A central aim of the Danish compulsory school (grade 0-9) is to prepare all students for further education (Folkeskoleloven 2020). This happens through educational guidance programs and as a part of the general curriculum. However, while 84% of 25-year olds in Denmark have obtained an upper secondary or vocational education, this accounts for only 62% of 25-year olds who grow up in a problematized neighborhood (Ministry of Interior and Finance 2018). This indicates that the location of students’ home and school affects their educational and future possibilities. Problematized neighborhoods refer to areas that are placed on an official list of “parallel societies” managed by the Danish Ministry of Interior and Housing (Ministry of Interior and Housing 2021). A central criteria for areas on the list is that 50% of the area’s inhabitants are of non-western descent. Other criteria refer to unemployment rates, crime rates, educational level and income level in the area. The public housing areas on these lists – and the people who live here – are targets of numerous political interventions. Recent initiatives include evictions of residents and demolition of apartment buildings to “mix” the resident population more (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Interior 2018). Schools in these areas are also subject to state intervention: Multiple projects have been launched to better the educational level of students and to increase the number of students who educate themselves further after finishing 9^th grade.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in three schools in problematized neighborhoods, the PhD project investigates intersections between the social categories race, gender, geography and class in an analysis of the schools’ educational guidance work with its students. This paper focuses on the tensions between what educational counselors and teachers present as attainable and “good” educational aspirations for the students and the students’ own educational aspirations.

In other to qualify the project’s understanding of future aspirations, I draw on Sara Ahmed’s concept of happy objects. Happy objects refer to “physical or material things but also to anything that we imagine might lead us to happiness, including objects in the sense of values, practice, styles as well as aspirations” (Ahmed 2010:29). In this sense, certain objects circulate as something that will lead us to happiness if we merely follow the right path. Thus, we are directed towards certain objects that we believe to cause us happiness. In this paper, I am interested in how certain educations or life choices (and not others) are circulating in the educational guidance as leading the students to a happy life, and what takes the shape of happy objects in the students’ own reflections on their future aspirations.

In my understanding of place, I draw on feminist geography which notes that categories such as social class and race “operate within and through spatial relations and differentiated geographies” (Parker 2011:435). I am thus informed by a material-discursive approach (Haraway 2004) in which I “recognize the importance of discourse while reasserting the materiality of bodies, of nature, of non-human and human interfaces” (Parker 2011:438). The paper hereby engages in the development of a theoretical framework that understands place as materially and discursively produced, and as affecting individuals differently depending on their intersectional social position (Crenshaw 1991; El-Tayeb 2011). This theoretical frameworkholds the possibility for a dynamic understanding of how the students’ context plays a central role in producing their subject position, educational aspirations and the educational guidance they receive.

The paper is guided by the following research questions: What takes the shape of ‘happy objects’ in the students’ and teachers’ reflections on the students’ future education and job? How can these happy objects be understood as intersectionally produced?

The analysis is based on ethnographic material produced during fieldwork in 8-9th grade classes in three Danish public schools (grades 0-9) in the spring of 2022. The schools are located nearby three different public housing projects that are all placed on an official list of parallel societies (Ministry of Transport and Housing 2021). Two schools are situated West of Copenhagen while one school is situated in Copenhagen. In total, I have interviewed 31 students, four educational counselors, five teachers and spent 30 days observing teaching and educational guidance sessions. The fieldwork design is inspired by post-structural empirical research on gender (Lather 2007; Ellis 2007) as well as frictional affective methodology (Staunæs & Pors 2021; Puar 2012). I began the fieldwork with observations of teaching, educational counseling in the classroom, and excursions to gain an understanding of the everyday praxis in the schools. After a few weeks of observations, I began semi-structured interviews with teachers and educational counselors. Towards the end of my fieldwork, I interviewed students in focus groups. The aim of the interviews with the students was to create knowledge on their experiences of their school life, educational guidance and their future. Interviews with teachers and educational counselors aimed to produce knowledge on their perceptions of their work and their students’ future possibilities (Atkinson & Hamersley 1983/2007). The material will be analyzed with attention to what is shaped as happy objects to the students in their reflections on future and education, and what is presented to them as happy objects in the educational guidance they receive. While I follow Ahmed’s point that happy objects are circulating on a societal level (such as the idea of marriage as the key to happiness), the students and teachers in the material have some degree of different ideas of what educational and vocational choices lead to a happy life. I consider how these happy objects are products of the intersecting social categories class, race, gender and geography that might e.g. lead a teacher to advise a female brown student to become a nurse while advising a male brown student to become a mechanic. In this sense, the analysis also explores the intersectional processes through which these happy objects turn the students in certain educational and vocational directions and away from others (Ahmed 2010).

In the presentation, I will unfold how educational counselors and teachers at the three schools tend to steer their students in the direction of a vocational degree (such as nurse, carpenter, electrician) while the majority of the students wish to enter high school and obtain an academic degree. When arguing for a vocational degree, teachers and counselors often mention earning a salary early in life. However, my ethnographic material indicates that money matters quite little to the students compared to other factors such as the degree being interesting and the job opportunities varied. Thus, the paper produces new knowledge on what social categories are at play in educational counseling of students at schools in problematized areas. This produces insights on how material-discursively produced ideas of so-called “vulnerable neighborhoods” (and thereby vulnerable residents) affect the educational guidance work that takes place inside the schools. The paper also produces new knowledge on the school life and aspirations of students going to school in these areas. Lastly, the project contributes with insights to how a theoretical perspective across the disciplines of intersectionality, education, sociology and feminist geography holds new possibilities for understanding the school in relation to its geographic location and its position as a central tool for integration in the Danish welfare state toolbox.

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