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Educational knowledge and politics of receiving migrant pupils. A contribution to Danish welfare state history during the late twentieth century

2023; Taylor & Francis; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00309230.2023.2238622

1477-674X

Nanna Ramsing Enemark, Mette Buchardt,

Global Education and Multiculturalism

ABSTRACTThe arrival of guest workers in Denmark from the late 1960s meant new political questions of how to receive their children in school. During the 1970s, the heyday of welfare state reforms, a new area of welfare state politics and policy emerged concerning these children: an education politics of migrant pupils accompanied by knowledge being produced in the intersection between the pedagogical professional field, the academic field and the political field. This politics, policy and knowledge area soon became contested among politicians, professionals and academics. The article explores a core discussion still taking place at present, namely how approaches for receiving newly arrived pupils in the Folkeskole (the primary and lower secondary school. Based on source material consisting of parliamentary debates from the official political field and the professional and research-based literature that developed in the period, the article sheds light on how educational knowledge on different approaches to reception was circulated between fields. Executing an analysis that combines concepts from sociology and history of education and knowledge and from theory on policy processes, the article shows how knowledge and politics interacted to make or reject policy junctures in the formative decades when the politics of migrant pupils in the Danish welfare state was established, namely from the early 1970s and up until the mid-1990s. We conclude that local developments and debates in the knowledge production field shaped early school integration policies in the Danish welfare state during the 1970s and 1980s, but had limited influence in the 1990.KEYWORDS: Migrant educationhistory of educationeducation policywelfare state historyeducation politics AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank Associate Professors Susanne Dau and Ethan Hutt and Postdoctoral Researcher Mantė Vertelytė for comments on earlier drafts.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 M. Buchardt, Kulturforklaring: uddannelseshistorier om muslimskhed [Culture as Explanation: Educational Histories about Muslimness] (Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, 2016); M. Buchardt, "The 'Culture' of Migrant Pupils: A Nation- and Welfare-State Historical Perspective on the European Refugee Crisis", European Education 50, no. 1 (2018): 58–73; and M. Padovan-Özdemir, The Making of Educationally Manageable Immigrant Schoolchildren in Denmark, 1970–2013: A Critical Prism for Studying the Fabrication of a Danish Welfare Nation State (University of Copenhagen, 2016).2 B. Kristjánsdóttir and S. Jacobsen Pérez, "Nyankomne Børn og Unge I Det Danske Uddannelsessystem: Lovgrundlag og Organisering" [Newly Arrived Children and Youngsters in the Danish Education System: Legislative Framework and Organisation], Nordand 11, no. 2 (2016): 35–63.3 Buchardt, Kulturforklaring; M. Vertelytė and D. Staunæs, "From Tolerance Work to Pedagogies of Unease: Affective Investments in Danish Antiracist Education", Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy 7, no. 3 (2021): 126–35.4 R. Alapuro and H. Stenius, eds., Nordic Associations in a European Perspective (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2010); and M. Hilson, P. Markkola, and A. Östman, Co-operatives and the Social Question. The Co-operative Movement in Northern and Eastern Europe c. 1880–1950 (Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press, 2012).5 Buchardt, Kulturforklaring.6 N. de Coninck-Smith, L. R. Rasmussen, and I. Vyff, Da skolen blev alles: Tiden Efter 1970 [When the School Became for All: The Time After 1970] (Aarhus: Universitetsforlag, 2015).7 Kristjánsdóttir and Jacobsen Pérez, "Nyankomne børn".8 M. B. Jørgensen, "The Diverging Logics of Integration Policy Making at National and City Level", International Migration Review 46, no. 1 (2012): 250.9 J. W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (Harper Collins College Publishers, 1995).10 N. R. Enemark, J. H. Li, and M. Buchardt, "Education policies