Anna Lund

This article brings cultural sociology, civil sphere theory, and critical theory into dialogue to examine the empirical-cum-political stakes of education in multicultural societies. Using a mixed-methods approach, it analyzes school cultures in Finland, Scotland, and Sweden, focusing on how the symbolic and interactional life of schools extends beyond academic performance. Schools are understood as moral environments where ideals of solidarity and coexistence, and thus processes of inclusion, are both cultivated and contested, revealing the potential and fragility of a lived civil sphere. The article introduces the concept of critical pedagogy of multicultural incorporation (CPMI), which includes interactional rituals of recognition, awareness of structural barriers, decolonizing practices, and meaningful representation. Magnolia School in Sweden serves as a key case, showing how a “thick” school culture grounded in CPMI supports prosocial outcomes for students with immigrant backgrounds in a society where non-whiteness, non-Western origins, and Muslim identity are increasingly stigmatized. In contrast, other schools in the study demonstrate thinner or more rhetorical approaches to diversity. The results show how young people across Europe encounter school cultures that vary in relation to their mode of incorporation, and are thus equipped with different tools for learning about collective life and how to imagine solidarity.

This article reflects on my intellectual journey into cultural sociology and the work of Jeffrey C. Alexander. Beginning with an ethnographic study of theatre for young audiences, I describe how encounters with the Strong Program in Cultural Sociology opened new analytical possibilities for understanding how meaning emerges in the stage−audience encounter. From this point, the value of an ethnographic perspective on civil sphere theory, which I call civil sphere ethnography, helps to bring the civil sphere into view within everyday situations, interactions and emotional dynamics. The article provides an example of how processes of civil repair can occur in a local educational setting within contemporary Swedish society, characterized by increasing diversity and segregation. By connecting Alexander with Paulo Freire, I outline a pedagogical approach I call the critical pedagogy of multicultural incorporation, highlighting its potential to foster recognition, reduce shame, enhance a sense of belonging and, hopefully, broaden civil inclusion.

This study examined students’ school engagement in relation to their migration status and their parents’ educational level across diverse school contexts with different density levels of migrant students. Altogether 1146 students (Mean _age = 13.65 years old) from seven schools in Finland, Scotland, and Sweden participated in the study. We obtained information about students’ school engagement and their demographics through a self-report survey. Results showed that migrant students demonstrated higher levels of control and relevance of schoolwork and future aspirations and goals , compared to their native peers. Students’ school engagement in migrant-medium schools (29%–33% students are migrants) was the lowest compared to that in migrant-dense schools (64%–77% students are migrants) and migrant-sparse schools (6%–10% students are migrants). Students whose mother’s educational level was higher reported higher levels of future aspirations and goals and family support for learning . Regardless of the density level of migrant students, schools depend on sufficient resources so that every student can engage in school.

Currently, Sweden is a society marked by growing anti-immigrant sentiments and residential stigmatization. As a result, the symbolic and social gaps between in-groups and out-groups are widening. Consequently, interactions that could foster empathy and solidarity across differences have become increasingly fragile. However, artistic initiatives that counter anti-civil forces are emerging. This article focuses on theater and social inclusion by examining three interconnected elements: meaning, communication, and social change-and how they can serve as a form of civil resilience through critical reflection and recognition processes. Thus, we illuminate how theater can become a venue for social inclusion for a young, ethnically diverse audience by activating symbolic structures of meaning and emotions that recognize the inequalities present within marginalized groups and their experiences. This is achieved by investigating the professional and dramaturgical strategies employed by an artistic team establishing a new theater in a stigmatized neighborhood north of Stockholm and their efforts toward social cohesion. The analysis identifies dramaturgical strategies involving emotions, authenticity, and bodies, along with other professional strategies that work transformatively within the theater and the community, resulting in theatrical communication that allows for psycho-social identification for the audience and critical self-analysis for theater professionals, thereby holding potential for civil resilience.

