“Betwixt and Between”:

Abstract

This study explores the sense of possibility as perceived by asylum-seeking children in Sweden in relation to education. An ethnographic approach brought out children’s own perspectives and motivations, and the hopes they pinned to attending school. It was found that the meaning of school related to children’s need of structure, a sense of belonging and a learning environment. However, their hopefulness was conditioned by their uncertain status as asylum seekers, worrying about being deported. This legal and emotional vulnerability and the limited attention of schools to their predicament risked undermining the benefits of their right to education.

Full text

“BETWIXT AND BETWEEN”:
Hope and the meaning of school
for asylum-seeking children in Sweden
Article • DOI: 10.2478/njmr-2013-0007 NJMR • 3(3) • 2013 • 162-170
1Migration and Health Unit, Nordic School of Public Health, Gothenburg, Sweden
2Department of Social Anthropology, School of Global Studies,
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Malin Svensson1*, Marita Eastmond1,2
* E-mail: malin.svensson@liu.se
Abstract
This study explores the sense of possibility as perceived by asylum-seeking
children in Sweden in relation to education. An ethnographic approach brought
out children’s own perspectives and motivations, and the hopes they pinned to
attending school. It was found that the meaning of school related to children’s
need of structure, a sense of belonging and a learning environment. However,
their hopefulness was conditioned by their uncertain status as asylum seekers,
worrying about being deported. This legal and emotional vulnerability and
the limited attention of schools to their predicament risked undermining the
benets of their right to education.
Keywords
Asylum-seeking • children • school • hope • liminality
1 Introduction
School often gures favourably in European research on refugees
as a supportive and health-promoting environment (e.g. Candappa
& Igbinigie 2003; Hek 2005; Rutter 2006; Watters & Ingleby 2002). A
report on refugee and asylum-seeking children in the UK, for instance,
found that “being engaged in education despite being destitute
provided them with a great deal of support and a sense of normality
...” and concluded that school allowed the children to maintain their
aspirations, even under conditions of hunger, homelessness and the
risk of abuse (Pinter 2012: 21). The terms vary considerably between
European recipient countries; some guarantee the same rights as
resident children, whereas others provide only differentiated or no
access to education, depending on legal status (Nonchev & Tagarov
2012).
With regard to asylum-seeking children specically, there is
relatively little research that focuses on their rights to education
(however, see e.g. Candappa 2000 for the UK; Vitus & Lidén 2010
for Scandinavia). This lack, at least in some countries such as
Sweden and the UK (Pinson & Arnot 2010), may be related to the
fact that their school statistics assign asylum-seeking children to the
broad category of “newly arrived pupils”1; a category that includes
children who already have permanent residence and, therefore,
disregards important differences – not least in terms of legal status
and entitlements. Existing research on asylum seekers, whether
unaccompanied (e.g. John et al. 2002; Lundberg & Dahlquist
2012) or accompanied by their families (Lennartsson 2009; Löwén
2006), mention school as important for establishing social relations
and a potential source of meaning but do not go deeper into what
such meaning would entail. Taking our cue from this observation,
we address school as a locus of possibilities as perceived by 14
accompanied asylum-seeking children in Sweden.2 We examine how,
during the highly conditional asylum seeking existence, the children
interact with school and negotiate their position in relation to the
possibilities there. While the hope of obtaining permanent residence
was present in all these pupils, so were fears of deportation,3 not
least among the older children.
2 Theoretical framework
Theoretical inspiration for the study was sought in Ghassan Hage’s
work (2003) on migrants in Australia, especially his writings on
the relationship between the innate human ability to feel hope
(hopefulness) and society’s role in distributing hope of a better future
to its citizens (social hope). Hopefulness, in Hage’s formulation,
enables people to invest in social reality even when the odds appear
extremely bleak and fear is present. It is “the ability to cope with what is
beyond one’s control and a belief in the possibility of a minimum sense
of agency despite all” (Hage 2003: 24). Hopefulness is thus related
to humans’ need to construct a meaningful future, resembling Ernst
Bloch’s description of hope as being about the future as envisioned
in the present (Bloch, cited in Hage 2003:10). Social hope, on the
other hand, is related to society’s allocation, never uniform or equal,
Received 14 September 2012; Accepted 12 July 2013
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of welfare and other social opportunities for self-realisation. Thus, in
Hage’s analysis (2003), a person’s sense of possibility is related to the
ability to trust in society’s provision of such opportunities. Such trust
cannot be taken for granted by asylum seekers without being assured
of a permanent residence status, although it does not prevent them
from being hopeful. Crapanzano (2003) makes a distinction between
hope and desire: hope relates to a positive stance of life in general,
e.g. a belief that things in life will come to a good end. When its object
is more specic, hope is more like desire, as in the case of desiring
a permanent residence permit. Importantly, the fullment of desire,
Crapanzano suggests, requires human agency (not necessarily
one’s own), while fullment of hope requires some other agency, e.g.
chance, fate or a god (Crapanzano 2003). Children, as a rule, have
little say in the assessment for asylum and are not always clear about
with whom the decision lies. Nevertheless, both hope and desire are
affected and shaped, we presume, by children’s possibility to attend
school. In Crapanzano’s formulation: “… as individually lodged as
we take them to be, both hope and desire have to be understood
as precipitates of interaction or interlocution” (Crapanzano 2003: 6).
