when their schools have spaces available they’re filled by students living further out from the city center. It’s some kind of domino effect.

What Bridge Valley School’s principal describes is a movement of students based on the structural and symbolic boundaries of The City and the relational status of place and space. Helena, one of the teachers at Bridge Valley School, further explains this: They apply to The Bay School [a school that is very close by, located in a wealthier neighborhood] first, but when they don’t get in they apply to us instead. We’re located so close, so we’re practically “The Bay School”; we’re closer to the city center and we have more Swedes. You wouldn’t pick a school further out on the subway line; maybe you pick one that has a certain curriculum like The English School, but I’d say that The Bay School and Pine Tree School are the big opt-in schools. Of course, they get jam-packed and I do believe that’s because they’re located closer to The City and have more Swedes [compared to Bridge Valley School]. Then we get students from Bee Valley applying to our school, cause we’re closer to Swedishness or whatever you can call it… [Shrugs her shoulders and sighs] it might sound strange…but closer to Swedish society. Anna: And how is it further out along the subway line?

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[Helena is quiet for a short time and then continues] … Yes, you can really reflect on that. I think it’s worse than here. This is my personal view, but it could be that it’s worse in some neighborhoods. I do believe that, here, we at least try to maintain a certain level. We might not have as high a level as, for example, they have at The Bay School, but we don’t have it really tough either.

Nasiche is a ninth grader at Bridge Valley School who decided to apply there instead of going to a school in Bee Valley, where she lives. She arrived with her family five years ago from Uganda, and as soon as the family had settled in, they started looking for a school for her: I live in Bee Valley, and I LOVE it; but education there, NO THANKS! [Emphasizing the words]. I’m grateful that I’m at this school and didn’t end up at a school in Bee Valley, you see. It’s a hundred times worse there and I don’t want to go to school there; I don’t belong there. I have many friends in Bee Valley, but most of them go to schools in other neighborhoods. They don’t want to attend a school in Bee Valley either, ’cause if you go to a school there it’s like going to school in Kurdistan or Iraq. Of course it’s mixed here, but not like there [sighs].

Schools like Bridge Valley, located close to more prominent areas, become more attractive schools for families with children who cannot get into a school closer to town. The reflections by Roger, Helena, and Nasiche show how closely connected space and place are to which schools are seen as attractive. Both structural and symbolic spatial boundaries play into which schools are seen as attractive. I have discussed how important the sense of belonging to a certain place is for students’ sense of belonging to a school, and furthermore how this is relational and connected to comprehensions of place, or in Massey’s words (2005) could be described as space. In this study, it appears as if schools in more “Swedish” areas or schools that are closer to “Swedishness” are those that students and parents are more likely to choose. However, for many students a school like Bridge Valley School can be the only reasonable option, as attending another school might make them feel lost or perhaps even that they do not belong. In the following section, I will discuss how a sense of belonging and thoughts around school choice can play out in everyday practices.

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Feelings of Belonging to Bridge Valley School As shown, the students at Bridge Valley School feel like they belong to Bridge Valley. They feel at home there, where they can “hang out with other students, who also have an immigrant background or live in the suburbs”. These feelings of belonging, and the importance of having friends with a similar background, are also at play when the students discuss potential school choices. One afternoon, Claudia, a girl with a Chilean family background, discusses her thoughts around a potential change of school with some of her classmates: It’s Friday afternoon and seventh grade has handicraft. Autumn is coming and school’s been on for a couple of weeks; the students are sewing t-shirts. They’re at different stations, everyone is working, and there’s a bit of ‘Friday feeling’ in the classroom. Music is playing and the students are talking about different things. When I approach the station where Claudia is working with her friends, I can hear them talking about a potential school change. Claudia, who had previously expressed thoughts around a change of school, is now talking about a potential school in town. However, in regard to the school, she’s a bit worried that there will be no “immigrants” there—no students who have an immigrant background like her. She knows that her friend has friends who go there, and wants to ask about her experiences of the school: Claudia: Classmate: Claudia: Classmate:

Is it just Swedes [in Swedish svennar] there? No, not just. Good, but how many? Is it like 60 percent or 75 Swedes, or what? Oh, I don’t know… (Field notes)

Student body composition is the most common theme mentioned by students at the school when discussing school choice. Several of them express that they would not like to change to a school where the majority of students were, as they put it, “Swedes”. They suspected that they would not feel like they belonged at a purely, as they put it, “too-Swedish school”. Previous research shows that student body composition and the division between “Swedes” and “immigrants” often also serve as a symbolic distinction between what denotes a “good” and “bad” school (Ambrose, 2016; Jonsson, 2015; Lund, 2015; Lundahl et al., 2014). However, even though Bridge Valley School competes with schools perceived as “better” or more “Swedish”, it might be the natural choice for some students and

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their parents since it feels like home. Dilar, a mother of three who is originally from Turkey but has lived in Sweden for the past 18 years, and who works as teacher, states: In Turkey, I would have picked the best school…but here…what should I say [hesitates and sighs] we’re second-…or even third-class citizens; we work and do everything we should, but we don’t have the same opportunities as you [pointing at me, as representative of “a Swede”]. You all inherit, you all have better finances and, you know, we don’t have that opportunity so I wouldn’t choose like my sister did. She chose a school downtown for her child, and she [thinking of her niece] is suffering for that. Because when there’s a holiday all the other kids go on vacation, to Spain or somewhere else and we can’t, the child gets a wound inside her; they don’t feel good if they can’t have what their friends have. My daughter has it a lot better here where she can be like the others, and now to high school, she didn’t pick [names a school downtown, predominantly “Swedish”]. She said, “I wouldn’t be like them, Mom”.

Being like the others at a certain school is a recurring theme among the students at Bridge Valley School and their parents. Making a school choice outside your neighborhood could lead to not feeling at home (c.f Dovmark & Holm, 2015). Furthermore, the students express worries around dreams and achievements, for instance that Bridge Valley School and its teachers might not live up to the same standards as other more “Swedish” schools, even though they express satisfaction with and affection for the teachers, a theme I will address more closely in the next section.

Student Dreams and Achievements When I ask about what the students dream of, they express a variety of dreams. They want to become lawyers, doctors, hair stylists, teachers, or football players; in other words, they are just like students at every other junior high school in Sweden. Teachers at Bridge Valley School express a concern about “the lack of Swedishness” among the students. Some of the teachers also express concerns that they might expect less of their students than teachers at other schools might. They accept that the students should get passing grades, but express that they do not encourage them to attempt any of the higher grades.9 The counselor at the school states: 9  In junior high school in Sweden there is a grading scale from E to A, where A means passing with special distinction and E means simply passing. It is also possible to get an F, which is a failing grade.

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That thing with assumptions, I do think we could have higher expectations on our students. Sometimes I do think we’re more of an E school than an A school.

The concern around not encouraging or “pushing” students harder is common among the teaching staff. They express that they are very good at “taking care” of students, evaluating their social skills, but that they can see a difference in standards compared to other schools, which they most often describe as more “Swedish”. Even students expressed thoughts around lower achievements at Bridge Valley School based on what they hear from friends at other schools. Dalia, in ninth grade, says: I know that in town there, you get a good education…or so I’ve heard anyway. I’ve heard that all the students there get at least 22010 points, and over. No particular school though…just heard [sighs].

Dalia, who has quite good grades and is about to move on from junior high to high school, is concerned that her grades will not be as highly valued as grades from other schools. Later in the interview, she tells me she has chosen a high school with a student body composition similar to that at Bridge Valley School for two reasons: firstly, because she wants to feel like she belongs, which she thinks is only possible among other “immigrant students”; and secondly, because she is worried that her education at Bridge Valley School has not prepared her in the same way as other junior high schools might have. During the year of this study, Bridge Valley School was also struggling with grades lower than the average in The City. The merit value for the school was 180 points, while the average in The City was 220 (2012/2013). Lower grades can be connected to student achievement, but there is also a risk that teachers’ expectations of what their students can achieve might play a part in how the students perform. Previous research has shown that teachers’ expectations form one of the more important factors for student achievement (Håkansson & Sundberg, 2012). The teachers at Bridge Valley School describe the students as “social” rather than “academic”, in the sense that they are perceived as having very good social skills but no real ability to learn the more academic schoolwork. The lack of academic skills 10  Every grade corresponds to a number: A = 20, B = 17.5, C = 15, D = 12.5, E = 10, and F = 0. Students can get up to 340 points.

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the teachers refer to involves the students having a “lack of Swedishness”. This “lack of Swedishness” is most often expressed in terms such as the students “not having enough knowledge of the Swedish language” or “lacking support at home”, but also in terms of their “living in a bubble” or “not knowing Swedish norms and values”. One example of this comes from Katarina, a teacher in seventh grade, who explains it as follows: Bridge Valley School is a multicultural school with loads of fantastic students and with very engaged teachers. It’s a sociable school. Kids are socially skilled. Then there are many students who have great difficulty with their language [Swedish]. There are loads of different languages at the school, and very few Swedes. Those who live in Bridge Valley with a Swedish background and who have stable family circumstances tend to go to other schools. Those who have a Swedish background and stay at this school tend to come from socially broken families, with loads of problems.

With a focus on the individual, difference, and a lack of “Swedishness”, there is a risk that the teachers at Bridge Valley School (often without intending to) end up reproducing discourses and adding to students’ feelings of non-belonging. Being described as “the Other”, as “an immigrant”, and as “someone who has impossible dreams” might lead to the students giving up even before they start. To deal with the feelings of non-belonging, as we have seen, the students express belonging to Bridge Valley in general and to the school in particular. To deal with descriptions of being an “immigrant” and “Otherness”, the students use jokes. In the last section of this chapter, I will give a glimpse at how belonging and non-belonging can be expressed on a daily basis at the school through “jokes” about ethnicity and newly arrived immigrant students; in other words, constructing otherness within their own school’s student body.

“Jokes” and Making Your Own “Other” As I have shown in this chapter, feelings of belonging in Bridge Valley and at Bridge Valley School but not in the rest of society or at a more Swedish school are a recurring theme among the students of Bridge Valley School. The feelings of non-belonging are almost always connected to expressed differences, regarding whether you are an “immigrant” or a “Swede”, or

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whether you live in Bridge Valley or not. One afternoon, ninth graders Lara and Joana start talking about the differences as they see them: Joana: It’s ‘us’ who live here and ‘them’ who live there. It’s a big difference. It might only be one [subway] station to Bay Valley; but there, there are only Swedes and here there are only immigrants. Everyone divides Swedes and immigrants into groups. The whole city does it. Lara: Swedes, they [live and go to school] in the nicer areas and we’re on the fringes of the city, and we feel left out. Joana was born in Sweden but her parents were both born in Poland, while Lara was born in Kurdistan and came to Sweden with her family when she was three. Both girls express feelings of being, as Lara puts it, “left out”. Feelings of being left out or not belonging are expressed by many of the students at Bridge Valley School, when they compare their living circumstances or school to society in general. These are feelings that the students have to deal with on a daily basis, and that to some extent are dealt with through jokes. In the following section, I will first give an example how jokes can be a way to deal with feelings of non-belonging, used as a resource. Then, I will give another example of jokes rather being used to construct one’s own “Other”, in situations when the jokes can be understood as ways of negotiating who is inside and who isn’t (Lamont, 1992). Once again, Lara and Joana: Lara:

You know, we have a lot of “you’re like this because you’re from”… yeah, around where you come from and such. Joana: Yeah… Polish people are known for drinking a lot, and then there can be someone who says “Let’s hope your genes don’t show” and so on. Lara: Yeah, she can say [pointing at Joana] “you’re like that, a bit slow, ‘cause you’re a Kurd” and so on. On the other hand, I might say “you bloody Pole, go and drink”, or if she says something weird I might say, “shut up, and drink”. That’s the way we are, do you get it? [Turning towards me with this question] Anna: I guess, but what kind of ideas are there?

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Joana: Yeah, Bosnians, who drink too, and Russians… [Lara interrupts Joana, the girls seem to become excited; perhaps they found this amusing to talk about?] Lara: …and Kurds who are… [Hesitates for a second before continuing with a laugh] …they’re all kebab. Joana: Oh yeah and so are Turks, they’re so kebab too. Lara: Yeah, they’re all going to work at a kebab kiosk. And if we for example have a Turk here and we have math class and he doesn’t want to work, or if he doesn’t know what to do, then his friends laugh at him and say, “you don’t have any future anyway so why don’t you just get a job at a kiosk and fix me a kebab”. Everyone laughs. The jokes are often used as ways of placing ethnicity under negotiation (cf. Jonsson, 2007, 2015; Kasselias Wiltgren, 2014). Moreover, by using jokes and creating symbolic boundaries and drawing distinctions between different groups of migrants at the school, the students are playing with ideas of who belongs and who does not. The play with cultural differences and jokes about each other can be understood as ways of coping with and strengthening their outsider culture and simultaneously coping with the fact that they feel left out from the rest of society. Lamont (1992) argues that identity can be defined relationally, and by reinforcing images of cultural norms the students develop a sense of group membership. However, as mentioned, jokes can also be seen as a way of dealing with feelings of who belongs and who does not. In the next section, I will give an example of jokes being used as a way of coping with the feelings of being left out. At Bridge Valley School there is one group of students who are perceived as “different”: those who are newly arrived (cf. Back & Shamser, 2012; Kasselias Wiltgren, 2014). The word “import” is used in the corridors and classrooms to differentiate this group of students. When I ask the students when and why they use “import”, they tell me that the word is not used in a purely positive way, but is rather most often used negatively, and usually to draw a clear distinction between who belongs and who does not. In the words of Lamont (1992), the word is used to mark a difference between the pure and impure. It is a word used to maintain borders between the group of students who are more established, the ones who belong, and the group of students who have more recently arrived in Sweden, those who still have not earned their way into full belonging. The following field note is one example of the students using the word in a way that is more playful to draw a distinction of who belongs:

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It is Friday afternoon and the students in ninth grade have an extra curriculum hour of homework, because the teachers believe many of them will have trouble meeting the goals at the end of the semester. All the students are working quietly but one of the desks is making a creaky noise so two students, irritated at the noise, ask the teacher if it is possible to fix it. The teacher says yes, leaves the classroom, and comes back after a short time. With him he has tools and a student as a helper. The teacher tells the class that this student has technical skills and that he has asked him to help with the desk. The student, a boy, is one of the newly arrived students. He starts to fix the desk and two of the girls in the classroom giggle, and then tease him with the words “check out the import, he thinks he knows what he’s doing”. The whole class giggles. The boy’s face reddens, and the teacher tries to make the class be quiet again. (Field note)

When students at Bridge Valley School play with what they see as cultural differences, or differences between who is newly arrived and who is not, they are able to rearrange who belongs and who does not. Referring to certain students as “imports” becomes a way of restructuring the hierarchy, a way of differentiating both in practice and in speech who belongs and who does not. Furthermore, it is a way of consolidating an existing order in society; because by placing the newly arrived students at the bottom of the ladder, they improve their own position (Back & Shamser, 2012).

Discussion In this final part I will conclude and discuss why feelings of belonging and non-belonging serve as an important analytical lens for understanding school choice and schooling in this era of marketized education. In the interviews as well as the field notes, students talked about living in “an immigrant area”, “being students at an immigrant school” with other “immigrant students”, and being “left out” from the rest of society. So did the interviewed parents. Despite their knowledge that both the school and the neighborhood had a bad reputation, and that other schools might be “better” and “give higher grades”, Bridge Valley School was seen as the most “natural” school choice for the students and their parents. For the students and their teachers, school achievement between schools was closely connected to Swedishness. According to the teachers’ low expectations and the academic achievements among the students at Bridge Valley School were related to the school’s lack of core groups of “Swedish” students. From a point of equity, these increased patterns of

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school segregation might be problematic. Beach and Dovemark (2007) state that since the Swedish school system increased the level of individual responsibility through marketization, equity has been jeopardized due to the responsibility being shifted from the school to the individual. The researchers use the concept of “pupil responsibility” (Beach & Dovemark, 2007, p. 62) and state that this is successfully hiding the fact that preconceptions, structural injustice, and disjunctively allocated capital, rather than individual students’ shortcomings, might be the reasons behind differences between schools. Further, actively choosing to go to Bridge Valley School like Dalia, returning to the school like Araf, or not following through with plans to change school like Claudia are all examples of how important feelings of belonging are to those who make these decisions. Their strong feelings of belonging to a place and a school where they can be themselves, with friends with the same social characteristics and manners, became a structuring force for these students’ school choices. Thus, students’ schooling is something more than just a venue of learning; it is also a place for fellowship and solidarity. This study highlights the fact that thoughts around school choice are relational. For the students living in Bridge Valley, there are few other options for schools where they would feel like they belong. A school in a more “Swedish” area would feel too “Swedish”, and a school further out from the city center would feel “too little” Swedish. Therefore, many in this diverse student group remain at Bridge Valley School. On the other hand, many Bridge Valley students choose to start at schools dominated by Swedish middle-class students, at the same time as students from Bee Valley believe that Bridge Valley School is their best option. Because it is seen as a more “Swedish” school than the schools in their neighborhood, Bridge Valley School is thus both an opt-out and an opt-in school. Still, on a daily basis, these students continuously negotiate the boundaries of belonging. They are highly aware of their position as the immigrant Other when leaving Bridge Valley. As a way of dealing with these feelings of stigmatization and of not fully belonging to the rest of society, they internalize their own ethnic hierarchies through jokes. However, every formation of an “us” also includes the risk of forming a “them”. When the students at Bridge Valley School deal with their feelings of non-­ belonging, of being the “immigrant Other”, they create a new group to belong to—“immigrants”—as well as another group, “imports”, who do not yet fully belong.