and the dilemmas concerning migrant students in the Northern European welfare states. The case of mother-tongue instruction", in Migrants and Welfare States: Balancing Dilemmas in Northern Europe, ed. C. A. Larsen (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022).11 Enemark, Li, and Buchardt, "Education policies", 5.12 Ibid., 21.13 L. Chouliaraki, "Pædagogikkens sociale logik: En introduktion til Basil Bernsteins uddannelsessociologi" [Pedagogy's Social Logic: An Introduction to Basil Bernstein's Sociology of Education], in Basil Bernstein: Pædagogik, diskurs og magt, ed. L. Chouliaraki and M. Bayer (Akademisk, 2001), 26–69; B. Bernstein, The Social Construction of Pedagogic Discourse. Class, Codes and Control vol. IV (Routledge, 2003), 168‒218; and P. Singh, S. Thomas, and J. Harris, "Recontextualising policy discourses: A Bernsteinian perspective on policy interpretation, translation, enactment", Journal of Education Policy 28, no. 4 (2013): 465–80.14 J. A. Secord, "Knowledge in transit", Isis 95, no. 4 (2004): 654–72; Östling et al., Histories of Knowledge.15 J. W. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (New York: Longman, 1995).16 Ibid., 165.17 Béland, "Ideas and Social Policy"; D. Béland and M. Howlett, "How Solutions Chase Problems: Instrument Constituencies in the Policy Process", Governance 29, no. 3 (2016): 393–409; and P. Rawat et al., "Kingdon's 'Streams' Model at Thirty: Still Relevant in the 21st Century?", Politics & Policy 44, no. 4 (2016): 608–38.18 Östling et al., Histories of Knowledge, bk. 115.19 Singh et al., "Recontextualising".20 Östling et al., Histories of Knowledge.21 Kingdon, Agendas.22 Kingdon distinguishes between conditions and problems of which only the latter can be solved. This article regards the "problem stream" as represented through the article's overarching dilemma: how to handle the group of migrant pupils in a welfare state with an inherent ideology of equality (H. V. Jønsson, "In the Borderland of the Welfare State: Danish Integration Policy – the early Years 1967–1983", in Welfare Citizenship and Welfare Nationalism, ed. A. M. Suszycki (Helsinki: Nordic Centre of Excellence NordWel, 2013), 240).23 Kingdon, Agendas, 166‒7.24 J. H. Li and N. R. Enemark, "Educating to belong: Policy and practice of mother-tongue instruction for migrant students in the Danish welfare state", European Educational Research Journal (2021), 14749041211054952.25 I. M. Clausen, "Undervisning af indvandrerelever i folkeskolen: Lovgrundlag og problemer" [Schooling of Immigrant Pupils in the Comprehensive School: Legislative Foundation and Problems], in Dansk som fremmedsprog, eds. G. Gabrielsen and J. Gimbel (Lærerforeningernes Materialeudvalg, 1982), 23–49; Buchardt, Kulturforklaring; and B. S. Kristjánsdóttir, Evas skjulte børn: Diskurser om tosprogede elever i det danske nationalcurriculum [Eva's hidden children: Discourses on bilingual pupils in the Danish national curriculum] (Institut for Pædagogisk Antropologi, Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitet, 2006).26 Buchardt, "The 'Culture'".27 Kristjánsdóttir, Evas skjulte børn, 154.28 In contemporary literature, "The Copenhagen model" (Københavnermodellen) denotes a dispersion model for migrant pupils. See G. H. Jacobsen, Lighed gennem særbehandling? Heldagsskoler og spredning som ekspliciteret særbehandling af etniske minoritetsbørn og udtryk for aktuelle tendenser [Equality through special treatment? Magnet schools and dispersion as explicit special treatment of ethnic minority children and an expression of contemporary tendencies] (Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, 2012), 81.29 See note 5 above.30 M. Padovan-Özdemir and B. Moldenhawer, "Making precarious immigrant families and weaving the Danish welfare nation-state fabric 1970–2010", Race Ethnicity and Education 20, no. 6 (2017): 723–36.31 L. Jørgensen, Hvad sagde vi! – om "De andre": Den udlændingepolitiske debat i Folketinget 1961–1999 [What did we say! – about "The others": The immigration political debate in Parliament 1961–1999] (RUC, Institut for Historie og Samfundsforhold, 2006).32 Padovan-Özdemir and Moldenhawer, "Making precarious immigrant families"; and E. Odde, Fremmedsprogede elever i danske skoler [Foreign Language Pupils in Danish schools] (Lærerforeningernes materialeudvalg, 1974).33 H. V. Jønsson, "Immigrant Policy Developing in Copenhagen and Ishøj in the 1970s", Scandinavian