Governance of Education and its Enterprise in State Policy of Integration - A comparative analysis of categories of students’ practices in education as an agent of integration The state policy of integration is actually followed by a governmentality centred on freedom (of choice) and self-regulation (Hvenegaard 2007). The explicit goal of the enterprise is employment and self-support, and in this respect integration measures follow the same trend as social welfare policy in general – despite the isolation of integration as an independent field of policy and practice. However, this focus intensively on employment and self-support is also prominent in the regime of educational policies ascribed as a force for economic competition in an emerging ‘national competitive state’ (Christensen 2008, Pedersen 2006, 2008). In many countries in Western Europe, for instance Denmark, Sweden and the UK, the education systems have become increasingly marketised, meaning an increased emphasis on “the choice of freedom” and the situation that students compete with one another in an unequal field of education, and an increased competition between diversified types of schools, options, streams and types. In this paper, the aim is to analyse the integration policy from a point of view of education, as the purpose is indeed, to study the different forms of students’ practices which are taking place in youth education as a selected site of the field of education. Furthermore, the analysis is based on a comparative perspective (Moldenhawer 2005), since the object of study is to address the transformation of students’ practices in selected schools in Denmark and Sweden, and to address the appearance of categories of ‘identity’, ‘citizen’ and ‘competence’ in the light of state policy of integration and education.

The data of analysis is qualitative interview with ethnic majority and minority students in ethnically mixed schools. Theoretical/analytically, the point of departure is basically the concept of pedagogic device, inspired by Bernstein, and how different kinds of knowledge are produced in the official field of pedagogic discourse and recontextualised in pedagogic discourse in classroom (Bernstein 1996, 2001, Neves and Morais 2001, Power 2006). Then, the point of departure is the concept of cosmopolitanism, and processes of inclusion and exclusion inspired by Popkewitz (Popkewitz 2008).

The expected finding is that the educational work of integration is, however, toned in a specific way by the fact that the students should learn to make realistic choices. The fact that free choice is conditioned and limited through the 'unequal field of education', inscribed in particular governmentalities thus becomes readily visible in the field of integration. Comparatively, the expected finding is also, that the category of citizen is more prominent in the case of students' practices in Sweden due to differences concerning the conception of how the state and its idea of community is perceived in the creation of education as a agent of integration.