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School Choice, We-Ness and School Culture

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Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging

Abstract

The chapter focuses on how school choice processes construct symbolic boundaries between student groups at two high schools in a Swedish urban city. Ash Public is an “immigrant school” on the city’s outskirts, and Beech Ltd. is a white middle-class school in the city center. The study analyzes how the relation between the schools’ student body composition, rumors, and ways of defining values and social characteristics structures the students’ feelings of belonging (or not belonging) to the specific school culture. The study shows that the constructions of “we” and “them” emerge as real obstacles for contacts between the Ash Public and Beech Ltd. students. Although their schools are located in the same city, they seem in many ways to be “worlds apart”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All names of places, schools, and individuals are fictional.

  2. 2.

    The empirical data was collected in 2014 within the Swedish research project Inclusive and competitive? Working in the intersection between social inclusion and marketization in high school (2012–2015), financed by the Swedish Research Council.

  3. 3.

    In upper secondary education in Sweden, there are 18 national programs: six higher education preparatory and 12 vocational. In addition, there are five introductory programs for students who are not eligible for a national program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Ann-Sofie Holm & Marianne Dovemark

Authors
  1. Ann-Sofie Holm
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  2. Marianne Dovemark
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Correspondence to Ann-Sofie Holm .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Stefan Lund

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Holm, AS., Dovemark, M. (2020). School Choice, We-Ness and School Culture. In: Lund, S. (eds) Immigrant Incorporation, Education, and the Boundaries of Belonging. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36729-9_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-36728-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-36729-9

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