This article-based dissertation examines students’ constructions of social and linguistic participation and social belonging in a linguistically diverse upper secondary classroom in Sweden. The focus is on a group of second language learners and their meaning-making processes in literary book-group discussions in a combined practice of the two parallel school subjects Swedish (SWE) and Swedish as a Second Language (SSL). SWE and SSL are two distinct school subjects in their own right, with different subject curricula and required teacher qualifications. In this dissertation, combined practice entailed SWE and SSL students being taught in the same classroom by a teacher who was qualified to teach both subjects based on the two curricula. The four key participants in SSL had migrated to Sweden due to outbreaks of war in their home countries. The theoretical framework consists of contact zone theory, including safe houses as safe spaces, dialogism, and transactional theory. A common denominator in these underpinnings is the notions of negotiation processes and power structures. Methodologically and onto-epistemologically, this dissertation is anchored in linguistic ethnography, which presupposes that research participants are co-constructors of data and meaning, and that linguistic analyses of interactions in local contexts contribute to discussions about social change at large. Article I focuses on three different learning spaces that the students in SSL had to navigate as part of their second language learning: whole-class, separate SSL group, and literary book-group discussions. Based on the findings of Article I, where literary book-group discussions seemed prominent for negotiations of meaning, Article II concentrates on one student’s trajectory of participation in a series of book-group discussions, and Article III centers around a particular group of students in SSL and their reflections on grouping strategies, participation roles, and discussion topics. The findings from these three articles show that student mobility between different layers of contact zones and safe houses seemed to provide an incentive for social and linguistic participation and social belonging over time. The findings also show that the four key participants in SSL seemed to avail themselves of social and linguistic participation and social belonging through an agency of vulnerability in literary book-group discussions as both contact zones and safe houses. This dissertation contributes to further empirical and theoretical discussions about developments of contact zone classrooms in Sweden and beyond, including the problematization of what teaching and learning in contact zones entails for students and teachers in this age of forced migration.

This study explores student-led literary book-group discussions in a linguistically diverse upper-secondary language classroom. It employs linguistic ethnography and focuses on minoritized migrant students’ fictive and factive readings of a novel; the participation roles they assumed; and how they reflected on different book-group formations over time. A stance analysis based on chronotopic concepts in relation to contact zone classrooms and safe houses demonstrates how students positioned themselves as knowledgeable discussants of literary texts and life. It also shows how the students were able to create a circle of trust in the safe house and aspire to contact zone contexts beyond the language classroom. Furthermore, the findings are indicative of students’ increased sense of social belonging and linguistic participation as a result of flexible grouping strategies and student autonomy in terms of how to engage with literary texts.

This paper focuses on how Gabriella, an upper-secondary student in Sweden, re-negotiated social belonging and linguistic participation in book-group discussions involving students in the school subjects Swedish and Swedish as a second language. Gabriella immigrated to Sweden due to forced migration. As a Swedish language learner, she worried that her language proficiency was regarded as insufficient by her peers. Within the frame of linguistic ethnography, and with the aim of identifying Gabriella's trajectory of participation in book-group discussions over time, audio-recorded group discussions about the novel How I live now, interview data, and observational fieldnotes were analyzed by means of an epistemic stance analysis. Building on learning as participation, it was possible to unfold how Gabriella went from a passing participant to a driving force. Her trajectory of participation was spurred by the content of the novel and a sense of epistemic responsibility to share her first-hand experience of war, while her classmates responded with silence. From an educational perspective, this paper emphasizes the importance of classrooms as contact zones where students are not only provided with rich opportunities to gather around literature that stirs up questions of what it means to be human, but more importantly, it accentuates the need for literary education to include responsive practices to help students accommodate each other as co-learners.

Based on fieldwork in an upper-secondary school in Sweden, this paper centers on Swedish as two school-subjects: Swedish (SWE) and Swedish as a second language (SSL), as taught in one class. Adhering to separate curricula, and taught by SWE and SSL teachers respectively, they are often implemented as physically separated subjects. By contrast, this paper explores three different learning spaces in relation to everyday negotiations of belonging and participation among the migrant language learners: combined whole-class teaching, a separate SSL group, and combined book-group discussions. Drawing from the notion of the classroom as a contact zone (Canagarajah, 2020) and theory of spatial repertoire (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2014), I discuss how minoritized second language learners negotiated social belonging and linguistic participation in these differently embodied learning spaces. Engaging a linguistic ethnographic approach, the data production consisted of fieldnotes from classroom observations, audio-recorded book discussions and semi-structured interviews. The material was analyzed by means of an epistemic stance analysis. Findings indicate that while an epistemic incongruence prevailed in the combined whole-class teaching, the reverse was found in the separate SSL group. In the space between these opposites, the book-group discussions served as a growing ground for epistemic congruence at the interface of SWE and SSL. The article thus contributes insights into how the organization of SWE and SSL affects how students navigate their multiple and hybrid identities as well as the extent to which they feel a sense of social belonging in order to fully participate in different educational practices.