Furthermore, we see hope and desire as anticipatory stances, and
as closely related to that of social imagination (Appadurai 1996). We
refer particularly to Appadurai’s notion of global ows of images of
other places and use it to refer to an individual’s ability to imagine her/
himself in the social world-to-be. Both hope and imagination are part
of what motivates migrants and refugees to seek a future that may
lead to a better life. In an increasingly interconnected world, people
encounter and construct images of conditions and opportunities
in other societies that inuence their choice of a safer place for
themselves and their children. For asylum-seeking pupils as well as
for their parents, school and education represent an important route
to such improvement and play a role in shaping the image of a good
life and future (e.g. Eastmond 2010).
Children everywhere represent the future as agents for social
reproduction and society’s perpetuation. School, concerned with
children’s socialisation and education, is also strongly oriented
towards the future, teaching pupils to aspire to goals and charting
their progress through the grades. In this capacity, school as a social
institution is very much a symbol for and mediator of what Hage refers
to as social hope, distributed by society and a locus of investment for
the future.
A third conceptual category, liminality, relates to the special terms
on which children in this study exist and project themselves into a
future in Swedish society. Liminality has to do with their conditional
emplacement, as asylum seekers, and the ambiguity characteristic
of that position. Originally a concept in anthropological studies of
social transitions (Turner 1967), liminality refers to the “betwixt and
between” period in a transition from one social position in the life
course to another (e.g. from child to adult). The ordeals that young
people go through in ritualised transitions, symbolically stripped of
personal and social identity, can serve as a metaphor for children
seeking asylum as they exist “betwixt and between” nation states:
Separated from the country of origin and its protection, but not yet
assured of full and secure incorporation into the country of asylum
(e.g. Khosravi 2011). As Malkki (1995) points out, in the “national
order of things”, i.e. a world system of nation states, where each
person needs to belong to and be protected by his/her state, asylum
seekers are anomalies, legally and socially. In such an order, as
Malkki puts it, refugees are “people out of place”. As will be shown
below, this ambiguity of tentative emplacement is reected both
in the policy and the institutional practice of education for asylum-
seeking children in Sweden.
Thus, hope and imagination in a liminal existence form the
conceptual frame for investigating the experiences of asylum-
seeking pupils. More specically, this article explores the following
questions: What meanings do the children in this study ascribe to
school in Sweden given the highly unpredictable outcome of their
asylum case; what are the images and hopes they relate to school
and education and in what ways do they invest in the social reality
that school represents for them?
Below we review the relevant features of the educational system
for asylum-seeking children in Sweden, outline the methodology
used to examine the children’s experiences of attending school, and,
nally, present the ndings in sections that reect the themes that
emerged from analysing the data.
3 Education for asylum-seeking children in
Sweden
The idea of “normal life” for asylum-seeking children is a central
feature of the Swedish reception policy as well as of the policy for
their education – to provide conditions that are as similar as possible
to those of resident children. This includes municipal housing,4 rather
than isolated reception centres, and the right to start school within 1
month of arrival. The children are exempt from compulsory school
attendance, however, and cannot enter upper secondary school
unless registered there before the age of 18 (Swedish Education Act
2010). The Swedish Migration Board informs local authorities and
schools about new asylum-seeking pupils. An investigation by the
Swedish National Agency for Education (henceforth SNAE, 2008a)
showed that local authorities do not routinely summon these children
to school and unrecorded non-attendance is likely to be substantial.
Similar ndings have been reported from the UK (e.g. Dennis 2002).
As to educational policy, there are no directives for newly arrived
pupils apart from what is subsumed under the Education Act (2010).
However, the SNAE has provided a set of General Recommendations
for local authorities and schools to guarantee these children their
educational rights, in particular the right to Swedish as a second
language (henceforth SSL) and mother tongue tuition (SNAE 2008b).
