Conference Agenda

The project presented here arises from the new educational needs that emanate from the changes taking place in the social, cultural, political, and economic spheres. The boundaries of formal education, as it has been understood until now, are being breached by new forms of learning, communication, and relationships, which are claiming their place in educational institutions. This is particularly relevant at the level of secondary education where the boundaries of conventional cultural and social systems are constantly being overwhelmed by these new realities (Fernández Enguita, 2016). This makes it necessary to rethink the systems of teaching and working in the educational system. Students at this educational level have a profile and resources closely linked to the knowmadic society (Cobo, 2016, Movarec, 2008), in which there is less and less sense in a teaching model based mainly on the unidirectional transmission of knowledge (Downes, 2017). This, in interaction with families, teachers and other educational agents, generates a world of conflicts of various kinds: curricular, social, attitudinal and expectations, etc.

We are therefore interested in learning about experiences that are being developed in this sense and that are generating proposals that transform either the curricular or organizational dimension, the framework of relations with the community or the involvement of the new virtual spaces (Reig y Vílchez, 2013). To this end, we are developing the research "Nomadic knowledge in emerging pedagogical contexts: mapping innovative community practices in secondary education", over the years 2022 and 2023. Its focus of study is the disruptive, transformative, and emergent experiences that are being developed in secondary schools in Andalusia. We are interested in mapping the fundamental elements that are present in the development of these experiences from the perspective of integral, ubiquitous, and expanded pedagogies that connect and curricularly integrate places, people, and times for learning.

The research is focusing on the analysis of emergent experiences, using participatory and narrative research methodologies that allow for a respectful, hermeneutic, non-invasive, negotiated and openly collaborative approach.

In this paper we present the study of one of the cases studied, which takes place in the secondary school "Cartagineses". This is in a semi-urban area on the outskirts of the city of Malaga, where for the last 10 years an educational project has been developed based on the construction of a professional community, together with the families and the municipality, centred on interdisciplinary and collaborative work projects, openness to the environment and the use of personal technological resources, with the subsequent abandonment of the textbook as an educational tool.

The objectives we set ourselves are as follows:

1. To analyse and evaluate collaborative strategies in the Secondary School environment, offered as creative workspaces where students, teachers, families and/or external social agents configure new citizen, professional and personal profiles in diverse fields of experience and activity (artistic, social, literary, scientific, technical) through the conformation of horizontal architectures of participation and dialogue between expert and profane knowledge. 


2. To recognise and recover emerging types of knowledge that act in secondary schools, alternative and/or convergent with the official curriculum, which promote and develop political, social, and cultural models in a social framework of transformation and change in ideological and epistemological proposals.

3. To recognize the guidelines, relationships, models, and knowledge that secondary education centres bring into play in the search for school success and their meaning in relation to the conditions established from the current frameworks of society, as well as the way in which both visions interact, compete, confront, or collaborate, in the achievement of an emancipated, participative and critical citizenship.

A central aim of the Danish compulsory school (grade 0-9) is to prepare all students for further education (Folkeskoleloven 2020). This happens through educational guidance programs and as a part of the general curriculum. However, while 84% of 25-year olds in Denmark have obtained an upper secondary or vocational education, this accounts for only 62% of 25-year olds who grow up in a problematized neighborhood (Ministry of Interior and Finance 2018). This indicates that the location of students’ home and school affects their educational and future possibilities. Problematized neighborhoods refer to areas that are placed on an official list of “parallel societies” managed by the Danish Ministry of Interior and Housing (Ministry of Interior and Housing 2021). A central criteria for areas on the list is that 50% of the area’s inhabitants are of non-western descent. Other criteria refer to unemployment rates, crime rates, educational level and income level in the area. The public housing areas on these lists – and the people who live here – are targets of numerous political interventions. Recent initiatives include evictions of residents and demolition of apartment buildings to “mix” the resident population more (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Interior 2018). Schools in these areas are also subject to state intervention: Multiple projects have been launched to better the educational level of students and to increase the number of students who educate themselves further after finishing 9^th grade.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in three schools in problematized neighborhoods, the PhD project investigates intersections between the social categories race, gender, geography and class in an analysis of the schools’ educational guidance work with its students. This paper focuses on the tensions between what educational counselors and teachers present as attainable and “good” educational aspirations for the students and the students’ own educational aspirations.

