Conference Agenda

The “integration of refugees” is today characterised by temporary protection and repatriation schemes, and the “Danish approach” to integration has gained traction across many European countries because of its restrictive measures. Within the national welfare states, asylum seekers and ‘refugees’ are increasingly promoted and positioned only as assets for the host states, who invests in ‘refugees’’ human capital to stimulate growth and employment in industries and occupations in demand of labour power. Welfare workers in Denmark, such as social workers, social educators and schoolteachers, have since the 1970’s engaged in educating ‘the refugee’ with reference to the welfare state’s social-liberal norms concerning self-sufficiency and the achievement of life quality, aiming to integrate and form the refugee within the existing capitalistic welfare society (Padovan-Özdemir and Øland 2022b, 100–127; 2022a).

Recently, Heba Gowayed, has constructed a theory of state-structured human capital (2022, 4) to study how Syrian refugees’ human capital “is augmented, transformed, or destroyed by national incorporation polices” in the US, Canada and Germany. But while Gowayed focuses on how different national policies either recognises and/or invests in one group of newcomers across three states, we will focus on how municipal integration workers have sought to transform and potentialize ‘refugees’ in local communities and its different economies.

Thus, the purpose of this paper is to study integration as a category of practice (Korteweg 2017; Jacobsen 2023; Masoud et al. 2023), and investigate how integration is described and work at the municipal level; how the state’s production of refugee positionalites is further governed locally. Thus, we focus on integration, not as a concept professing coherent meaning nor as a category of analysis, but exclusively as a category of practice which means that we focus on the “social, cultural and economic processes that produce groups in ways that move beyond integration discourse” (Korteweg 2017, 440). We engage in integration as a category of practice across multiple settings and investigates how municipal integration practices unfold, as narrated by the integration workers themselves. The analysis pays particular attention to how integration practices interact with and effectuate national policies of temporariness and repatriation in ambiguous ways, and how differences between rural and urban municipalities, their political leadership, and differences in housing, occupational and populational infrastructure transpire.

Research has translated integration as a category of practice into a bordering practice of internal frontiers that reproduces symbolic boundaries, racial difference and social inequalities within democratic policies (Borrelli 2021; Shapiro et al. 2024; Stoler 2022; Øland 2019; 2025). Such research shows how race is produced in the targeting of racialised groups by racialised images and interventions, and thus how racialisation implies practices and actions by dominant groups. Research has also pointed to how the refugee category itself has become racialised and racialising in as much as it has become associated with non-white bodies (Picozza 2024; Blinkenberg and Øland 2026). We use these insights in our analysis to point to what we conceptualise as racialisations and racialising narratives where refugees are targeted as a racialised group by disparaging and dehumanising images that seem to legitimate coercion and exploitation in the narratives of the integration workers.

The research question underpinning this paper is: how are local interests conveyed and canalised into integration practices and how do these practices simultaneously enact dynamic constructions of ‘refugees’?

This study discussed here is part of a larger project titled Apart and Apart? Education and social inclusion of refugee children and youth in Iceland. One of the project’s pillars is to examine refugee youth’s language learning, language use, and multilingualism. Building on that pillar, this study examines multilingual practices that support learning Icelandic and heritage languages, including Icelandic-as-a-second-language classes, homework support, and heritage-language classes across family, school, and community contexts. The research question guiding this study is the following:

How do the language practices of family, school, and community shape Syrian and Iraqi youth’s Icelandic language learning, heritage-language maintenance, and academic progression in upper secondary school education?

Findings from previous studies in Iceland focusing on youth with refugee backgrounds have consistently highlighted structural and institutional barriers to educational inclusivity, including a lack of policy, a lack of teacher preparation, limited heritage-language support, and sustained home-school collaboration (Gunnþórsdóttir, 2019; Hama, 2020; Harðardóttir & Magnúsdóttir, 2018; Ragnarsdóttir, 2020). At the same time, research has paid less attention to the facilitators that enable youth to persist and progress across school levels, including family language practices, community-based language support, and linguistic and cultural approaches within schools (Allen et al., 2021; Fong et al., 2024). Even less visible is how youth and their families actively navigate structural and institutional barriers to educational inclusivity in everyday life, for example, how they negotiate language expectations, mobilize resources across home, school, and community contexts, and sustain both Icelandic language learning and heritage language use as Syrian and Iraqi youth transition into upper secondary school (Prasad & Lory, 2020; Ungar, 2011; Ungar & Theron, 2019).