In practice, schools have developed different local models to fulll the
recommendations and provide solutions for newly arrived pupils. For
instance, the pupil may join a Swedish mainstream class (henceforth
MC), with separate instruction in SSL and/or in-class study guidance
in the pupil’s mother tongue, for education utilisation. Alternatively,
the pupil may join an introductory class for non-Swedish-speaking
children (henceforth IC5) with the main goal to provide sufcient
command of Swedish for subsequent transfer to an MC. Regarding
mother tongue tuition, not all schools provide it and those that do
often arrange it outside the ordinary timetable (Swedish Schools
Inspectorate 2012: 13). The duration of IC participation is not regulated
(SNAE 2008b: 13); which gives IC teachers great discretion – within
the resource constraints – in deciding when to transfer a pupil to an
MC (cf. Ekermo, cited in Bunar 2010: 57). Also, the Swedish Schools
Inspectorate (2009: 6, 7) has noted that pupils in ICs and those in
MCs with separate SSL are often disconnected, geographically and
socially, from the main school activities. The Inspectorate concluded
that too long a stay in an IC holds pupils back and prevents them
from developing skills in other subjects (2012: 11); moreover, study
guidance is often provided in an ad hoc manner (Swedish Schools
Inspectorate 2012: 13), as also found in the UK (Rutter 2006: 151).
For the schools, one problem is nancing for asylum-seeking
pupils; the allocation via the Migration Board is lower than for resident
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pupils. To cut back on costs, in some places school days are shortened
to exclude lunch and schools offer fewer subjects (Swedish Schools
Inspectorate 2013a, 2013b). These examples of school practices
demonstrate that the idea of “normality” promoted by the Swedish
policy is difcult to implement in practice. Furthermore, in a study on
the Swedish asylum reception system, Appelqvist (2006: 37) reports
insufcient understanding among school staff of the asylum process
and of its consequences for the pupils concerned. While education
is expected to help children integrate into Swedish society, asylum-
seeking children are at the same time supposed to be mentally
prepared for repatriation, an ambiguity noted by Appelqvist (2006: 9)
and Brekke (2004: 27). Such preparation, however, is outside of the
responsibility of the education system.
4 Methods
Understanding asylum-seeking children’s experiences at school was
based on their reports and our observations; data from interviews
with teachers and parents were also included where relevant.
The study draws on data from ethnographic eldwork in 2007–
2009 during the asylum process of initially 15 children (18 were
asked to participate, 3 declined), including ve pairs of siblings.
The criteria for recruitment were that children were asylum seekers,
accompanied by their families and of school age. We were given
access to the information meetings held by the Swedish Migration
Board for asylum-seeking families to introduce ourselves and our
research. Thirteen children were recruited through these meetings,
and an additional two from an NGO. Both parental and child consent
were obtained and continuously conrmed throughout the research
process.
One child ended our contact shortly after the study began and
was later deported. Of the remaining 14, 6 were aged 6–11, 8 were
12–16, with an equal gender division. They arrived as asylum seekers
between 2006 and 2008 from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and
the Palestinian territories. Except for the siblings, most of the children
did not know each other. At the end of our eldwork, 8 of the 14
children had been granted permanent residence, 3 were waiting for
appeal decision, 1 was waiting for the rst decision and 2 had been
rejected and deported.
With children aged between 6 and 16, a variety of data collection
techniques was required to encourage individual expression.
We used semi-structured interviews – at times more informal and
unstructured in character, as well as drawings and photography.
In addition, participative observations were made in the children’s
homes, during leisure activities, at school and during “walk-alongs”
(Svensson 2010). Some of the interviews were conducted during
walk-alongs from school to home. The techniques were optional and
useful in getting to know one another as well as in building trust.
Each respondent was provided with a disposable camera as well as
a sketch-block and pens.
The data collection was carried out by Malin Svensson, but
both authors took an active part in the analysis. Between 4 and 15
meetings were conducted with each child, in most cases until the
rst decision was received, usually in their homes and a few times in
public places such as a church, NGOs premises or at school. They
were housed in ats in towns or smaller communities. The empirical
material also included a full one-day observation as part of visits made
to each child’s school: Eight junior compulsory schools (grades 1–6),
one senior compulsory school (grades 7–9) and one comprehensive
upper secondary school. A majority of these schools offered both the
IC and the MC models; three did not offer IC education and placed
asylum-seeking pupils directly in an MC. In our study, nine children
were placed in ICs and ve in MCs.
Interviews with the children were conducted using authorised
interpreters, experienced in working with children; with a few
exceptions, the same interpreter was used consistently for each
family. With time, as the children’s Swedish language skills improved,
they declined having an interpreter. Interviews were tape-recorded
and transcribed, observations were documented in eld notes and
the creative material (drawings and photographs) was used to
encourage free expression, stimulate a dialogue and was sometimes
compared with other data to obtain more depth. Analysis was ongoing
throughout the research process, including several readings of the
material, as well as interpretation of the results at different stages
until salient themes were identied.
