Unaccompanied Minor Immigrants Facing the Swedish School System: Challenges of Practice

Author(s):

Oleg Popov(presenting / submitting)Erik Sturesson Inger Carlsson

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 07 A, Intercultural Casestudies

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-19

17:15-18:45

Room:

ESI 3 - Aula 4

Chair:

Yvonne Leeman

Contribution

Integration of refugee children in school system of European countries is an actively developing research field. Logically, as Bourgonje (2010) points out and Dronkers, van der Velden, & Dunne (2011) show, the presence of significant numbers of pupils coming from abroad has complex implications for education systems. In 2008, the Commission of the European Communities presented a Green Paper on the challenges and opportunities for EU education systems dealing with children from a migrant background. However, there are lacking studies concerning integration of unaccompanied minor refugees in the Swedish educational systems, in particular concerning study of specific subjects.

During the past six years the number of asylum seeking unaccompanied children has increased in Sweden more than six times, from about 400 persons in years 2004-2005 to about 2500 persons in 2010-2011. Most of them are boys (about 80%) in age of 14-17 coming mainly from Afghanistan and Somalia. These children are placed in different municipalities around the country that take responsibility for their education and socialisation in the Swedish society. Currently, municipalities are forced to take children according to centrally defined quota, as a system of voluntary accommodation of minor migrants collapsed due to dramatic (and unexpected by the state authorities) increase of migration (Häggroth, 2011). The Swedish state unpreparedness to deal with a massive influx of unaccompanied minor refugees led to a long waiting time for residence permits during which children remain stateless illegals (Bhabha, 2009) with very limited rights.

Multiculturalism and intercultural education have been for the long time constitutive components of Swedish teacher training (Johansson, 2008). However, these topics used to be treated mainly theoretically as many of the teacher students, particularly in the Northern part of Sweden, have still few occasions of personal encounter with immigrants. They come from rather culturally homogeneous communities and teacher profession still remains a field where few immigrants are occupied. Nowadays, theory needs to be applied in practice when teacher students go to school and they face culturally diverse classrooms. This becomes a serious challenge for many of them.

The study presented in this paper addresses the following questions: How do unaccompanied immigrant children experience their meeting with Swedish school system? What contextual factors they report as decisive for their education? How do prospective teachers conceptualise their roles as facilitators of educational success of immigrant children?

Socio-cultural theory is used as a theoretical lens for analysis of the case of new incoming unaccompanied refugee children presented below. Theoretical constructs of multiculturalism and different dimensions of teachers’ intercultural competence are also important for the study.

Method

The study was organised in two stages. In the first stage, already finalised, the schooling situation of a group of asylum seeking unaccompanied children recently places in a remote area school in the Northern part of Sweden was studied. In order to allow for an in-depth exploration of immigrant children’s school situation and views about their integration in new context, this stage builds on a case study methodology. A case study can be defined as “an in-depth description and analysis of a bounded system” (Marriam, 2009, 40). Research was conducted with a group of six 16/17 year-old newly arrived children. Individual interviews were the central method of data collection. Interviews were semi-structured, allowing a flexible framework for pupils to express themselves. The second, on-going stage of the study consists of group interviews / guided discussion with prospective teachers at the final phase of their education. The aim is to explore their theoretical understanding of the case studied by the researchers in the phase one (Carlsson, 2011) and practical suggestions for improving the educational situation for asylum seeking children. In total, over sixty prospective teachers of different specialisations are involved in the study, with each interview-group consisting of 5-6 persons.

Expected Outcomes

This paper argues that existing practice of introducing unaccompanied immigrant children into Swedish school system is built with multiple cultural barriers impeding success of their integration in Swedish society. Interviewed children expressed their feeling of social vacuum around them, with very limited possibilities for interaction with Swedish people. Mother tongue tutors used to help pupils to understand school culture and subject knowledge, but their time was very limited and considered absolutely insufficient by the pupils. Interestingly enough, the pupils, who had longer schooling from their home countries, experienced more difficulties with the Swedish educational system than their rather analphabetic peers. Several pedagogical tensions were identified concerning understanding of the teacher’s role and work methods. As one pupil commented “in my country teacher helped me to understand, here I have to learn to understand by myself”. Different contextual factors were reported by children in the case study as negatively affecting their socialisation, for example, remoteness. They wanted to live in the bigger city. Preliminary results from the second stage of the study show that prospective teachers, discussing the case, recognise existing systemic problems in education of unaccompanied immigrant children and feel luck of instrumental intercultural competence to deal with such problems.

References

Bhabha, J. (2009). Arendt’s Children: Do Today’s Migrant Children Have a Right to Have Rights? Human Rights Quarterly, 31, 410–451. Bourgonje, P. (2010). Education for refugee and asylum seeking children in OECD countries: Case studies from Australia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Education International. Belgium. Carlsson, I. (2011). Ensamkommande flyktingbarns möte med den svenska matematikundervisningen. Examensarbete, 30 hp, Umeå Univerisitet. Commission of the European Communities (2008). Green Paper: Migration & mobility: challenges and opportunities for EU education systems. Dronkers, J., van der Velden, R. & Dunne, A. (2011). Why are migrant students better off in certain types of educational systems or schools than in others? On the effects of educational systems, school composition, track level, parental background, and country of origin on the achievement of 15-year- old migrant students. Keynote address at The European Conference on Educational Research 2011, 13-16 September 2011, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Available at http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Dronkers/English/ECER.pdf Häggroth, S. (2011). Ensamkommande barn – vem ska ta ansvaret? Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting. Stockholm. Johansson, G. (2008). Teachers Intercultural Competences as Keystones for Learning in Europe. http://pure.ltu.se/portal/files/3309957/B6_Johansson.pdf Merriam, S. (2009). Qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. San Francisco: Jossey-Brass. Yin, R. (2003). Case Study Research: Designs and Methods. London: Sage Publications

Author Information

Oleg Popov (presenting / submitting)

Umeå Univeristy, Sweden

Erik Sturesson

Umeå Univeristy, Sweden

Inger Carlsson

Ardedi School, Nordmaling, Sweden

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