Abstract
The school welfare system faces a challenge in the linguistically and culturally diversifying school. This article examines how school welfare personnel, native language teachers, and migrant parents conceptualize the wellbeing of migrant children in Finland. The data analyzed by thematic content analysis consists of group and individual interviews of a total of 47 persons: nurses, psychologists, social workers, a headmaster, special education teachers, native language teachers, and migrant parents in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The school welfare professionals and migrant parents views stressed different factors as risks and resources of migrant childrens wellbeing. In school welfare personnels view, school wellbeing is secured by downplaying difference between children of diverse cultural backgrounds; moreover, they do not see negative attitudes, discrimination, or bullying of migrant children as a particular problem. Migrant parents and native language teachers in turn consider or at least fear their childrens wellbeing to be jeopardized by social exclusion, prejudice or discrimination. The school personnel find it difficult to recognize the power imbalance between minorities and the national majority that lies behind these different conceptualizations. This reduces trust and impedes the cooperation of migrant homes and school, particularly in situations when an intervention is imperative for securing child wellbeing.
Highlights
School is rapidly diversifying culturally and linguistically as a result of growing immigration and the relatively higher total fertility among immigrants
In Helsinki the proportion of foreign language speaking children is currently 14 percent among children in primary school age (7 to 15) and over 16 percent of the children attending primary school participate in the teaching of Finnish/Swedish as a second language (City of Helsinki Education Department 2010)
Seen primarily as an additional resource. Their children’s school wellbeing is first and foremost an issue of equity and participation. In their point of view, cultural difference can be a problem for their children only because Finnish society makes it a problem
Summary
School is rapidly diversifying culturally and linguistically as a result of growing immigration and the relatively higher total fertility among immigrants. Services of the welfare state are treating their subjects as citizens with equal rights and as “humans in need of guidance and care” (Hagelund 2009, 97) This double relationship binds together control and welfare, and implies a power relation that can be described by the concept of “governmentality” (e.g. Dean 1999) which is relevant for understanding how social services and educational institutions deal with minorities and other vulnerable groups, such as migrants. The “health-promoting school” approach (Gray, Young and Barnekow 2006), raises the issues of democratic practices, participation, equity, and empowerment to the center stage in understanding school wellbeing Health promoting activity both in adults and children is affected by their self-esteem, optimism, belief in change, and their assessment of what others think of them and their group The research data consists of interviews of three groups of respondents: 1. School welfare personnel (school health nurses, school psychologists, school social workers, special education teachers and a headmaster): a. 4 focus group discussions: 19 participants in total b. 5 individual expert interviews
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