Educating to belong: Policy and practice of mother-tongue instruction for migrant students in the Danish welfare state

Abstract

This article explores how the development of mother-tongue instruction (MTI) policies in the Danish welfare state have created varying notions of difference and sameness in the schooling of migrant students and how they experience these notions locally in practice. Based on an analysis of MTI’s policy history and oral history interviews with former migrant students, we analyse MTI policy development within the Danish welfare state as a primary case and discusses whether these developments seem to be unique to the Danish welfare state by considering (West) Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden as a comparative perspective. Noting the paradoxes and dynamics of the welfare-state policy of ‘school for all under one roof’ at the intersections between the policy and practice level, we posit that migrant students are regulated as a homogeneous group that is expected to be ‘the same’ but is simultaneously considered to be ‘different’ from other, majority students. The findings thus reveal the paradox of welfare-state education policies and practice: while macro scale policy for migrant education aims to emphasise difference through MTI, the social consequences at the micro level show the opposite; namely, that MTI produces feelings of sameness and belonging among migrant students.

Positions of Newly Arrived Students in Nordic Education Policies and Practices

“…In fact, in Denmark, recent studies in the field of education for newly arrived students show that they are regulated as a homogenous group expected to be 'the same' but at the same time considered to be 'different' and through frames of 'normality' that are color-blind or culturally neutral (Li & Enemark, 2021). The same tendencies are found in Sweden, where newly arrived students are treated as one single collective (Brännström 2021a(Brännström , 2021bSSI, 2017aSSI, , 2017b.…”

Forhandlinger af tilhørsforhold på tværs af tid

“…I 1990'erne startede brugen af 'tosprogede elever' og kategorierne 'børn med anden etnisk baggrund (end dansk)', 'efterkommere' og 'andengenerationsindvandrerbørn' (Kofoed 1994), og senest vandt betegnelsen 'tredjegenerationsindvandrerbørn' frem gennem 2000'erne. Tosprogede elever bliver også anvendt overlappende med kategorien 'muslimske børn/elever' (Buchardt 2016;Gilliam 2018;Li & Enemark 2023).…”

Migrants and Welfare States

“…This chapter is based on research done in the research project FLOW -Global flows of migrants and their impact on North European Welfare States 2018-2021. Part of the source material has previously been analyzed in Li and Enemark (2021). In this chapter, it is analyzed from a different optics, drawing on insights from e.g.…”