In other to qualify the project’s understanding of future aspirations, I draw on Sara Ahmed’s concept of happy objects. Happy objects refer to “physical or material things but also to anything that we imagine might lead us to happiness, including objects in the sense of values, practice, styles as well as aspirations” (Ahmed 2010:29). In this sense, certain objects circulate as something that will lead us to happiness if we merely follow the right path. Thus, we are directed towards certain objects that we believe to cause us happiness. In this paper, I am interested in how certain educations or life choices (and not others) are circulating in the educational guidance as leading the students to a happy life, and what takes the shape of happy objects in the students’ own reflections on their future aspirations.

In my understanding of place, I draw on feminist geography which notes that categories such as social class and race “operate within and through spatial relations and differentiated geographies” (Parker 2011:435). I am thus informed by a material-discursive approach (Haraway 2004) in which I “recognize the importance of discourse while reasserting the materiality of bodies, of nature, of non-human and human interfaces” (Parker 2011:438). The paper hereby engages in the development of a theoretical framework that understands place as materially and discursively produced, and as affecting individuals differently depending on their intersectional social position (Crenshaw 1991; El-Tayeb 2011). This theoretical framework holds the possibility for a dynamic understanding of how the students’ context plays a central role in producing their subject position, educational aspirations and the educational guidance they receive.

The paper is guided by the following research questions: What takes the shape of ‘happy objects’ in the students’ and teachers’ reflections on the students’ future education and job? How can these happy objects be understood as intersectionally produced?

In 2015, 2.8 million people sought refuge or asylum in European countries (UN 2016) and recipients of the largest numbers of refugees and asylum seekers were Germany (700,000) followed by Sweden, France and Russian Federation (300,000 each) (UN 2016). The refugees came from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and North West African Countries and many of them were unaccompanied adolescent minors, i.e. at school age (Donini, Monsutti & Scalettaris, 2016; Menjívar & Perreira, 2019). In the case of Sweden, the refugees were unevenly distributed geographically by the authorities and small rural municipalities, often sparsely populated, received more refugees per capita than regions of the large cities.

The rapid and extensive inflow of refugees/asylum seekers (henceforth ‘migrants’) in Swedish rural municipalities brought with it challenges for the local administration in terms of integration (educational, social and labour integration), e.g. providing education and other municipal services. But the arrival of migrants also meant hope for the rural communities (Johansson, 2019). After a period in the rural areas, the migrants were relocated. Small rural municipalities continue (to varying extents) to receive quota refugees, and there is also some relative immigration to some extent, but the proportion of migrants in Swedish rural municipalities is significantly smaller today than in 2015.

Since 2015, structural changes of economic art have also taken place in Swedish rural municipalities. In the mid-2010s, during the large inflow of refugees 2015, Swedish rural regions were characterized by general depopulation, decreasing public services and labour market, etc, and some of them are still, more or less, in that situation. However, in Norrland (i.e. the Northern region of Sweden) where most Swedish rural regions are located, an industrial expansion related to ‘green industry’ is taking place. The industrial boom has led to a great need for labour with a need for also institutional support and access to services for this labour in certain Norrlandic regions, a labour market expansion with effects on all other regions and local towns in Norrland, in different ways. Small rural towns in the region, risk further relocation, now to nearby industrially expanding Norrlandic regions and cities. At the same time, there are examples of the industrial boom that applies to certain areas in the north having positive repercussions on local labour markets in smaller towns in the form of new establishment of companies, and existing companies that expand.

Against this background, we direct in this paper interest towards challenges and opportunities in the reception of new adolescent migrants from the perspective of local professionals. The research questions are:

• What did representatives of schools and municipal public services say about the influx of migrants during the great wave of refugees in 2015 and what do they say today?
• What hopes were/are tied to the reception of refugees for the future?
• What challenges were/are seen?
• How do descriptions from the past reflect in those of the present?

The overall question guiding the inquiry is:

• What kind/s of integration is/are emphasized in the professionals’ narrations - educational, social and/or labour integration?

The findings will be discussed through the broad lens of educational, social and labour integration, and in relation to the rural contexts. Inspired by the idea that integration consists of sets of overlapping processes that take place differently in various contexts and spheres of receiving societies (Castles, Korac, Vasta, & Vertovec, 2002), the analysis takes notice of presences in local discourse regarding educational, social and labour integration.