Conference Agenda

Northern Ireland has a deeply divided education system with demarcation most notable along ethno/religious and social class lines. The former is largely attributable to the historical organization of the schools estate based on religion, and the latter is associated with a system of academic selection that filters children into Grammar and non-selective post-primary schools according to their performance in tests taken during the final year of primary school. Academic selection, and the grammar school system that underpins it, has come under some considerable scrutiny, with much of the research evidence pointing to a negative relationship between the selective system and equality of opportunity in education. The suitability of this system in a transitioning society that has become more ethnically diverse in post conflict years has, however, received less attention. Drawing on social cohesion theory, we reflect on the grammar school system to argue that the cross-community class interests animating it not only perpetuate inequalities within respective communities but may also present a significant barrier to peacebuilding efforts in education, and ultimately impede progress towards a more socially cohesive society.

The paper will present and discuss findings from an interdisciplinary research project “Ukrainian children in Danish schools” exploring how the reception of the Ukrainian refugee children in Denmark takes place in a unique historical context characterized by immense media interest and public and political support. In Denmark, a new special legislation furthermore has created completely new conditions for reception of refugee students in elementary school. Hence, it is underlined that children from Ukraine should be able to attend Danish schools ‘without renouncing their attachment to Ukrainian language, culture and identity’ (Børne- og Undervisningsministeriet, 2022) which contrasts with the usual monoculturally and monolingually oriented Danish policy on reception classes.

Theoretically informed by the concept of postmigration, the Ukrainian refugee situation is approached from a broader perspective on the conflicts, ambivalences and negotiations existing in a society characterized by migration as an ongoing condition (Petersen & Schramm, 2017, Foroutan, 2019, Römhild, 2017), which is underlined by focusing on children’s multilingual and transnational everyday practices and how those are handled by welfare professionals.

The main empirical material made the subject of analysis are field notes from a single day of observation in a Danish reception class for children from Ukraine. The reception class can be seen as an organized cultural encounter (Galal & Hvenegård-Lassen, 2020) between the Ukrainian children and the Danish school. The cultural encounter appears exceptional, as the children are placed in the reception class and not in general classes at the school. Reception classes offering "basic education" in Danish for newly arrived children, spending up to two years there until they are deemed ready to mainstream classes, is a well-known phenomenon in Denmark. But this reception class differs from others in that it is exclusively for children from Ukraine, which makes the school’s efforts for facilitating the cultural encounter more visible in terms of promoting national cultures.

Drawing on theoretical approaches from the post-migrant paradigm (Foroutan, 2019, Römhild 2017, Vitting-Seerup, 2017, Petersen & Schramm, 2017), the paper argues that by moving the focus from the ‘migrant minority’ in the cultural encounter to its inherent power dynamics new insights will be produced. Hence, the object of analysis in the post-migrant perspective is not migrants and how they can be ‘integrated’ (Rytter, 2019) as in a ‘migrantology’ approach (Römhild, 2017) but rather the organised cultural encounter’s inherent negotiations about normality. It will therefore center the majority position as the focus of the analytical attention and explore how this position, represented by the Danish school and its professionals, sets standards for what is normal and problematic.

The paper will present three analysis excerpts, focusing on (a) negotiations on educational technologies such as school-parent cooperation and homework, (b) negotiations on linguistic expressions and repertories in the classroom (mainly Ukrainian, Russian, Danish and English) and (c) cultural expressions of national symbols and youth culture mainly related to music. In the analysis, these observations will be related to considerations on how the educational problematisations of newly arrived children as not-yet-ready for mainstream classes can be de-migrantised (Foroutan, 2019) and related to broader societal and structural power conflicts on, among others, national identities, gender, class and race. Thus, the paper aims at answering the research question: How can barriers and opportunities for newly arrived Ukrainian students' education in the Danish school system be explored through a postmigration perspective?

The number of immigrant background students in the Spanish educational system, as in other European countries, has undergone significant growth in the last three decades, modifying the demographics of students present in schools. According to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional, 2020) the students of foreign origin in Primary Education account for 40.90% and 11.58% of the total school population. The above is more evident in public schools with 12.0 % of immigrant students in the Community of Andalusia (context of the study), reaching up to 15.5 % in the province of Almería. Moreover, 95.6% of immigrant background students are enrolled in public schools.

The study of educational trajectories is a crucial issue both for the future of immigrant background students and for society in general, since their success to some extent, can be the precursor of social inclusion (Cutmore, 2018). Literature shows that most of the scientific evidence has developed models that tends to blame students who do not manage to go through their basic schooling in the time and form established by the educational system (Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2017). However, there is not much evidence on the educational trajectory that immigrant background students go through once they entered the system, there is thus very little data about the critical moments in which their educational trajectory is broken or the variables that affect their paths. Without such information it will be impossible to implement programs that help achieve the success of these students when the learning of immigrant background students will be affected in part by how well schools understand the cultures and unique experiences of these students.

Against this backdrop, the study has a double purpose: to analyse the educational trajectories of immigrant background students and to determine to what ex­tent some sociodemographic variables (gender, origin, length of stay in Spain or home language) affect these careers. The sample was constituted by 172 students (52.3 % female, 47.6 % male) aged be­tween 6 and 16 years (M= 12.6; SD = .79). Four aspects were analysed: 1) the mobility of the schools through which these students navigated, 2) the grade in which they have been enrolled and its relationship with chronological age, 3) the repetition rate, and 4) the graduation rate or the higher educational level they achieved in their schooling (Paris & Alim, 2017).

With this work we are interested in documenting this gap in the scientific literature by exploring which sorts of variables enhance students’ successful schooling of immigrant background students and gaining more insight in the extent to successfully navigate the Spanish educational system. Such information might have broad practical implications for policymakers and teachers involved in supporting the effectiveness of programs among students in vulnerable conditions.

The findings confirmed that participants seemed to have followed very complex, diverse routes through Spanish education although there are differences in terms of gender and mother tongue. Women in the sample exhibit trajectories more in line with the traditional paths, since their repetition rate is lower. Whereas the school mobility is particularly high in the case of students with a language different from the school’s vehicular language. In a previous study (Rodríguez-Izquierdo y Darmody, 2019; Rodríguez-Izquierdo, 2018) it was noted that the linguistic competence report is not always available at the time of incorporation at the new school so that the start of linguistic support is delayed or interrupted. This high mobility of schools does not facilitate neither the follow-up that would especially be beneficial for these students nor the inherently complicated socialization process in adolescence (Rodríguez-Izquierdo, González-Falcón and Goenechea, 2020).