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Finally, in order to understand the logic and practice behind individual school choice, it is important to understand where students feel they belong. A school choice might not be made based on what would be seen as rational logic. The students in this study are not rational calculators, driven by a desire to go to a school where they can get the best grades, but are rather humans trying to live their lives among others who recognize and value their cultural identities as a quality rather than a burden.

References Alexander, J.  C. (2013). Struggling Over the Mode of Incorporation: Backlash Against Multiculturalism in Europe. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(4), 531–556. Ambrose, A. (2016). Att navigera på en skolmarknad. En studie av valfrihetens geografi i tre skolor. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Andersson, R. (2008). Skapandet av svenskglesa bostadsområden. In L. Magnussson Turner (Ed.), Den delade staden: segregation och etnicitet i stadsbygden (pp. 119–155). Umeå: Borea förlag. Andersson, R., Bråmå, Å., & Hogdal, J. (2007). Segregationens dynamik och planeringens möjligheter. Malmö: Malmö Stadskontor. Andersson, R., Bråmå, Å., & Hogdal, J. (2009). Fattiga och rika: segregerad stad Göteborg. Göteborg: Göteborgs stad. Back, L. (1996). New Ethnicities and Urban Culture: Racisms and Multiculture in Young Lives. London: Routledge. Back, L., & Shamser, S. (2012). New Hierarchies of Belonging. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 15(2), 139–154. Ball, S. J. (2003). Class Strategies and the Education Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage. New York and London: Routledge. Beach, D., & Dovemark, M. (2007). Education and the Commodity Problem: Ethnographic Investigations of Creativity and Performativity in Swedish Schools. London: Tufnell Press. Böhlmark, A., & Holmlund, H. (2011). 20 år med förändringar i skolan: Vad har hänt med likvärdigheten. Uppsala: IFAU. Böhlmark, A., Holmlund, H.& Lindahl, M. (2015). Skolsegregation och skolval. IFAU rapport 2015:5. Bunar, N. (2009). När marknaden kom till förorten. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Bunar, N. (2010). The Controlled School Market and Urban Schools in Sweden. Journal of School Choice, 4(1), 47–73. Bunar, N., & Ambrose, A. (2016). Schools, Choice and Reputation: Local School Markets and the Distribution of Symbolic Capital in Segregated Cities. Research in Comparative and International Education, 11(1), 34–51.

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Bunar, N., & Ambrose, A. (2018). Urban polarisering och marknadens förlorare. In M. Dahlstedt & A. Fejes (Eds.), Skolan, marknaden och framtiden. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Christensen, P. (2004). Children’s Participation in Ethnographic Research: Issues of Power and Representation. Children and Society, 18, 165–176. Christensen, P., & James, A. (2017). Research with Children. Perspectives and Practices (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Dovemark, M., & Holm, A.-S. (2015). Förortens skola- möjligheternas skola? Utbildning och lärande, 9(1), 62–79. Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. London: Basic Books. Håkansson, J., & Sundberg, D. (2012). Utmärkt undervisning. Framgångsfaktorer i svensk och internationell belysning. Stockholm: Natur & Kultur. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles and Practices (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Hort, S. (2014). Social Policy, Welfare State and Civil Society in Sweden (Vol. 1, 3rd ed.). Lund: Arkiv förlag. Jonsson, R. (2007). Blatte betyder kompis. Stockholm: Ordfront. Jonsson, R. (2015). Värst i klassen? Berättelser om stökiga pojkar i innerstad och förort. Stockholm: Ordfront. Kallstenius, J. (2010). De mångkulturella innerstadsskolorna: Om skolval, segregation och utbildningsstrategier i Stockholm. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Kasselias Wiltgren, L. (2014). Stolt! Om ungdomar, etniciteter och gemenskaper. Linköping: Linköping University. Lamont, M. (1992). Money, Morals and Manners: Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lilja, E. (2011). Den segregerade staden. Tre kvarter i Stockholms innerstad. Stockholm: Stockholmia Förlag. Lindbäck, J., & Sernhede, O. (2012). Från förorten till innerstaden och tillbaka igen: gymnasieskolan, valfriheten och den segregerade staden. Educare, 4(1), 53–78. Lund, S. (2015). School Choice, Ethnic Divisions and Symbolic Boundaries. New York: Palgrave Pivot. Lundahl, L., Erixon-Arreman, I., Holm, A.-S., & Lundström, U. (2013). Educational Marketization the Swedish Way. Education Inquiry, 4(3), 497–517. Lundahl, L., Erixon-Arreman, I., Holm, A.-S., & Lundström, U. (2014). Gymnasiet som marknad. Umeå: Boréa. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage. Östh, J., & Malmberg, B. (2013). School Choice and Increasing Performance Difference: A Counterfactual Approach. Urban Studies, 50(2), 407–425. Reay, D., Crozier, G., & James, D. (2011). White Middle-Class Identities and Urban Schooling. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Ristilammi, P.  M. (1994). Rosengård den svarta poesin. Stockholm: Brutus Östling förlag. Skolverket. (2018). Familjebakgrundens betydelse. Stockholm: Skolverket. Swedish Research Council. (2011). God forskningssed. Vetenskapsrådets Rapportserie 1:2011. Trondman, M., Krantz, S., Pettersson, K., & Barmark, M. (2012). Låt oss kalla det skolkultur. Om betydelsen av normativt försvarbara och meningsskapande praktiker för förbättrade skolprestationer. Locus, 3(12), 6–31. Trumberg, A. (2011). Den delade skolan. Segregationsprocesser i det svenska skolsystemet. Örebro: Örebro University. Wacquant, L. (1999). Urban Marginality in the Coming Millennium. Urban Studies, 36(10), 1639–1647. Yang-Hansen, K., & Gustafsson, J.-E. (2016). Causes of Educational Segregation in Sweden: School Choice or Residential Segregation. Educational Research and Evaluation, 22(1–2), 23–44.

CHAPTER 4

“Different from the Eyes of Others”: Negotiating Faith in a Non-denominational Educational System Åsa Trulsson

Well, it feels like many people make it hard for you because you’re religious … They make you into something different. You don’t see yourself as different, but you become it from [sic] their eyes. (Sahla)

School performance and educational choices are not only shaped by cognitive skills and rational deliberation but are also embedded in structures of meaning and emotions. Of particular importance are the construction and negotiation of symbolic boundaries that effectively determine who is worthy of participating in a moral community and who is not (cf. Alexander, 2006). Sahla was the only girl in her class with a hijab. In her experience, a wall of “ugly tricks” excluded her from being a full member of her school’s common culture. Through the projections and acts of

Å. Trulsson (*) Department of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Lund (ed.), Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9_4

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­ thers, Sahla unwillingly came to inhabit the category of the “Other,” a o process she explicitly associates with being Muslim. Although Sweden is often regarded as one of the most secularized countries in the world, religion is a recurrent theme in contemporary debates on multiculturalism and incorporation. The intersection between religion and education is a central node in these debates, as exemplified in such topics as the rights of students to be excused from certain educational activities for religious reasons, the responsibilities of schools with regard to radicalization, and not least, religiously motivated clothing and symbols in school settings (e.g. Bergdahl, 2010; Schenk, Burchart, & Wohlrab-Sahr, 2015). Moreover, although Sweden is becoming increasingly religiously diverse, being secular is an essential part of the self-understanding of central institutions and individuals alike (Thurfjell, 2015). These observations raise questions concerning not only religious identity as a measurement in determining who is worthy of participation in a specific school culture, but also how religious identities and aspirations are disciplined within educational practices. This chapter explores these concerns through the narratives of young self-identified Muslims. How do these young people understand and negotiate symbolic boundaries related to religion and belonging in schools and in society? What are their strategies for dealing with such boundaries, while at the same time retaining a commitment to their education?

Framing According to Jeffrey Alexander (2006), symbolic boundaries distinguish between us and them, with desirable and moral characteristics assigned to those who belong while those deemed unworthy of membership are attributed with undesirable and morally suspect qualities. Hence, certain values, norms, and manners are sensed to be connected to a certain “we-­ ness” among those who belong, but at the same time are attributed a universal meaning of being what is good, just, and desirable. Belonging and participation are thus not only dependent on formal membership or material conditions, but also on compositions of emotion and meaning. Moreover, symbolic distinctions inform and even produce the experiences, understandings, and practices of the everyday. Andrea Voyer combines Alexander’s perspective with Michel Foucault’s in order to illustrate how symbolic boundaries are reified as truth regimes that determine the values, norms, manners, and even abilities of the desired subject. Symbolic ­boundaries hence wield power, as subjects tend to manage themselves,

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their identities, and other expressions accordingly (Foucault, 1972, 1977; Voyer, 2013). However, symbolic boundaries are never stable but are rather continuously negotiated and even contested in everyday life, for instance in a given school culture (Kivisto & Sciortino, 2015). The departure point of this chapter is that, while there is a constant struggle over which groups can be associated with the desirable core values and beliefs, these processes also shape the experiences, understandings, and practices of the young people concerned.

Methods The chapter builds on interviews with young people who identify as Muslims. While their understanding and level of engagement in the religious tradition are quite varying, the focus here is on their own interpretations and positioning. This strategy emanates from a theoretical understanding of religion that prioritizes “religion-as-lived” rather than “religion-as-preached” (McGuire, 2008). Although it unfolds in relation to the discursive tradition of codified practices, religious texts, and traditions (Asad, 1993), lived Islam is brought about by the everyday practices and beliefs of laypeople. This means stepping away from stipulated categories regarding what religion is or should look like, as well as changing focus from people’s adherence to certain doctrines to how people actually relate to what they hold sacred in their everyday lives (Ammerman, 2013). The interviews are part of a more extensive study that includes young people with different religious identities.1 The participants were located through respondent-driven sampling (Heckatorn, 1997) as well with the help of non-related gatekeepers in youth organizations, schools, and religious communities. The study is held together with two geographical frames: a larger city and a smaller municipality in southern Sweden. The choice of these locations is strategic: the population of the larger city has long been one of the most diverse and multicultural in Sweden, while the demographic character of the smaller municipality changed significantly as a response to its reception of refugees and migrants in 2015. Together, these settings have the potential to allow for a wide range of experiences in relation to schooling, migration, and incorporation. 1  The study was vetted by the Swedish Ethical Review Agency in order to protect the integrity of the participants in every step of the research process. Please note that all the names of the young people in this chapter are pseudonyms.

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For the sake of consistency, the chapter focuses on the participating Muslim youths, in total 15 persons. The interviews lasted one to two hours, with additional follow-up conversations conducted if needed. The participants’ ages span between 16 and 24  years. Their parents’ educational backgrounds are varied, with only some having a higher education, and many work in the service sector or health care services. Importantly, experiences from migration are central to all the participants’ lives, either as a personal experience or through their parents having migrated (cf. Lund & Lund, 2016). They also hold firm to a transnational identity, as Somali, Bosnian, Iraqi, Tunisian, and so on, as well as being Swedish. Further, some of the participants were born and raised in Sweden, and have visited what they nevertheless refer to as “the homeland.” The analysis of the material focuses on the stories the young people tell of their religiosity, identity, and schooling, and how these intersections play out in everyday life. Such narratives do not give us direct access to experiences or daily interactions; instead, they are creative endeavors that unfold in relation to present concerns. The focus of narrative analysis is hence how the narrator uses experiences and what the story does in terms of creating new meaning (Plummer, 1995; Riessman, 2008). Further, the young people’s stories not only are personal but also relate to broader narratives on religion, “we-ness,” and belonging that influence educational practices, school cultures, and other areas in which young people must navigate (cf. Ammerman, 2013; Plummer, 1995; Riessman, 2008). Still, such dominating narratives are not wholly determinative but are rather the object of constant negotiation (Chase, 2011; O’Toole, 2018). In analyzing the interviews, I thus looked for both common themes emerging from the material and narratives relating to the primary theoretical framing of this chapter.

Multiculturalism, Incorporation, and Religion in Sweden Although the presence of Islam in Sweden can be dated earlier, Muslim communities became firmly established in the aftermath of labor migration in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then, the number of Muslims in Sweden has increased due to forced migration from countries where Muslims are considered a majority of the population, such as Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently, Syria. There is no registration of religious affiliation in Sweden; hence, the size of the Muslim population can only be estimated. In 2010, most assessments claimed 500,000 Muslims in Sweden,

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but it is reasonable to suggest that the numbers have risen considerably since then (Olsson & Sorgenfrei, 2019; Otterbeck & Schmidt, 2015). The Muslim population is hence a significant minority in contemporary Sweden. It is extremely heterogeneous, however, in terms of both denominations and regional differences in how Islam is understood and practiced (Olsson & Sorgenfrei, 2019; Otterbeck & Schmidt, 2015). The position of Muslim identities is set in relation to the shifting discourses on multiculturalism and incorporation in contemporary Sweden. During the last decade, neo-assimilationist ideals have increasingly come to influence the debate, which has made values and symbolic boundaries more pronounced. The development is generally attributed to the rise of right-wing populism and the emergence of the nationalistic party the Swedish Democrats, who specifically target Islam in their critique of multiculturalism. However, the political mainstream increasingly emphasizes the importance of so-called core values in building social cohesion. Values, such as the autonomy of the individual, democracy, and gender equality, have been presented as particularly Swedish. “The Others,” whether migrants or religious minorities, are rendered suspect of lacking such qualities and therefore in need of adaptation in order to be able to participate in the common community (Dahlstedt & Neergaard, 2016; Eliassi, 2013; Shierup & Ålund, 2011). Concerning Muslims in Sweden, debates have increasingly revolved around security issues and matters of integration, while simultaneously collapsing the different ethnic and cultural backgrounds of Swedish Muslims into one homogenized “Muslimness” (Cato, 2012, see also Otterbeck & Schmidt, 2015). Moreover, research notes that Muslims are often portrayed as especially difficult to incorporate because of their perceived “otherness” (Cato, 2012; Otterbeck & Schmidt, 2015). This resonates with a dominating colonial narrative in Europe, where Islam is presented as particularly antithetical to modernity while Muslim subjectivities are seen as irrational and determined by culture and religion (e.g. Alexander, 2013; Eliassi, 2013; Said, 1978). Sweden is a secularized country, perhaps even remarkably so in a global comparison (World Values Survey, 2017). Surveys report that faith in God is relatively low and that religion, at least as traditionally envisaged, is not particularly important in the lives of the majority (Bromander, 2013; Kasselstrand, 2015; Thurfjell, 2015). Being “secularized” also seems to be an essential quality of national self-definition. To be “Swedish” is to be secular; the religious is associated with “the Other” and is located in the distant past, geographically remote areas, or culturally distant groups (Thurfjell, 2015; von Brömssen, 2016). Secularization also characterizes the everyday

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life of Swedish young people. Several surveys have highlighted that religion, or more specifically religious adherence, only seems relevant to a minority of contemporary youths (Bromander, 2012; Löwheim, 2012). For some young people, however, religious belonging could be of fundamental importance; yet studies also show that these youths often experience tension between the expectations embedded in their religious tradition and the norms of the so-called secularized society (Berglund, 2013a, 2017; Karlsson Minganti, 2014; Nordin, 2012; Otterbeck, 2010; Zachariasson, 2014). According to Talal Asad (2003), the secular is not a universal category but should rather be considered a process that is intrinsically linked to the category of religion, in that it produces and manages desired (and deviant) religious subjects, practices, and creeds. Secularity is hence variously negotiated in different historical circumstances. In Sweden, secularity is constructed in relation to the historical dominance of the state church and its enforcement of Lutheran doctrine for centuries. Even after the establishment of religious freedom in the nineteenth century, the Church of Sweden has been envisaged as a church for the people, that is, a church open to all and governed democratically by laypeople (e.g. Bäckström, Edgardh, & Pettersson, 2004; Pettersson, 2011). Today its membership amounts to almost 6 million, or 57 percent of the population (Swedish Church, 2019). However, several scholars explain the persistent commitment to the Church of Sweden in terms of a perceived cultural identity rather than adherence to Lutheran doctrine (e.g. Kasselstrand, 2015; Schenk et al., 2015; Thurfjell, 2015). Hence, a Christian identity could be envisaged as a cultural heritage, but with the religious still reserved for the “Other.” Moreover, a liberal understanding of Lutheran doctrine shapes the category of religion itself. This means that “true” religion is conceptualized as personal belief, preferably being kept in the private realm, while different perceptions such as a focus on daily observance, moral conduct, and submission to codified traditions are associated with “distorted” or “untrue” religion (Asad, 2003; Nilsson & Trulsson, 2019).

