What meaning do minority ethnic parents’ generational status, socioeconomic and ethnic background, and gender have for their parenting practices and home–school relationships? This question frames a newly initiated PhD project, which this poster presentation introduces.

Situated within a Danish educational context, the project aims to generate knowledge about how minority ethnic parents across generational position, social and ethnic background, and gender experience their relationships with the Danish public school. The project explores similarities and differences between first- and second-generation minority ethnic parents’ approaches to parenting, schooling, and their relationships with the school. According to the national objectives for the Danish public school, schools are expected to challenge all pupils to reach their full potential and to reduce the impact of social background on academic achievement. These objectives reflect politically defined visions of equal opportunities and participation for all pupils. However, qualitative research on minority ethnic pupils demonstrates that they experience unequal opportunities for participation, and that an important reason for this is that teachers—often contrary to their intentions—approach minority ethnic pupils through racialised understandings and low expectations.

The Danish Public School Act states that the school’s mandate must be fulfilled in cooperation with parents. Research on minority ethnic pupils’ school experiences can therefore not stand alone but must also include an examination of minority parents’ relationships with the school. There is broad agreement among researchers that strong home–school relationships are important for pupils’ schooling, development, and well-being. Accordingly, the project has a dual research focus: first, to examine home–school relationships across first- and second-generation minority ethnic parents; and second, to investigate whether similar racialising processes shape teachers’ relationships with parents.

Previous research on home–school relationships has primarily focused on first-generation minority ethnic parents and has often framed these relationships as problematic from the school’s perspective. Challenges have frequently been explained by reference to parents’ cultural background or assumed lack of resources and language skills. A growing group of minority ethnic parents in the Danish public school consists of second-generation parents—individuals who were born in Denmark or have lived most of their lives there. These parents are generally assumed to have stronger linguistic and cultural prerequisites for engaging with the school than the first generation. Nevertheless, there is a significant need for deeper insight into home–school relationships across both first- and second-generation minority ethnic parents if schools are to live up to democratic ideals of equal opportunities for all pupils and parents, regardless of background.

The project is theoretically grounded in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of education and his concepts of field, habitus, and capital. These concepts are used to analyse the conditions that first- and second-generation minority ethnic parents bring into the school, as well as the taken-for-granted assumptions and unwritten norms embedded in the school as an institution that may shape unequal opportunities for parental participation. Intersectional perspectives are integrated into Bourdieu’s framework to account for how multiple categories—such as gender, socioeconomic background, and ethnicity—intersect in shaping parents’ conditions for participation in home–school relationships.

The research questions are primarily explored through a qualitative study consisting of ethnographic fieldwork at two public schools in Aarhus, Denmark. The selection of two schools located in different socioeconomic areas enables a comparative perspective on how families’ resources and the schools’ local contexts influence home–school relationships. One school is located in a suburban area with both owner-occupied housing and social housing, while the other is an urban school serving a more socioeconomically diverse population. The fieldwork will span six to eight months and include observations of classroom teaching, parent–teacher conferences, parent meetings, and social events where parents are present at the school. These observations aim to explore how parents and school staff interact across different contexts and to gain insight into the children around whom the relationships are formed. In addition, the study includes semi-structured interviews with first- and second-generation minority ethnic parents, teachers, and other school professionals. The interviews focus on participants’ experiences of home–school relationships and on the institutional conditions framing these relationships. By juxtaposing parent and teacher perspectives, the project seeks to illuminate variations in how participants understand one another. The empirical material will comprise approximately 20 first- and second-generation minority ethnic parents of different genders and ethnic backgrounds, 3–6 teachers, and three other school professionals with key roles in the school.

Existing national and international research primarily focuses on first-generation minority ethnic parents. The few studies that examine second-generation minority ethnic parents tend to focus on parenting practices, school strategies, and assimilation patterns rather than on home–school relationships. By comparing first- and second-generation parents, this project contributes new knowledge about how experiences of schooling are shaped by migration histories, social background, and gender. The project thus nuances existing research that often explains differences in parental involvement primarily through social class by also incorporating ethnicity and generational status. Overall, the project aims to contribute knowledge that can inform more inclusive and equality-promoting practices in home–school relationships.

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