Social,Spatial and Material Conditions for Mattering: Newly Arrived Young Migrants’ Possibilities to Matter in Everyday Life in a Swedish School

Research Context and Participants

As mentioned above, school is a crucial arena for newly arrived young people, as they have significant adults and peers to relate to and learn about the receiving society. It is also an arena where young people spend a large part of their everyday lives, consequently affecting their opportunities for mattering in different ways. In addition, Sweden, at the time of the study, after the large influx of refugees in 2015, not only received many migrants but also adopted a new migration policy and has been described as a society in change when it comes to issues of immigration and equality (Dahlstedt & Neergaard, 2019). These changes – a more restrictive migration policy and increased xenophobia – can affect newly arrived young people’s opportunities to matter and their overall well-being and are therefore important areas to study. The political changes can furthermore be related to similar patterns in countries across Europe, which makes the study transferable. It was against this background that the selection of case – newly arrived young people’s conditions for mattering in the context of a school in Sweden – was made.

The fieldwork done by the first author was situated in a LI at an upper secondary school. The school was located in a medium-sized Swedish city with comparatively few foreign-born people, which was also reflected in the composition of students. In the academic year 2017, when the fieldwork was carried out, around 15% of the students at the school had a foreign background, including the newly arrived students (The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2022). At the time of the study, approximately 2,500 students attended the entire upper secondary school, and 73 newly arrived students were enrolled in the LI. The participants were newly arrived students (N = 10, 16–20 years old), male and female, from Afghanistan, Syria, Kosovo, Somalia and Ethiopia. Seven were unaccompanied refugees, and three had arrived with their families. Four stated they had already received residence permits; one living with family had a temporary work permit; and two indicated that they were in the process of seeking asylum. They come from different socio-economic backgrounds and with varying school experiences. While some had never attended school before, others had several years of school behind them. One of the participants described that he had attended a special school where they only studied the Quran.

Information about the study was given to the young migrants and the school staff in writing and orally, and written consent was obtained from participants before the study began. The students were informed that their participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw at any time without explanation. They were also told that field notes from the observations would be recorded so that individuals could not be identified and that pseudonyms would be used.

Interviews and Observations

As the first author, I spent 20 whole school days on-site (April–June 2017). The study started close to a traditional understanding of mattering as a social psychological concept and relational phenomenon. Thus, the semi-structured interviews conducted by the first author included questions about how the participants perceived themselves to be significant to others and in their everyday environment (cf. Elliott et al., 2004; Marshall, 2001). The interviews also included questions about how the young people experienced life in and out of school and how they experienced their well-being. All 10 participants took part in one formal interview that lasted, on average, 40 minutes, followed by several more informal conversations with the participants in daily school life. The interviews took place individually within the school. We communicated in Swedish at the request of the participants. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, and the informal conversations were recorded as field notes (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007).

While the interviews captured the youths’ narrated experiences, the observations contributed to capturing body movements in the room and the complexity of relationships, such as the dynamics between students and between students and teachers. They were thus used as an essential supplement to the interviews. The observations were mainly done during lessons, but I also participated in excursions outside the school premises and spent time with the students on breaks and lunches. At first, the observations were more explorative. They became more attentive as I got to know the field and the participants, focusing on how the young people moved in school, ‘in the room’, interacting with others and the physical environment. I observed how social, material and spatial boundaries arose in everyday life. For example, I observed how symbolic boundaries were drawn between ‘Swedes’ and young people from ‘other countries’ and how the materiality of the school affected and reinforced these. I also observed how the room was designed, what was on the walls, what resources were available, such as literature, and for whom.

The time spent with the young people also enabled me to understand the nuances of the relationships and frictions that were not captured in the interview situations. In the field notes, a distinction was made between the concrete and the emotional record (cf. Mauthner, 2002). The concrete record refers to descriptions of what is happening and the physical environment. I described situations where the ‘mood in the room’ changed in the emotional record, and I tried to capture the students’ emotional expressions. The emotional record has been helpful to analyse situations where the young people expressed, or when I observed, that they felt comfortable and uncomfortable and hence in or out of line. Furthermore, it has been beneficial to make visible and reflect on how my positioning may have affected the participants. Thus, the young people’s narratives are understood as constructed concerning my presence and influence through my different (attributed and self-ascribed) positions such as ‘Swedish’, ‘woman’ and ‘a representative of the majority society’. My background as a Swede – and in the context implied whiteness – was emphasized in everyday school life by teachers and students. I believe the position as a white, middle-class, Swedish female researcher gave me access to move over the school premises and to ‘blend in’ at school (cf. Ahmed, 2006). Hence, I was included in the school’s whiteness norms, with the risk that I also reproduced them. Furthermore, this position allowed me as a researcher to understand whiteness and its associated ‘Swedishness’, as the norm of the school. As shown in this study, this is the norm in which ‘otherness’ was understood and organized in relation to. I identified how borders were drawn based on Swedishness and where I could pass as Swedish. I noticed how this position was constructed and regarded as desirable. At the same time, this position may have restricted my ability to see certain patterns in my material, for example, expressions of everyday racism and its many forms.