European scholarship highlights the growing recognition of multilingualism and its cognitive, educational, and social benefits. Scholars such as Cummins (2021, 2024) emphasize that multilingual learners benefit when schools move away from monolingualism and create classroom ecologies that welcome cross-linguistic connections, translanguaging, and identity-affirming language use (Cummins, 2021, 2024). Similarly, Fong et al. (2024) argue that undervaluing ethnically or racially minoritized students’ identities, including social status, religious beliefs, and their socio-ecological environment, can undermine their sense of belonging, which in turn shapes their academic progress. Lastly, Chumak-Horbatsch (2025) underscores the importance of investing in multilingual, inclusive classroom practices that draw on all students’ language repertoires and create equitable environments that strengthen students’ belonging.

This paper draws on a theoretical framework in socio-ecological resilience (Ungar & Theron, 2019) and Linguistic and Cultural Collaboration (Prasad & Lory, 2020). In line with Ungar and Theron (2019), resilience is treated as a multisystem process: young people do well under adversity when they can navigate toward and negotiate for psychological, social, cultural, and material resources that sustain well-being and a sense of belonging in culturally meaningful ways. This framing aligns with the study’s focus on how Icelandic language learning, heritage language maintenance, and academic progression depend on resources accessed and negotiated across family, school, and community contexts, including instructional support, culturally and linguistically safe relationships, and opportunities to maintain heritage languages. Complementing this notion, Prasad and Lory’s (2020) LCC specifies what equitable collaboration can look like in practice. In practice, LCC is both a process and a product that emerges when teachers, students, families, and community actors utilize diverse language repertoires and funds of knowledge to enrich learning while challenging deficit views of marginalized languages. Together, these lenses support an analysis of language practice as socially organized, power-laden, and consequential for the academic trajectories of Syrian and Iraqi youth.

Topic: In many societies around the world, collaboration between school and families is recognized as essential to support students' educational success. This is the case in Quebec, a French-speaking province of Canada, where Epstein's typology (2011) has been widely used in research to study parental involvement and opportunities for parents to collaborate with schools. The typology is divided into six types: 1) parenting; 2) communication with the school; 3) parental involvement at school; 4) monitoring and supporting learning at home; 5) participation in decision-making; 6) collaboration and exchanges with the community.

However, some authors express reservations about Epstein's typology when it comes to studying the involvement of parents who do not represent the majority (Gosselin-Lavoie et Charette, 2024). In this regard, Bower and Griffin (2011) point out that the modes of involvement and collaboration traditionally expected of parents, such as involvement at school or support with schoolwork, do not cover the ways in which parents can be involved when they are in a low socioeconomic situation or when they represent a minority group. In these contexts, Bower and Griffin (2011) highlight the value of supporting networking among parents and their power to act about their rights and those of their children. Cranston et al. (2021), in a study focusing on refugee parents who do not speak the language of the school, also describe Epstein's conceptual framework as problematic. It does not consider the challenges that parents may face in the host society, which could affect their possibility to get involved in their children's education, such as a lack of knowledge about the school system, partial mastery of the language of school, or the time-consuming search for employment. According to Conus (2023), school expectations are governed by rigid norms that distance some parents from school by placing the burden of collaboration on their shoulders, rather than considering the structural and institutional factors that create barriers. According to Coady et al. (2015), who examine collaborations between school and Spanish-speaking immigrant families, to demonstrate inclusion in collaboration, it is essential to reconceptualize the relationship between parents and the school, as well as the resources available to them.

Research question: How do the terms of collaboration offered to refugee families or asylum seekers in Quebec enable or prevent parents from meeting their needs and addressing their realities?