Young People, Religion, and Non-denominational Schooling Historically, the Swedish educational system was intertwined with the Church of Sweden, ensuring that the populace could read the Bible and knew the Catechism, thus allowing to take communion as a member of society. The separation of education from religion meant securing that no

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religious party could continue to influence educational activities (Hartman, 2000; Kittelmann Flenser, 2015). This clearly relates to the historical dominance of the state church. In this case, religious freedom—and by extension the non-denominational—is constructed as the need to protect individuals from strong religious institutions rather than protect religious communities from aggressive state involvement. According to Peter Berger, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas, the former is characteristic of a European historical experience, with strong state churches, while the latter informs secularity in the US (Berger, Davie, & Fokas, 2008; see also Nilsson & Trulsson, 2019). The Educational Act as well as the national curriculum stipulate that teaching should be non-denominational and impartial, allowing students of different creeds to feel comfortable participating without undue influence of any worldview. This applies to the teaching in both public and independent schools, including confessional schools, and all subjects, including religious education (SFS, 2010, p. 800; Skolverket, 2011). According to Jenny Berglund (2013b), there is a distinct Protestant flavor to religious education in Sweden, but it also permeates the larger educational system. Most obviously, the Lutheran calendar structures the school year, which also means that Christian holidays are frequently celebrated in an unproblematized manner. Moreover, education is still thought to foster good citizens, which is evident in the paragraphs on fundamental values in the national curriculum. A much-discussed passage states that education should impart values “borne by Christian tradition and Western humanism” such as respect for “human life, individual freedom, and integrity, the equal value of all people, equality between women and men” (Skolverket, 2011, p. 4). These words place desired values within specific religious and philosophical tradition associated with core groups in Sweden, and within a liberal understanding of Christianity (cf. Berglund, 2013b; Burchart, 2015). Karin Kittelmann Flenser (2015) shows that there is a tendency in Swedish schools to present religious people as irrational, duped, or even stupid, while the non-religious and atheism are considered neutral positions. Moreover, different school actors often distance themselves from the religious “Other,” primarily the Muslim “Other” (Kittelmann Flenser, 2015; Von Brömssen, 2003, 2016). Studies also point to insecurity on behalf of teachers in terms of dealing with religious differences and potential conflicts (Sjögren, 2011; Von Brömssen, 2012). In a survey from 2006, 25 percent of the participating Muslim young people reported having experienced some form of harassment during the last year, while 16

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percent attributed such abuse to their Muslim identity. Children in junior high school reported being exposed to harassment to a higher extent than youths in high school did (Otterbeck & Bevelander, 2006). Perhaps mirroring these results, in a more recent survey among high school students 10 percent of the participating Muslims claimed to have experienced discrimination. Yet, when conducting complementary interviews, Berglund notes that knowledge of negative stereotypes and discrimination tends to affect young Muslims’ sense of self, even if they have not been personally exposed (Berglund, 2013a). Concurrently, a recent report indicates a widespread concern among parents regarding the school as a possible arena for both anti- and interreligious discrimination and harassment (Larsson & Sorgenfrei, 2018). Berglund (2017) also shows that Muslims who attend supplementary religious education avoid talking about this in a public school setting, as they run the risk of being considered “too religious” by teachers and other students. However, the same students also claim to experience considerable benefits from taking part in supplementary religious education in terms of identity formation, educational attainment, and networking for future employment. Hence, even if religion and religious identity seem to emerge as a primarily problematic category in previous research, it becomes particularly interesting to scrutinize the possibilities for young self-identified Muslims to negotiate the symbolic boundaries of belonging in the educational context (cf. Rissanen, 2018).

Cultivating Religious Dispositions What does it mean to be a young practicing Muslim in contemporary Sweden? A survey from 2012 reports that Muslim youths share many concerns with their non-Muslim peers in the same age group, such as spending time with their friends, exercising, or earning extra money. However, the Muslim respondents, to a higher degree than the non-Muslims, did claim that “belief in something” was an essential aspect of their life (Berglund, 2013a, see also Bromander, 2012; Löwheim, 2012). Participants in the present study also identify being Muslim with believing in God, yet when asked to describe their faith they more often refer to what they do. The young people try to pray regularly, fast during Ramadan, eat according to the dietary restrictions, and refrain from alcohol. They also avoid intimate relationships before marriage, and many of the young women wear a hijab or otherwise modest clothing. Hence, for these young people being Muslim is also a way of being.

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Willo describes himself and his family as religious. However, being Muslim is just something he is: it is not something he goes around thinking about. It is an integral part of himself, he says, like having black hair. “Of course it’s important, it’s me! To say it’s not important is to say that I’m not important.” Willo says his prayers, refrains from pork and alcohol, and strives to be a good person, but he equally mentions sports and hanging out with his friends as important activities in his daily life. He is not a priest, he says laughing, but is instead “basic” just like everyone else. Leyla, on the other hand, describes Islam as a compass that guides her through her everyday concerns and gives her a sense of peace and support. There is, she argues, an Islamic way to act in every situation. She also consciously cultivates different virtues, such as patience and modesty, which are stipulated in Islamic tradition. On describing humility, her favorite virtue, she says: You have to control your feelings and not be so preconceived in your thoughts and opinions. To be humble; I think that covers everything. Because then you’re humble when it comes to behavior, how you eat, how you dress—it unfolds everything.

The focus, hence, is to train and realize certain abilities until they become a natural part of the self (cf. Mahmood, 2005; Mellor & Shilling, 2010). For both Willo and Leyla, albeit to varying degrees, practicing the faith involves a regulation of daily life. Islamic principles influence mundane practices, such as dressing, eating, and modes of conduct, even though the person does not reflect on it. Further, a sustained daily practice, such as prayer, structures the everyday in that it creates a particular temporality and comportment. Philip Mellor and Chris Shilling (2010) use the term “body pedagogics” to indicate how practices are central to religious identity as tools for creating a religious orientation in the everyday. For some, like Leyla, being a Muslim involves a conscious effort to let Islam penetrate all aspects of their lives and control their emotions and manners accordingly. For others, like Willo, being Muslim is just who he is. Although it at times can be hard when trying to fit in prayers on a busy school day, or when exams are scheduled during Ramadan when they might be more tired than usual due to fasting, the young people do not perceive that the educational system hinders them in practicing their faith. They are, however, highly aware that their lifestyle is different from that of many of their classmates. Praying regularly, choosing not to have romantic

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relationships, dressing modestly, and refraining from alcohol can be perceived as a break with many of the norms of contemporary youth culture, despite its heterogeneity. The young Muslims argue that it would be more convenient not to be religious in Sweden. Some of them describe the surrounding youth culture as being full of distractions and temptations that make them stray from what they feel entails acceptable behavior or being close to God. By establishing a difference between their ethics and the surrounding milieu, they strategically assert their own identity as well as suggest desired values and manners (cf. Zachariasson, 2012). However, such a perceived difference can also be a source of embarrassment and a sense of otherness. Some youths argue that they hesitate to make their religious identity and inclinations known to their peers, as “you don’t want to be excluded or stand out” or say it might be embarrassing to mention certain things “as it’s not the norm in Sweden.” The young people also call for a separation between religious conviction and certain school activities, such as learning different subjects. For instance, Willo characterizes people who skip part of their education, such as religious or sexual education, as stupid: That’s bullshit; it’s knowledge. Should you be stupid and not give a crap about that? It’s a part of education, and it’s good to know such things.

Such positioning suggests that the young people manage their religious conviction in line with a secularized discourse that stipulates that the subject should be able to set aside their religious sentiments when more pressing obligations, such as learning, demand it. Other positions, such as not being able to step out of a religious worldview and requiring consideration of it in any situation, are presented as undesired and problematic. Their narratives hence reflect limits on how religious you can be in a school context and the fact that these young people manage themselves in relation to established norms.

Managing Religious Motivations There is a sense of “we-ness” connected to the Islamic tradition visible in the young people’s narratives. For Aida, a close Muslim community has been central throughout her life. She describes religion “as a part of the family” and has always had close relationships with other Muslims, especially from a Bosnian background. According to Aida, Muslim friends share the same values and remind each other to act in a desired way:

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You know that because of religion, they remind you to do good: You can’t do this; it would be good if you did that. It becomes good on good.

Strong relationships with other Muslims in the form of either family or friends are hence crucial for Aida, both as a source of strength and recognition and as a resource in cultivating religious dispositions. Family and friends discuss and interpret experiences, but also observe and value behaviors. The immediate community could hence be described as a disciplining force (cf. Sharma, 2008, see also Foucault, 1977). It is vital to note that the young people themselves do not perceive this as restrictive; on the contrary, it is a milieu where desired values, manners, and characteristics can be cultivated and strengthened together with others (cf. Sharma, 2008). According to Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh (2015), the strong emphasis on state individualism within the Swedish social contract harbors deep suspicion of strong collectives outside the bond between the state and the individual, especially if core values such as independence and voluntarism in social relations are understood as challenged by such. Such boundaries are also visible in the young people’s narratives. Although most participants acknowledge the importance of family and friends, they are equally consistent in emphasizing their agency and autonomy. They repeatedly emphasize that being a practicing Muslim is their own choice and that, despite conventional images of Islam, the very notion of coercion is alien to their religious tradition. Even Aida, who constantly returns to the role of family and community, points out that she herself has chosen to be a practicing Muslim and is not merely following her parents. Such sentiments rhyme well with processes of individualization in contemporary society and have been discerned by other scholars as themes of young religious people’s self-presentation (e.g. Holmqvist Lidh, 2016; Madge et al., 2014; Otterbeck, 2010). It becomes evident that a cultural vision of the subject as part of an active religious community or enmeshed in a ­religious tradition is only desirable if the subject can simultaneously assert their freedom and independence. Claiming autonomy is further of great importance to the women who wear hijabs. When Arjeta started wearing a veil at the age of 12, the first thing her teacher asked her was if it was her own choice. The question startled her. “And when I got that question then, yes, why shouldn’t it be my choice?” Now, however, she considers her teacher’s question utterly problematic, as it aligns with a general tendency to “pick on” people with a hijab and who follow Islam. She feels that girls with hijabs are continuously diminished as human beings and discriminated against. All the girls

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with headscarves told stories of people asking them if it was their own choice, or had had people assert to them that they must have been forced to wear it by their father or other male relatives. The question could come from classmates, teachers, passersby, or others that the girls encountered in their daily life. Hence, awareness of the hijab being associated with undesired qualities, such as passivity and coercion, saturated their narratives, and they frequently returned to emphasizing that they were indeed autonomous subjects exercising their free will. It should be noted that there are several other positions that Arjeta and the other young women could take in regard to the hijab, for instance submitting to the will of God, using the veil out of respect for tradition, or using it to realize Islamic virtues such as modesty or piety. However, in relation to a dominating narrative of Muslim women as passive, oppressed, and restricted by family and culture, their means to gaining access to participation is to claim that they are agentic and autonomous subjects (cf. Bracke & Fadil, 2011; Karlsson Minganti, 2014; Mahmood, 2005).

Becoming Different Through the Eyes of Others Emina remembers when she was in elementary school and the teachers told her class they would have a lesson on Islam the following week. Upon hearing her classmates’ reactions, which Emina describes like “oh, terrorists, this and that and ba ba ba” and knowing they would identify her as a Muslim, Emina decided to read up on Islam: I thought, next week when we talk about Islam, people are going to ask me questions, or they’ll say lots of untrue things. I have to read up on it so I can answer.

By doing this, Emina states that she “fell in love” and started practicing Islam. In her narrative, she positions herself as an autonomous individual seeking knowledge and choosing Islam by her own free will. However, her story also mirrors another dominating narrative: the presentation of Islam as a violent, oppressive religion, at odds with modern society. Such portrayals abound in movies, social media, comments by non-Muslims, and stories of exposed friends or family. They are a part of the young people’s lived experiences, and something they have to relate to in their everyday. Their narratives are marked by a double consciousness; in the famous words of W.E.B. DuBois, “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in

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amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois, 2007 [1903], p. 8). Their sense of self is hence structured by a historically ascribed identity, namely Muslims as a problem (Meer, 2010, see also Abdel-­Fattah, 2017). The young people tell stories of how they adjust their behavior based on an image of themselves that they perceive non-Muslims project onto them; it involves not expressing rage when mistreated but acting calm. Deeqa says: When people do racist acts, you think I won’t do anything, because that’s precisely what they want us to do. Like scream back, mess with them. They want us to show that we’re bad people. It’s merely a matter of being quiet and walking away.

Likewise, Azra wants to counter misconceptions about Islam, using herself and her personality as the primary tool. Although not fully covered, she wears long robes and a hijab, and hence “people know who I am from this, and they’re going to judge me.” She claims that people are surprised when she does not get angry or scream, as this is something most readily associated with Muslims, in her opinion. Her strategy is to “normalize herself”; that is, show that she is like everyone else, or that “everything’s okay.” It could involve smiling, saying hello, or taking a few steps away from a person who looks uncomfortable. It could also entail showing that she goes to school, has a family, is afraid of dogs, and eats chocolate. Both Azra and Deeqa are highly aware of others’ perception of them as a problematic category, and adjust their behavior in accordance with this perception. Azra also quite meticulously tries to measure the reactions of others and act accordingly by complying with the established norms of social interaction or emphasizing parts of herself that she perceives as ordinary and normal. She would not give up her Muslim identity, clothing, or behavior, however. In fact, she argues that the forgiving and humble attitude is an Islamic virtue that she practices in these encounters. Her efforts could hence simultaneously be seen as a wish to be recognized as a practicing Muslim and a human being like everyone else.

Being the “Other” at School According to the young people, Islam is often unfairly portrayed as stricter and more rule-governed and extreme than the other religious traditions. Stories most often concern religious education, but the young people claim that teachers in other subjects also bring up Islam, Muslims, or reli-

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gious people as representing something fatalistic, irrational, or at odds with the more scientific approach that is favored in the different subjects. Stories also revolved around teachers not differentiating violent groups and theocratic regimes from the rest of the Muslim community. The young people attribute such tendencies to a lack of knowledge on behalf of the teachers, but as an extension of the dominating narrative on Islam in society at large. Arjeta argues: There are these countries that have taken specific sentences [from Scripture or tradition] and remake them and create their own cultures. And then people write about them in Swedish books … Well, this isn’t Islam …. They want to distort the image of Islam; it happens in society all the time.

Like Arjeta, young people often feel obliged to “protect” their religion by denouncing what they perceive as problematic, extreme un-Islamic ways of practicing. Some of the young people have experienced bullying from teachers or peers at one point or another; or if not, they hear stories from their siblings and friends (cf. Berglund 2013a). Such incidents are presented as examples of discrimination and, even though they are not always entirely sure of it, as being connected to their Muslim rather than their transnational identity. Further, young people often frame such stories with statements such as “I don’t like the word racist, but” or “I don’t like to play the victim, but,” thus underscoring the experiences as real by positioning the speaker as unbiased and truthful. In most cases the young people choose to stay silent, partly because of the perceived power of their teachers but also in order not to make a nuisance of themselves and reinforce the image of the angry and problematic Muslim. Another strategy is to attribute the negative image of Islam to misinformation and a lack of knowledge, rather than underlying racism or Islamophobia. Hanan argues that negative sentiments about Islam can come up in discussions at school, but that this is due to images from the media and limited knowledge. She says: But … if you haven’t read up on it you only see the surface, what you see, what you hear on the news. Then it’s easy to get the wrong impression.

Young people also tell of how they actively try to direct their thoughts and feelings into not paying attention to people with prejudices, but also to keep in mind that these people only constitute a minority. Willo says:

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If someone’s said something bad about Muslims or Somalis, I think, ah that’s just one person. I don’t think the majority feels like that.

This cultivation of thought could be seen as a coping strategy for minimizing the effects of discriminatory practices and prejudices in the everyday worlds of young people.

Being the Guest Bilal’s school is on the other side of the city. To get there, she has to take the bus through the city center and other areas with which she is not very familiar. She says she does not get any comments about her religion at school, but that on her way home people often take the liberty to comment on her hijab or call her a damned foreigner. Once, when she was entering a store, a person even said: “Look, there go the suicide bombers.” Although such incidents are hurtful, Bilal describes them as a regular part of her everyday and merely something she has to deal with. One result of this is that she feels most at home in her neighborhood, where she grew up and where her friends are. Here, she feels safe. The young people often tell stories of everyday encounters when they have been marked as different or outside what it means to be Swedish. In particular, such experiences are associated with wearing a hijab, which according to the young people put you at risk of being labeled “Other” and being the subject of discriminatory practices. Indeed, even those participants who do not wear a veil mention stories of people having their veil tugged at or being harassed or spit at. These stories are well known and shared, and hence deeply affect the young people’s experiences in terms of their identity formation and sense of belonging (cf. Berglund, 2013a; Sixtensson, 2009). The narratives of the young people reveal the presence of an exclusivist construction of Swedishness, whereby it is linked to appearance but also manners, such as mode of dress. It is often contrasted with the category of the immigrant, which in turn is constructed as a monolithic entity of what is perceived as culturally distinct “Others” (Eliassi, 2013; Westin, 2015). As such, the young people are deemed as lacking cherished qualities such as autonomy, gender equality, and tolerance, or are otherwise associated with uncivil behaviors, such as violence and oppression. Further, although many were born in Sweden, their experiences reinforce a sense of being a “guest” or a “stranger.” Barzoo Eliassi (2013) describes such experiences as being subject to the mercy of being

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tolerated by core groups, obligated to be grateful and not “rock the boat” by criticizing the social arrangement. Guests do not have the same right to feel at home in a particular place as the self-proclaimed host does. Hence, Bilal is at home in her neighborhood, where she feels she is not entangled in the perceptions, stories, and gaze of others (cf. Chap. 3, this volume). While the young people often present fasting, praying, and other religious activities as unproblematic, some particular challenges emerge in their descriptions of their lived experiences of practicing their faith in an educational milieu. Of consequence was a lack of designated spaces for prayer, which forces participants to ask teachers if they can access rooms or use hallways to pray. This is connected to feelings of embarrassment, standing out from the crowd, or having to explain oneself to others. Similarly, the main problem with fasting is described as constant remarks and an experienced obligation of having to discuss fasting with others. Deeqa and her friends had been fasting since secondary school, and even though it works rather smoothly, the endless questions annoy her: I mean they know Muslims fast. And when people see us, they like to say look, they’re fasting … ah, that’s not normal, like go home to your country.

