Abstract
ABSTRACT This article explores preschool practitioners’ perceptions of their encounters with migrant parents in rural preschools. The practitioners’ accounts are analyzed through Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. This theoretical approach was chosen based on the assumption that a successful integration process is accompanied by the presence of a dialogic stance that embraces difference. The practitioners’ accounts describe a change, in terms of moving from a monologic to a dialogic stance, that in turn indicates a move towards (self-)reflexivity as far as their attitudes towards migrant parents and their own practices are concerned. In addition, the practitioners’ accounts can be understood as describing that they experience an integration process themselves.
Highlights
Research that addresses questions related to the integration of migrant families in preschools demonstrates a range of challenges in finding a common ground between migrant families and preschool practitioners (De Gioia 2013; Lamb 2020; Lunneblad 2017; Sønsthagen 2020; Tobin 2020; Van Laere, Van Houtte, and Vandenbroeck 2018)
‘Earlier it was more “them and us” and it is not, that is the major difference, as I can feel’, described another practitioner. Her experience of change ranged from seeing the newcomers as ‘the others’ to including them in a common preschool-weness, in the sense that the migrant parents were included in the broad category of parents
When welcoming newly arrived families, preschool practitioners navigate between the perceptions of what a Swedish preschool is and what the newcomers represent
Summary
Research that addresses questions related to the integration of migrant families in preschools demonstrates a range of challenges in finding a common ground between migrant families and preschool practitioners (De Gioia 2013; Lamb 2020; Lunneblad 2017; Sønsthagen 2020; Tobin 2020; Van Laere, Van Houtte, and Vandenbroeck 2018). Previous research on migrant families’ encounters with Swedish preschools concentrated on how integration was accomplished in multicultural urban areas (Lunneblad 2006, 2013, 2017; Ronström, Runfors, and Wahlström 1995). More and more asylum seekers were assigned housing in rural areas (Skolverket 2017; SCB 2020a, 2020b), with a lower density of residents and with more cultural and linguistic homogeneity. This change has entailed children with migrant background entering preschools at which the practitioners had little or no experience of receiving newly arrived families
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