Paper short abstract:

Finnish Integration training's objective is that migrants get employed, but their different backgrounds are often set aside in the process. In this paper, I examine with an intersectional gaze how the trainings’ instructors comprehend the diversity among immigrants and its effects in their work.

Paper long abstract:

Integration trainings are among the first societal institutions an immigrant attends after receiving the permit of residence in Finland. Thus, the “social integration” usually begins in an educational setting where, according to the National Core Curriculum for Integration Training for Adult Migrants 2012, “[--] all migrants receive information about their rights and responsibilities in Finnish society and its world of work [--].”

The education is mainly organized as labour market training for adults, which means that its objective is that migrants become familiar with the language and central institutions of their new country of residence, and, after suitable further training, enter the workforce. The objective is thus built on the idea of employment-based, universalist citizenship. In this mindset (e.g. in authoritative documents) differences such as gender, culture and religion can seem irrelevant or even harmful, since the same rights and obligations apply to everyone. What makes this institutional universalism, paradoxical, is that it can easily disregard the differences that matter, i.e. people’s diverse backgrounds, and lead into their unequal treatment.

Based on theorists of intersectionality, this paper focuses on the instructors’ understandings of diversity. This frame of research illustrates the fact that perceptions of social categories and their implications always reflect the actors’ personal positions within power hierarchies. Through ethnographic observations and interviews I examine how the instructors encounter, negotiate and (re)produce intersecting categories of “immigrant-ness”. I also need to ask what consequences the emerging differences have in the everyday interactions of integration trainings.

Paper short abstract:

Part of an ethnographic study about Chilean feminist high school students in 2018. The presentation focuses on the students' testimonios about their school's oppressive neoliberal gender norms, and their struggles to resist and transform these processes of gender/political subjectification.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the testimonios of Chilean feminist high school students who narrated and analyzed how state institutions, particularly their own high school, attempted to produce them as feminine neoliberal successful girls and their own stories of resistance to these mechanisms. The data for this article was produced within a yearlong critical ethnographic study on the processes of production of high school feminist students’ gender and political subjectivities in Chile during 2018. During the ethnography I conducted testimonios interviews, and art based collective testimonios workshops. The feminist students in this proyect critiqued the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) violence by which their school and teachers tried to produce them as specific types of "girls." Thorugh these stories of struggle the students produced themselves as subjectivities who experienced oppressive and violent gender norms processes, and at the same time could name, map, and resist these procedures, constructing them as motivations and reasons to act and identify as political actors. Students were able to open up "fractures" in normative discourses in their performative engagements with them. I argue that these feminist testimonios were tools used by the students to create resistant and mestiza subject positions for themselves. Student were able to move across the borders and limits of what was produced by the institution as correct gender/political subjectivities for female minors. The feminist students expressed feelings regarding how norms to be recognizable were unlivable for them, which in turn made them resist, challenge, and engage in imperfect performances of "female student."

Paper short abstract:

Historically, speaking Scots in schools was actively discouraged, but since 2014, a formal Scots qualification is taught in some schools. Using creative ethnographic methods to challenge hierarchies and change attitudes raised the status of Scots in this school context and subverted language norms.

Paper long abstract:

Scots is one of three indigenous languages spoken in Scotland, alongside English and Gaelic. Historically, speaking Scots in schools was actively discouraged. Generations of pupils were taught to ‘speak proper English to get on in the world’ and Scots was often thought of as slang or bad English. Scots is now recognised once again as a language, and recent policy and curricular changes have led to the introduction of the Scots Language Award (2014) a formal qualification, now taught in some schools in Scotland.

This presentation describes ethnographic fieldwork incorporating Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Creative Arts workshops in a secondary school in Scotland. The research team (PhD student and teacher) worked alongside staff and pupils to promote positive attitudinal change towards Scots. The methodology created space and time for key moments of transformation when conventional pedagogical approaches were disrupted. Each participant had the potential to be or become an agent of change, and the interaction between pupils, teachers, researcher, authors and artists, and senior management created opportunities for new ways of learning and thinking about the Scots language and its place within a formal learning environment, which in turn can both reflect and change wider societal attitudes.

A collaborative creative arts workshop became a key site for resistance. Power hierarchies were flattened, pupils became researchers and classroom norms were subverted. The resulting high-quality exhibition was described as ‘world class’ and is displayed permanently in the school boardroom. Scots is now visible in a site of power within the school.