In Sweden, as elsewhere, migrants’ language knowledge has become a debated topic and a cornerstone in restrictive migration policies. In this paper, we investigate how the metaphor ‘language as a key’ to society is used by migrant language learners and how it relates to the participants’ experiences of learning Swedish. The study draws on interviews with 174 migrants enrolled in three different state-subsidized language educational contexts providing tuition in basic Swedish. The results highlight how the metaphor was recurrently used and how it constructed certain time-space relations. It positioned migrant language learners as outsiders to a national imaginary, and the temporal aspects of the metaphor both pointed to what was needed to be done in the present, that is, learning Swedish, and how language learning was associated with future-oriented possibilities. While the migrant students reproduced a simplified discourse on the relationship between language learning and integration, their language learning experiences simultaneously subversively challenged the simplified metaphor.

I det här kapitlet belyser vi föräldraskapets betydelse för hur människor som invandrat till Sverige upplever sin tillvaro i det nya landet och hur de ser på framtiden. Mer specifikt diskuteras hur social rörlighet, det vill säga individers rörelser i samhället såväl socialt som rumsligt, formas i relationer mellan vuxna och barn. Barnens mående och möjligheter till utveckling och ett bättre liv har avgörande betydelse för föräldrars tankar och vägval inför framtiden. Barnen utgör både en förankring i det nya landet och en livlina när livet är tufft. I kapitlet belyser vi därtill hur asylprocessen skär genom familjelivet, där en osäker tillvaro får påtagliga konsekvenser för hela familjen. 

I denna studie undersöks hur skyddssökande som kom till Sverige 2014-2015 orienteras i en ny tillvaro och hur deras orientering och meningsskapande ändras över tid. Utifrån en longitudinell design där vi intervjuat deltagarna vid två tillfällen med några års mellanrum (2018 och 2022) analyserar vi med hjälp av Sara Ahmeds orienteringsbegrepp deltagarnas levda erfarenheter av handlingsutrymme och inkludering i Sverige. Analysen visar en tydlig orientering mot att vilja lära sig svenska och få ett arbete men att vägen dit är svårframkomlig och kantad av hinder. Språkinlärning och språkutbildning blir såväl något att organisera sitt hopp om en bättre framtid kring som något som skapar institutionella stopp. Deltagarnas erfarenheter understryker även betydelsen av studieförbundens inkluderande policy, som skapar tillgängliga sociala rum. Mot bakgrund av senare års repressiva migrationspolitik diskuteras hur den offentliga problembilden av “misslyckad integration” tenderar att osynliggöra människors ansträngningar och strategier i strävan efter inkludering och en bättre framtid.

Today, many children grow up in transnational families with a variety of migration experiences. Greek-Swedish migration is characterized by several migration waves starting in the late 1960s, followed by a period of re-migration to Greece, and then a new migration wave due to the financial crisis in Greece in 2010. This paper investigates seven Greek-speaking families in Stockholm with children from 5 to 17 years old who moved to Sweden after 2010. Some of the parents in the study had previously lived in Sweden as children. Based on ethnographic interviews, we investigated how the family’s reason about their linguistic choices and linguistic aspirations. Migrant families face the task of caring for both learning the language of the new country of residence and maintaining and developing the family’s mother tongue. While we found several similarities in the way the families ascribed value to knowledge in Swedish and Greek, the parents positioned themselves differently concerning their perceived agency in their family’s multilingual development. These differences were grounded in the parents’ present and past migration experiences and their current professional and socio-economic situations. When reflecting upon the linguistic choices within the family, migrant parents related the family’s linguistic practices to their own linguistic needs as well as to their children’s. Making a connection between linguistic practices and migration experiences, we argue, is crucial for understanding how migrant families reflect upon their language learning aspirations and their multilingual lives.

I det här kapitlet fokuserar vi på hur lärare resonerar om sitt agerande i relation till olika estetiska dilemman som aktualiseras i arbetet med nyanlända. Kapitlet problematiserar gränssättning i arbetet och yrkets relationella karaktär. Vi visar bland annat hur lärare ser på sin roll i relation till elevernas möjligheter att ta sig vidare i utbildningssystemet och att få stanna och etableras i Sverige. 

