‘I’ll always have black hair’ – challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in Finnish schools

Sanna Mustonen

doi:10.1080/20020317.2021.2000093

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses raciolinguistic ideologies in the Finnish educational context. Ethnographic interviews and observational data gathered during 2015–2020 from two young males who came to Finland from the Middle-East in autumn 2015 as unaccompanied minors were analysed applying the small stories approach. The research questions were: 1) What kinds of racializing discourses are circulated, negotiated, and resisted in the participants’ self- and other positionings? 2) How is valuation of their language and literacy skills and participation in education reflected in these positionings? Critical linguistic ethnography was used to identify the racializing discourses. The results indicate that structural raciolinguistic ideologies repeatedly impacted the participants’ educational paths: notwithstanding their good command of Finnish they may have been judged as deficient language users, weakening their chances of equal participation in classroom interaction and access to further studies or practical training. However, outside the educational context, they may successfully deploy their multilingual repertoires for networking and entrepreneurship. While intersecting factors such as race, gender, or religion influence participation, they are treated as language issues in a politically correct but vague way. This calls for a critical discussion of how students’ struggles with participation should be situated within broader structural biases.

Highlights

I was chatting with a young man, who had arrived in Finland a year and half earlier and recently entered the mainstream class
The young man stated: ‘I’ll always have black hair, I’ll always be recognized as an immigrant’, indicating a self-positioning in which circulating racialized discourses explained the inequality of opportunity in the Finnish educational system and society
The main theme of their stories was – espe cially during the first years with Eylo and throughout the data collection with Habib – exclusion, which was linked to racialization and language skills in a com plex way. They were among the first immigrant students in their local comprehensive school and experienced ‘a honeymoon period’ with the Finnish students before entering mainstream education

Summary

Introduction

I was chatting with a young man, who had arrived in Finland a year and half earlier and recently entered the mainstream class. We were talking about his schooling, plans and dreams, and how learning Finnish would help him achieve his goals. I was interested in his language learning process and resources. The young man stated: ‘I’ll always have black hair, I’ll always be recognized as an immigrant’, indicating a self-positioning in which circulating racialized discourses explained the inequality of opportunity in the Finnish educational system and society. His words challenged the discourse of language skills as key to participation. Learning Finnish and becoming a member of the new society turned out to be a more complex process than I had anticipated

Results

Discussion

Conclusion