Research with children living under great uncertainty poses
challenges not only to the researcher (Svensson, Ekblad & Ascher
2009) but also to the children. Even so, the majority followed
through and most of them seemed to benet from the interest
in their everyday lives. Some parents expressed their wish that
participation would ameliorate the conditions of future asylum-
seeking families. Furthermore, some children and parents seemed
to hope that participation would favour their asylum case despite
our repeated reminders that we could not inuence the outcome.
Hence, it was essential but not always easy to maintain a balance
between closeness and distance, and to avoid creating unrealistic
expectations. Another research challenge concerned interpretation;
relying on interpreters meant having to return several times to
important themes to validate our understanding, by approaching it
from a different angle. An ethical issue concerned the representation
of the children’s voices. Some of them expressed a willingness to be
recognised by using their own names; however, when the need to
protect their anonymity had been explained, they agreed to choose
the pseudonyms used in this article (cf. Svensson 2010).
5 Findings
The themes that emerged from the data collection indicate a number
of areas in which the children invested their efforts: structure and
predictability, a learning environment, peer relations and material
belongings. The meanings ascribed to school tended to differ with
the child’s age. The younger children seemed to be mainly concerned
with playing “here and now” with arts-and-crafts material, the toys
in the school yard and peers, and less with educational issues,
demonstrating a more positive image of school and the teachers’
role. The older children reected more critically on their education
and their own position and expressed a more nuanced picture of
their school experiences. This included their struggling for interaction
with Swedish peers, as well as more abstract reections about their
future. The older children were also more aware of their conditional
status and reected on whether there was any point in investing
in a future in Sweden without certainty regarding being granted a
residence permit. As Romina from Iran (aged 12) put it:
… if I can stay in this country I’ll have a very good future. But if I
have to go back [to Iran], then everything is black.6
The photographs the children took in their photo assignment
illustrate the importance of beginning school in Sweden. Most of
them, especially the younger ones, had taken pictures of school,
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outside as well as inside the building, sometimes including peers and
teachers; some also documented their way to school. Sometimes
the child was present in the photo, often together with the others.
Benyamin (8) from Afghanistan shows his cousin’s school building
and himself lined up with her classmates in a colourful classroom.
In the initial phase of the asylum process, many articulated a strong
enthusiasm about school and their right to attend. Romina (12), 2
months after her arrival, compared Swedish school with her Iranian
one and gave her rst impressions of Swedish society:
… everyone here [in Sweden] … and who has come here has got
an awfully good future; lives awfully well …. So I have absolutely
no doubt that even my future will be awfully good.
5.1 Structure and predictability
Reachard (6) from Lebanon attended an IC with nine pupils. Every
morning the teacher shook hands with each pupil and greeted “Good
morning”. She then wrote the daily schedule on the board, marking
the time and the activities with a red pen and breaks with a green.
On the day of our visit, the teacher was absent and the assistant
forgot to mark breaks in green; the pupils reacted immediately. One
of them ran to the whiteboard and told her to change colours. When
she also wrote the words “hour” and “end” in that order, there was
an outcry and a girl went to the whiteboard and told her to change to
“end” and “hour”.
IC teachers in this study bore witness to such reactions among
refugee pupils when details that were signicant for them were
forgotten or changed; therefore, most of them began each morning
with including the pupils in a review of the daily schedule. It allowed
few spontaneous changes as this would undermine predictability
and teachers pointed out that if modications were made, some
of the children would show feelings of insecurity. Also, pupils in
the heterogeneous ICs seemed concerned with categorising their
classmates; what countries they came from as well as their mother
tongue and religion – perhaps as a way to orientate oneself in the
social structure of the class.
For most of the children in this study, the scheduling character of
school seemed to counteract the lack of predictability in their lives.
For example, the majority reported an accurate memorising of the
timetable and kept track of which teachers would be present on a
particular day. Many children checked their school bag before going
to bed or in the morning, some calculated their arrival to school
so they had time to play with peers. Most of them, especially the
younger children, spoke cordially about their teachers.
During the walk-alongs, we found that the daily routines were
signicant for some of the children, e.g. the route to school as well
as the time before and after school. Romina’s (12) comments on her
drawing of her path to school illustrates how she and her mother
say hello to the same woman every morning, the school building
is colourful and the sun is shining. Two brothers from Iraq, Asmar
(12) and Polat (11), also walked to school, often accompanied by
schoolmates, and expressed joy at being able to walk on their own;
they had previously lived further away from school and had to use the
school transport. The link between school and leisure activities was
especially apparent during the walk-alongs with Reachard (6) and
with Zack (6) from Iran, who hung around their favourite swings in the
school yard before slowly moving on. The continuum of play came to
a clear end, and Reachard, wanting it to last a little longer, rolled a
snowball all the way home from school.