Journal of History 38, no. 5 (2013): 590‒611.34 See note 5 above.35 Jørgensen, Hvad sagde vi!, 100.36 Jønsson, "In the Borderland".37 B. Rahbek and T. Skutnabb-Kangas, God, bedre, dansk? : Om indvandrerbørns integration i Danmark [Good, better, Danish? On immigrant children's integration in Denmark], 1st ed. (Børn & Unge, 1983).38 Her opinion piece in Politiken (Danish newspaper) was cited four days after the piece came out in a written question to Minister of Social Affairs Eva Gredal (S): Parliamentary debate summary, 23 December 1971, Question by MP Kristine Heltberg (SF). Available at: www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19711/salen/m35/19711_m35_referat.pdf; and K. Andersen, "Næppe støtte til fremmedarbejderblad" [Unlikely there is Support for the Foreign Workers' Magazine], Politiken, 19 December 1971. For more on this debate, see Kristjánsdóttir, Evas skjulte børn, 194‒200.39 S. Waast et al., Allah i Danmark [Allah in Denmark] (Skoleradio/TV, DR, 1981).40 Buchardt, Kulturforklaring, 33‒4.41 Kristjánsdóttir, Evas skjulte børn.42 Buchardt, Kulturforklaring, 45‒6.43 Gabrielsen and Gimbel, Dansk som fremmedsprog.44 Buchardt, Kulturforklaring, 33‒4.45 Jørgensen, Hvad sagde vi!46 C. Horst, Interkulturel pædagogik [Intercultural Pedagogy] (Vejle: Kroghs Forlag, 2003); and Jørgensen, Hvad sagde vi!47 Kristjánsdóttir, Evas skjulte børn, 269.48 Parliamentary debate summary, Inquiry on the immigrants' family situation, comments by Steen Folke (VS), Mimi Jacobsen (CD), Ebba Strange (SF), 20 November 1979, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19792/salen/m10/19792_m10_referat.pdf.49 By e.g. Brixtofte (V) and Lis Starcke (DR) on the Aalborg approach, Steen Folke (VS). Parliamentary debate summary, 20 November 1979, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19792/salen/m10/19792_m10_referat.pdf.50 With the notable exception of Fremskridtspartiet [The Progress Party]. Center and left-wing parties offered broad support, e.g. parliamentary debate summary, 20 November 1980, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19801/salen/m25/19801_m25_referat.pdf, and parliamentary debate summary, 11 November 1981, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19811/salen/m23/19811_m23_referat.pdf.51 Parliamentary debate summary, comment by MoE Dorte Bennedsen, 20 November 1980, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19801/salen/m25/19801_m25_referat.pdf.52 Parliamentary debate summary, comment by MoE Dorte Bennedsen, 20 November 1980, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19801/salen/m25/19801_m25_referat.pdf.53 For more on this debate, see Kristjánsdóttir, Evas skjulte børn, 194‒200; A. Ahmad and J. Blum, "Indvandrerbørn og deres undervisning i Danmark" [Immigrant Children and their Schooling in Denmark], Dansk pædagogisk Tidsskrift 29, no. 6 (1981): 247–50; B. Rahbek, "Da arbejdskraften blev til mennesker" [When the Labour became People], Dansk pædagogisk Tidsskrift 28, no. 7 (1980); and B. Søndergaard, "Hvornår bør andetsproget indføres i en bilingual skole?" [When Should the Second Language be Introduced in a Bilingual School?], Dansk pædagogisk Tidsskrift 29, no. 6 (1981): 229–34.54 See note 41 above.55 J. Blum, "Indvandrerne og deres børn" [The Immigrants and their Children], Dansk pædagogisk Tidsskrift 29, no. 5 (1981): 205–6; Buchardt, Kulturforklaring; and Rahbek Pedersen, "Da arbejdskraften blev til mennesker".56 Ahmad and Blum, "Indvandrerbørn".57 Ibid., 250.58 Ibid.59 Ahmad and Blum, "Slutreplik", 255.60 Rahbek and Skutnabb-Kangas, God, bedre, dansk?; J. Gimbel, Undervisning af tyrkiske elever i Køge Kommune [Schooling of Turkish Pupils in Køge Municipality] (Danmarks Lærerhøjskole, 1994); and Kristjánsdóttir, Evas skjulte børn.61 B. Moldenhawer, "Skolen – en nøgle til integration af etniske minoritetsbørn?" [The School – A Key to Integration of Ethnic Minority Children?] (AMID, Institut for Historie, Internationale Studier og Samfundsforhold, Aalborg: Universitet, 2002).62 K. Just Jeppesen, "Skolen – en nøgle til integration" [The School – A Key to Integration] (Socialforskningsinstituttet: De Fremmede i Danmark, 1993), 3; and Moldenhawer, "Skolen".63 Moldenhawer, "School", 4.64 Danske kommuner [Danish Municipalities] no. 21, 14 October (1981): 24‒8.65 It appeared to be similar to the "dual classes" approach.66 It is unclear whether Asbjerg was the consultant in question, and