Hence, Deeqa presents the frequent comments as harassment aimed at setting her apart from other students at her school and moreover Swedishness proper. As a practicing Muslim, she feels like she becomes a “guest” and is not really at home. The school milieu could be seen as a secularized space, where religious bodies and practices are not forbidden but are made visible and to some extent out of place. A sense of feeling out of place could also come from teachers making racist slurs, giving them lower grades, or questioning their performance on specific tests. Many youths state that teachers doubt their ability to write or otherwise excel in the Swedish language, which particularly bemuses them if they were born in Sweden. Emina, for instance, says her teacher in the Swedish language was surprised that she had gotten an A on the national exam: And he [the teacher] said, how weird that you got an A.  Why is that so weird? He just: but how long have you lived in Sweden [laughter]? Well, what could I say? The question is so stupid. I merely: what? I was born here [laughter]!

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Emina feels that the teacher marked her as a guest who does not truly belong to the Swedish community; not because of where she was born, her citizenry, or language skills, but because of her “Muslimness.” Young people also tell stories of teachers giving Muslim students unwanted attention in the form of making them spokespersons for their religion (cf. Holmqvist Lidh, 2016; Moulin, 2011). Sahla says she is often asked to explain things she feels are far from her own life and never really thinks about, such as the conflict between Israel and Palestine or anti-­ Semitism among Muslims. Such questions, however well intended, always make her feel exposed. “You become the advocate for an entire religion. It becomes this responsibility that you carry.” Similarly, Hanan often feels that she becomes like a manual and is made to answer all types of questions because of her being a Muslim. Usually, she says she does not mind answering, but some questions can be difficult as there are divergent opinions within the Muslim community. Hanan says: “And then I feel like I don’t want to stand for everybody; I want to stand for me and not my entire religion. It’s tedious.” Asking the present students about their experiences and opinions could be seen as a strategy of recognizing their distinct identities. Yet, such strategies tend to present Islam as a stable and monolithic entity outside the historical circumstances at hand. Further, they dissolve diverse ways of being Muslim into one single type, usually perceived as different from the secularized normality (cf. Zilliacus, Paulsrud, & Holm, 2017). By being forced to represent all Muslims, the girls feel as if they are stripped of their individuality, reduced to their religious identity, and further associated with phenomena they do not like or know little about. This practice sets them apart from other individuals in the classroom, as they do not fulfill the desired criteria for being fully autonomous. Lastly, the negative experiences of being a representative of a religious tradition unfold against the backdrop of awareness that such an identification means being cast as a problem.

Recognizing Religious Identities as a Resource Just before starting high school, Leyla started wearing a hijab. She remembers that her parents cautioned her: people might treat her differently and even frown upon her. “It’s not the custom here, it’s not the normal thing to do,” Leyla says. She persisted, however, convinced that this was her choice to make as long as she did not hurt anyone. Nevertheless, she adds sadly, “I was treated that way; people were very prejudiced.” She refers to

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her experience at the new school as “total exclusion.” Even though she had worked very hard to make the grades needed to attend this particular school, she eventually decided to change schools. She opted for one that in her view did not have the same high standards, but where she felt at home. Today, Leyla still wears the hijab and continues to pursue an academic career as a social worker. Further, she describes the stories of Mohammad being slandered and persecuted in Mecca as a great inspiration to not give up on her education or her religious convictions: He [the Prophet] was also bullied. When he delivered his message, nobody liked it at first. People threw shit, stones, and everything possible at him. He had to flee the city [of Mecca]. So he was also excluded. And I got inspiration from that.

Religion can hence be a resource for identity management, meaning-­ making, and belonging; but at the same time, it also results in exclusion from secularized groups and communities in society at large. The role of religion in young people’s lives can hence be said to be somewhat of a paradox (Nordin, 2012; Trondman, 2012). Azra frames her memories from high school in a different manner. She primarily talks about the feeling of comradeship and openness among her classmates and the school as a whole. She remembers that her classmates held many different identities and came from diverse backgrounds. In Azra’s view, this diversity created a climate of creative discussions that made her “step out of her bubble.” Tolerance and respect for different opinions and identities always characterized the conversation. She says: But I felt like the class was so open to each other that we could have a heated discussion and then cool down and say, okay, I accept what you’re saying.

Azra says that the fact that everyone was different but also took care of each other made her feel comfortable with her religious identity at school. She also felt that the teachers played an essential role in handling potential conflicts and reminding everyone that the school was a place where everyone should feel comfortable: Not everybody has the same sexuality, and not everybody has the same nationality. Some had arrived in Sweden just a couple of years ago. And, like, we tried to really be there for each other.

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Her narrative tells of a school culture where the diversity of the student body is presented as both a strength and a resource for learning (cf. Lund & Trondman, 2017; Sarstrand-Marekovic, 2016). Experiences being visible as one sub-group among many, in addition to continually being encouraged to engage in dialogue and speak one’s mind, allows for a sense of belonging. The difference between Leyla’s and Azra’s narratives is that Leyla describes a school culture where the religious is firmly excluded from participating, while Azra’s school culture allows her to pursue her religious identity and hold firm to the educational project. Both girls, however, call for a recognition of religion as a resource for them personally as well as something beneficial for schooling and all of society. They present Islamic principles as highly compatible with core values in the educational system. Many of the young people claim that their religion either helps them be better students or strengthens characteristics thought to be desirable in a school context, such as respecting teachers, helping others and working, and the merits of aspiring to gain knowledge. Moreover, they also attribute an inner strength to their religion, which helps them handle stress or persist when their studies are hard or others put them down. According to Inkeri Rissanen (2018), a sense of belonging is hindered not only through the association of undesired qualities with Muslim identities, but also when their positive characteristics go unnoticed. For instance, Arjeta laments the fact that religious people are “swept under the carpet” and are only brought up to show a problem. Likewise, Deeqa says: “Like, you only show the backhand, I’m joking [laughter]. I swear that’s what I mean. Show what’s good about us. We’re not bad people.”

Discussion The young people take pride in their education as well as their religious identity. Hence, this chapter presents a particular set of experiences that position both schooling and religion as necessary and beneficial to the self. These young people come to navigate the boundaries of different communities of belonging, and their efforts thus shed light on the possibility for the normatively secular educational system to recognize and incorporate religious identities. Certainly, processes of inclusion and exclusion are dependent on the school culture at hand, as well as the deliberate work of school actors to expand the symbolic boundaries to incorporate different identities and experiences as expressions of the common good. Religion does, however, occupy a peculiar position in relation to schooling, belonging, and incorporation in contemporary Sweden.

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The young peoples’ narratives disclose a desire to belong to the moral community of Islam, which means they also have to manage their identities in accordance with the symbolic boundaries of their religious community. Although sharing many concerns with non-Muslim youths, being a practicing Muslim involves a regulation of everyday behavior in prayer, dress, and eating habits, and so on. It also includes a Muslim community of family and friends, who share values and reinforce desired manners and behaviors. The young people acknowledge that their life choices often set them apart from the dominating norms that are prevalent among their peers and at school. Some even actively distance themselves from what they perceive as a distracting youth culture full of temptations. Yet, most of them would like to combine and even fuse the different areas in their lives, and claim that this would not be particularly problematic—had they not been “made different from the eyes of others.” The dominating narrative of Islam as an oppressive, violent religion, associated with characteristics that are normatively located outside the symbolic boundaries of liberal democracies, is especially visible in the young people’s narratives. As practicing Muslims, they feel as if they are continuously made suspect of carrying undesired values, norms, and manners. They also manage themselves accordingly, for instance by constantly disclaiming undesired religious practices and downplaying racism and other discriminatory practices, but most obviously by avoiding making a nuisance of themselves and thus confirming the image of Muslims as a problem. A kind of double consciousness comes to inform their everyday interaction and sense of self. Moreover, such associations can be subtle in the pressure of constantly having to explain oneself and ask for permission, or being marked as different and outside Swedishness proper. The stories of friends and family are also important in making discrimination and harassment real in the young people’s everyday world. There is also a gendered dimension to belonging, as young women with hijabs feel, especially associated with undesired qualities. Importantly, several of the young people claim that Islamic virtues teach them to be humble and patient, hence not acting out or aggressively countering stigmatization. This strategy must be seen as an effort to fuse the desired qualities with their Muslim identity. The young people manage themselves in accordance to what is perceived as the desired subject in the educational system. Concerning religion, this can mean presenting oneself as an autonomous subject exercising one’s free will, or accepting the boundaries between different disciplines and religious motivations. Other cultural visions, which emphasize tradi-

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tion, family, or submission to codified doctrines, are not seen as an expression of free will but are continuously excluded as problematic and non-desirable (cf. Bracke & Fadil, 2011; Mahmood, 2005; Nilsson & Trulsson, 2019). However, the young people call for a recognition of their religious identities as beneficial and supportive in developing their academic identities, but also as contributing to the common good in society at large. They thus ask to be fully incorporated as practicing Muslims (cf. Alexander, 2006; Trondman, Taha, & Lund, 2012). On the other hand, the young people also resent being made a representative of their religion, in that they feel they are reduced to their religious identities and stripped of their individuality. Moreover, this also suggests an essentialized view of Islam and Muslim subjectivities, which couples to the narrative of otherness becoming problematic for and a burden to the young people. There is hence a tension between being extremely visible as a Muslim, which prevents feelings of belonging, and being made invisible when it comes to positive representations (cf. Rissanen, 2018). From the young people’s narratives, it becomes evident that experiences gained from other important areas in their lives influence their experiences of schooling. Schools and classrooms cannot be set apart from dominating narratives on religion, belonging, and incorporation into society at large. Instead, the communities they are a part of influence them. However, a given school culture and the educational practices of different actors can also serve to expand symbolic boundaries to also incorporate those who have previously been excluded. The educational system thus has the potential to affect social solidarity in society at large (cf. Alexander, 2006; Lund & Lund, 2016; Tognato, 2018). It can be argued that the demands of “neutrality” stipulated in the Educational Act and national curriculum make it particularly difficult to include religious truth claims in educational practices. However, the liberal Protestant underpinnings of schooling become visible when it comes to religious practices, observances, and ethical manners. These matters are at the core of the young people’s religious identity and orientation, yet the experience of constantly being made visible and having to explain themselves puts them in the position of the “guest” and evokes a sense of being out of place. The boundaries of belonging hence have a bodily dimension. Moreover, if true religion is understood as inner belief or philosophical positioning, these orientations may not be forbidden but run the risk of becoming unintelligible or even rendered outright undesirable.

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CHAPTER 5

To Construct Civility or Be Constructed as Anti-civil Henrik Nilsson

I met with the students in both the home and school environments. I saw that there was a problem there […]. They sort of had two roles […]. Understanding your religion and culture gives you pride and security, which are necessary if the students are to be open to society as well as bridge the divergences between their original culture and Swedish society. (Anwar)

Anwar dreams of, as a Muslim, being accepted and respected in Sweden. Since the mid-1980s, he’s fought for a recognition of the Muslim community in a midsized city in the southern part of the country. Anwar came to Sweden from Egypt in the 1970s to study civil engineering. Then, after working a number of years as a civil engineer, he educated himself further to become a high school math teacher and began working within municipal adult education (Komvux). At Komvux Anwar met young Muslims

H. Nilsson (*) Department of Education and Teachers’ Practice, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Lund (ed.), Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9_5

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who had experienced failure in school, and he began looking into what it was that lay behind these failures. He discovered that many young Muslims exaggerated parts of the Swedish youth culture: I worked with [Muslim] high school and junior high youths. The youths drink a lot, and you’re supposed to really cause a scene. There’s some sort of pride in who drinks the most. It ends up being an exaggerated understanding of what it means to have fun. It’s very easy to describe it as the Swedish way. Conflict [with their parents] arises. The youths try to come up with excuses—that I’m going to study with my friend. But the youths don’t want to, and can’t, break with their parents, and they don’t want to lose friends.

Anwar explains that he understood that the Muslim youths’ behavior was to some degree due to the fact that they didn’t feel secure in their identity. This also contributed to their rejection of their parents; and the parents didn’t understand how they could help their children without having insight into and knowledge about Sweden and its culture. He wanted to help the youths and parents solve the conflicts that arose between them, and also wondered how he might be able to help them, together, to come into this new society. He understood that the parents and their children navigated the new society in different ways—dangers and possibilities were interpreted differently. For Anwar, his experiences as a teacher would ultimately lead to the establishment of a Muslim-profiled primary and intermediate school (Jibrilskolan) aimed at helping Muslim children, youth, and parents handle and merge the different worlds—the Swedish and the Muslim. During this time, he also founded a Muslim community and met many of the families in his role as imam. In connection with the establishment of the Muslim-profiled school, Anwar also became engaged in the public debate. Besides helping newly arrived Muslim children and youths feel more secure in themselves and in their identity, he also asserted that the majority society’s attitudes about and images of Islam needed to be broadened. He started holding lectures on Islam, taking part in anti-­ racist work, and collaborating with other religious communities: Hopefully, you raise the awareness among both those who are newly arrived and Swedes—that they meet in the middle somewhere. That Swedes understand that this is necessary; Sweden can’t live isolated, you have to do your part to help, and the immigrants have to understand that they’ve come to a new, nice country and are going to have a good life. They have to follow the rules of the game, but there’s nothing to keep them from retaining their

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culture and religion. And then everybody can meet at a level where the one doesn’t dominate the other, and have understanding for each other; then, we can live well together.

Another element of the social change Anwar wanted to achieve was to establish places where different groups in society could meet. If we look at Anwar’s dreams and concrete plans for a different society from a cultural sociological civil sphere perspective, we see a great deal in common with Alexander’s (2006) “civil sphere” social theoretical model. With this model, it’s possible to understand societal solidarity and its limits. In Alexander’s words, Anwar is working for “the expansion of the discourse of liberty” (Alexander, 2006, p. 551). Swedes and immigrants should feel free together and should meet “at a level where the one doesn’t dominate the other, and have understanding for each other”, according to Anwar. The aim of this chapter is to describe and analyze how Anwar is negotiating and working to change the cultural meanings that define Muslims, Muslim school, and Islam. In order to understand Anwar’s work I need to understand, firstly, the degree to which the majority society believes Muslim identity and Islam as an institution are compatible with democratic values, and secondly, how Anwar is trying to change the majority society’s anti-democratic representations of Muslims and Islam. During the period 2011–2015 I accompanied Anwar in his work as imam and school principal (Nilsson, 2015). I read how the mass media reported, and I myself also reported, on the Muslim school during this time. I also interviewed Anwar numerous times. The news reporting on the Muslim-profiled school and Anwar’s struggle not only described but also reflected how Muslims and Islam were represented, decoded, and coded in the local civil society (cf. Hall, 1973). I retrieved data on Anwar’s actions in the public sphere from the local newspaper and a larger national newspaper’s reporting on Jibrilskolan’s activities and Anwar’s work as an imam, a principal, and an opinion-former. The three mass media articles are representative of how Anwar presents himself and argues his case. In this text, I will refer to these articles as a1 (local newspaper 19 May 2003), a2 (national newspaper 11 Jan 2003), and a3 (local newspaper 12 Oct 2010). The reporting reflects how Anwar, to varying degrees, manages to merge ideas about the place of Muslims and Islam in the civil sphere. Besides the data from the newspapers, I will also refer to a number of ethnographic observations and recurring interviews from the period during which I accompanied Anwar in his daily work as principal (2009–2015).

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The chapter consists of five parts. I begin with an explanation of how I will use Alexander’s (2006, 2011) civil sphere theory and social performance theory. Then, I contextualize Anwar’s public performances with the help of previous research on how Muslims and Islam are represented in the Swedish media and, according to national attitude surveys, how they are understood by the majority society. In the third part, I present the personal experiences that motivated Anwar in his work for the recognition of Muslims and Islam. In the fourth part I discuss Anwar’s performance in the mass media. Finally, I highlight what the theories on the civil sphere and social performance as drama can teach us about how actors and a culture form different paths of incorporation for marginalized identities. It’s thus not hidden structures that this analysis aims to reveal, but rather the obvious ways people in civil society create meaning in their lives and attempt to affect each other through symbols, narratives, and counter-­ narratives (Alexander & Smith, 1993; Smith & Howe, 2015). This case has its limitations, of course. It’s based on Anwar’s intentions, beliefs, and performances, rather than being a systematic study of Muslims’ incorporation in Sweden.

Theoretical Framework Anwar is working to change the cultural meanings that hold society together. He wants to move the Muslim identity and Islam to the middle of the civil sphere, and to see himself and other Muslims be able to freely inhabit the public space. Alexander (2006) asserts that a society’s self-­ image constitutes a civil sphere. This “we” has a structuring power over itself as well as everyone within it. It’s through the collective self-image that the members of a society define and value each other and themselves. The way difference is interpreted, and how society relates to it, can vary. The autonomy of the civil sphere, in Alexander’s words, must “be understood in a dialectical way” (Alexander, 2006, p. 203). It shouldn’t be seen as a theoretical ideal image; it is highly empirical and dependent on “resources and inputs from other spheres” (Alexander, 2006, pp. 54–55). When we interpret and explain societal phenomena we use, for instance, economic, family-oriented, or religious discourses for classification and valuation. Meanwhile, the civil sphere also has its own vocabulary. Alexander and Smith (2003) identify this language as a democratic code that forms social relations in society. The civil code mentioned in later work by Alexander (2006) is the core of the social meanings with which

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we categorize our surroundings and see ourselves. The binary code has an evaluating function: with it, we create a “simple” but fundamental feeling and meaning about things. With the help of the code, empirical facts can also be sorted out from reality, interpreted, and be attributed moral qualities. Alexander and Smith (2003, p. 124) describe the process as follows: Actors are obsessed with sorting out empirical reality and, typifying from code to event, with attributing moral qualities to concrete “facts”. Persons, groups, institutions, and communities who consider themselves worthy members of the national community identify themselves with the symbolic elements associated with the sacred side of the divide. Their membership in civil society is morally assured by the homology that they are able to draw between their motives, and actions and the sacred element of the semiotic structure.