Living within walking distance of school increased the children’s
perceived range of possibilities and sense of agency, such as
making friends, playing, doing homework with peers. Some of the
other children lived far from school and their dependence on school
transports prevented them from interacting spontaneously with peers.
The importance of structure is also evident in the children’s longing
for school during holidays, often perceived as lonesome and boring.
Sara (16) from Palestine described what being back in school after
the holidays felt like:
It was really great because during the holidays I longed so much
for school. It is something I have got used to.
She even cancelled a medical appointment so as not to miss
school the rst day after the break.
One of the key elements for good school performance and
for making friends is – according to these children – to master the
language of the majority culture. School plays an exceptional role in
furthering such skills.
5.2 School as a learning environment
Education is indeed an area related to hope for a better life in
the future. Both the children in this study and their parents value
education; they do so in different ways depending on class and
educational background. Our results indicate that some children’s
investment in education stems from their parents’ ambitions already
before becoming refugees: For example, some parents taught their
children at home when school attendance was prevented by conicts,
and some mothers had never themselves had the right to attend
school. Especially the older children and those with few opportunities
to go to school in their country of origin placed particular value on
education. Sebastian (13), for instance, who had spent just 2 years
in school in Afghanistan before being recruited for child labour,
perceived educational opportunities as a chance to make a life:
Who doesn’t want to go on studying and learning more. When
you have the chance, why not. You should be able to read and
then examine what possibility or ability one has to continue. Then
do well and try to forget the hard life one had and leave it behind
you.
Often, such imagining among the children was expressed in
terms of a particular profession.
The children in our study placed much effort in acquiring Swedish
language skills, aware of it being a prerequisite for advancing into
an MC and to comprehend other subjects. All of them expressed the
desire to learn Swedish; seeing it as necessary to do well at school
and to navigate in Swedish society.
Although they strove to master Swedish, some pupils worried
that they did so at the expense of other subjects. Romina (12), in an
MC, where most children spoke Swedish well, explained her concern
that her focus on Swedish made her forget what she had already
learnt in Iran:
I’ve got to learn Swedish, which is really good, I force myself
and I really try. But then came English, mother-tongue tuition and
then all the other subjects. So I’ve become much worse at maths
… sometimes I forget everything.
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Other pupils also missed having more of other subjects such as
maths, reading or arts and crafts, but the provision of study guidance
in their mother tongue required for these subjects was very ad hoc.
Especially the older children seemed to negotiate investment
in efforts until legal status was assured. For instance, Sara (16)
explained her reluctance to learn Swedish before having permanent
residence. One week after being granted refugee status, Sara (16)
said:
[Now I feel that] if I am to work, much harder and learn the
language very quickly, and if I go in for it even more, wow, I have
a chance of going to university.
For others, waiting took its toll. With a more drawn-out and
negative process, a few of the older pupils withdrew and showed
symptoms of distress. They seemed to lose their motivation and
their school performance declined. Teachers conrmed that these
pupils no longer seemed to be making any progress. While the
channels for agency appeared to be blocked and making efforts
seemed increasingly pointless, hope – “the existential and affective
counterpart of agency” (Lindquist 2006: 4) was more tenacious:
School remained signicant as a breathing space and could at times
continue attracting their interest even when they were doing less well.
On the whole our data indicate that, irrespective of age, increased
language skills enhanced children’s self-condence, and while
learning Swedish was important for educational progress, it was as
important for making friends and gaining a sense of belonging.
5.3 School as a social environment
The children in this study who started school in an MC interacted
with Swedish peers more frequently and at an earlier stage than
those in an IC. Especially small close-knit communities seemed
to facilitate a sense of inclusion. Benyamin (8), for instance, was
the only asylum-seeking pupil at his school and as such received
positive attention from staff and peers. His teacher described him
as a brave boy, who came to school all alone the rst day; when
everyone had introduced themselves to him, he did the same though
he knew hardly any Swedish. During the rst lesson he hardly talked
at all, answered only when addressed but did what he could, e.g.
held up his hand to choose a song during singsong. Sometimes, he
toughened up to compete with the other boys, e.g. by arm-wrestling
or other physical contact when words failed him. Such efforts under
the right circumstances, as in Benyamin’s case, could lead to
friendships but did not result in social relationships for everyone. The
other MC pupils in the study found making friends a challenge. Some
of them were children in larger communities faced with prevailing
notions about immigrants. Romina (12) appreciated that some of the
Swedish girls tried to help her with the language. They later betrayed
her condence and teased her for not speaking proper Swedish. This
was evident during our visit to her school: Their conversation and
body language insinuated that Romina did not belong to their class.