Asbjerg did not talk of this approach.67 Danmarks Lærerhøjskole, now Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitet (Danish School of Education).68 Danske kommuner, 27.69 Ibid., 28‒31.70 The longer school day was later implemented through first the so-called "magnet schools" and later nationally implemented with the 2014 School Reform. In 2019, legislation came into effect which made it mandatory for 1-year-old children in disadvantaged neighbourhoods to attend daycare at least 25 hours a week.71 See note 5 above.72 Li and Enemark, "Educating to belong".73 Jørgensen, "The Diverging Logics".74 Parliamentary debate summary, comments by Bertel Haarder, 17 March 1988, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19871/salen/m67/19871_m67_referat.pdf.75 Parliamentary debate summary, comment by MoE Dorte Bennedsen, 20 November 1980, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19801/salen/m25/19801_m25_referat.pdf.76 Parliamentary debate summary, comments by Bertel Haarder, 17 March 1988, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19871/salen/m67/19871_m67_referat.pdf.77 Note how government coalition party Venstre wanted less national legislation/more decentralisation. Parliamentary debate summary, 17 March 1988, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19871/salen/m67/19871_m67_referat.pdf.78 Parliamentary debate summary, 17 March 1988, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19871/salen/m67/19871_m67_referat.pdf, and Parliamentary debate summary, 3 May 1989, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19881/salen/m82/19881_m82_referat.pdf.79 Moldenhawer, "Skolen"; and Padovan-Özdemir and Moldenhawer, "Making precarious immigrant families".80 Buchardt, Kulturforklaring; Kristjánsdóttir, Evas skjulte børn; and T. Øland et al., Statecrafting on the Fringes: Studies of Welfare Work Addressing the Other (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2019).81 Coninck-Smith et al., Da skolen blev alles.82 Clausen, "Undervisning af indvandrerelever", 23–49.83 Gimbel, "Undervisning af tyrkiske elever"; J. N. Jørgensen, "Bilingualism in the Køge Project", International Journal of Bilingualism 7, no. 4 (2003): 333–52; and Coninck-Smith et al., Da skolen blev alles.84 A Danish and a Turkish mother-tongue class gradually becoming one over the course of a few grades.85 B. Moldenhawer and M. I. Clausen, Dig & Mig & Vi To – evaluering af tokulturelle klasser [You & Me & the Two of Us – Evaluation of Two-cultural Classes] (Enghøjskolen, Hvidovre. Pædagogisk Central i Hvidovre, Hvidovre Kommune, 1993) [Pedagogical Central in Hvidovre, Hvidovre Municipality].86 B. Kristjánsdóttir, L. Timm, and K. Schalburg, Bæredygtig skoleudvikling: Samtaler med Kirsten Schalburg [Sustainable School Development: Conversations with Kirsten Schalburg] (Dansklærerforeningen, 2014) [Danish Teachers' Union]; and Enemark (forthcoming).87 J. N. Jørgensen, LANGUAGING: Nine Years of Poly-Lingual Development of Young Turkish-Danish Grade School Students (Copenhagen Studies in Bilingualism, The Køge Series, vol. K15, 2008).88 Just Jeppesen, "Skolen".89 J. N. Jørgensen and C. Horst, Et flerkulturelt Danmark: Perspektiver på sociolingvistik, sprogpædagogik, dansk som andetsprog: Festskrift til Jørgen Gimbel [A Multicultural Denmark: Perspectives on Sociolinguistics, Language Pedagogy, Danish as a Second Language: A Tribute to Jørgen Gimbel] (Danmarks: Lærerhøjskole, 1995).90 Gabrielsen and Gimbel, Dansk som fremmedsprog, 1.91 Clausen, "Undervisning af indvandrerelever", 30.92 Gimbel, Undervisning af tyrkiske elever.93 Motion for a Resolution on Foreign Language Pupils in the Danish School System [Forslag til folketingsbeslutning om indpasning af fremmedsprogede børn i det danske skolesystem], 29 March 1995, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19941/beslutningsforslag/B89/19941_B89_BEH1_M69_referat.pdf.94 Parliamentary debate summary, comments by particularly Frank Dahlgaard (KF), 29 March 1995, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19941/salen/m69/19941_m69_referat.pdf, and, surprisingly, national classes as a means of "centering the expertise" suggested by Pia Kjærsgaard (DF), parliamentary debate summary, 8 February 1995, question to the minister by Pia Kjærsgaard (DF). Available at: www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19941/salen/m51/19941_m51_referat.pdf. For more on local dispersion policy