Instead of pointing to a number of overall structures and their effects on social life, the analysis is done through the meaning and emotional structures that motivate and form social life and interactions: Life is about meaning, and it is discrimination that makes meaning possible. Our distinctive identities, as individuals and collectivities, are central to our projects for life. Identity is meaning, and the meaning of our life gives us vitality. Meaning defines us, and it defines those around us at the same time. (Alexander, 2006, p. 14)

People’s ability to create interpretations and meaning leaves them open to changes to the meanings that shape their behavior and attitudes. In his empirical studies of the civil sphere, Alexander (2006) describes how stigmatized identities are transformed and assigned civil characteristics by being detached from the anti-civil code and attached to the civil code. In later work from 2011, he develops a number of central elements for understanding when a society’s mindset is undergoing change. Among other things, Alexander (2011) highlights the importance of the actors referring to recognized, shared holy narratives that the majority can identify with. Actors like Anwar need to couple sacred background representations with their urgent codes, such as the assertion that everyone in the community will benefit if the mosque is allowed to call to prayer. Besides background constructions, performances also contain rhetoric, dramaturgy, and the actor’s actions, which are interpreted and weighted by those witnessing the performance. In this context, it is background constructions and ­rhetoric that I will focus on in order to better understand how positive

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recognition can arise between Muslims and the majority society. To achieve inclusion, negative categorizations need to be transformed into positive ones. In order to accomplish this, it is necessary to have what Alexander (2011) calls a re-fusion of meanings. In modern Western democratic states, meanings are fragmented. There isn’t just one understanding, one opinion, one point of view. To achieve symbolic shifts and social change, it is necessary for the members of the majority society to emotionally and intellectually feel and understand, for instance, that it is important to practicing Muslims to be able to display their religion in public. If the majority feels and understands this, and believes the arguments are logical, political change will likely arise. How Anwar and his protagonists and antagonists make use of the civil code and attach it to positive narratives about Sweden and Swedes is thus central in reconstructing symbolical boundaries for inclusion (Alexander, 2011).

Representations of Muslims and Islam in Sweden For Anwar, contact with the mass media was important. It allowed him to reach a broad audience in his midsized city, and debates and discussions about the establishment of a mosque, call to prayer, and a Muslim-profiled school were held on this platform. The mass media encourage members of society to participate in the broader publicity in order to debate, discuss, and share their opinions; however, at the same time that the mass media offer the possibility to influence public opinion, a person’s own dreams and space for acting can be circumscribed. The mass media both select and interpret, and can be a voice for, various interests that influence public opinion and societal attitudes and thus affect the civil sphere. The discourse on Islam that Anwar tried to reconstruct has changed over time in Sweden. In an overview of mass media reporting on Islam and Muslims in Sweden, Cato (2012) asserts that from 1975 to around 1990, reports on Islam mainly involved practical issues—for example how to deal with halal slaughter, the celebration of Ramadan, or the possibility to pray during the day. While these practical issues still come up now and then in the debate on integration, today they have been solved. They are no longer emotionally loaded symbols but have instead been turned into routine, profane symbols in everyday life at workplaces and schools. According to Cato (2012), it was in the 1980s that the debate on Islam and Muslim identity in Sweden again came to be based on values, and it became increasingly more common to generalize the Muslim identity and assign it negative

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qualities such as being homophobic or anti-Semitic. The discourse on Muslims and Islam was transformed from dealing with norms (rules that prescribe correct behavior) to dealing with values (shared ideas of good/ bad) (cf. Alexander, 2012; Voyer, 2013). The discourse has also come to encompass issues such as integration, equality, safety, and homogenization (Cato 2012). Within the equality discourse, for instance, Islam has become synonymous with patriarchal structures and the oppression of women. There are also strong discourses asserting that Muslims and Islam are creating a divided, segregated society (Borell, 2012). If the debate of the 1970s–1990s was about Muslims and Islam in Sweden, today there are also events in other parts of the world that dominate the news flow and influence the image of Islam and Muslims in Sweden (Larsson, 2006). Since 9/11 the negative bias in the mass media’s reporting has increased, which may influence the general negative image of Muslims and Islam as well as result in more cases of discrimination. A survey study conducted by the Swedish Integration Board in 2005 showed that 67% of the population felt that Islamic values are incompatible with those of Swedish society (Integrationsverket, 2005). Furthermore, 46% of respondents saw Muslims as different from Swedes, and 37% were opposed to the building of mosques. Regarding veils, 35% were opposed to Muslim women wearing them in public; only 25% approved of it. The most negative response in this area was the 66% who disapproved of a woman wearing a veil on an ID card (Integrationsverket, 2005). Racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim ideas and organizations espousing these ideas are on the rise across Europe. Prejudices regarding Muslims have also had physical consequences: the time since 9/11 has seen an increase in the harassment of women wearing veils (Listerborn, 2010; Sixtensson, 2009) and men with an Arabic appearance (Borell, 2012). In 2014, an average of one Swedish mosque or Muslim prayer center a month was attacked (Expo, 2014).

Muslim Agency and Solidarity in the Swedish Civil Sphere Studies show that Swedish Muslims try to assimilate to culturally dominant conventions and norms; for instance, they might change their name to hide their original identity (Arai & Skogman Thoursie, 2009). To avoid harassment, some Muslims choose not to wear certain things that could identify them as Muslims. Some parents, concerned for their children’s

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safety, choose Muslim-profiled schools over municipal ones (Gustafsson, 2004; Nilsson, 2015; Zine, 2007). The research focusing on what Muslims themselves do is mainly concerned with how Muslim organizations conduct Koran readings for children and youths (Berglund, 2009), and how mosques and their imams arbitrate in conflicts between families, and conduct education for those who are newly arrived as well as prison and hospital visits (Borell, 2012). The collective organization that occurs—through among other things mosques, Koran schools, and Muslim-profiled elementary schools—often sees a gathering of Muslims from various ethnic, linguistic, and social backgrounds. Meanwhile, the main aim is religious rather than political. In Sweden there are only a few politically oriented Muslim organizations, and these don’t have a broad public audience. The political work is described as peripheral by Cato and Otterbeck (2014), who studied Muslims’ engagement in  local and national politics. They further show that Muslims who are politically engaged do not directly fight for Muslim identity and recognition. This low degree of professional political engagement among Muslims regarding Muslim issues likely reflects a hindrance by the majority society’s often negative view of Muslim identity and faith. The situation for Muslims in Sweden has similarities to that in France (Peace, 2015). Whereas Sweden does not share the same colonial past with Muslims that France does, like in France there are strong feelings and opinions that the public and political arena should be spared from religion. This might be a reason for the absence of religious issues in Swedish political life. In the World Values Survey (Inglehart et al., 2014), Sweden is classified as the most secular country in the world; at the same time, Sweden has a political party that openly acknowledges that its ideology is based on Christian values. It’s not certain, however, that Swedes experience the references as specifically Christian (Thurfjell, 2015). Meanwhile, the social and symbolical boundaries between Muslims and the majority society are not static. Jenny Berglund (2015) was one of few researchers, in connection with attacks on mosques in Sweden in 2015, to report on how ethnic Swedes showed solidarity with Swedish Muslims in protesting the violence. The moral background fabric with which Muslims’ actions and Islam are interpreted and valued, which I’ve presented in this section, is elusive. How Muslims are treated and how their demands are negotiated in the civil sphere vary based on context.

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Anwar’s Motivation The issue of incorporation forms a nation’s identity—its “we-ness” and its destiny (Eyerman, 2001). We witness, or ourselves become involved in, the social drama over social and cultural integration. By “drama” I’m not talking about socially subversive events that are matters of life and death, but rather simply the everyday cultural life in the form of myths, narratives, and spectacle that we all more or less understand and simplify and identify ourselves and others with (cf. Dilthey & Rickman, 2015[1961], pp. 87–93). Drama can be used to influence, and it can be motivational. No one can avoid the issues in our everyday meetings—at work, at school or daycare, or in the mass media’s reporting. In Anwar’s life, there were many diffuse dramatic events that formed and motivated the fight for Muslim incorporation. According to Anwar himself, as stated in the opening quote of this chapter, its origin was just those encounters with Muslim youths at Komvux. According to Anwar, the conflicts at Komvux were due to the youths’ inability to reconcile the different expectations from home and school, and during their free time with friends. This phenomenon is reminiscent of what Du Bois describes as double consciousness: “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois, 2007 [1903], p. 8). Unlike some of the parents, who frowned on late nights out with friends and instead wanted to keep their children at home, Anwar felt that Muslim and Swedish youths needed to get to know each other. He also knew, unlike most of the Muslim parents, that there were Swedish youths who dedicated a great deal of time to their schoolwork. But this wasn’t enough to help the students. The parents needed help too, according to Anwar, in recreating the authority that had previously been supported by the culture and social network in their home country. He experienced that many of the parents lacked a social network and the cultural resources they needed to raise a family. The roles often shifted, between the youths’ meeting with the Swedish statsindividualism (individual autonomy supported by the state) (Berggren & Trägårdh, 2015) and with their parents from more collective-oriented cultural backgrounds (cf. Bouakaz, 2009). And the more politically free, equal, and individualized child-rearing in Sweden stood in opposition to a more traditional, authoritarian approach. According to Anwar, one way to bridge the cultural gaps and insecurity among the children and youths was to ­ strengthen their Muslim identity:

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Understanding your religion and culture gives you pride and security, which are necessary if the students are to be open to society as well as bridge the divergences between their original culture and Swedish society.

With the establishment of the Muslim-profiled school, Anwar asked himself the same question Du Bois asked of the educational system in the US: “Training for life teaches living; but what training for the profitable living together of black men and white?” (Du Bois, 2007 [1903], p. 65). The Muslim school was primarily intended for Muslim children and youths. Anwar wanted to strengthen the students’ Muslim identity to allow them to stand up to discrimination, have an influence on their own lives, and also actually change attitudes and values. He summed up his strategy with the following metaphor: “If we have a little plant that’s well cared for, its roots grow strong and it can then grow into a big plant.” This strategy is reminiscent of the one Balisis Lal (1990) describes. According to Lal, there is strong empirical support for the idea that ethnic organizations can serve a supporting function in matters of integration and offer help with practical needs, link the past to new experiences, and help people maintain their self-confidence and social status. In his work at Komvux, Anwar saw that these resources were not available via the majority of society’s organizations and institutions. Even more personal events have formed Anwar’s work for the incorporation of Muslims. His children attended a Swedish municipal elementary school in the 1980s, when neither Swedish society nor the school had yet learned about Muslim holidays. During Ramadan his daughter wanted to fast, but no one at the school knew about the holiday or what it entailed: I remember when my own kids were in school. They’re grown now, so it’s been a while. There were some problems then too. I heard about it from my daughter, who was in the fourth grade. It was Ramadan. She wanted to fast because we’re Muslims. She didn’t dare say anything to [the teacher] … When it was lunchtime, she pretended to eat. What fear. That was one thing we [parents] didn’t know about. It must’ve affected her and her concentration. It was bad enough not being able to talk about it … accepting a Muslim’s habits and way of life. That was the fundamental idea with Jibrilskolan.

That neither Anwar himself nor other Muslims should have to hide their identity as Muslims in public thus became an important driving force for him in the establishment of the Muslim-profiled school and his

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continued work. The dilemma posed by living with a double identity was something he often returned to when I spoke with him about the background of the school and his work to strengthen Muslims’ and Islam’s position in Swedish society: Being Muslim and going to the prayer hall and praying … spending time with my Swedish friends. There’s nothing weird about that. It doesn’t need to polarize things. I don’t need to be either/or—I can be both/and.

According to Anwar, the founding of Jibrilskolan in 2002 was thus a way to solve some of the problems he had experienced as a parent, an imam, and a teacher at Komvux. When I spoke with students and parents about Jibrilskolan, they described it as “a place where you can feel at home” (cf. Zine, 2007). Even though the school’s establishment was formally approved by the Swedish School Agency, there were still issues to be resolved both internally and in relation to the surrounding society. All the parents did not agree with Anwar’s ideas about the school’s function. This was not only important to be able to run the school; but also, for the school to be accepted and appreciated it was crucial that the parents support its vision: There are different types of parents. We have parents who absolutely want to have an Islamic school. They move to Öjbo solely because the school’s there. These are most often practicing Muslim parents with a higher education. Then we have parents who … want to do what their neighbors do. If the neighbor’s son can read the Koran they want their kids to read the Koran too. It has to do with conscience and feelings of guilt—maybe not really their own decision.

In some cases, parents with a higher education and a conservative interpretation of Islam chose the school in order to protect their children from the influence of the majority society. Anwar, on the other hand, wanted to see the school as a bridge to the majority society. Even the parents who chose the school because of outer social pressure rather than the conviction that Islam could help their children could be hard to handle. There were also certain values and norms among some parents that needed to be calibrated: There’s a great deficiency among our parents when it comes to seeing the children’s needs or when it comes to lowering themselves to the children’s level. They don’t care one bit what the children think. They [the parents]

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say that they’re older and responsible, and thus know what’s in the best interest of their child, especially when the children are little.

According to Anwar, it was important that the parents modernize their child-rearing in order to show that the purpose of the school wasn’t to conserve traditional child-rearing patterns and traditions. The work to modernize the Muslim identity thus entailed not only restoring an original identity but also becoming a part of society by doing this work and making it known. Anwar used his experiences with and knowledge about parents in his outward political work. In the next section, I will show how he tried to impose his framing of integration as the “common-sense” position.

Anwar’s Public Performances Before Anwar established the Muslim-profiled school in 2002, he had fought for permission to build a mosque. He dreamed of gathering the city’s Muslims across ethnic and national lines. The issue of the mosque drew opinions concerning the consequences it would have for the social cohesiveness and incorporation of Muslims in society. The majority society had difficulty understanding Anwar when he tried to explain why the mosque and the Muslim-profiled school would strengthen and improve integration by strengthening Muslim self-confidence and identity. In the planning work for building the mosque, the municipality arranged several meetings with both residents and outside actors. At these meetings, the mosque was labeled with qualities such as “segregating” and being a threat to “diversity” (Krantz & Petersson, 2005). The school Anwar opened in the fall of 2002 was criticized with similar arguments. In May 2003, just over half a year since the school’s opening, the local newspaper published its first article on it (a1). The article tells of how the school has invited the public to come see its classrooms and lessons, and to talk with its teachers and principals; it also asserts that the school is creating segregating social effects similar to the mosque. One of the school’s teachers—with a Swedish background and a teaching certification from Sweden—is interviewed. This teacher is extremely critical of the school, and is quoted a good ­number of times. According to the teacher the school does not offer sufficient Swedish language lessons, while the students “for most of the day hear a deficient language since everyone’s bilingual”. These opinions are given a great deal of space, likely because the interviewee is a teacher at Jibrilskolan and is therefore regarded by the journalist as a trustworthy source. The teacher talks about “an obvious segregation

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and isolation of the children” as something society should work against. The way the teacher talks about this is presented as concern for the children, and the claims about Jibrilskolan’s weaknesses and assumed failure are interpreted by the journalist as facts and truths. The school and its students, teachers, and education are placed discursively in the profane area of the civil sphere. The journalist listens to the teacher, and then confronts Anwar with the claim about the school’s segregating and isolating qualities: Isn’t there a risk that you’re isolating and increasing segregation when children of immigrants with a specific faith and culture attend a school where it’s not a natural part of the course of the day that they socialize with Swedish students? (Journalist) There’s no risk whatsoever. We follow the curriculum, and the children learn Swedish. (Anwar)

The teacher’s story, above, about the depicted community of language from which the children at Jibrilskolan are isolated, is reinforced by the journalist. In Sweden, deficient Swedish language skills have also come to be an explanation for why newly arrived immigrants are unemployed. At the same time that it’s fully rational to acknowledge the importance of a common language, it’s also a question of a symbolic weighing of what counts as sufficient knowledge in a language, both spoken and written. In Sweden, for example, social segregation is also said to be due to deficient knowledge of the Swedish language. Thus, when the journalist hears from one of the school’s teachers that the students are not learning Swedish, this symbolizes a larger story of society’s segregation. Besides the purported deficiency in language education, the school is also criticized for lacking in equality. The interviewed teacher asserts that Jibrilskolan distinguishes between boys and girls as they are taught separately. The school also doesn’t allow students to learn about Swedish traditions and customs. In this way, negative foreground symbols like isolation and segregation are linked to deep background representations and holy narratives about the school’s role in promoting parity and equality. Further, the students are labeled as having “a specific faith and culture” that would pose a danger if strengthened. They have to be saved as soon as possible, through socializing with Swedish children. Ball discusses this form of separation as “the saviour discourse”, one that “promises to save schools, leaders … teachers and students from failure, from [ ] their weaknesses” (Ball, 2009, p. 87). The savior discourse is counterproductive, from Anwar’s perspective. So that they can be saved, the students’

