Conference Agenda

From a position outside the mainstream, outside the norm, it can be only a small step to being perceived as problematic, lagging behind, or marginalized (Corbett, 2015). This applies both spatially and socially, to territories and localities (Roberts & Green, 2013) as well as to individuals and communities (Basu, 2020), which always exist in a certain spatiotemporal context (Villa & Knutas, 2020). This symposium explores how marginality is not a static condition but an active social and institutional construction that shapes the educational (rural) landscape.

Constructed marginality in schooling and education can be understood in two primary senses. First, authorities and institutions shape conditions and make decisions that disadvantage certain spaces or members of society (Beach et al, 2019). This includes the implementation of market-oriented competition, which often leads to a polarization of access to education (Holloway & Pimplott-Wilson, 2012). Second, marginality is constructed through social processes where certain groups or regions are presented as "other," second-rate, or inherently deficient due to their cultural, gender, economic, or geographic characteristics (Cuervo, 2025).

This symposium brings together four diverse perspectives to examine these processes across different global contexts: German, Swedish, Pakistani, and Romanian. The studies focus predominantly on rural areas, as these are most often perceived as problem areas in light of the norms set by today's globally dominant urban society (Thomas et al., 2011; Gristy et al., 2020).

The individual papers follow the two perspective mentioned above: On the one hand, structural and policy lens, and on the other hand, the social and discursive lens. The first focuses on how top-down decisions and systemic settings create unequal conditions in the German and Swedish educational landscapes. In Germany, the construction of marginality is examined through territorial governance. The rural periphery faces significant inequalities of educational opportunities, driven by demographic decline and a severe teacher shortage that risks a "deschooling" of certain areas. Similarly, in Sweden, the marketization of the "Natural Resource" program reveals a tension between educational marketing and the actual societal needs for local industry resilience, illustrating how privatization can reshape rural education.

The second perspective examines how marginality is reinforced through everyday interaction, language, and prejudice, using Pakistan and Romania as examples. In Pakistan, marginality is manifested through a "blame game" between parents and teachers. Here, socioeconomic constraints like poverty are misinterpreted as a "deficiency" in parental motivation, creating a cycle of mutual distrust that widens the home-school gap. In Romania, the symposium highlights the persistence of "anti-Gypsyism" within the school mediator system. Despite policies aimed at Roma inclusion, deep-seated stereotypes continue to be deployed by staff, showing how marginalization persists even within systems designed to alleviate it.

In their methodology, individual contributions bring a combination of qualitative interviews, critical mixed methods, and spatial analysis. Although at first glance the four symposium papers seem distant from each other in terms of the content and regional contexts, they are closely linked by the idea that marginality is not only a geographical fact (distance from the center), but an active process of exclusion through discourse and politics, which transforms difference into a deficit (cf. Cuervo, 2025).

In Germany, rural schools are sometimes considered as sites of structural marginalization resulting from demographic change, decentralized governance, and uneven territorial development. Rural areas confronted with population decline face shrinking pupil numbers, school closures, and reduced institutional capacity, which both reflect and exacerbate existing disparities in educational access and quality (Bartl, 2024). These processes of marginalization risk to be enhanced by the current lack of teachers which is still predicted to continue in the coming years (KMK, 2025). Marginalization occurs through diverse mechanisms: declining enrolment undermines the viability of small elementary schools, while limited financial, cultural and human resources constrain rural schools’ ability to keep up educational standards, thereby reinforcing inequalities in educational provision and learning opportunities. Rural schools are increasingly dependent on local resources, meaning that their development trajectories vary according to ambits of local governance and resource endowment, creating a “geographical lottery” of educational opportunities across territories (Rundel & Salemink, 2021; Jahnke, 2019). The concept of territorial governance of schooling and education offers a useful lens for analyzing how educational provision is shaped by the interplay between state education policies and local development strategies. Territorial governance reframes schools as a central element of local agendas aimed at sustaining rural communities against demographic decline. However, it also introduces competitive pressures and market-oriented logics that can privilege well-resourced localities over disadvantaged ones (Esparcia & Abbasi, 2020; Jahnke, 2019). The current shortage of qualified teachers is globally recognized as one of the key challenges for education and school development (UNESCO, 2024). Beyond national differences in teacher shortage, international research highlights the difficulty to recruit and retain formally educated teachers especially in rural areas (Gehrmann & Germer, 2025). In Germany, a shortage of 27.000 teachers has recently been predicted until 2035, thus adding to the current number of open teaching positions or underqualified teachers (KMK, 2025). This teacher crisis leads to a broad variety of policies to secure the teaching personel and ensure the educational quality for the future at different governance levels – ranging from regional government incentives to local initiatives (Gehrmann & Germer, 2025; Seeliger & Håkansson Lindqvist, 2023; Jahnke, 2020). Using the ambivalence of the provocative term „deschooling“ (Illich, 1971) I want to highlight strategies that address teacher shortages at different governance level and discuss their possible impacts on the marginalization of schooling in rural areas.