Analysis

As a common procedure in ethnographic fieldwork, the material’s creation and analysis were intimately connected (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). The practical work with the analysis followed the phases of a thematic analysis and included the steps of getting to know the material, generating codes, forming themes and producing the report (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The description of the analytic procedure may look like a linear process. Still, the analysis involved back-and-forth analysis between different parts, and the whole proceeding was characterized by a cyclical movement between the categorized empirical data and analytical concepts derived from the article’s theoretical perspective. As described above, a greater focus came to be directed towards spatiality and materiality both on-site and in the analysis, where Ahmed’s theories of orientation were combined with theories of mattering. The field notes were shared and discussed with the fourth author throughout data collection and later with the second and third authors. I (the first author) mainly conducted the analysis but discussed it with the three other authors throughout the analytic phases. The discussion of the analysis was ongoing until a consensus was reached to ensure the quality of the analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Inside the Classroom

During the time I spent with the young people on LI, I observed that they spent most of their school day with other newly arrived youth in their shared classrooms. They lunched with their classmates and spent breaks together. The spatial and temporal separation of bodies into the ‘newly arrived’ and the so-called ‘ordinary students,’ usually referred to as ‘Swedish students’ by both teachers and students in LI, was evident. The school’s everyday life was organized and divided into teaching aimed at newly arrived students and teaching aimed at so-called ‘regular’ classes, students who were eligible for upper secondary school (e.g. Fejes & Dahlstedt, 2020; Hagström, 2018; Nilsson Folke, 2017). As we will show, this spatial organization with separate classrooms had consequences for the newly arrived young people’s opportunities for mattering.

Several youths highlighted the classroom context, with the closeness to and the support from the teachers, as the best thing about school. Hamed and Leah, who have both attended school before, Hamed in Afghanistan and Leah in Syria, speak appreciatively of the teachers and their commitment. Hamed explained how he ‘gets energy’ from one of his teachers. He said, ‘She comes to us and says, “Just read and work hard,” and so it is with this: work hard with Swedish. She gives energy.’ Leah, like many others, took her starting point compared to how her schooling had been before and described that:

The teachers are better here. They understand us, and they explain more. That’s not the case there [in Syria]. They are not interested in the students. It’s just better here /…/ They are very kind. They explain three times or four times if you want if you do not understand.

Similar to Hamed and Leah’s experiences of the teachers being interested in and engaging with them, others described the importance for their well-being to feel that someone cared about them and what was happening to them now and in the future, illustrating how the teachers contributed to the young people’s sense of social mattering (cf. Rosenberg & McCullough, 1981). In this way, relationships with the teachers and other newly arrived students could occur in the school’s everyday life. Thus, social mattering was made possible inside the walls of the classroom. At the same time, the relations with the teachers were not frictionless, as the observational material shows, and there were daily negotiations about the young people’s position in school and assumed future position in society that arose at the intersection between Swedishness and being an immigrant.

Thus, the school context also came to assume other meanings in relation to other students at school, something that the newly arrived young people reflected on. For example, Najib reflected on the absence of Swedish young people inside the classroom and how that, combined with his housing situation, meant that he did not have contact with, as he described, Swedish people. This situation was not unique to Najib but applied to many of the newly arrived youths. Through the school’s spatial organization, social mattering was made possible internally within the group of newly arrived youths and in relation to the Swedish-born teachers whom the newly arrived youths emphasized as necessary and for some the only Swedish contacts. However, the school, and as in this case in combination with a similar restrictive housing situation, can be understood as a physical place that conditions how young people can matter to others through the bodies they physically encounter. Furthermore, the spatial distance was also reinforced socially and discursively through daily conversations that focused on differences between how young Swedes are and how the newly arrived young migrants are.