Later, she became close friends with another new girl in the class,
originally from a country near her own. They shared thoughts and
feelings during breaks, such as the desire to have a boyfriend, as
well as future oriented hopes, such as what to become professionally.
She had not told anyone in school that she was an asylum seeker
and her teacher noted that she did not trust any adult at school –
although Romina herself regarded her teacher as someone to turn
to, for instance if she felt unwell.
In our observation of an IC class, we noted strong solidarity among
the pupils, especially when attacked from the MC pupils. When one
of Reachard’s (6) classmates was hit by a snowball thrown by an MC
pupil, his whole class reacted protectively and went together to inform
their teacher. However, the internal solidarity among pupils with a
refugee background, both in IC and MC, could be vulnerable to the
competition for permanent residence that inevitably exists between
asylum-seeking pupils. Sherbel’s (12) feelings were hurt when he
told his MC classmates, who were former asylum seekers, that his
family’s asylum application had been rejected. They responded by
laughing at him.
Rejections affected the children’s sense of possibility and well-
being, reminding them of what they dreaded the most. Sebastian’s
(13) mother declared that being in a group with asylum seekers could
be very trying for a young person:
… there are youngsters around him in the same situation, many
can be turned down. On those days he is very, very uneasy. He
comes home and tells us with a lot of concern and anxiety and is
extremely irritated.
Sebastian became quieter during the course of the study; his
worries were manifested in his body language, e.g. his bowed head
and withdrawal from dialogue. Though visibly sad and anxious, he
decided to change schools and applied to the headmaster of the
school in his neighbourhood where they only had MCs. He informed
his teacher and headmaster and got their permission to change. He
was then much more satised, being able to make Swedish friends in
his own neighbourhood, do homework with peers and create a social
life for himself.
Most of the IC teachers in this study appeared to be acquainted
with the refugee experiences of their asylum-seeking pupils, whereas
the MC teachers seemed less aware. However, all teachers seemed
to have limited knowledge of the asylum process, e.g. the procedure
for seeking asylum, the low level of the family daily allowance, the
overcrowded housing conditions or which pupils were awaiting an
asylum decision. They also refrained from sorting newly arrived
pupils according to legal status, choosing to work as if they were
all going to stay in Sweden (cf. similar ndings in the UK by Pinson,
Arnot & Candappa 2010: 210). Therefore, the everyday activities in
class seldom concerned the asylum seekers’ situation, except when
a pupil received his/her asylum decision. When asylum was granted
a pupil, it raised the expectations of the other asylum seekers in the
class. Maria (12), for instance, was happy for her classmate who
obtained a residence permit and hoped that she would also be as
fortunate.
Pupils and teachers in this study, both within and outside an
IC, sometimes depicted the IC as a form of exclusion or alienation
from the school community. Some teachers indicated that this may
be due to their physical placement at the margin of the mainstream
school and their limited curriculum. Our data suggest that one of
the strongest reasons for children to leave an IC, even though they
might be emotionally attached to peers and teachers there, was to
escape the social marginalisation of an “IC pupil”. Looking forward
to the possibilities that qualication for an MC represented, such as
having Swedish peers, feelings of competence and expectations of
belonging to “normality”, was part of the asylum-seeking children’s
imagining.
The asylum-seeking children’s silence about negative
experiences of school or friends may also reect their positive
anticipation of school at this early stage, i.e. a feeling of relief on
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arrival, having left difcult situation. Loneliness was a sensitive issue
for these children, sometimes connoted with distress. Filiz (13) was
reluctant to admit her lack of friends despite her long time in Sweden
and described her social activities after school:
We mostly meet in school. Some go to the cinema and I
sometimes go with them. Sometimes we go into town in the
evenings and buy clothes.
Filiz’s mother, like other parents who sometimes gave a different
picture, conrmed that this may be more wishful thinking than reality.
Many of the other children’s relations with peers had seldom gone
beyond school situations, such as going with somebody to their
house, or inviting each other. Also, many of the children lived in
poverty and felt that their material possibilities were not as good as
they had imagined them to be.
5.4 Owning something: material belongings
Material things were part of the children’s emotional investments in
social relationships and wish for social acceptance. The meaning
of owning something like a bicycle or a mobile phone could be the
ability to connect socially with peers, or to avoid loneliness. Farrah
(7), attending an IC, was frank about her unwanted loneliness and
her photographs illustrated her isolated life in a two-room apartment
with her parents and two siblings, far away from school. She quietly
explained that for her, it would be easier to make friends if she had a
mobile phone. Not owning something was also a marker of difference
easily producing a sense of shame. Asylum-seeking pupils made
material comparisons with Swedish peers in an MC more frequently
than did asylum-seeking pupils among themselves in an IC. Sherbel
(12), waiting for an appeal to be decided, borrowed his Swedish
classmates’ games during breaks and lied to them for fear of being
laughed at:
I say that my mummy does have money but that I’m not allowed
to buy [computer games]. But we haven’t got money.