Bartl, W. (2024). Räumliche Ungleichheit-wie ein Föderalstaat sehen. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43717-6_8 Esparcia, J., & Abbasi, F. (2020). Territorial governance and rural development: Challenge or reality? In E. Cejudo & F. Navarro (Eds.), Neoendogenous Development in European Rural Areas. Springer. Gehrmann, A., & Germer, P. (Eds.). (2025). Teacher shortage in international perspectives: Insights and responses. Springer. Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. Harper & Row. Jahnke, H. (2019). Territorial governance of schooling and education in rural areas: Case studies from northern Germany. In H. Jahnke, C. Kramer, & P. Meusburger (Eds.), Geographies of Schooling (pp. 19–33). Springer. Jahnke, H. (2020). Bildung in ländlichen Räumen - Aktuelle Entwicklungen im Zeichen des demographischen Wandels. In C. Wiegandt & C. Krajewski (Eds.), Land in Sicht - Vielfalt ländlicher Räume in Deutschland (pp. 288–299). BpB. Kultusministerkonferenz [KMK]. (2025). Lehrkräfteeinstellungsbedarf und -angebot in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2025–2035. Seeliger, S., & Håkansson Lindqvist, M. (2023). Dealing with teacher shortage in Germany—A closer view of four federal states. Education Sciences, 13(3), Article 227. UNESCO. (2024). Global report on teachers: Addressing teacher shortages and transforming the profession. https://doi.org/10.18356/9789231006555

Globally, marketization and privatization are increasingly transforming school systems in countries (Verger et al., 2016) that are simultaneously in a state of poly-crisis, facing economic, social, and political challenges. Contemporary global economic and trade challenges are creating new risks in domestic food production for the Nordic welfare states. Societal resilience requires ongoing labor and skills supply to local industries, including agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry. However, rural schools that carry the Natural Resource program have difficulties recruiting students for the vocational specializations (e.g., forestry, agriculture, and animal care) directed towards jobs in these sectors (Arbetsförmedlingen, 2023). Educational privatization tends to be absent from rural areas and rural upper secondary education specifically (Fjellman et al., 2019), but the Natural Resource program is an exception; despite its rural character, a majority of the educational providers organizing the program are private. Our study examines this potentially 'successful' rural educational privatization and analyses the tension between how educational marketing is shaping student recruitment patterns and the program's potential for solving societal problems through certain educational and vocational work. Our theoretical points of departure include a socio-spatial framework based on Doreen Masseys work to address regional restructuring (Massey, 1979) and the marketization and commercialization of education (Ball, 2006) together with the Swedish case of extensive dismantling of the welfare state (Dovemark et al., 2018). Place is a structuring feature in how youth choose and access education and marketization has previously been shown to impact students' everyday life in private schools (Allelin, 2019), but more research is needed in relation to how particular educational programs are presented and marketed to prospective students. The study utilizes several data sources and incorporates a critical mixed methodology (i.e., Younas et al., 2026), using qualitative content analysis and statistical analysis paired with spatial visualization. The data sources include marketing educational materials (videos, texts, pictures) used for recruiting students and population-based register data from the Gothenburg Longitudinal Database (GOLD) with a sub-sample of all students attending the program between 1998 and 2022. GOLD contains information on students' location, grades, school choices, program affiliation, and family background. The study's mixed approach attempts to contribute to a deeper and critical understanding of how educational marketing is shaping student recruitment and how privatization can change rural education by focusing on the program as a case study.