I en tid då migration blivit allt mer laddat har även frågor som rör flerspråkighet blivit det.  Språk väcker känslor på olika sätt och har alltid både en inkluderande och exkluderande sida. I det här kapitlet diskuteras språkideologiska perspektiv på frågor som rör språk och utbildning för barn och unga med migrationsbakgrund. Språkideologi handlar om uppfattningar om språks sociala värde och hur språk kopplas samman med talare och sätt att vara. En språkideologisk analys kan både visa på hur uppfattningar om språk skapar skillnad  mellan grupper i samhället och hur språk används som ett maktmedel.  I kapitlet diskuteras hur synen på flerspråkighet blir en del av en särskiljande diskurs där talet om ”andras” språk kan bli ett sätt att tala om dessa ”andra”. Bland annat diskuteras ökat fokus på språkkrav och språktestning, en förändrad syn på rätten till modersmålsundervisning och tendensen att sammanväva utbildning för nyanlända och andra elever med migrationsbakgrund med migrations- och integrationspolitik.

This article examines the literary representation of contemporary urban vernaculars (CUV) in fiction. It focuses specifically on four Swedish novels published in the last ten years, whose narratives are set in the urban and increasingly multilingual, migrant-rich and class-stratified peripheral areas of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The analysis centers on how they are situated in these urban peripheries, using written representations of spoken, non-standard Swedish CUV as symbolic resources to give authenticity to the narratives. We examine the distinctive linguistic features that are employed to evoke the imagination of CUV, and how these are used to build the fictional characters and to create certain recognizable social personas and practices. We also discuss the linguistic features that are available but are not exploited to represent the fictional characters’ ways of speaking, and possible reasons why this is so. Finally, we examine how the novels exploit contrasts between registers, particularly between CUV and adult second-language speaker styles and between CUV and standard Swedish, and with what effects. The findings are discussed in the context of the broader social discourses about language, migration, CUV and adult second-language speakers in present-day Sweden.

Detta kapitel handlar om unga migranters vuxenblivande, en process kantad av möjligheter och utmaningar. Kapitlet diskuterar studie- och yrkesval bland elever på språkintroduktionsprogrammet med fokus på vilka val som framstår som möjliga inför framtiden. Specifikt riktas ljuset mot hur dessa val förändras över tid och påverkar, och i vissa fall villkorar, elevers planer och drömmar om studier och yrkesliv. Den så kallade gymnasielagen utgör en viktig del i deltagarnas berättelser och träder fram som en illustration  av hur hastigt införda förändringar  på det migrationspolitiska området fått en avgörande betydelse i nyanländas liv.

This article uses contemporary Swedish fiction to explore sociolinguistic phenomena, and argues that literature constitutes an important arena for studying the (re)production and circulation of sociolinguistic experiences and ideas at a particular time and place. It builds on qualitative analysis of 65 Swedish books, published between 2000 and 2020, which depict protagonists with multilingual and migrant backgrounds. The study examines patterns of repetition in these works of fiction. It foregrounds recurring sociolinguistic experiences that are made relevant in the depiction of the fictional characters’ lives, and how they are emotionally interpreted. The analysis shows that the narrated experiences are often told and organized in similar ways and they tend to use the same social images of speakers to highlight processes of boundary-making and social differentiation. Language is used as an important part of the entextualization of these social experiences. For example, the authors often depict “the immigrant” and “the Swede” as binary opposites, which are linked to certain typical forms of speaking and being. By way of repetition, we argue, these recurring fictional experiences contribute to the formation of a grander narrative about language, belonging and social boundary-making in contemporary Sweden, and to the construction of Sweden as a society that is increasingly segregated and stratified.

This article is centred on the tendency to align education for newly arrived students with migration policy. Drawing on an in‐depth analysis of interviews with four adult migrant students, we aim to investigate how the participants’ experiences of studying and how they imagine their future intersect with their immigration status. The interviews were conducted when they were first studying a language introduction programme, and then three years later. We focus on the participants’ nar‐ ratives about transitions within the education system and later into the labour market. Using Sara Ahmed’s approach to the orientation of subjects in time and space, the analysis shows that all students expressed a desire to “be in line,” meaning finishing their studies and finding employment. Students with temporary and conditional residence permits were directed towards specific vocational tracks and sectors of the labour market. Migrant students are a heterogenous group and, based on the findings presented, we argue that immigration status constitutes a crucial part of this heterogeneity, influencing how students imagine their future in a new society.