Due to an increasingly diverse student population questions concerning multicultural education have received increased attention in Finland over the past years, usually with emphasis on ethnicity, religion or gender. In this paper, however, we turn attention, with a multicultural framework, to the relationship between the two national language groups in Finland (Finnish and Swedish). We are interested in if/how certain ambivalence in identity-formation is created when minority and majority language cultures meet each other in school.

The empirical data for our study comes from four Swedish-speaking language minority schools in Finland. In these schools most pupils come from bilingual backgrounds. In this study we focus on the following topics: Where is the location of bilingual pupil’s cultural identity and how are they positioning or representing themselves? Are they at risk of being (culturally) marginalized? Of interest is also how the majority language students influence the positioning of the monolingual Swedish students. We also try to discover how attitudes and values from the majority culture come in to the minority culture, within the school milieu. Considering that language is crucial in identity-formation (cf. Liebkind & al 2006; Østern 2004) we are interested in exploring if some forms of bilingualism create certain ambivalence in the pupils’ identity formation.

These above mentioned themes guide us to answer our main research question: Are schools with a majority of bilingual pupils also multicultural schools? By framing the discussion in this way we contextualize this phenomenon to a wider European context. In Europe there are many language minorities, with different historical heritage and status in the national context. About 10 % of the population in the EU, belong to a language minority. There are many aspects of this research that can be applied and compared to other majority/minority-relationships in Europe.

Our theoretical framework comes partly from studies within sociology of identity (Hylland-Eriksen 2004, Weedon 2004, Giddens 2001, Hall & du Gay 1996, Bhabha 1994, Ricoeur 1992), and partly from the tradition of critical multicultural education, where questions concerning social justice and equality come to the fore (McLaren 2004, Sleeter & Grant 2003). In our analysis we look for distinctions that create for students a sense of belonging to the Swedish-speaking language minority despite the ambivalent messages students receive regarding linguistic and cultural belonging and identifications. On school level we look for how linguistic and cultural pluralism is dealt with within the school activity.

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