Violence among young people is usually discussed only as bullying, and the hurtful intentions and hostile relations between the bully and the victim are taken as granted (Väisänen & Lanas 2022a, 2023). This view overlooks violence taking place in close peer relationships and the mechanisms normalizing it. These mechanisms are informed by exclusionary social norms and inequalities related to appearance, style, hobbies, wealth, linguistic talent, sexual orientation, skin colour, religion, place of residence and gender representation (e.g. Boyle & Berridge, 2012; Duncan, 2013; Horton, 2011; Juva, 2022). The paper at hand reports one part of a larger research project in which we produced knowledge about the mechanisms that normalise friendship violence among young people. Joining contemporary childhood studies that increasingly challenge adult‑centred framings children’s active participation in constructing their social worlds, we showcase how young people create safety in the everyday life of school in the midst of mechanisms normalizing violence.

Violence in school is commonly discussed in terms of bullying, and young people are commonly viewed as the perpetrators, victims or as bystanders in bullying situations in school. Their actions for preventing bullying or violence in school tend to be seen simply in terms of how obediently they obey adult-driven models. In this research we see students neither as helpless or harmful objects of adult interventions. We see them as active participants, purposefully creating safety in the everyday life of school.

We define violence as anything done to hurt or upset another person, including structural, systemic and symbolic violence. These forms of violence refer to violence and inequality produced by societal power struggles for example through everyday school practices (Holmes, 2013), where it is not recognised as violence but remains invisible (Herr & Anderson, 2003). The effect of systemic violence stems from it not being identified as violence, but as "just the way things are" (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, 204). Violence or safety from it cannot be understood without addressing broader social conditions and phenomena such as racism, heteronormativity, gender discrimination, economic inequality, or social norms. These have been obscured in majority of bullying research (Väisänen & Lanas 2022b, 2023; Walton 2011). Such research repeatedly decontextualises and individualizes violence focusing on standardized models ad solutions (Väisänen & Lanas 2022, 2023), paints a negative picture of the children it is supposed to help (Väisänen & Lanas 2020), and overly focuses on punishments (Väisänen & Lanas 2025).

The mechanisms normalizing violence are particularly salient in school because attending education is obligatory for every young person, and it is a key place for peer contacts (Kiilakoski & Lanas, 2022); it creates ideas about friendship and violence by teaching social skills (Finnish National Agency for Education 2014, 156); and due to its societal selection function (Simola, 2015) everyday school life also produces multiple exclusionary micro-level practices and creates otherness and hidden exclusions in peer groups (Watson, 2019).

In this paper we have asked how students navigate these mechanisms and create safety in the everyday life of school. The question emerges from our ethnographic fieldwork.

This paper reports one part of a larger study we have observed everyday practices and lives in three schools from grades 4 to 6, for 3 months, three days a week (a total of 96 days of observation in the schools). Using ethnographic methods, three researchers observed mundane practices, followed chains of events, mapped histories and the multi-sited events that emerged in the everyday school life. Researchers took part in activities in lessons, breaks, halls and lunchroom. The three ethnographic researchers kept a diary of their observations. Each week during the ethnography the five project researchers met to analyse the events and jointly directed the researchers’ gaze. The ethnographic analysis has run in parallel with the ethnography. As planned, the diaries included a lot of observations of the difficulties and challenges of peer relations in school. However, after the first month, we noted each researcher’s observations included multiple descriptions of situations in which the children themselves brought the mechanisms of violence in to question by small actions, creating safety in multiple small, mundane, unnoticed ways. We decided to direct the ethnographic gaze also to these. It was like making the invisible visible: while the field was filled with challenges and difficulties, it was also filled with diplomacy, kind words, care, negotiation, support, closeness, commitment, breaking or following norms, working together. For this paper, we have taken out every extract from the diaries in which the students produced safety for themselves or others, all together 15pages, and carried out a simple thematic analysis to the extracts.

Our analysis shows that students produced safety in school by questioning the mechanisms that normalisd violence, life in multiple different ways. Results are preliminary, since the ethnography is just coming to an end. These preliminary results suggest that students: 1) are aware and question oppressive norms, making each other feel safe when there are aspects of systemic violence in their surroundings 2) create practices of tenderness and care. Who is in the position to create these practices in impactful ways is a question of power and status. These are also at times directed at some children more than others, making safety a commodity. 3) create safety for themselves, at times at the expense of others, for example by trying to help their own fear of exclusion These commonly took place without adult support and unrecognized by adults.

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