The paper will present and discuss findings from an interdisciplinary research project “Ukrainian children in Danish schools” exploring how the reception of the Ukrainian refugee children in Denmark takes place in a unique historical context characterized by immense media interest and public and political support. In Denmark, a new special legislation furthermore has created completely new conditions for reception of refugee students in elementary school. Hence, it is underlined that children from Ukraine should be able to attend Danish schools ‘without renouncing their attachment to Ukrainian language, culture and identity’ (Børne- og Undervisningsministeriet, 2022) which contrasts with the usual monoculturally and monolingually oriented Danish policy on reception classes.

Theoretically informed by the concept of postmigration, the Ukrainian refugee situation is approached from a broader perspective on the conflicts, ambivalences and negotiations existing in a society characterized by migration as an ongoing condition (Petersen & Schramm, 2017, Foroutan, 2019, Römhild, 2017), which is underlined by focusing on children’s multilingual and transnational everyday practices and how those are handled by welfare professionals. 

The main empirical material made the subject of analysis are field notes from a single day of observation in a Danish reception class for children from Ukraine. The reception class can be seen as an organized cultural encounter (Galal & Hvenegård-Lassen, 2020) between the Ukrainian children and the Danish school. The cultural encounter appears exceptional, as the children are placed in the reception class and not in general classes at the school. Reception classes offering "basic education" in Danish for newly arrived children, spending up to two years there until they are deemed ready to mainstream classes, is a well-known phenomenon in Denmark. But this reception class differs from others in that it is exclusively for children from Ukraine, which makes the school’s efforts for facilitating the cultural encounter more visible in terms of promoting national cultures. 

Drawing on theoretical approaches from the post-migrant paradigm (Foroutan, 2019, Römhild 2017, Vitting-Seerup, 2017, Petersen & Schramm, 2017), the paper argues that by moving the focus from the ‘migrant minority’ in the cultural encounter to its inherent power dynamics new insights will be produced. Hence, the object of analysis in the post-migrant perspective is not migrants and how they can be ‘integrated’ (Rytter, 2019) as in a ‘migrantology’ approach (Römhild, 2017) but rather the organised cultural encounter’s inherent negotiations about normality. It will therefore center the majority position as the focus of the analytical attention and explore how this position, represented by the Danish school and its professionals, sets standards for what is normal and problematic.

The paper will present three analysis excerpts, focusing on (a) negotiations on educational technologies such as school-parent cooperation and homework, (b) negotiations on linguistic expressions and repertories in the classroom (mainly Ukrainian, Russian, Danish and English) and (c) cultural expressions of national symbols and youth culture mainly related to music. In the analysis, these observations will be related to considerations on how the educational problematisations of newly arrived children as not-yet-ready for mainstream classes can be de-migrantised (Foroutan, 2019) and related to broader societal and structural power conflicts on, among others, national identities, gender, class and race. Thus, the paper aims at answering the research question: How can barriers and opportunities for newly arrived Ukrainian students' education in the Danish school system be explored through a postmigration perspective?

In the project “Ukrainian children in Danish schools”, reception of Ukrainian children is studied from a children’s and school professionals’ perspective through qualitative methods: ethnographic fieldwork at two Danish schools for children aged 6-16, and at a discursive societal and policy level through document analysis. In the paper, the main empirical material will be fieldnotes from classroom observations and policy documents. The paper draws partly on joint work with Padovan-Özdemir (Padovan-Özdemir & Jacobsen, in prep).

The paper will contribute with knowledge on how to approach the reception class context as an organised cultural encounter and at the same time on how to de-essentialise and nuance the mainstream concepts of culture and integration (Rytter, 2019) often related to such educational contexts. Related to this, it will present possible practical implications and recommendations on how professionals can develop their practice in reception class pedagogy. It will also contribute with knowledge on the reception of Ukrainian children in Denmark and discuss how the insights from research in this quite limited field can contribute to a broader discussion on research on migrant children in Europe. Lastly, it will contribute to the emerging discussion on the usefulness of the postmigrant paradigm in educational research (Padovan-Özdemir, 2020).

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