Session Information
23 SES 12D, Minority Education
Symposium
Contribution
As part of the EU Framework for Roma Integration, Sweden has developed a Strategy that is an example of both explicit and exclusive targeting of the minority. In this paper we describe briefly the background and evolution of the Strategy but also the tensions it has revealed around issues of Roma representation and the framing of equality. We draw on two types of empirical data: Documentary materials produced around the Strategy by official sources and Roma organisations. These include (a) Government Communications and Reports on the Roma Inclusion Strategy, and EU documents related to the Swedish National Roma Integration Strategy; (b) Responses to the government documents by Roma organisations. Second, we have interviewed the former minister for integration (Erik Ullenhag), a Roma activist, and collected materials, and discussion notes from a policy conference “Romsk Inkludering”. We have framed our analysis against critical reviews of minority policies in social and education fields (Hübinette, 2016; Liedholm & Lindberg, 2020; McGarry, 2012; Montesino & Ohlsson Alfakir, 2015; Rodell-Olgaç, 2013), and EU and Swedish policies that address Roma minority issues (European Commission, 2016; Kommissionen mot antiziganism, 2015; Regeringskansliet, 2014). Even though the Strategy has engaged imaginatively with the politics of inclusion for Roma, it has not provided answers to two fundamental challenges: those posed by cultural recognition dilemmas prevalent in education; and, those regarding the practical issues around policy implementation. In an ethnically-blind policy environment, designing explicit policies for the heterogeneous groups of Roma in Swedish schools has produced mixed responses from the Roma and non-Roma organisations and policy actors. Challenges that the Strategy is facing relate to (a) the incorporation of Roma ‘voices’ into the actors represented in municipal and education institutions; (c) the heterogeneity of Roma communities (in terms of languages, religious affiliations, diversity of cultural identities); (c) majority views represented in local government and education institutions about an ethnicity-blind perspective to ‘education for all’.
References
European Commission. (2016). Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee, and the Committee of the Regions (27.06.2016. COM(2016) 424). Brussels: Assessing the Implementation of the EU Framework for NRIS and the Council Recommendation on Effective Roma Integration Measures in the Member States 2016. Hübinette, T. (2016). Words that wound: Swedish whiteness and the inability to accommodate minority experiences. In K. Loftsdóttir & L. Jensen (Eds.), Whiteness and postcolonialism in the Nordic region: Exceptionalism, migrant others and national identities (pp. 43–55). Abington: Routledge. Kommissionen mot antiziganism. (2015). First interim report. Stockholm. Liedholm, M., & Lindberg, G. (2010). Romska barn i skolor. En undersökning på uppdrag av Delegationen för romska frågor Lund. McGarry, A. (2012). The dilemma of the European Union’s Roma policy: Commentary. Critical Social Policy, 32(1), 126–136. doi:10.1177/0261018311425201. Montesino, N., & Ohlsson Alfakir, I. (2015). The prolonged inclusion of Roma groups in Swedish society. SocialInclusion, 3(5), 126–136. doi:10.17645/si.v3i5.247. Regeringskansliet. (2014). Education and Training 2020 National Report—Sweden. Regeringskansliet, Ministry of Education and Research, Memorandum. Rodell-Olgaç, C. (2013). Education of Roma in Sweden. In S. Hornberg & C. Brüggeman (Eds.), Die bildungssituation von Roma in Europa (pp. 205–217). Münster: Waxmann Verlag.
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