Minoritized communities confronted with persistent structural inequalities are versatile in the ways they address these challenges and obstacles. Research reveals a wide array of strategies developed to better the opportunities of community ‘members’. One important strategy, which engages with the key issue of educational inequalities troubling many ethnic minority children, is the bottom-up organization of supplementary or weekend schools after the hours of mainstream/traditional schools or at the weekends (Steenwegen, et al. 2022). To many minoritized individuals and families, these schools are a key element in the search for maximal educational opportunities for their children. Supplementary schools have become very popular: around 20% of minoritized youth in the UK (Maylor et al., 2013) and as many as 45% in Flanders participate therein at some point (ongoing research author).

Crucially, these schools are often set up and managed by volunteers, and teachers are often parents or other (unpaid) community members, providing classes in support of pupils’ academic success, to teach heritage languages, and to nurture a sense of pride (Burman & Miles, 2018; Lan Curdt-Christiansen & Hancock, 2014; Lytra & Martin, 2010). Research up until now has mainly focused on the role these schools play in the lives of the pupils. However another main reason for the continuing importance of these schools is that they seem to have a much wider scope than ‘just’ focusing on youth. Given the schools’ inherently collective character, as set up by ethnic community members themselves, their role as a potential community force is central to the current paper.

We aim to understand what role these schools play for other community members, and as such potentially for the community as a collective. Our leading general research question is: what resources are made available in the supplementary school and how are these resources used by community members? We unpack how supplementary schools, while often starting from a pupil-centered approach, expand their scope to provide support to the ‘whole community’. Supplementary schools seem to function as spaces where valuable resources become accessible to a wide network of ‘community members’(Kim & Zhou, 2006; Lee & Zhou, 2017).

Therefore, we analyze the types of resources emerging in these spaces, building on the frameworks of Funds of Knowledge (Rios-Aguilar et al., 2011) and Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005). Through their work, these scholars have critiqued the persistent perception of ‘minority capital’ as deficient and the lack of recognition of power differences impacting minoritized communities (Valenzuela, 2005). In response, these frameworks offer non-traditional lenses to recognize and reveal the resources present in supplementary schools, and how these are strategically applied.

Sharing resources also implies creating relationships between people, and in the context of our research the notions of bonding and bridging relations are relevant. The former refers to relations between ingroup members (such a group can be based on various identity or other dimensions e.g., ethnicity, language, social class, but also participation in specific organizations), while bridging relations are ties with so-called outgroup members. We build on studies showing that supplementary schools give access to resources to both middle-class and working-class families, thus broadening the reach of community cultural wealth and enabling (upward) mobility for a larger group of community members (Kim & Zhou, 2006; Lu, 2013).

Research context and data collection This research takes place in Flanders, the northern Dutch-speaking and semi-independent region in Belgium. In Flanders, ethnic inequalities have proved to be persistent in the past decade(s) and are often much more salient than in neighboring countries. In education, the labor market and housing, ethnic minorities experience many difficulties and obstacles (Corluy & Haemels, 2015; Costa & de Valk, 2018). In this context, we aim to understand how supplementary schools try to support the broader community. Our interviews with twelve supplementary school leaders unexpectedly highlighted the role of supplementary schools as sites in which community cultural wealth is made accessible. We initially conducted interviews with school leaders and founders, to learn about the purposes the schools pursue with their pupils. However, throughout the interviews, another picture of the schools emerged showing the broader importance of these schools. Gathering data We use data from twelve semi-structured interviews with the school leaders of supplementary schools. These supplementary schools are organized by a diverse sample of communities, and each seeks to pursue different purposes with its pupils. The interviews took place between October 2020 and January 2021, in Dutch or English, depending on the preference of the interviewee. Each interview lasted between 35 and 75 minutes. Due to Covid-restrictions, 10 of the 12 interviews were conducted online. Coding process and analysis After the interviews were transcribed verbatim, we started the coding process using Nvivo software. In the first phase, we used open coding to make sense of the data, highlighting those instances where the interviewees described the schools’ purposes as not just concerning pupils. In these quotes, purposes referred to parents, teachers, or other members of the community. We labelled these different quotes with open categories referring to the ways in which they supported the community; for example, ‘providing information’ or ‘help translating’. After reading those codes several times, a second phase of axial coding connected the open categories. We chose one illustrative quote and connected it to other quotes that referred to a comparable way of providing support. Subsequently, in the open coding phase, we compared the different codes and used the community cultural wealth approach of Yosso (2005) with six distinct types of community capital to connect categories. Then, we circled back to the axial coding phase to compare our categories with the six forms of capital described by Yosso (2005).

The analysis made clear that school initiators support parents and children not only to focus on community level goals such as shared language development, heritage understanding and the nurturing of cultural pride and self-confidence, but that crossing differences and connecting with outgroup individuals and institutions is a fundamental part of how supplementary schools want to work. Our analysis also revealed that these spaces actively engage with differences and the tensions that sometimes do exist. Often these tensions are related to inequalities and processes of exclusion experienced by parents and their children in mainstream education, on the labor market and in (‘outgroup’) society in general. Supplementary schools aim to create a space where these tensions can be addressed, and inequalities are challenged – and sometimes explicitly resisted – by empowering community members, offering them opportunities for self-development and expanding their expertise. At the same time, initiators show an awareness of the ‘ingroup’ tensions and aim to bridge these too within the context of their schools, often by explicitly naming these tensions and directly confronting the individuals and social groups involved. Our research shows that supplementary schools are a space where many resources are present, various actors build relationships with each other and where actors aim for ‘success’ (however that is defined) as active participants in mainstream society. We tried to paint a more nuanced picture, based on the perceptions, experiences, and narratives of the initiators. Supplementary schools constitute a space where community members can strengthen the social ties that grant them access to the different forms of capital. The supplementary schools function as intermediaries, translating community wealth into functional resources. In these ways, the schools provide community members with wide access to the community cultural wealth by primarily investing in bonding relations, but with a view to participating in broader society.

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