Outside the Classroom

Outside the classroom, in the school’s common areas, such as the entrance to the school, the dining room, the corridors and the stairwell, the students in different classes passed each other daily but rarely met. The school’s spatial division with separate classrooms also had consequences in other parts of the school. It impacted the newly arrived young people’s experiences of their place at school and how they mattered to other students. Hence, the spatial separation had social consequences. The newly arrived youths stated that creating relationships with students outside of LI was difficult for them. Thus, it was difficult to identify opportunities to feel that they mattered to them. At the same time, they emphasized these relationships as crucial to them. Relations with Swedish peers were highlighted as necessary in several ways. The most central was the feeling that you were part of Swedish society, a community, and several young people wanted to meet a Swedish partner. Also, many emphasized that getting to know Swedes was fundamental for learning the Swedish language and for understanding taken-for-granted cultural skills, which was described as important for them to orient themselves in everyday life. This emerged in the conversation with Petrus:

Through language introduction, you only get Swedish. But /…/ in Sweden, there are many rules. How to walk. How to cycle. Where to cycle. When can you play music? Where to throw the rubbish. Right? If I had not been with the Swedes, I would not get this information. That’s why we must get everything. At school, a Swedish lesson, just about society and rules. From the beginning, you must learn. It’s hard if you do not know.

For Petrus, getting to know Swedes meant having access to the taken-for-granted cultural knowledge that affects the feeling of orienting oneself in everyday life, knowing how to spatially move the body to create a sense of being in line. However, it was not only about being able to understand and learn cultural habits and norms; but the young people’s stories were also about being able to pass and be accepted as ’normal’ youth. Petrus described how he experienced many prejudices and, similarly to other participants, described a fear of being perceived differently, both in terms of appearance and cultural habits. This sense of bodily and social orientation created insecurity among the young newcomers, not least at ‘meetings with ‘Swedish’ peers. The school organized meetings between the newly arrived students and the mainstream classes on a few occasions. These occasions were essential and coveted for the newly arrived students, but at the same time, they gave rise to conflicting feelings that emerged in my conversation with Aaron:

Aaron says that he would like to get to know more Swedes, but he does not dare to speak Swedish, and Swedes do not return his greetings, so he becomes insecure about greeting or befriending them. Aaron tells of a collaboration with a Swedish class; they talked when in the classroom, but never outside. On the street, they do not greet. If it’s a girl I can understand but a guy, why does he not want to be friends? (Field notes).

Although these occasions, when the newly arrived youths met other students at the school who did not go to LI, were significant for many of them, these meetings could also contribute to a feeling of being out of line, and of not mattering to the Swedish students. In Aaron’s narrative, disorientation arises when young Swedish people do not want to talk to him outside the classroom and organized activities. Najib described in a similar way how these encounters created nervousness:

Najib: It would be good if we had more students from Sweden.

Interviewer: Yes. It would be more mixed.

N: We’ve only been with them for an hour. Not so much.

I: Did you have a lesson together?

N: Yes.

I: What was that lesson?

N: It was a discussion question, but it was before.

…

I: Okay, how was it then? How was that hour?

N: It was good, but I have talked to the Swedes about the subject, which was a matter of discussion, but they said nothing. It was just us.

I: They said nothing? Was it just you talking?

N: Yes. It was just us.

I: Mm. Would you like to do it again but with more time?

N: Well. You get nervous. But if we were more together than in a lesson.

I: That it would be more natural then?

N: Yes.

In connection with meetings with students outside of the LI, several newly arrived youths expressed nervousness and concern about ‘what will they think of us?’ This concern was expressed both in terms of looking and behaving differently compared to other young people, and there is a risk that this anxiety about ‘being different’ was reinforced by the school’s discriminatory practices. Their worry can be understood in several ways. As described by Najib, the fact that these meetings took place on a few occasions created both more pressure and nervousness than if they had been part of the school’s everyday life. However, their concerns can also be interpreted against the background of how these meetings were organized. The school arrangements were aimed at and based on learning about each other’s cultures, with a starting point in differences (cf. Lögdberg et al., 2023). For example, the girls were asked to visit the mainstream classes to talk about veil-wearing from their perspective. On another occasion, the mainstream students visited the newly arrived and spoke about a class trip to India. Furthermore, the classes got together to discuss and learn about cultural differences in an informal way. Although the newly arrived youths, through these occasions, became noticed and had a chance to describe their way of looking at things, such as veil-wearing, they were first and foremost noticed as migrants. Their ethnic and national backgrounds were emphasized, especially in relation to students who did not attend LI, and it was only in this way that the newly arrived students had the opportunity to matter. This can be compared with Carey’s (2019, 2020) and colleagues (2022) research on marginal and partial mattering about communities of colour and youths being marginalized. That is, the young people are not given the opportunity to define and develop their self-concept in the context of the school based on their whole persona and academic potential but are instead examined and interpreted first and foremost based on, as in this case, having migrated and were thereby attributed a status as non-Swedish.