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identities are placed discursively in the margins of society’s “we” and their agency is taken from them, which Anwar asserts is central to being a member of society. It also appears that the journalist is eager to get Anwar to acknowledge the school’s shortcomings in its failed integration and threat to the glue that holds society together. According to Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky (1982), debates of this type often concern the moral order in society and what they call “pollution beliefs”. Through such “pollution beliefs”, the journalist and the interviewed teacher attempt to distinguish what they see as immoral actions by an already marginalized group from the established morals, and thereby uphold the image of the good society (p. 37). Empirical observations of a Muslim-profiled school with separated teaching are given their specific meaning through the sacred narrative of an equal country where everyone speaks Swedish; and when situations and events are interpreted through this filter they take on a certain significance. With these holy background representations, Islam is interpreted as the reason for the separation of boys and girls and the resulting inequality—Jibrilskolan is placed as “matter out of place” (Douglas, 2002, p. 36) and other schools as integrative models. Anwar is also asked to comment on reports that other Muslim-profiled independent schools have violated the Education Act, and of lies and misconduct by principals in their failure to report physical punishment and suspected abuse. Instead of commenting on other schools, Anwar points out that Jibrilskolan obeys the law, has nothing to hide, and is a well-­ functioning school: Jibrilskolan obeys all the laws and rules the Swedish authorities have set up. We aren’t worried about scrutiny or debate. We namely have a very good school that functions like any other elementary school in Sweden. (a1)

This quote highlights the fact that Anwar has been asked to answer for all Muslim-profiled schools even though he has no formal role representing them. His idea that children need to be more secure in their identity and strengthen their self-confidence in order to take in knowledge and enter society doesn’t reach the readers of this article. The journalist wedges himself in as a biased critic between what Anwar wants to achieve with the school and what one of its teachers says is going on (cf. Alexander, 2017). Meanwhile, the journalist’s claim that parents are segregating their children by choosing Jibrilskolan goes unchallenged in the article (a1). Like

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Anwar, three parents are also confronted with this claim. They are quoted as saying that at Jibrilskolan “the children don’t have to feel different … Here, there’s security and community.” It’s the majority society that’s driven them to leave the bullying and poor results at other schools and seek refuge at Jibrilskolan. In the counternarrative, the parents appear to care about their children exactly like good parents do. They aren’t segregating their children but rather protecting them. Their choice of Jibrilskolan appears logical as well as ethically defensible. As opposed to the interviewed teacher and the journalist, the parents code the school positively: it offers security and restores the social solidarity they have found lacking. These mothers say their children are: … really happy. Now our kids can be safe in their own culture and religion, and not risk being bullied. Then they’ll handle integration better later. At the school, the children don’t have to feel different or risk being bullied for it. Here, there’s security and community. (a1)

Just like in Anwar’s reasoning, in this narrative Jibrilskolan is presented as a moral outpost that helps the parents in their child-rearing and the children in their learning, by offering security (Zine, 2007). Furthermore, seen from the outside, with the Swedish school system encouraging parents to actively choose their children’s school (Lund, 2015), their choice of Jibrilskolan appears completely rational. Meanwhile, the parents in the quote above don’t refer to their legal right to choose their children’s school. Instead, they cite the emotional need to be accepted as Muslims and feelings of “otherness” in the Swedish public school system as driving their choice. But although they stress their emotional and particular needs for language, culture, and Islam, they also point out that: The kids get to go to a school with a Swedish focus and education, but here there’s also the languages, the culture, and Islam. So they get a good foundation to stand on, at the same time that they’re learning Swedish and other subjects. (a1)

The parents stress the importance of both raising their children and learning about the receiving society as well as the culture their children have brought with them from their home country, in an attempt to convince the journalist that the school’s Muslim profile is compatible with what they assume are desirable values to the journalist.

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Anwar’s Performances for Multicultural Incorporation With time, Anwar has learned not to get defensive when Islam and Muslims’ behavior and ways of understanding the world are criticized. He describes this as follows: When I was younger I thought of it as us against them. I’ve always acted spontaneously—don’t have any direct strategies, but I get experience from my surroundings. I think it’s that you grow in your surroundings. But it’s easy to get bogged down from the pressure and get defensive. There’s a certain risk—you have to stand up. Also, the situation dictates how you have to respond. It’s not about winning—it’s about doing what’s right. If Islam is right for me, I want others to learn from Islam too. It’s not earthly benefit I’m interested in but rather a good deed. You can also build more self-­ confidence in your role. I’ve actually stopped and reflected on things—I’ve even heard criticism from those closest to me. That gave me something to think about. You can’t just think about yourself—but instead of backing up, it was the opposite. We [Muslims] believe that faith grows and shrinks. We read our sources. Neither I nor others do things—we are causes. I’m going to make sure to do the right thing. I have a responsibility to remedy the fear that exists among Muslims.

Anwar’s most important driving force is “remedying the fear among Muslims”. He also says that his experiences from the debates that arose in connection to the establishment of the mosque, the Muslim-profiled school, and the application to have call to prayer have taught him that it’s not simply a matter of winning debates. On the other hand, he hasn’t thought about how he’s changed his reasoning. When I compare the first article (a1) with the second (a2) and third ones (a3), I notice that in the latter two Anwar uses a progressive narrative that contains both Muslim and Swedish holy background elements. Instead of answering claims and questions posed with the intention of distinguishing Muslims and Islam from the civil sphere’s holy core, he explains that we need to try to understand those who do something wrong instead of judging them. He also points out that everyone can make mistakes, and if we do make a mistake there are fair laws that we’re all equal under. Thus, instead of defending Muslim things and criticizing Swedish things, in both his speech and actions Anwar begins to link both the Muslim and the Swedish to democratic values and motivate this with the positive codes of civil discourse.

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This change in his social performance is reminiscent of how Alexander describes more successful performances, when actors: … hook their actions into the background culture in a lively and compelling manner, working to create an impression if sincerity and authenticity rather than one of calculation and artificiality, to achieve verisimilitude. (Alexander, 2011, p. 7)

This change didn’t mean, however, that antagonists on the Internet and in the mass media stopped wedging in the claim that Anwar’s plans for a mosque and a school were financed by religious fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia. At the same time that Anwar is confronted with these claims, in Sweden’s largest daily newspaper (a2) he’s depicted as being an “anti-­ fascist champion” who is on the front lines of demonstrations against racism and xenophobia along with other religious communities. Now, we’ll look more closely at the article in the national newspaper (a2) to see if there are any clues as to why Anwar’s motives are coded positively based on his actions. We start with the way his presentation of himself is interpreted. In this nationwide newspaper (a2), he’s described as “thoughtful”, “well-formulated”, and “well-dressed”. The journalist refers to representatives of local organizations who describe Anwar as “intelligent”, “clear”, “persistent”, “open”, and as someone who “doesn’t let himself be provoked”. “Thoughtful”, “well-formulated”, and “intelligent” describe his intellectual ability in positive terms. When asked if he is of brave character, he answers in the positive: Yes, I believe so. Pretty much. I’m aware of the risks, but it’s important that you stand for what you think is right. Like Olof Palme. Like Anna Lindh did. But I don’t compare myself with them. (a2)

Anwar is allowed to participate in forming his own characterization. It’s not simply a matter of how he talks and dresses, but also how he links himself to Swedish icons in the collective conscience: both Olof Palme and Anna Lindh have gone from being simply politicians to politicians who symbolize peace, bravery, and independence (Eyerman, 2001). At the same time, however, he’s aware of the risk of hubris (cf. Smith & Howe, 2015). The social performance theory highlights processes and actions to help us understand what shapes people’s convictions, which in turn motivate their actions. In order to, like Anwar, be successful in the process of influencing, many elements of performance must be merged. It’s not enough

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for Anwar to simply merge the meanings he wants others to ascribe to him. It is of course an important piece of the puzzle that his role and its character are experienced as authentic, and the possibility for Anwar’s audience to embrace his message obviously increases if they believe he is wise and honest. At the same time, however, his audience has to be able to identify with what he is saying. Like most people, Anwar links to his dream of being like everyone else. To have lots of different friends. At the same time, he also refers to bigger dreams of bringing people together and creating a better society. He both identifies with and shows the possibility to integrate the tolerance, openness, and respect for freedom that characterize an individualistic culture (Berggren & Trägårdh, 2015) and simultaneously contributes to the common (cf. Voyer, 2013). The newspaper’s readers likely do not have experience of going to the prayer hall, but many of them have surely experienced what it feels like to be questioned and to not fit in when they just want to be themselves. When I accompanied Anwar in his daily work he often mentioned how much he respected, and how highly he valued, the democratic fundamental rights, and stressed that Muslims appreciate Swedish democracy. “It would be harder to be a Muslim in Saudi Arabia, where they don’t have the freedom we enjoy in Sweden”, he answered when a teacher with a Swedish background asked if it wouldn’t be easier to be a Muslim in a Muslim country like Saudi Arabia. Anwar conveyed the same narrative in the local newspaper (a3): “Sweden is an open country, and everybody can practice their religion here … That’s why it’s attractive to Muslims to live in Sweden.” Although Anwar began taking the initiative in interviews—and was permitted to do so—journalists still tried to distinguish the Muslim identity from the democratic values he wanted to connect it with. However, unlike in the earlier article (a1), he was able to deftly maneuver the claims and recode them into something other than how they initially might be interpreted. For instance, by asking Anwar “What do you think about the Taliban?”, the journalist from the national newspaper (a2) attempted to distinguish Islam and Muslims from the sacred side of the civil sphere. But instead of describing the Taliban’s detestable actions and dehumanizing them like so many others would do, Anwar explained the following: To some degree they’re misunderstood and misled. They never got to fix their mistakes. I like the Swedish way of looking at people who do something wrong—that you try to ask why and such. (a2)

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In opposition to the journalist’s indirect coding of the Taliban as “pure evil”, Anwar shifts the perspective and asks how we can help them. At the same time, he doesn’t avoid the question about their evil ways. Instead, he points out the importance of understanding instead of judging. Additionally, he links this philosophy to the “Swedish way” of “asking” about something one doesn’t understand. The issue of the Taliban possessing some sort of innate evil instead becomes a question of understanding. Like in the earlier article (a1), Anwar is asked to comment on Muslim-­ profiled schools that have violated the Education Act (a2). Unlike the first time he was asked this, he now cites the consequences of violations and notes that it’s not only Muslim-profiled schools that the law and consequences apply to: “Schools that don’t behave properly shouldn’t be allowed to continue their activities, whether they’re Islamic or not.” In this way, he shows that Muslim-profiled schools and other publicly financed schools are equal under the law. Discursively and symbolically, the school is placed among institutions that respect laws and rules. Furthermore, it is ascribed the same holy background element that codifies the constitutional state’s principles regarding equality under the law. Another example of how Anwar has become more adept is when the local newspaper (a3) asks him to comment about the upcoming change to the national curriculum whereby knowledge about the Christian religion is to be given more space. He answers that it’s important that students learn about Christianity because this is part of the Swedish cultural heritage. When the journalist asks him why he thinks Islam has not been given the same space, he answers that “religion in general should be given more space in education” (a3). The journalist’s presumable hope that Anwar would compare Islam and Christianity is not realized, with Anwar instead highlighting the advantages of more time being dedicated to Christianity and religious issues. Both religions will benefit from an increased interest in religion in general, he asserts. These examples show how Anwar succeeds in fending off “polluted beliefs” and instead communicates narratives in which Islam and Muslims as symbols are linked to the concept of democracy and freedom.

Discussion The ambition of this chapter has not been to empirically describe the objective situation of Muslims and education in present-day Sweden. Instead, I have shown that different contexts and social performances offer different possibilities and space for the narrative Anwar wants to communicate about Muslims’ incorporation into the Swedish civil sphere.

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His narrative on why it’s important to build a strong Muslim cultural and religious identity isn’t always conveyed. Presumably, the core narrative of Swedish schooling identifies with the story of isolation and an Islamic school that can’t offer social mixing, social cohesion, and equal education, which has long been a fundamental tool for incorporation (Lund, 2019). In such a narrative, Anwar’s performance doesn’t arouse any feelings or images (Alexander, 2017, p. 7) about how the Muslim-profiled school will improve cultural and social integration. Although he tries to dramatize the dangers, this approach finds no footing. It’s not interpreted as “a tear in the social fabric”, to use Eyerman’s (2001, p. 2) metaphor. The stigmatization of Muslims and the bullying of Muslim students aren’t experienced as “pressure on [the civil sphere’s] boundaries” (Douglas, 2002, p. 157) and the self-image of the majority society. Anwar is unsuccessful, in Douglas’ words, in exaggerating “the difference between within and without” (Douglas, 2002, p. 5), to create sufficient pressure on the established symbolic boundaries. The drama does not arise (cf. Alexander, 2017, p. 7), and the symbolic order remains unchanged when Jibrilskolan is constructed as a threat to the Swedish language and equal education. In this narrative it’s not the school system or the majority society that’s made it difficult for immigrant incorporation, but rather Muslims who, with the help of Islam and the free school educational policy, have placed themselves in a self-segregated situation. As I have also shown, Anwar sometimes manages to link his urgent matters to core narratives and symbols. When he draws on democratic values like autonomy and the rights to make individual choices and exercise religious freedom, he uses metaphors to depict his ideas about ­integration. Instead of referring to the right to practice Islam in public, he highlights the fact that Muslims and core groups are equal under the law. In this way, he binds the Muslim and majority identities together into a common regulative institution and places himself in contact with Swedish holy icons and symbols of freedom and bravery, like Anna Lindh and Olof Palme. By discursively doing this, he stages a discursive refinement, at the same time that he creates a positive link to something regarded as sacred values in the Swedish civil sphere (cf. Alexander, 2011). Profane meanings are re-fused with the sacred/positive pro-civil “from the bottom up” (Alexander, 2011, p. 85). Anwar builds up a narrative in which all parts fit into each other and are interpreted positively, to have an effect in the form of recognition that ultimately results in socio-symbolic homology (Trondman, Lund, & Lund, 2011).

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In order to succeed at symbolic communication in this respect, it has to be open to complexity but must also link together symbolic patterns. In the words of Mary Douglas (2002, p. 3), Anwar is building symbolic patterns, and “within these patterns disparate elements are related and disparate experience is given meaning”. Denotative and connotative signifiers are attached and used together to map out the sacred side of the civil sphere. From this culturally pragmatic perspective, Anwar’s performance can be viewed as a series of social performances in the civil sphere in which he as a speaker re-fuses himself and his “audience, to connect with the members of civil society through felicitous performance of the codes and narratives that define it” (Alexander, 2011, p. 103). The symbolic boundary between being constructed as civil and anti-­ civil is a very fine line. In the local context, what shapes symbolic and discursive forms for incorporation isn’t merely social facts about education, curricula, and the actual discrimination of Muslims. Rather, in this case, it is more how social factors are represented—that is, how social facts such as signs are woven “into chains of already powerful symbols” (Alexander, 2017, p. 40)—that has significance for the incorporation of Muslims and Islam. Anwar’s work for the recognition of Muslims and Islam in Sweden thus implies not only normative hopes but also real things in the world where semiotics and social structure and values connect. With Anwar’s work as an empirical filter, I’ve shown that the fight for recognition is about “better placement inside the symbolic boundaries of civil society” (Alexander, 2007, p. 29). I’ve also shown that this can be achieved through a merging of meaning systems that have thus far existed s­ eparately. A merging of meaning systems that expands feelings and opinions about what the societal “we” contains is difficult, but not impossible.

References Alexander, J.  C. (2006). The Civil Sphere. New  York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexander, J.  C. (2007). The Meaningful Construction of Inequality and The Struggles Against It: A “Strong Program” Approach to How Social Boundaries Change. Cultural Sociology, 1(1), 22–30. Alexander, J. C. (2011). Performance and Power. Cambridge: Polity. Alexander, J.  C. (2012). Iconic Power Materiality and Meaning in Social Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Alexander, J. C. (2017). The Drama of Social Life. Cambridge: Polity press.

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Alexander, J. C., & Smith, P. (1993). The Discourse of American Civil Society: A New Proposal for Cultural Studies. Renewal and Critique in Social Theory, 22(2), 151–207. Alexander, J. C., & Smith, P. (2003). The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology. Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics. In J. C. Alexander (Ed.), The Meanings of Social Life. A Cultural Sociology (pp. 11–26). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Arai, M., & Skogman Thoursie, P. (2009). Renouncing Personal Names: An Empirical Examination of Surname Change and Earnings. Journal of Labor Economics, 27(1), 127–147. Ball, S. (2009). Privatising Education, Privatising Education Policy, Privatising Educational Research: Network Governance and the “Competition State”. Journal of Education Policy, 24(1), 83–99. Berggren, H., & Trägårdh, L. (2015). Är svensken människa?: Gemenskap och oberoende i det moderna Sverige. Stockholm: Norstedts. Berglund, J. (2009). Teaching Islam: Islamic Religious Education at Three Muslim Schools in Sweden. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet. Berglund, J. (2015). Sweden’s Protests Against Islamophobia Highlight the Polarized Views of Swedish Citizens Toward Muslims. [Blogg]. Retrieved April 19, 2019, from http://bit.ly/1wT27lN Borell, K. (2012). Islamofobiska fördomar och hatbrott: En kunskapsöversikt. SST:s skriftserie, Nr 1. Stockholm: Nämnden för statligt stöd till trossamfund. Bouakaz, L. (2009). Föräldrasamverkan i mångkulturella skolor. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Cato, J. (2012). När islam blev svenskt: föreställningar om islam och muslimer i svensk offentlig politik 1975 2010. Lund: Lunds universitet. Cato, J., & Otterbeck, J. (2014). Active Citizenship among Muslims in Sweden: From Minority Politics to Political Candidacy. Tidsskrift for islamforskning, 8, 223–247. Forum for Islamforskning, Københavns Universitet. Dilthey, W., & Rickman, H.P. (2015[1961]). Pattern & Meaning in History: Thoughts on History & Society. London: Routledge. Douglas, M. (2002). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. Douglas, M., & Wildavsky, A.  B. (1982). Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. (2007). The Souls of Black Folk: Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Expo. (2014). Flera moskéattacker i Sverige. Retrieved from https://expo. se/2014/12/flera-mosk%C3%A9attacker-i-sverige Eyerman, R. (2001). Cultural Trauma Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gustafsson, K. (2004). Muslimsk skola, svenska villkor: Konflikt, identitet & förhandling. Umeå: Boréa.

