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Not All Students Are Equally Equal: Normality as Finnishness

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The State, Schooling and Identity

Part of the book series: Education Dialogues with/in the Global South ((EDGS))

Abstract

Equality is a foundational theme for the educational system in Finland. This chapter explores the marginalization of migrant students in two lower secondary comprehensive schools. The subtle processes of exclusion, of being considered not normal or too different, are explored through interviews with teachers and other personnel. Even though teachers talk about all students being equal, they often have different behavioral and achievement expectations of migrant students. However, while the school is presented as an equal space for all individual students, the ideal or ‘normal’ student includes expectations of Finnishness. Hence, migrant students are seen as causing the problems themselves by being too different from ethnic Finnish students, rather than seeing the problems as caused by the school structure and culture.

This study has been financed by a grant from the Academy of Finland.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the interviews and partly in the observations, the fieldworker noticed that the teachers used immigrant and immigrant background when speaking of students of color while students with scarves were called migrants or students with migrant background. There were also teachers that problematized the category of immigrant student. In this chapter we use the term migrant, as the main concept, but when we refer to the speech of the teachers and other personnel or in the construction of migrant student as category we use the notion of immigrant as it is used in both schools.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Ina Juva & Gunilla Holm

Authors
  1. Ina Juva
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  2. Gunilla Holm
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Correspondence to Ina Juva .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Helsinki Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Finland

    Kari Kantasalmi

  2. University of Helsinki Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Nordic Centre of Excellence ‘Justice through Education’, Finland

    Gunilla Holm

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Juva, I., Holm, G. (2017). Not All Students Are Equally Equal: Normality as Finnishness. In: Kantasalmi, K., Holm, G. (eds) The State, Schooling and Identity. Education Dialogues with/in the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1515-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1515-1_11

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-1514-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-1515-1

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