As a borrower, he felt inferior to his Swedish classmates,
while his relation with them also generated hope; accessing their
possessions and company during breaks helped him imagine that
someday he too would be able to live safely in Sweden, own things
he desired and be socially accepted. The emotional strain was
sometimes too much and he shouted at classmates, he said, but
regretted it afterwards.
Other children in this study were more silent about such feelings
and entrusted their wishes for material things only to a few persons,
like their parents – or kept them secret. Most of the parents faced
a dilemma in negotiating their children’s desires. Filiz’s (13) mother
responded by pointing to the future:
I want to be able to give my daughter what she needs. Sometimes
she wants things and I can’t afford them. So I tell her that ‘when
we get permanent residence you shall have these things’.
For some, the lack of material things in a situation of restrictive
poverty became an obsession, at the same time as they had to
control their wants. Sherbel (12) felt responsible for his younger
brother Reachard (6) and scolded him for asking the researchers for
drawing-paper and pens:
Mummy will be angry. I can fetch from school because mummy
has said ‘you’re not to ask anyone for anything’.
Sherbel reminded his brother of their parents’ nancial situation
and their fear of the children getting used to asking other people
for things the family couldn’t afford. Maria (12) also often heard her
parents talk about their nancial situation. She understood but also
felt frustrated because she needed winter clothes which her parents
could not afford. Financial poverty among asylum-seeking children
is common7 and often connoted with shame (e.g. Pinter 2012;
Björnberg 2010). For some, however, poverty seemed to give rise
to creative strategies to deal with it, such as borrowing from others
or concealing their disadvantage. Others withdrew from peers out of
school, or silently tried to accept their situation as temporary.
6 Concluding discussion
This article points to the importance of school in providing asylum-
seeking children with a sense of possibility of a better life in Sweden.
From their narratives and our observations, it is clear that the
children invested much of their time and energy in school; most of
them actively responded to the opportunities offered by the Swedish
educational system. This provision of opportunities for education
constitutes social hope, in Hage’s terminology, in which Sweden, as
receiving society, through its policy of “normal life”, entitles asylum
seekers to the same forms of education as newly arrived children
with permanent residence status.
Without exception, the children in our study attached great
importance to being part of a school class. School served as a guide
in the process of learning how to become an accepted friend, being
a pupil or even a resident in Swedish society. Their dedication to
learning Swedish and mastering the language sufciently to be
moved up to a mainstream “Swedish” class, as well as to gaining
friendships with peers permanently resident and uent in Swedish,
became important markers of achievement, attesting to the children’s
desire to become part of life in the new society. Even so, older
pupils worried about falling behind in the other subjects; in terms
of learning, Swedish school seemed less demanding than previous
school experiences. Nevertheless, all seemed to thrive in a socially
open environment, and trust developed over time with teachers and
peers. Such trust promoted agency and was the means through
which the majority struggled on, navigating an increasingly familiar
territory and striving to consolidate the temporary space allotted to
them.
In offering much-needed structure and stability, as well as a
breathing space, school was clearly a source of well-being for the
children. These ndings resonate with the study of a Dutch programme
to support refugee and asylum-seeking children, concluding that
school has “…healing possibilities because it provides attention,
structure and […] can serve as a bridge to the new society and the
future” (Watters & Ingleby 2002: 44). This idea of school as a bridge
to a new life in Sweden was embraced not only by many schools
but also by the children themselves in their strivings to do well.
However, as our study makes clear, the bridge metaphor is relevant
only to those fortunate enough to obtain a permanent resident status.
Bridges built with so much care and effort may well be erased from
one day to the next. The sudden disappearance of a classmate acted
as a reminder of the reality of failure and deportation and affected the
hope and well-being of the others. Periods of vigorous efforts by the
authorities to speed up returns of rejected asylum seekers were thus
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likely to heighten both fear and rivalry between asylum seekers and
further underscoring their conditional presence at school.
Thus, there were two parallel processes at work for these children
in their liminal position, pointing in opposite directions: one nurtured
hope and condence in a steady mastering of a new language and
social acceptance as member of a class and another mercilessly
undermined it by reminders of the risk of rejection and return. The
conict between the two became increasingly acute over time,
especially for some of the older children. Even so, against all odds, it
seemed, some continued insisting on the importance of school as a
link to the future. Faced with the threat of removal, they maintained
hope and “the trusting expectation that tomorrow has something to
offer” (Lindquist 2006: 6). Sebastian (13), waiting for a decision on
his appeal, is a good example of the tenacity of hope:
I manage because I think of the future. That we can have a better
future. [School is meaningful] because one learns the language
in school and one isn’t alone, and one gets to know the society.