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Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Inglehart, R., Haerpfer, C., Moreno, A., Welzel, C., Kizilova, K., DiezMedrano, J., Lagos, M., Norris, P., Ponarin, E., & Puranen, B. et al. (Eds.). (2014). World Values Survey: Round Six – Country-Pooled Datafile 2010– 2014. Madrid: JD Systems Institute. http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp Integrationsverket. (2005). Integrationsbarometer 2004. En rapport om allmänhetens inställning till integration, mångfald och diskriminering 2003 och2004. Krantz, S., & Petersson, K. (2005). Moskén i Växjö: inte bara en byggnad. In J.  Ekberg (Ed.), Invandring, invandrare och etniska relationer i Sverige 1945–2005. Årsbok från forskningsmiljön AMER vid Växjö universitet. Växjö: ActaWexionensia. Lal, B.  B. (1990). The Romance of Culture in an Urban Civilization: Robert E. Park on Race and Ethnic Relations in Cities. London: Routledge. Larsson, G. (2006). Muslimerna kommer! Tankar om islamofobi. Göteborg: Makadam. Listerborn, C. (2010). Den våldsamma integreringen. Muslimska kvinnor i offentliga rum. In C. Listerborn, I. Molina, & D. Mulinari (Eds.), Våldets topografier. Betraktelser över makt och motstånd (pp.  265–285). Stockholm: Bokförlaget Atlas. Lund, S. (2015). School Choice, Ethnic Divisions and Symbolic Boundaries. New York: Palgrave Pivot. Lund, S. (2019). Immigrant Incorporation in Education: High School Students’ Negotiation of Belonging. In J. C. Alexander, A. Lund, & A. Voyer (Eds.), The Nordic Civil Sphere (pp. 203–228). Cambridge: Polity. Nilsson, H. (2015). Kultur och utbildning: En tolkning av två grundskolors mångkulturella kontexter. Växjö: Linnaeus University Press. Peace, T. (2015). European Social Movements and Muslim Activism. Another World but with Whom? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sixtensson, J. (2009). Hemma och främmande i staden: kvinnor med slöja berättar. Malmö: Institutionen för urbana studier. Malmö högskola. Smith, P., & Howe, N. (2015). Climate Change as Social Drama. Global Warming in the Public Sphere. New York: Cambridge University Press. Thurfjell, D. (2015). Det gudlösa folket: De postkristna svenskarna och religionen. Stockholm: Molin & Sorgenfrei. Trondman, M., Lund, A., & Lund, S. (2011). Socio-Symbolic Homologies: Exploring Paul Willis’ Theory of Cultural Forms. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(5), 573–592. Voyer, A.  M. (2013). Strangers and Neighbors: Multiculturalism, Conflict, and Community in America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zine, J. (2007). Safe Havens or Religious ‘Ghettos’? Narratives of Islamic Schooling in Canada. Race Ethnicity and Education, 10(1), 71–92.

CHAPTER 6

Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging Stefan Lund

I started this edited volume by presenting four quotes and asking the question: “What are these voices actually articulating”? In the introductory chapter I offered some initial suggestions of possible answers to this question and set up a theoretical framework in order to study the ways in which symbolic boundaries of belonging affect civil relations and immigrant incorporation in educational practices. My introduction was followed by four empirical chapters discussing school actors’ negotiations and reflections on the symbolic boundaries of belonging in different educational practices. In this final chapter, I ask myself: What have these four empirical chapters actually articulated? I will answer this question in three steps. First, I will discuss and interpret a theme called “Belonging and school segregation”. Second, I will turn my focus toward another common theme, “Swedishness and schooling”, which is followed by the last theme: “Meaning, reflection, and interpretation”.

S. Lund (*) Department of Education, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. Lund (ed.), Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9_6

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Belonging and School Segregation The chapters in this edited volume have demonstrated in different ways that school we-ness is a structuring force that guides and restricts core and out groups’ feelings of belonging, actions, and reactions in school choice and educational settings. They have exposed that different school cultures tend to maintain and require certain values, social characteristics, manners, and beliefs. In order to be or become an unproblematic member of a specific school, students have to be or learn how to be like us! Symbolic boundaries of belonging are performed in discourse and schooling practice that separate “us” at this school from “them” at other schools—but that also, in a broader picture, divide core from out groups in the Swedish educational system. In other words, symbolic boundaries of belonging are part of the reinforced school segregation in Sweden. The introduction of independent schools, increased competition, and school choice reforms at the beginning of the 1990s opened up a “self-­ segregating window” that for decades had been politically concealed. It had been practically impossible for parents and students to choose a particular school in the previous three decades. Central government policy regulated and dimensioned admission to different forms of schooling. Thus, school choice reforms changed parents’ and students’ opportunity structures (Erixon-Arreman & Holm, 2011; Lund, 2008). In a formal sense, “everyone” got “equal” access to educational settings that had previously been out their reach (cf. Khan, 2011). But, simultaneously, these reforms overrode the possibilities to fulfill underlying goals of socializing democratic citizens in institutional spaces in which children and youth could meet. The self-segregated window goes two ways. First, it has opened up for Swedish middle- and upper-class parents to actively place their children in certain junior-high and high schools. These schools, with a homogeneous composition of high-performing students, are also as a result interpreted to symbolically represent core values of Swedishness (equality, individualism, autonomy, rationality, secularism). These schools, with motivated students and where the majority have Swedish as their mother tongue, are seldom understood as a “problem” for civil incorporation. To a high extent, these schools fulfill the goals that the education system strives for. Another positive sign of these schools’ incorporative functions is that they also tend to attract and assimilate immigrant students with high educational capital and study motivation (cf. Ambrose, 2016; Bunar, 2009; Kallstenius, 2010; Lund, 2015). In this

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sense, this pattern of social mobility through educational choice is supported by core values of the educational sphere. From this overall point of departure, immigrant students who have chosen and been accepted to “Swedish schools” (based on their grades) can be seen as active (ambitious, motivated, high-performing), rational (choosing the best schools in the region), and supportive of fulfilling fundamental normative aspects (social cohesion) of educational policy. But, as the chapters in this volume have stressed, these “Swedish schools” that are seemingly open to everyone do not explicitly exclude high-performing immigrant students. Within school practice, social exclusion is instead symbolically defined by students’ “ individual attributes and capacities” (Khan, 2011, p. 197). Second, the educational system’s self-segregation window has also opened up for Muslim-profiled independent schools. Muslim parents’ and children’s experiences of academic failure, bullying, and prejudice in the public school system is one important self-reported factor in the motives for the parents placing their children in independent Muslim schools. Another is connected to a lack of recognition and feelings of non-­ belonging. As this parent tells us: “The children don’t have to feel different … Here, there’s security and community”. Finally, the conviction that strengthening cultural-religious identities is essential for the process of incorporation into Swedish society: “Understanding your religion and culture gives you pride and security, which are necessary if the students are to be open to society as well as bridge the divergences between their original culture and Swedish society”. In the present educational system, based on a pronounced school choice policy, these motives could be coded as civil values; namely, that school leaders adjust schooling practice to the demands of the school market (cf. Ball, 2007), and that immigrant parents choose the educational milieus they believe will best benefit their children’s interests and needs. This is especially the case when they and their children have previously experienced prejudice, stigmatization, and perceived “otherness”. But, in contrast to self-segregated “Swedish schools”, Muslim schools can be viewed as “carriers of uncivil behaviors who are unwilling to be part of the ethnic mainstream” (Lund & Voyer, 2019, p. 293). As previously discussed in this volume, there is strong suspicion toward collectives that operate outside the bond between the state and the individual—especially when the core values of the Swedish civil sphere can be questioned (Berggren &Trägårdh, 2015). In other words, the two forms of self-segregation relate to the civil coding of the Swedish civil sphere in fundamentally diverse ways. Symbolic boundaries that in d ­ ifferent

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ways uphold culturally and socially homogenized schooling cultures can on the one hand be coded as an unproblematic part of “us”, and on the other as a polluted “them”. In my interpretation, the narrative of Muslim independent schools poses a threat to core civil values like individual and religious freedom, gender equality, equal education, social cohesion, and democratic incorporation (cf. Englund, 2018). On the other hand, despite the civil coding of different schools, both these forms of self-segregation pose a threat to the basic understanding of the praxis and expected outcome of Swedish schooling; namely, to provide for a democratic and “universal” we-ness. Social and/or ethnic self-­ segregated schools stand in strong contrast to such normative hopes of educating toward individual autonomy, respect for cultural diversity, and democratic citizenship (cf. Izquierdo & Minguez, 2003). Instead, in my interpretation, they are formed in order to reinforce a “specific” we-ness that supports actions and ideas of incorporating individuals in relation to different homogenous social and ethnic groups. Lack of Recognition Another important finding in regard to school segregation, however, is that one particular group of immigrant students—those living in territorially stigmatized suburbs—actively try to close this window of self-­ segregation. It never, or at least very seldom, happens that ethnically Swedish parents and students choose schools with a majority of immigrant children. Rather, they often tend to avoid ethnically and culturally mixed school settings (cf. Kallstenius, 2010; Roda & Stuart Wells, 2013). When these immigrant students make their school choice, they are looking for better schooling (good grades and learning proper Swedish) and incorporation into Swedish society. In this sense, their school choice and participation in schooling are part of an active strategy, based on the assumption that ethnically Swedish-dominated schools, in a way superior to others, can develop their knowledge and grades, incorporate them, and increase their social chances through schooling (cf. A. Lund, 2019). Very often, this does not work in the way they had hoped. When moving to these milieus, many immigrant students feel that they do not fit in. Such feelings are connected to:

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(1) Place: “It’s ‘us’ who live here and ‘them’ who live there. It’s a big difference. It might only be one [subway] station to Bay Valley; but there, there are only Swedes and here there are only immigrants”. (2) School’s student body composition: “There were only two of us immigrant girls”. (3) Social interaction and friends: “Never hung out with friends after school” (…) “The other students didn’t want to talk to us, they didn’t even say ‘Hi’” (…) “We feel left out”. (4) Signs of religious manners: “It’s not the custom here, it’s not the normal thing to do”. (5) Social position: “In Turkey, I would have picked the best school … but here … You all inherit, you all have better finances and, you know, we don’t have that opportunity so I wouldn’t choose like my sister did. She chose a school downtown for her child, and she [thinking of her niece] is suffering for that. Because when there’s a holiday all the other kids go on vacation, to Spain or somewhere else and we can’t, the child gets a wound inside her; they don’t feel good if they can’t have what their friends have”. These parents’ and students’ feelings and reflections are seemingly similar to what James Baldwin stated almost 50 years ago: I’m certain, again, you know … that again like most white Americans I have encountered, they have no … I’m sure they have nothing whatever against Negroes, but that’s really not the question, you know. The question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance, which is the price we pay for segregation. That’s what segregation means. You don’t know what happening on the other side of the wall, because you don’t want to know. (James Baldwin, cited in Peck, 2017, p. 40)

Successful school achievements have given the immigrant students the opportunity to enter high-performing city center school buildings and classrooms. But, these students feel that their cultural identities and lives outside school in the territorially stigmatized suburbs are of no interest to their new classmates. They are the minority students, met with apathy and ignorance. As described in the chapters in this edited volume, the immigrant students are formally within the prestigious institutions but are simultaneously outside the civil coding of these schools’ we-ness. Their belonging is not self-evident at such schools.

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In my interpretation, these immigrant “school movers” seem to be met with passive and uninterested attitudes from the “Swedish” majority students, which hinders the development of primary relations. The core group’s lack of care and mutual recognition makes the immigrant school movers feel out of place. They become individuals unworthy of love and care, and who as a consequence can’t fully be themselves with the others. Because mutual recognition is intersubjective and thus connected to “the physical existence of concrete others who show each other feelings of particular esteem” (Honneth, 1995, pp.  95–96). The symbolic boundaries that specify the we-ness at these schools thus uphold asymmetrical communicative relations that obstruct friendship from happening. This lack of establishing genuine relations between autonomous individuals also means that the school culture prevents solidarity and acceptance of everyone’s distinct qualities (cf. Alexander, 2006; Honneth, 1995). The experiences of meeting an ignorant school culture, and feelings that their cultural identities are of little interest to the core group and that they as a consequence are hindered from contributing to the school community, initiate a process of reflection that makes the “school movers” return home to their stigmatized neighborhoods—home to places and schools where their values, characteristics, manners, and beliefs are recognized; to school cultures where real friendship can be developed.

“Swedishness” and Schooling In relation to my previous discussions, there are indications that local school markets have generated symbolic boundaries of belonging that are structured in relation to a school’s association to Swedishness. These boundaries are drawn by the school’s location (city center and wealthy neighborhoods), student body composition (socioeconomic background and quantity of ethnically Swedish/immigrant students), school achievements, and the ways in which the school culture upholds certain values, manners, and beliefs. In my interpretation of the chapters in this volume, this symbolically defined school hierarchy appears to uphold three ideal types of schools. I will hereafter call these the “foreign schools”, “multicultural schools”, and “Swedish schools”. As discussed above, the “Swedish schools” uphold a majority of native Swedes, students who are often unproblematically regarded as fully incorporated insiders (cf. Lund & Voyer, 2019). The “foreign schools” are often supposed to challenge the sacred narrative of the educational sphere. They can’t offer an equal

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e­ducation where everyone learns to speak proper Swedish. “Foreign schools” are symbolically coded as arbitrary and organized by factions (cf. Alexander, 2006). For example, Muslim-profiled schools or schools located in neighborhoods where very few or no ethnic Swedes live. The interviewed students in these latter types of schools say they really like their neighborhood and have lots of friends living there, but that the schools perform poorly and that there is a total lack of Swedishness: I live in Bee Valley, and I LOVE it; but education there, NO THANKS! … I have many friends in Bee Valley, but most of them go to schools in other neighborhoods. They don’t want to attend a school in Bee Valley either, ‘cause if you go to a school there it’s like going to school in Kurdistan or Iraq. Of course it’s mixed here, but not like there. [sighs]

At the end of the quote, this student refers to her choice of a “multicultural school” located closer to the city center and therefore also, as this teacher expresses, closer to Swedishness: “we get students from Bee Valley applying to our school, ‘cause we’re closer to Swedishness or whatever you can call it … [Shrugs her shoulders and sighs] … it might sound strange … but closer to Swedish society”. Another complementary aspect, grounded in the empirical analyses in this edited volume, is that these “multicultural schools” offer a pluralistic, deliberative, and study-oriented school culture. The school actors describe that boundaries of belonging in these milieus are built on solidarity with “the other” and acceptance of everyone’s distinct qualities (cf. Alexander, 2006). Students feel “at home”, that they belong. A solidarity and friendship form a collective community, exemplified by these two student voices: But I felt like the class was so open to each other that we could have a heated discussion and then cool down and say, okay, I accept what you’re saying. And if you didn’t, there was always someone else who said, but you know what, that’s enough now. (…) Not everybody has the same sexuality, and not everybody has the same nationality. Some had arrived in Sweden just a couple of years ago. And, like, we tried to really be there for each other. (…) … here we have more of a kinship than just being ordinary friends. We’re more like brothers and sisters.

Students argue that at “multicultural schools” their cultural identities are regarded as an asset, that they can build close relationships with others,

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that teachers respect them and show that they are able to learn, and that the diverse group of students is a resource for learning. Teachers play an important role in building such school cultures. Like Anna Lund (2019) argues, “teachers can help migrant students maneuver through the formal structures of schooling in the face of racial prejudice and discrimination”. The teachers are described as having a social pathos and as mediators between schooling and society. Thus, they are viewed as social performers who in the communicative institution of education are sometimes able to connect cultural civil coding to social signifiers. One of the teachers describes the work: “We’re not social workers but we have another kind of task involving the students … to teach them … and also help them into Swedish society”. Thus, “multicultural schools” offer a social, academic, and incorporating milieu where this group of immigrant students feel they can learn, are cared about, and can be themselves. Through continuous reflections over what they have learned through discourse and experience to be important schooling conditions, they have come to understand that these school cultures will recognize their cultural identities as a contributing asset.