Growing migration has changed student populations in many countries, challenging schools and educational systems to include students from migration backgrounds. Teacher collaboration has emerged as a key means to respond to this challenge, yet studying how teachers collaborate to mobilise support in this context poses difficult theoretical and methodological questions. This chapter presents an analytical approach which, drawing on the theory of inclusive pedagogy and mixed methods social network analysis (MMSNA), can elucidate the extent to which teacher collaborations are likely to support the inclusion of migrant students. The approach proceeds in three steps to examine: first, who collaborates to support migrant students? Second, what do inclusive forms of collaboration look like? And finally, how supportive of migrant student inclusion are collaborations likely to be? The approach, demonstrated with MMSNA data from a lower secondary school in a large Swedish city, advances knowledge on the role of collaboration for supporting diverse students and offers the potential to further theory and methods.

For many students with migrant backgrounds and newly arrived students, their mother tongue is not only a knowledge and a school grade issue, but also a reflection of their identity and a sense of belonging, which are shaped by political structures. In this article, we analyze the role of mother tongue in Swedish policy documents and the way teachers and students see the role mother tongue in two Swedish schools: how do school professionals and students view the importance of mother tongue? What measures are taken to encourage the mother tongues of students with a migration background and newly arrived students? What are the implications of and obstacles to studying one’s mother tongue? We will look at levers of integration where school staff, as well as policy documents, encourage modes of incorporation, but also do identify obstacles concerning the practice of mother tongue instruction. Our article shows that although students long for a double cultural belonging, the policy documents are ambiguous and create an unclear promise for migrant students and their mother tongue teachers concerning multicultural incorporation. In practice, they have little evidence that maintaining their cultural background represents a strong value in Sweden. Ambiguous attitude towards mother tongue can be seen as a symbolic response to Sweden as a country which took a turn regarding its migration policy. The integration of residents with a migrant background is constantly questioned in the media and became a central issue in political debates. The implementation of mother tongue instruction reflects Sweden’s current state of discussing migration concerning integration policies somewhere between recognition and stigmatization. The data are drawn from student interviews, interviews with mother tongue teachers, and field notes in two schools in one of the biggest cities in Sweden.

Previous research conducted in Swedish schools and beyond has shown how newly arrived migrant students are excluded by peers from the majority population and by longer-term residents. The novelty of the present article is its focus on the opposite: how peer interaction between newly arrived and other students arises in superdiverse school settings and what this interaction means for newly arrived migrant students. A multidimensional theoretical perspective with a focus on social interaction within school is utilized to illuminate the drama of social life. Ideals of the civil sphere, superdiversity, habitus and conviviality are combined, the goal being to create links between macro- and micro-levels. Peer interaction is analyzed as meaningful per se, rather than as an exchange value. This is valuable from a subjective perspective in relation to the notion that being ordinary is a key to belonging. The analysis shows the lived interconnectedness between ideals, institutions, practices, and individuals’ life experiences. The data are drawn from ethnographic fieldwork undertaken during one academic year in two middle schools [högstadiet] and 42 interviews with newly arrived migrant students and school staff in Sweden.

Through an ethnographic account of the ways that teenagers in a Stockholm school construct meaning through hard-hitting humor, that is, ‘pisstaking’, we investigate how collective representations play out in everyday life. This culture in interaction is analyzed as a form of ‘social art’ where participants sensuously negotiate visible and invisible power structures. The article depicts the interactions as embedded in a symbolic landscape of meaning, one where complex inequalities contained within bodies and played out in interaction can resist and (re)produce gendered and racialized orders and identities. Masculinities, femininities, sexualities, notions of the ‘right’ kind of modernity and being ‘the immigrant’ are put to use as cultural resources in an intersectional play around gaining and maintaining social value and self-worth. We show how ‘pisstaking’ works among teenagers: promoting situational solidarity while also allowing for differentiation and othering processes.