“We Pupils Had to Hear…” Marginalised Youths’ Experiences of Racialising Language and Symbolic Violence in Swedish Schools

Guided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approaches of symbolic capital and symbolic violence, this article examines the everyday mechanisms of ‘otherising’ language practices in schools that reinforce racism against marginalised youths in Sweden. The empirical material is based on focus group discus...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social policy and society : a journal of the Social Policy Association 2024-10, p.1-15
Main Author: Jönsson, Jessica H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Belonging
colonial discourse
marginalisation
migrant youths
racialising language
Sweden
symbolic violence
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Summary:Guided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approaches of symbolic capital and symbolic violence, this article examines the everyday mechanisms of ‘otherising’ language practices in schools that reinforce racism against marginalised youths in Sweden. The empirical material is based on focus group discussions and individual in-depth interviews with youths with migrant backgrounds in Sweden. The stories told by the participants in this study indicate how young people with immigrant backgrounds are discursively racialised and otherised as a group that does not belong to Swedish society, through the articulation of negative opinions, attitudes, and ideologies as part of established colonial discourses. It is argued that the marginalisation of migrants in Sweden, which is a consequence of social policy, has even resulted in utilisation of a marginalised language — one that deviates from the majority language in several different ways.
ISSN:1474-7464
1475-3073
1475-3073
DOI:10.1017/S1474746424000307