Conceptual framework: The capabilities approach theory will be used to answer our research question, which is part of a social justice perspective and was developed by Amartya Sen in the field of social economics (Sen, 2000). The author describes the concept of capabilities as a set of modes of functioning that are potentially accessible to a person, whether they exercise them (Sen, 2000). They are real opportunities available to persons that would allow them to choose to “be” and “do” what they value (Olympio, 2020; Picard et al., 2015). The capabilities approach aims to inform people of their rights and the resources available to them but also emphasizes the need for people to know how to use these resources, thereby opening a wider range of opportunities for them (Sen, 2000). The approach also draws on the concept of conversion factors, which can be negative or positive. These factors explain why individuals with the same resources do not necessarily achieve the same results. These factors can be personal, sociocultural, environmental, etc. They affect people's ability to use and transform resources (Sen, 2000).

This research addresses a critical yet under-examined subject within the sociology of education and internal migration: the lived experiences and identity formation of young women who grew up as children of rural-to-urban migrants in China’s distinctive ‘urban villages’ (chengzhongcun城中村). While the children of China’s estimated 300 million internal migrants have garnered significant scholarly attention (Luo, 2012; Dorfman, 2018), research often bifurcates into a discourse of ‘left-behind children’ in rural areas versus ‘migrant children’ facing integration barriers in cities (Li et al., 2025; Dong, 2018). This study identifies a significant empirical and theoretical gap concerning those who inhabit a unique socio-spatial niche: they are not ‘left-behind’, nor are they transient ‘migrants’ in the typical sense; they are socialised within the city, yet within enclaves marked by informality, stigma, and profound inequality. Urban villages, formed by the engulfing of former rural settlements by expanding metropolises, are dense, low-cost neighbourhoods housing millions of migrant families (Zhou, 2025; Lam, 2022). They are physical and symbolic frontiers where urban dreams and rural origins collide.

Focusing on female experiences introduces a vital gendered lens, as daughters often navigate compounded pressures from limited family resources, gendered expectations, and the imperative for educational success as a perceived sole pathway to mobility (Jacka, 2005; Goodburn Lau, 2015). The research is guided by three questions: 1) How do the spatial and social characteristics of urban villages shape the educational opportunities, identity construction, and emotional experiences of women raised within them? 2) What strategies do these women employ to pursue educational success and social mobility within constrained environments? 3) How do they negotiate and reconfigure their complex, hybrid identities during their transition to adulthood?

The theoretical framework synergistically integrates Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital. Sen’s approach shifts the evaluative focus from outcomes (e.g., test scores, income) to the expansion of individuals’ substantive freedoms and ‘capabilities’—the real opportunities to achieve valued ‘beings and doings’, such as being educated, enjoying social integration, and maintaining self-respect (Sen, 1999). It provides a normative lens for assessing equality of opportunity. Bourdieu’s conceptual toolkit (economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital, habitus, and field) offers a critical sociological apparatus to diagnose the structural roots that constrain these capabilities (Bourdieu, 1986). The spatial and social milieu of the urban village is analysed as a field with a specific distribution of capital, where families often possess limited economic capital, marginalised cultural capital (relative to urban mainstream norms), and thin local social networks. The ‘urban village’ label itself often carries negative symbolic capital (stigma) (Lam, 2022). This integrated ‘capital-capability-field’ framework allows us to analyse how structural inequalities in capital convertibility systematically limit the development of individuals’ capabilities, while also examining the agential, often burdensome strategies individuals deploy to accumulate capital (notably educational credentials) and expand their horizons (see also a model linking Bourdieu and Sen by “The Role of Outside-School Factors in Science Education”, 2016).

The European/international relevance of this study is multifaceted. It contributes to global debates on the intergenerational consequences of migration, educational inequalities in super-diverse cities, and the role of space in reproducing social class. It resonates with European research on the integration of second-generation immigrants in contexts of spatial segregation and offers a comparative perspective from the Global East on how rapid, state-driven urbanization creates unique marginal spaces and subjectivities. The study’s theoretical engagement with capability and capital provides a robust, transferable framework for analysing educational mobility at the intersection of space, gender, and class across different national contexts.