The conicting projections into the future with which the children
had to battle reect the structural realities of their position. The
chances for a better life for this category of children are in very real
terms shaped by the relations of power in which they are involved:
Sweden’s restrictive asylum practice; the poverty of many asylum
seekers due to minimal allowances and educational programmes
that do not always address their needs. Social hope, formulated
in the Swedish policy of “normal life”, is in fact highly tentative and
its realisation relies on the applicant being granted permanent
residence. This policy, on the one hand, and the restrictive asylum
determination on the other, posit a tension well known from other
areas of refugee reception in Northern Europe, sometimes summed
up as that between “care” and “control” (Eastmond 2011; Giner 2007).
A similar tension is evident in the polarisation of images of refugees
in popular discourse as either victims, or otherwise “deserving” or as
“bogus” claimants. The ambiguity characterising reception is aptly
captured by Derrida’s concept of hostipitality, signifying simultaneous
hospitality and hostility (Derrida, cited in Khosravi 2011: 26). This
structural inconsistency and its manifestations in social discourse
form the context in which pupils are to pursue (and schools to
provide) an education that can sustain their hopes for a better future.
This article throws light on a liminal category of children, who
otherwise tend to be made invisible in the broader denition of
“newly arrived pupils” in Swedish schools. It highlights their special
predicament of “uncertain normality” – as pupils without an ensured
right to settle and become members of society. Undocumented
children – another category without permanent residence – have
recently also gained the right to education in Sweden (Swedish
Schools Inspectorate 2013b). Whether the sojourn in Swedish
schools is benecial to those who fail to secure permission to stay
and if so, in what ways, is largely unknown, as the research on those
returned is almost non-existent (cf. Rutter 2006: 48). The solution
is not to deny children without permanent residence the possibility
of attending school, but to address their particular predicament and
attendant uncertainty. In the light of our ndings, the real challenge for
the receiving state and its educational system is greater recognition
of the needs of this category of children. While drawing on the
undeniable strengths of the Swedish school system, this could also
entail providing them with more substantial education, social support
for personal growth and a sense of possibility that may serve them
well, irrespective of where they end up building their future.
Malin Svensson is a PhD student at the Nordic School of
Public Health, Sweden. Her research interests are everyday life
perspectives of asylum-seeking children, the Swedish reception
system and ethnographic research methods. She is the author of
‘Making Meaningful Space for Oneself: Photo-based dialogue with
siblings of refugee children with severe withdrawal symptoms’,
Children’s Geographies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2009, with Solvig Ekblad &
Henry Ascher) and of ‘Barns vardagsliv under asylprocessen – en
etnogrask studie’, in Mellan det förutna och framtiden. Asylsökande
barns välfärd, hälsa och välbennande, edited by H.E. Anderson et
al. (Kapitel 2010).
Marita Eastmond is a professor of Public Health at the Nordic School
of Public Health and Professor of Social Anthropology at School of
Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research
focus is forced displacement and exile, the politics of asylum,
the medicalisation of refugees’ problems and narratives as lived
experience. She is the author of The Dilemmas of Exile (1989/1997)
and co-editor of Globala Familjer: Transnationella Nätverk och
Släktskap (2007).
Acknowledgements
Funding has been provided by European Refugee Fund and
Gothenburg Research on Asylum-seeking Children in Europe, Clas
Groschinsky Foundation and Queen Silvia Jubilee Foundation.
Notes
The term refers to pupils arriving in Sweden at school age, i.e.
6–18, and who do not have basic command of the Swedish
language (Swedish National Agency for Education 2008b: 6-7).
In 2009, by the end of our eldwork, Swedish local school
authorities registered 2,892 asylum-seeking pupils (Swedish
National Agency for Education 2012).
In 2009, the number of accompanied asylum-seeking children
who arrived in Sweden was 6,888; rejection rate was 61% and
rising (Swedish Migration Board, Statistics Bureau 2011).
Housing is privately arranged or arranged by the Swedish
Migration Board. In either case, the local authority is responsible
for the child’s education. In addition to a small daily allowance,
health and dental care is free of charge as for permanently
resident children (Swedish Migration Board 2012).
The concept of Introductory Class for newly arrived pupils is
absent in Swedish Educational Legislation (SNAE 2008b: 4).
The original quotes are translated from Swedish to English.
Words in square brackets come from earlier statements and are
included here to clarify the quotation.
Asylum-seeking families are entitled to half the amount of social
welfare that permanent residents receive (Williams 2012).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
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