The Making of the Educationally Manageable Immigrant Schoolchildren in Denmark 1970-2013

by Marta Padovan-Özdemir

Since the 1970s in Denmark, children of Southern European or non-European immigrants (and later refugees) have attracted particular educational attention and intervention.

This research project investigates how immigrant schoolchildren have come to be objects of educational attention, and how this attention has been imagined turned into professional interventions in the educational management of immigrant children in basic schooling in the Danish welfare nation-state 1970-2013.

The study comprises three analyses. The first analysis identifies the problem-solving complexes that have emerged in local educational administrations' responses to the presence of immigrant schoolchildren in primary and lower secondary schools, and relates these problem-solving complexes to broader national imaginaries of managing immigrant families. The second analysis focuses on the development of teachers' professional subjectivities as effects of professional problematisations of immigrant schoolchildren as objects of pedagogical concern. The third analysis investigates an epistemic horizon made available to teachers of immigrant schoolchildren. This analysis identifies the knowledge invested in shaping the conduct and mentality of teachers of immigrant schoolchildren, and how this knowledge has been made instructional of teachers.

Utilising the Foucaultian notion of dispotif, the three analyses are combined analytically in order to identify an evolving arrangement of problematisations and responses vis-á-vis immigrant schoolchildren. The identification of dispotif(s) assists illuminating the grid of intelligibility that has governed the making of educationally manageable immigrant schoolchildren of the Danish welfare nation-state in an era of intensified immigration and globalization.

Methodologically, the study unfolds a documentary analysis of professional journals, educational-administrative reports and teacher guidelines. The selection of these documents are determined by their estimated proximity to teachers encountering immigrant schoolchildren.