Taken together, the various examples inside and outside the classroom illustrate how the school’s spatial organization and teaching were central to the students’ potential to matter to others socially. These empirical examples further illustrate how the newly arrived students could matter internally within the classroom context, yet mattering was constrained externally to people outside the group of newcomers. As highlighted in the newly arrived youths’ narratives, to matter to people outside the group of newcomers is essential for mattering in a broader, inclusive perspective.

On the Walls

In this last section, we look at the walls and the physical objects used in daily teaching, showing how materiality is vital when mattering is created. Through a tour of the school, the school’s material character appears as divided areas; some places are marked out, while others can be interpreted as part of the hidden ‘Swedish’ background (cf. Ahmed 2006). Thus, the divided everyday life of the school was also visible and strengthened through the material design of the room and its characteristics and in the school’s material resources used in daily teaching.

In the newcomers’ classrooms, Swedishness was exposed as an orientation through posters on the walls representing the Swedish royal family and internationally known Swedish politicians, such as Anna Lindh and Margot Wallström, standing in front of a UN flag. Furthermore, there were posters of, for example, Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai, which can be interpreted as materializations of the equal values that the school wanted to communicate to the newcomers (cf. León Rosales, 2010). The teachers discussed these values as Swedish values and contrasted them with countries ‘that did not stand for these’, such as, according to the teachers, the countries from which the newly arrived youths came (cf. Lögdberg et al., 2023). As a path to integration, the orientation around and towards Swedishness (cf. Hagström, 2018) became apparent through the room’s material decoration and resources. In the newly arrived youths’ classrooms, messages were found in languages other than Swedish, which confirmed the newly arrived youths’ position as migrants. Still, the young people were encouraged only to speak Swedish in the classroom.

In contrast, messages were communicated in Swedish in the common areas through posters and the monitor in the entrance hall. In the stairwell, one of the school’s most central places, the ‘regular classes’ had made a countdown to graduation. This consisted of paper with a number for each day left until the end of school, a picture characteristic of the student’s schooling and a clarifying text of the picture in Swedish. The pictures reflected these students’ experiences of their time in upper secondary school. A picture was adorned with a Christmas tree titled ‘Merry Christmas, all students’. Another image had the text ‘The just started upper secondary school starter pack’. Below the text were pictures of designer clothes, bags, shoes and a takeaway coffee from a coffee chain. In many ways, the images did not reflect the newly arrived students. For example, not all celebrated Christmas and other traditions are illustrated in the pictures. However, the most apparent difference was that, even if they were the same age, most of the newly arrived students would not graduate at the same time as the non-migrant students, something that Nilsson Folke believes contributes to temporally parallel school lives and a feeling among the new arrivals to get stuck and not progress (cf. Nilsson Folke, 2017).

Thus, these common areas allowed some young people to pass unnoticed and pass as ‘normal.’ In contrast to the newcomers’ classrooms, where Swedishness was exposed as an orienting line, the common areas were characterized by what can be described as Swedishness as a starting point or a hidden background (cf. Ahmed, 2006). Apart from the room’s design, which enabled some relationships but excluded others, the school’s material resources used in everyday teaching had implications for the young people’s sense of being in line and how that matters. The following situation below shows a student’s active lived experience of difference:

During a history lesson, the students are given the task of translating words and writing down their meanings. They are directed to use the physical dictionaries to learn to look up the meaning of the words in Swedish in the reference books. The words they must understand include idea, growth, ideology, striving, influencing, improving, living conditions, oppression, rebellion, and revolution. The students pick up dictionaries on a small bookshelf on wheels that stand in the classroom. I sit down next to a student. ‘I only have this dictionary to look at’, the student says, turning to me and showing me a slightly worn pocket dictionary. He explains that it is the only dictionary available for his country. ‘The whole country has one dictionary’, he says, looks down, and goes on to say that he is alone here, the only one from his country in this town. The student searches for the teacher’s words in the assignment, but not all exist. He does not find ‘living conditions’ and asks me what it means (Field notes).

Ahmed (2010, p. 53) describes how human doing is not about an ‘inner ability.’ It is about ‘how the world is organized in a way that enables or blocks doing’ (cited in Hagström, 2018, p. 49). The situation above can be made understandable with the help of Ahmed’s description that certain bodies have their place and that things are within their reach. The situation illustrates one of the everyday practices where the school can be understood as directed at and designed based on certain bodies, the regular students. At the same time, the newly arrived youths were adapted to existing schemes and their resources. To summarize, this part showed how some students could be confirmed and create community by and through the school’s materiality and thus pass as ‘normal.’ In contrast, for others, it could be a reminder that they might not belong there and that the school was not designed for them, creating a feeling of loneliness and what can be explained as anti-mattering (Flett, 2018).