The focus of the present study explores how Swedish schools define and categorize situations when students have been exposed to different forms of abusive acts and violence at school. Professionals working in schools encounter students with different social and cultural backgrounds and needs situations. This implies that schools on a daily basis have to deal with a diversity of situations and dilemmas. Student’s conflicts and situations of harassment and violence is a constant part of these dilemmas. Hjörne and Säljö (2014) argue that categorization is an often used in the process of bringing order in schools. Categories are used in order to contextualize different problems and in the search for a solution.

Research shows that there are no place where youth is at greater risk of being exposed to violence than in the school and on their way to or from their school. Threats are a relatively common experience among school students, but some aspects of this mundane and frequent violence are not taken seriously and are, thus, not reported (Hong, & Espelage, 2012). A great part of the literature on violence and harassment in schools has a focus on bullying. There are several studies showing a significant correlation between bullying and other antisocial behaviors (Thornberg, 2011). Both students who act as offenders and those who are victims are at greater risk of being subjected to aggressive and violent behavior later in life (Ttofi, Farrington & Lösel, 2012).

Sweden has witnessed a radical change in school approaches towards youth exposed to violence. Overall, there has been a development the last two decades where behavior previously categorized as fights and teasing, in various policy documents, is now described in terms of a legal discourse. Consequently, juridical concepts like discrimination and harassment are more frequently used (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012). One result of this is that the number of police reports has increased. At the same time, there is no clear evidence that violence and degrading treatment are actually increasing in Swedish schools. There is, however, evidence suggesting that societal norms and school policies are changing, rather than the actual prevalence of violence (Estrade et al., 2012).

Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse. A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Estrada, F., Pettersson, T., & Shannon, D. (2012). Crime and Criminology in Sweden. European Journal of Criminology, 9, 668–88. Hjörne, E., & Säljö, R. (2014). The pupil welfare team as a discourse community: Accounting for school problems. Linguistics and Education, 15, 321–338. Hong, J. S., & Espelage, D. L. (2012). A review of research on bullying and peer victimization in school: An ecological system analysis. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 17, 311-322. Jenkins, R. (2000) Categorization: Identity, social process and epistemology. Current sociology 48(3): 7-25. Thornberg, R. (2011). "She's weird" - The social construction of bullying in school: A review of qualitative research. Children & Society, 25, 258-267. Ttofi, M. M., Farrington, D. P., & Lösel, F. (2012). School bullying as a predictor of violence later in life: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective longitudinal studies. Aggression and Violent Behavior 17(5), 405–418. Wodak, R., & Krzyzanowski, M. (2008). Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.