The aim of this paper is to investigate how young immigrants as pupils in an upper secondary school in Norway present their narrative identity as pupils.

The study is conducted in 1^st grade among 16 years’ old pupils in an upper secondary school. The class that is under study consists of 24 pupils. 50 % of these pupils should be classified as immigrants according to Statistics Norway (Statistics Norway, 2013). Immigrants are persons who are born abroad and who live in Norway with parents as well as grandparents born abroad (Our translation) or persons who are born in Norway with parents and grandparents born abroad. 

Norwegian policy-makers have for many years been concerned with egalitarianism in the sense that all pupils should have the same possibilities to be learn and to be treated equally (Gullestad, 2002; Pihl, 2010). Based on research of Norwegian political documents, school laws and curriculum these researchers find that central questions in the documents are how Norwegian culture, national identity and Norwegian history should be defined and taught to pupils in schools. The concept multicultural is hardly mentioned in these documents (Børhaug, 2007). This means that equality may be understood as becoming equal. Instead of being given equal opportunities pupils may be supposed to become equal. This way of interpreting the political documents may strengthen the understanding of “we” as Norwegians and “they” as the foreigners or strangers.

According to Abdallah-Pretceille (2006) an important value in interculturalism is to look across characteristics and categories where others have the power to define culture and ethnicity. In White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue the concept dialogue is understood as an open and respectful exchange of views between different ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic background and heritage, a dialogue that is based on mutual understanding and respect on all levels of society (Council of Europe, 2008).

What we as researchers expected to find was a classroom that was characterized by “we” and “they”. What we actually saw after three weeks of observation was a classroom that could be classified as intercultural. Based on our observations we asked the pupils if we could make individual interviews with them. What we wanted to find out was how they experienced their school-days and what they understood as the main reasons for their experiences.

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