Allelin, M. (2019). Skola för lönsamhet: Om elevers marknadsanpassade villkor och vardag. Arkiv förlag. Arbetsförmedlingen. (2023). Yrkesprognoser. https://tinyurl.com/59m3ejws Ball, S. J. (2006). Educational policy and social class: Selected works of Stephen J. Ball. Routledge. Dovemark, M., Kosunen, S., Kauko, J., Magnúsdóttir, B., Hansen, P., & Rasmussen, P. (2018). Deregulation, privatisation and marketisation of Nordic comprehensive education: Social changes reflected in schooling. Education Inquiry, 9(1), 122–141. Fjellman, A.-M., Yang Hansen, K., & Beach, D. (2019). School choice and implications for equity: The new political geography of the Swedish upper secondary school market. Educational Review, 71(4), 518–539. Massey, D. (1979). In what sense a regional problem? Regional Studies, 13(2), 233–243. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Zancajo, A. (2016). The privatization of education: A political economy of global education reform. Teachers College Press. Younas, A., Kvist, T., & Stolt, M. (2026). Framework and key considerations for designing and conducting critical mixed-methods research (cMMR). Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 80(1), 55–61.

The marginalization of rural areas results from the long-term development of relations between metropolitan areas and their hinterlands (Solstad & Andrews, 2020). This paper investigates the social construction of marginality within the education system of rural Pakistan. This process is manifested through the systemic neglect of rural state schools, which are perceived as inferior alternatives to urban or private institutions, further entrenching the educational divide (Ali et al., 2021). Marginalization of rural areas in many developing countries is the result of long-term political decisions, social prejudices (Suttie, 2019), and failing communication between education providers (the state, teachers) and recipients (children and their families) (Ahmed et al., 2021). Many studies on parent–teacher relationships has revealed that mutual trust, effective communication, shared responsibility, and recognition of families’ needs are positive factors for children’s success (e.g., Anazia et al., 2025). However, the extent and quality of cooperation may vary due to socioeconomic, cultural, and societal structural factors (Mughal et al., 2019). Although poverty and illiteracy are objective barriers to academic achievement in rural areas of developing regions (Yulianti et al., 2019), their transformation into a "label" of failing parents or inferior schools hinders the education system just as significantly, if not more (Ahmed et al., 2021). Findings within this qualitative study are based on thematic interviews with twelve rural parents and ten teachers from rural public schools. The results reveal a pervasive "blame game" where teachers and parents hold each other responsible for children's academic failure. Teachers construct an image of "deficient parents", often misinterpreting socioeconomic constraints—such as poverty and illiteracy—as a lack of motivation. Conversely, parents view teachers as unprofessional and exclusionary, noting that educators frequently send their own children to private schools, signaling the perceived inadequacy of the state system they represent. Additionally, locally dominant norms like gender segregation and socioeconomic hardships can hinder active communication and prevent participation in school activities. This exchange of negative perceptions increases the home-school gap and erodes trust. To substitute barriers with opportunities, the paper recommends moving away from deficiency-based narratives. Based on the results, we offer recommendations for improving teacher training and parental roles to foster mutual understanding and enhance children’s success.