and its effect in general, see Jacobsen, Lighed gennem særbehandling.95 Parliamentary debate summary, 19 May 1993, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19921/salen/m76/19921_m76_referat.pdf, and Parliamentary debate summary, 24 November 1992, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19921/salen/m19/19921_m19_referat.pdf.96 Parliamentary debate summary, comment by Birthe Weiss (S), 24 April 1991, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19902/salen/m51/19902_m51_referat.pdf.97 Parliamentary debate summary, comment by Bruno Jerup (EL), 5 November 1997, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19971/salen/m12/19971_m12_referat.pdf.98 Parliamentary debate summary, comment by Anne Baastrup (SF), 5 November 1997, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19971/salen/m12/19971_m12_referat.pdf.99 Parliamentary debate summary, comment by Hans Peter Baadsgaard (S), 5 November 1997, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19971/salen/m12/19971_m12_referat.pdf.100 Parliamentary debate summary, comment by Henning Urup (V), 5 November 1997, www.folketingstidende.dk/samling/19971/salen/m12/19971_m12_referat.pdf.101 Moldenhawer, "Skolen".102 Gimbel, Undervisning af tyrkiske elever i Køge Kommune.103 Gimbel, Undervisning af tyrkiske elever, 5; and J. Gimbel, A. Holmen, and J. Normann Jørgensen, "Det bedste Københavns Kommune har foretaget sig hidtil": Beskrivelse og evaluering af sproggruppeforsøg i skoledistrikterne 6 og 12 i Københavns Kommunes Skolevæsen 1996–99 ["The best Copenhagen Municipality has done so far": Description and evaluation of language group experiments in the districts 6 and 12 in Copenhagen Municipality School Administration 1996–1999] (Københavns Kommune, 2000).104 Gimbel, Holmen, and Normann Jørgensen, "Det bedste Københavns Kommune har foretaget sig".105 Just Jeppesen, "Skolen", 37.106 Béland, "Ideas and Social Policy".107 See note 101 above.108 Å. Lundqvist and K. Petersen, In Experts We Trust: Knowledge, Politics and Bureaucracy in Nordic Welfare States, 1st ed. (Southern Denmark: University Press, 2010).109 Jacobsen, Lighed gennem særbehandling; Li and Enemark, "Educating to belong"; and Enemark, Li, and Buchardt, "Education policies".110 M. Buchardt, "Schooling the Muslim Family: The Danish School System, Foreign Workers, and Their Children from the 1970s to the Early 1990s", in Families, Values, and the Transfer of Knowledge in Northern Societies, 1500–2000, ed. U. Aatsinki, J. Annola, and M. Kaarninen (Routledge, 2019), 283–300; L. M. Daugaard, Sproglig praksis i og omkring modersmålsundervisning: En lingvistisk etnografisk undersøgelse [Linguistic practice in and around mother tongue instruction: A linguistic ethnographic study] (Aarhus: Universitet, 2015); C. Horst, På ulige fod: Etniske minoritetsbørn som et skoleeksempel [On uneven footing: Ethnic minority children as a school example] (Aarhus: Universitetsforlag, 2017); Jacobsen, Lighed gennem særbehandling; and Jørgensen and Horst, Et flerkulturelt Danmark; Kristjánsdóttir, Uddannelsespolitik i nationalismens tegn [Education politics in the name of nationalism] (Aarhus: Universitetsforlag, 2018); and L. Salö et al., "Mother Tongue Instruction in Sweden and Denmark. Language Policy, Cross-Field Effects, and Linguistic Exchange Rates", Language Policy 17 (2018): 591–610.111 G. Myrberg, "Local Challenges and National Concerns: Municipal Level Responses To National Refugee Settlement Policies in Denmark and Sweden", International Review of Administrative Sciences 83, no. 2 (2017): 322–39.Additional informationNotes on contributorsNanna Ramsing EnemarkNanna Ramsing Enemark is a PhD fellow in Education Policy Research at the Centre for Education Policy Research (CfU), Aalborg University, Denmark. She is trained in education science and political science from Aalborg University (BA, MA) and specializes in welfare state studies, migration and education policy history and comparative education.Mette BuchardtMette Buchardt is a Professor and Head of Centre for Education Policy Research (CfU), Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research comprises the interdisciplinary field of education policy history and welfare state history, including education- and social reform in the European states, e.g. modernization and secularization, and the influence of migration on welfare state development historically and at present.