Migrant Youth, Schooling and Identity Perspectives and Experiences from Northern Europe

This volume provides a broad outlook on migrant youth and schooling in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and the United Kingdom. It explores empirically how these young people—who range from the first to the third generation—position themselves in relation to school, friendships, language-use, aspirations, and the expectations placed upon them. The book also examines the role of a variety of professionals, street-level bureaucrats, and other key actors in framing, representing, problematizing and ultimately contributing to shaping the experiences of these young people. Contemporary contextual challenges for educational advancement are particularly highlighted, as are key issues of cultural representation and recognition. Several contributions also focus on sub-groups within the immigrant-origin population that have so far only received a limited attention in the literature, such as youth in rural areas, LGBT youth, first-in-family college students, and youth who transition out of anti-school subcultures.
The contributors stem from a variety of disciplines, ranging from Education and Youth Studies to Social Work and Sociology, and tackle many innovative themes, such as peer violence, special needs education, and artistic interventions, among many others. Through this original perspective and comparative outlook, the book makes an important contribution to the literature on youth, migration, identity, and education. It will interest undergraduate students in several areas of the social sciences, teachers and other professionals who work with children and young people.

1. Introduction.- PART I. YOUTH PERSPECTIVES.- 2. Worst School in Town? Students in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods Reclaiming Representations of Their School.- 3. Who Is Friends With Whom? Figurations of Ethno-Racial Differences in Youth Friendships.- 4. Boys at the Periphery: Balancing Acts and Their Consequences for Minority Danish Boys in Danish Schools.- 5. Unequal Temporalities: On Ethnicity and Future Imaginaries in Lower Secondary Education in Denmark.- 6. The Inheritance of Contradiction: Parental Expectations, Educational Aspirations, and Trajectories to Higher Education of First-Generation College Students from Swedish and Immigrant Backgrounds.- 7. To be and not to be: Second language coded students.- 8. The Development and Negotiation of Linguistic Identities of Youth of Vietnamese Refugees Background in Iceland.- 9. Syrian Refugee Youth in Iceland: Education and Integration.- PART II. PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVES.- 10. Plurilingual Youth’s Negotiations of Linguistic Identity inVarious Learning Spaces: A multiple-case study from Iceland.- 11. On the Margins of Leisure: A Swedish Policy Analysis of the Problematization of Children’s Leisure Time.- 12. “If you stand out too much, belonging to a group is hard”: Growing Up in Rural Idyllic Sweden, Reflections from an Adult Perspective.- 13. The Making of Children at a Community School: How Children’s Leisure is Performed in Terms of Place and Gender.- 14. Engaging with Danish Teachers’ Lower Expectations Towards Ethnic Minoritized Students’ School Performance.- 15. At the Heart of the Swedish City: Professionals supporting youth in disadvantaged urban areas.- 16. (In)visible Vulnerability: Working with Young LGBTQ+ People with Migrant Backgrounds.- PART III. PEDAGOGICAL PERSPECTIVES & PRACTICE.- 17. Inclusion vs. Exclusion: Organization of Training Programme for Newly Arrived Students of (16-19) Age on Structural and System Levels in Norway.- 18. Cultivating Youths’ Identities through Multicultural Education: Toward Culturally Sustaining Teaching and Assessment.- 19. Minority Identities on Display: Experience of Research on Three Multicultural Events.- 20. Twice Invisible: Migrant Children with Special Educational Needs.- 21. Sixty Years Later and Still not Quite British: The Windrush Generation.- 22. Objects and Props in the Role of the Human: How Theatre Performance can Restore New Kinds of Visibility to Migrants and Refugees.- 23. The Arts as ‘Therapy’: The Arts as Investigation.

Nils Hammarén has a Ph.D. in Social work and is a Professor of Child and youth studies. He works in the Department of education, communication and learning at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His research interest is within the fields of youth, gender and ethnic and migration studies.

Biörn Ivemark has a Ph.D. in Sociology, is a former post-doctoral fellow at the University of Gothenburg, and now works as a researcher in the Department of Education at Stockholm University, Sweden. His primary research interests revolve around the social mechanisms of educational inequality and social mobility as well as the social identity dynamics related to class, ethnicity and migration.

Live Stretmo has a Ph.D. in Sociology, and is currently working as a senior lecturer in Child and Youth studies at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests lie within the intersection of migration, youth and gender/sexuality studies.