Ahmed, Q. W., Rönkä, A., & Perälä-Littunen, S. (2021). Parental involvement or interference? Rural teachers’ perceptions. Education Research International. Ali, K., Yaseen, M. R., Makhdum, M. S. A., Quddoos, A., & Sardar, A. (2021). Socioeconomic determinants of primary school children dropout: A case study of Pakistan. International Journal of Educational Management, 35(6), 1161–1177. Anazia, I. U., Skinner, B., & Woods, C. (2025). Home–school partnerships: Values and expectations of rural teachers and parents. Educational Research, 67(2), 170–189. Mughal, A. W., Aldridge, J., & Monaghan, M. (2019). Perspectives of dropped-out children on their dropping out from public secondary schools in rural Pakistan. International Journal of Educational Development, 66(1), 52–61. Solstad, K. J., & Andrews, T. (2020). From rural to urban to rural to global: 300 years of compulsory schooling in rural Norway. Journal of Rural Studies, 74, 294–303. Suttie, D. (2019). Overview: Rural poverty in developing countries: Issues, policies and challenges. Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies, 9(1), 94–101. Yulianti, K., Denessen, E., & Droop, M. (2019). Indonesian parents’ involvement in their children’s education: A study in elementary schools in urban and rural Java, Indonesia. School Community Journal, 29(1), 253–278.

After joining the European Union, the Romanian government identified education as a policy priority in order to promote Roma integration, educational attainment, and social mobility (2022). One result of this policy priority was the establishment of a system of school mediators to work with both schools and Roma communities to improve Roma educational outcomes, including increased educational outcomes and graduation rates (Csesznek & Schafft, 2021; Pop & Balea, 2016). School mediators thus are the school staff most directly concerned with Roma educational access and inclusion. Officially, persons who identify as Roma are given hiring priority for school mediator positions (Csesznek & Schafft, 2021). However, in practice these positions often go to persons who do not ethnically identity as Roma, and especially in more rural settings in which the pool of qualified applicants for school mediator positions is small. This paper uses interview data with school mediators in a sample of rural and urban locations within Romania’s Carpathian Basin to examine how national-level educational policy is translated into local-level practice (Brüggemann & Friedman, 2017). In particular, we examine how Roma and non-Roma school mediators differentially -- and in some cases similarly -- describe the nature of their work and how anti-Roma stereotypes are deployed in both the ways in which school mediators describe their professional roles, as well as the students and families with whom they work. We find that while non-Roma mediators tend to more frequently express anti-Roma stereotypes, these stereotypes also appear in the comments of Roma-identifying mediators, consistent with theories of stereotype internalization which describe how subaltern groups may internalize and reproduce negative stereotypes (Bó, 2019). We argue this internalization is consistent with more regional and historical patterns of cultural trauma that are a shared part of the Roma experience (Ferkovics et al., 2017). Though the school mediator system ostensibly is framed as a policy mechanism to increase educational and social inclusion of Roma students, anti-Gypsyism remains a persistent feature of institutional and educational settings in Romania and elsewhere, often even within the context of educational practice meant to increase inclusion (Baciu, 2020; Rostas, 2019; Toma, 2023).

Bó, B. B. (2019). Structure versus agency: A cross-national examination of discrimination and the internalization of negative stereotypes. European Societies, 21(3), 327–355. Brüggemann, C., & Friedman, E. (2017). The decade of Roma inclusion: Origins, actors, and legacies. European Education, 49(1), 1–9. Csesznek, C., & Schafft, K. A. (2021). Roma youth and on-the-ground implementation of Roma education policies in rural Romania. In K. A. Schafft, S. Stanić, R. Horvatek, & A. Maselli (Eds.), Rural youth at the crossroads: Transitional societies in Central Europe and beyond (pp. 176–194). Routledge. Ferkovics, R., Németh, K., & Schafft, K. A. (2017). Roma identity, cultural trauma, second class citizenship and the contemporary context for ethnic political representation in Hungary. Croatian Political Science Review, 54(1-2), 74–93. Pop, F., & Balea, B. (2016). School mediators in the Romanian education system: A discussion on their role in addressing educational inequalities. Social Change Review, 14(2), 149–176. Rostas, I. (2019). A task for Sisyphus: Why Europe's Roma policies fail. Central European University Press. Toma, S. (2023). Educational policy and Roma children in Romania. In E. J. Done & H. Knowler (Eds.), International Perspectives on Exclusionary Pressures in Education (pp. 183–204). Palgrave Macmillan.