Meaning, Reflection, and Interpretation As I have shown, the school actors’ negotiation of and reflection on the symbolic boundaries of belonging offer an analysis that is complementary to the Bourdieusian and Foucauldian thinking that has long dominated this field of research (cf. Apple, 2004; Ball, 2003; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Fejes, Olson, Rahm, Dahlstedt, & Sandberg, 2018; Gewirtz, Ball, & Bowe, 1995; Reay, Crozier, & James, 2011). These reflexive immigrants have learned to be aware of the “hidden” meaning structures that regulate what are regarded as appropriate values, social characteristics, manners, and beliefs in different school cultures and in society at large. Their ongoing reflections on who they are and who they want to become in relation to others are often neglected by the frequently repeated analysis of schooling and its relation to cultural and social reproduction. In other words, meaning is not predefined but rather negotiated and contested, and finds new forms in relation to time and place. The immigrant school actors come to gather information, learn, and be aware of the distinctions drawn between: types of school cultures within local school markets; how different groups of students apply meaning in school choice processes; pursuing schooling milieus where they can be themselves; and knowing how to

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cope with the Swedish civil sphere’s core values of autonomy, equality, and individualism—for example, female Muslim students who emphasize their free will to wear a veil, or the ways in which immigrant students use the educational system’s opportunity structure and actively choose a school that best suits their demands. They use experience and reflection as tools for learning, and for becoming better at handling the communication and social interaction that takes place within the Swedish school system. In this general sense, they are not independent and passive. Meaning is not shaped behind their backs. They are agents, actively negotiating and reflecting upon their feelings of belonging in different communities. Very often, these reflections come to be about a kind of double consciousness that informs their everyday interaction and sense of self (Du Bois, 2007). Being outside Swedishness proper, they feel as if they are continuously made suspect of carrying undesired values, characteristics, manners, and beliefs. Many of these school actors try to negotiate such symbolic boundaries. This becomes obvious, as in the quotes below, when they avoid making a nuisance out of themselves and thus confirming the image of immigrants as a problem: If someone’s said something bad about Muslims or Somalis, I think, ah that’s just one person. I don’t think the majority feels like that. (…) When people do racist acts, you think I won’t do anything, because that’s precisely what they want us to do. Like scream back, mess with them. They want us to show that we’re bad people. It’s merely a matter of being quiet and walking away. (…) Like, you only show the backhand, I’m joking [laughter]. I swear that’s what I mean. Show what’s good about us. We’re not bad people.

As I have argued, in their daily lives immigrant school actors are constantly reflecting in-depth on how their selves, in interaction with others, can re-fuse meaning and/or enlarge we-ness. “Considerations of belonging are in this sense a vital aspect of the enlargement of the common horizon of values and the establishment of mutual understanding of how to handle difference” (S. Lund, 2019, p. 221). Thus, the ongoing negotiation of and reflection on boundaries of belonging and immigrant incorporation are not about loss of meaning, as in Habermas’ colonizing thesis. Incorporation into pluralistic societies can’t be fully explained in terms of

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instrumental action (money and bureaucracy) or disrupting communicative action in the lifeworld (values and norms). According to the empirical chapters in this volume, the focus should rather address the communicative and social interactions themselves and the ways in which actors’ feelings of belonging are structured by different forms of interpreted meaning. Interpretations and reflections are closely united. The interviewed immigrant school actors in this volume have all seen, experienced, or observed the structuring forces of belonging/non-belonging in the we-­ ness of different communities (e.g. neighborhoods, school cultures). In different ways, they have interpreted this problem and drawn a conclusion as to how to act in social relations (cf. Dewey, 1916). In my own interpretation, the deeper meanings of this ongoing reflection on the social interaction between core and out groups reflect a hope—not just for their incorporation into a specific school culture but into the Swedish civil sphere in general. These immigrant school actors “do not just want to be good and high achieving students, they want to become good members of the civil sphere” (S. Lund, 2019, p. 220). Like in many other countries, there are powerful structures in the Swedish school system that work against such hopes of multicultural incorporation (Alba & Holdaway, 2013). This is truly problematic, not least from the perspective of fulfilling the normative hope of civic education (Honneth, 2015; Tognato, 2018). More than a hundred years ago, John Dewey taught us that “a democracy is primarily a mode of associated living” and of “conjoint communicated experience”, and that such shared experience is “equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity” (Dewey, 1916, p. 101). As the chapters in this volume have exposed, there is no doubt that Swedish schooling faces a major challenge in this regard.

References Alba, R.  D., & Holdaway, J. (2013). The Children of Immigrants at School: A Comparative Look at Integration in the United States and Western Europe. New York: New York University Press. Alexander, J. C. (2006). The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ambrose, A. (2016). Att navigera på en skolmarknad: en studie av skolvalfrihetens geografi. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet.

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Apple, M.  W. (2004). Creating Difference: Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism and the Politics of Educational Reform. Educational Policy, 18(1), 12–44. Ball, S. (2007). Education PLC: Understanding Private Sector Participation in Public Sector Education. London: Routledge. Ball, S. J. (2003). Class Strategies and the Educational Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage. London: Routledge. Berggren, H., & Trägårdh, L. (2015). Är svensken människa? Gemenskap och oberoende i det moderna Sverige. Stockholm: Norstedts. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1977). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage. Bunar, N. (2009). När Marknaden Kom till Förorten: Valfrihet, Konkurrens och Symboliskt Kapital i Mångkulturella Områdens Skolor. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] (2007). The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Englund, T. (2018). Essä: Är demokratin hotad? Om privata intressen och skolans omvandling. Utbildning & Demokrati, 27(1), 115–135. Erixon-Arreman, I., & Holm, A.-S. (2011). Privatisation of Public Education? The Emergence of Independent Upper Secondary Schools in Sweden. Journal of Education Policy, 26(2), 225–243. Fejes, A., Olson, M., Rahm, L., Dahlstedt, M., & Sandberg, F. (2018). Individualisation in Swedish Adult Education and the Shaping of Neo-Liberal Subjectivities. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 62(3), 461–473. Gewirtz, S., Ball, S.  J., & Bowe, R. (1995). Markets, Choice and Equity in Education. Buckingham: Open University Press. Honneth, A. (1995). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity. Honneth, A. (2015). Civil Society as a Democratic Battlefield: Comments on Alexander’s The Civil Sphere. In P. Kivisto & G. Sciortino (Eds.), Solidarity, Justice and Incorporation: Thinking Through the Civil Sphere (pp.  81–95). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Izquierdo, H. M., & Minguez, A. M. (2003). Sociological Theory of Education in the Dialectical Perspective. In C.  A. Torres & A.  Antikainen (Eds.), The International Handbook on the Sociology of Education: An International Assessment of New Research and Theory (pp.  21–41). New  York: Rowman & Littlefield. Kallstenius, J. (2010). De mångkulturella innerstadsskolorna: Om skolval, segregation och utbildningsstrategier i Stockholm. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Khan, S. R. (2011). Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Lund, A. (2019). Preparedness as a Counter-Memory. School Desegregation, Social Chances and Life Chances. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(13), 2318–2325. Lund, A., & Voyer, A. (2019). “They’re Immigrants Who Are Kind of Swedish”: Universalism, Primordialism, and Modes of Incorporation in the Swedish Civil Sphere. In J. C. Alexander, A. Lund, & A. Voyer (Eds.), The Nordic Civil sphere (pp. 177–202). Cambridge: Polity. Lund, S. (2008). Choice Paths in the Swedish Upper Secondary Education: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Recent Reforms. Journal of Education Policy, 23(6), 633–648. Lund, S. (2015). School choice, Ethnic Divisions and Symbolic Boundaries. New York: Palgrave Pivot. Lund, S. (2019). Immigrant Incorporation in Education: High School Students’ Negotiation of Belonging. In J. C. Alexander, A. Lund, & A. Voyer (Eds.), The Nordic Civil Sphere (pp. 203–228). Cambridge: Polity. Peck, R. (2017). I Am Not Your Negro: A Major Motion Picture. New  York: Vintage Books. Reay, D., Crozier, G., & James, D. (2011). White Middle-Class Identities and Urban Schooling. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Roda, A., & Stuart Wells, A. (2013). School Choice Policies and Racial Segregation: Where White Parents’ Good Intentions, Anxiety, and Privilege Collide. American Journal of Education, 119(2), 261–293. Tognato, C. (2018). The Civil Life of the University: Enacting Dissent and Resistance on a Colombian Campus. In J. C. Alexander & C. Tognato (Eds.), The Civil Sphere in Latin America (pp. 149–176). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Index1

A Academic demands, 11 Admission score, 19, 32, 33 Alexander, Jeffrey C., 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 42, 65, 66, 69, 85, 93–97, 104, 107, 110, 111, 120, 121 Anti-civil, 7, 12, 13, 91–111 Ash Public School, 1, 11, 17, 21–31, 33–36 Assimilate, 97, 116 Autonomy, 4, 8, 10, 12, 69, 75, 79, 94, 99, 110, 116, 118, 123 B Bay City, 21–24, 29, 36 Beech Ltd. School, 17, 21–23, 29–36 Behavior, 32, 73, 77, 79, 84, 92, 95, 97, 106, 117 Belief, 2, 3, 5–10, 12, 67, 70, 85, 94, 116, 120, 122, 123

Binary code, 95 Binary discourse, 2, 3, 6, 10, 21, 34 Boundaries of belonging, 2, 3, 6, 8–10, 12, 13, 60, 72, 85, 115–124 Bourdieu, Pierre, 122 Bridge Valley, 11, 42, 48–52, 56, 57, 60 Bridge Valley School, 1, 11, 41–43, 45–60 C Civic education, 6, 124 Civil incorporation, 2, 116 Civil repair, 6, 7 Civil sphere, 2, 6, 9, 10, 93–98, 103, 106, 108–111, 117, 123, 124 Civil values, 3, 4, 117, 118 Community, 8, 9, 12, 35, 49, 65, 67–69, 71, 74, 75, 78, 81–85, 91, 92, 95, 103, 105, 107, 117, 120, 121, 123, 124

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 S. Lund (ed.), Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9

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INDEX

Compulsory school, 4, 18, 28, 42, 45, 46 Core and out groups, 3, 6, 9, 12, 116, 124 Core values, 67, 69, 75, 83, 116, 117, 123 “Cream skimming,” 19 Cultural identities, 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 70, 119–122 Cultural sociological, 10, 21, 93 Culture, 1, 4, 7, 11, 17–36, 44, 47, 58, 65–69, 74, 76, 78, 83–85, 92–94, 99, 100, 103, 105, 107, 108, 117, 118 D Democracy, 9, 84, 108, 109, 124 Democratic values, 12, 93, 106, 108, 110 “Double consciousness,” 76, 84, 99, 123 Douglas, Mary, 104, 110, 111 Drama, 94, 99, 110 E Educational policy, 6, 7, 11, 110, 117 Educational practice, 2, 3, 21, 34, 66, 68, 85, 115 Educational reform, 5 Educational sphere, 10, 117, 120 Emotions, 8, 10, 65, 66, 73 Equality, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 18, 69, 71, 79, 97, 103, 109, 116, 118, 123 Ethnic background, 19, 21, 34, 35 Ethnic boundaries, 3, 9, 10, 21 Ethnic composition of student body, 5, 21 Ethnographic, 11, 12, 93

F Feelings of belonging, 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 17, 18, 21, 23, 33, 34, 41, 42, 45, 53–54, 56, 59, 60, 85, 116, 123, 124 Foucault, Michel, 66, 67, 75 G Grades, 5, 19, 20, 24, 25, 27, 30–33, 41, 43, 47, 50, 53–56, 54n9, 59, 61, 80, 82, 100, 117, 118 H Habermas, Jürgen, 123 High-performing, 33–35, 116, 117, 119 High school, 4, 11, 17–24, 26, 46, 54, 55, 72, 81, 82, 91, 92, 116 Honneth, Axel, 6, 120, 124 I Imam, 92, 93, 98, 101 Immigrant background, 4, 5, 7, 11, 46n5, 53 Immigrant incorporation, 2–10, 13, 110, 115–124 Immigrants, 1, 4–11, 17, 19, 24, 25, 28, 29, 33, 34, 36, 41, 47, 49, 50, 53, 56, 59, 60, 79, 92, 93, 103, 115–124 Inclusion and exclusion, 2, 21, 34, 44, 83 Incorporation, 2, 3, 8, 66–70, 83, 85, 94, 99, 100, 102, 106–111, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 Independent schools, 11, 18, 19, 21, 23, 28–30, 71, 104, 116–118

 INDEX 

Individual freedom, 71 Individualistic, 4, 33, 108 Inner-city schools, 1, 7, 17, 28, 29, 34, 35, 41, 42, 51 Interpretation, 2, 13, 67, 95, 101, 115, 118, 120, 122–124 Interstitial institutions, 6 Interviews, 12, 22, 23, 31, 34, 42n1, 43, 43n3, 47, 55, 59, 67, 68, 72, 93, 108 Islam, 67–69, 73, 75–78, 81, 84, 85, 92–94, 96–98, 101, 104–106, 108–111 Islamophobia, 78 J Jibrilskolan, 92, 93, 100–105, 110 Jokes, 45, 56–60 Junior high school, 43, 54, 55, 72 K Koran, 98, 101 Koran schools, 25, 98 L Labor migration, 68 Lamont, Michéle, 8, 9, 44, 57, 58 Local school markets, 23, 42, 43, 48, 120, 122 M Majority and minority students, 7 Marketization, 5, 6, 19, 45, 60 Meaning, 2, 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, 19, 42, 43n3, 44, 65, 66, 68, 93–96, 104, 108, 110, 111, 115, 122–124

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Meaning-making, 3, 10, 12, 44, 45, 82 Middle-class, 19, 29, 33, 34, 36, 47, 60 Moral community, 65, 84 Multicultural incorporation, 106–109, 124 Multiculturalism, 66, 68–70 Multicultural schools, 56, 120–122 Municipal, 22–24, 27, 42, 91, 98, 100 Muslim, Muslim identity, 69, 72, 77, 83, 84, 93, 94, 96, 98–100, 102, 108 Muslim-profiled school, 92, 93, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 106, 109, 110, 121 N Narratives, 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, 21, 42, 66, 68, 69, 74–76, 78, 79, 83–85, 94–96, 99, 103–106, 108–111, 118, 120 Negotiation, 2, 3, 10, 58, 65, 68, 115, 122, 123 Non-belonging, 4, 7, 9, 11, 41, 42, 44–45, 56, 57, 59, 60, 117 Norms, 5, 21, 28, 34, 44, 56, 58, 66, 70, 74, 77, 84, 97, 101, 124 O “Otherness,” 34, 42, 45, 56, 69, 74, 85, 105, 117 Out of place, 80, 85, 120 P Parents’ educational backgrounds, 45, 68 Performance theory, 94, 107

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INDEX

Place, 2, 3, 5, 31, 32, 42, 48n7, 51, 52, 60, 71, 80, 82, 85, 93, 101, 116, 119, 122, 123 Prejudice, 12, 33, 34, 78, 79, 97, 117, 122 Prestigious schools, 25, 28, 34 Q Quasi-markets, 18 R Racism, 78, 84, 107 Rational, 4, 12, 20, 61, 65, 103, 105, 117 Recognition, 2, 8, 75, 83, 85, 91, 94, 96, 98, 110, 111, 117–120 Reflection, 2, 3, 13, 47, 52, 115, 119, 120, 122–124 Re-fuse, see Meaning Religious, 1, 4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 66–78, 80–85, 92, 94, 98, 107, 109, 110, 118 Religious identity, 12, 66, 67, 72–74, 81–83, 85, 110 Residential segregation, 5 Rumors, 18, 33, 34 S Sacred, 8, 67, 95, 104, 108, 110, 111, 120 School achievement, 4, 5, 59, 119, 120 School actors, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 20, 24, 42, 71, 83, 115, 121–124 School choice, 5, 7, 8, 11, 17–36, 42–48, 50–54, 59–61, 116–118, 122

School choice reforms, 19, 45, 116 School competition, 7 School culture, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 17–36, 44, 66–68, 83, 85, 116, 120–122, 124 Schooling, 2–8, 10–13, 25, 41, 45, 47, 59, 60, 67, 68, 70–72, 83, 85, 115–118, 120–122 School markets, 22, 23, 45, 117 School reputation, 20, 25, 26, 29, 32, 34, 49–51 School segregation, 4, 5, 13, 19, 42, 60, 115–120 Secular society, 7 Secular values, 4 Segregation, 18, 23, 27, 34, 45, 102, 103, 119 Self-segregation, 12, 117, 118 Social background, 19, 29, 98 Social boundaries, 3, 9 Social chances, 118 Social characteristics, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 12, 18, 21, 34, 44, 60, 116, 122 Social cohesion, 69, 110, 117, 118 Social interaction, 3, 9, 36, 77, 119, 123, 124 Social manners, 9 Social mobility, 5, 117 Social performance, 13, 94, 107, 109, 111 Social relations, 75, 94, 124 Social segregation, 103 Solidarity, 2, 7, 18, 35, 36, 60, 85, 93, 97–98, 105, 120, 121 Stigmatization, 3, 7, 48n7, 49, 60, 84, 110, 117 Student body composition, 18, 29, 46, 53, 55, 119, 120 Swedish curriculum, 35

 INDEX 

Swedish National Agency of Education, 18, 19 “Swedishness,” 8, 13, 51, 52, 56, 59, 79, 80, 84, 115, 116, 120–123 Swedish schools, 4, 6, 7, 10–12, 28, 36, 44, 46, 54, 56, 60, 105, 110, 117, 118, 120, 123, 124 Symbolic boundaries, 3, 6, 8–10, 12, 17, 21, 23, 28, 34, 35, 44–45, 51, 58, 65–67, 69, 72, 83–85, 110, 111, 115–117, 120, 122, 123 Symbolic codes, 2 T Territorially stigmatized area, 7

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U “Us” and “them,” 3, 9, 10, 66 V Values, 2–10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 34, 44, 47, 56, 66, 67, 69, 71, 74, 75, 83, 84, 93, 96–98, 100, 101, 105, 106, 108, 110, 111, 116, 120, 122–124 W We-ness, 2, 9–11, 17–36, 42, 44, 45, 68, 74, 99, 116, 118–120, 124 Working-class, 48