Abstract
ABSTRACT This article explores how recently arrived students are positioned and position themselves in the Language Introduction Programme in upper secondary school in Sweden using a combination of position theory with nexus analysis. The material used consists of official national documents and local school documents, observations, interviews and photographs. Circulating discourses are analysed through discourses in place, historical bodies and interaction order. The analysis revealed ambiguous and conflicting discourses at the school, where students in the Language Introduction Programme are positioned both as having rights and as being deficient, lacking what is here termed Swedishness. While principals place the responsibility on students themselves to use Swedish in social situations, official documents emphasise the duty of the principals to ensure that education is relevant. Students’ voices do not appear to be important, and their agency is mainly restricted to their own learning. The identities that were made possible relied on their mastery of Swedish. Conflicting discourses circulate regarding the rights of students and their weaknesses and responsibilities. The combination of these two factors may mean that students run the risk of being positioned as having few opportunities to be successful at school.
Highlights
Current globalisation processes of migration implies that many children and adolescents receive their education in settings where other languages are dominant than those they were raised through
The analysis revealed ambiguous and conflicting discourses at the school, where students in the Language Introduction Programme are positioned both as having rights and as being deficient, lacking what is here termed Swedishness
Language Introduction Programme (LIP) falls under the directives of the Education Act (SFS 2010:800) and aims to ‘give young immigrants who have recently arrived in Sweden an education with a focus on the Swedish language, which will allow them to continue into high school or other forms of education’1
Summary
Current globalisation processes of migration implies that many children and adolescents receive their education in settings where other languages are dominant than those they were raised through. In this article nexus analysis is used to study the positioning of recently arrived adolescents in education in Sweden. Young people aged 16–19 who have recently arrived in Sweden are usually referred to the Language Introduction Programme (LIP) in upper secondary school. Its main purpose is to teach students Swedish language skills and to provide them with an education in other subjects so that they can meet the requirements of mainstream programmes, called national programmes. LIP is a transitional programme, and students are expected to progress quickly to a national programme (either vocational or academic), to other forms of study or to. The challenges that the programme presents are great, since students must reach the required level in Swedish as a second language while completing studies they began before coming to Sweden
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