Being in limbo or learning to belong? – Telling the stories of asylum seekers in a mill town

Abstract

This paper explores how young asylum seekers learn to belong to a local community. It takes its point of departure from a biographical and socially situated learning perspective and uses four analytical aspects of belonging: biographical experiences, engagement, imagination, and alignment. The data on which this paper is based are biographical interviews with five asylum seekers and field notes from a small mill town in Sweden. The findings show three types of learning: learning to be marginalised, learning to be disconnected, and learning to become a co-participant in the local community. Furthermore, the paper discusses how these learning processes are shaped by biographical experiences as well as access to the various communities of practice in and outside the local community, and how the asylum process negatively impacts their learning to belong to the local community and wider Swedish society.

Keywords:

• Asylum seekers
• learning
• belonging
• local community
• biographical approach

Introduction

The paper explores how five young adult asylum seekers learned to belong to a local community in Sweden. Sweden, like other European countries, has recently experienced a large number of asylum seekers. In 2015 alone, there were about 200,000 people who applied for asylum in Sweden – a country with 10 million inhabits. To accommodate all asylum seekers, asylum camps were established in cities as well as in small towns and rural areas. An asylum seeker is defined as a person who has applied for asylum in another country that is not their country of nationality or habitual residence (Innes 2015). In contrast to refugees, who have been awarded protection under Swedish asylum policy and international conventions, the situation of asylum seekers is generally more precarious. Wernesjö (2014) even stresses that refugee status in itself creates a sense of belonging.

Research on asylum seekers in Sweden mainly focuses on their health during the asylum-seeking process (Tinghög et al. 2016, Jonzon et al. 2015). There are some studies about the importance of school for asylum-seeking children’s learning (Svensson and Eastmond 2013), but we have not found any studies on adult asylum seekers’ learning. The discourse of inclusion for adult migrants in Sweden is analysed in a study of a state-funded programmes for popular education institutions called From Day 1 (Fejes and Dahlstedt 2017). They find that this discourse is constructed through the idea that learning Swedish and about Sweden is essential to gain employment and get the opportunity to engage in society. Fejes (2019) also stresses that asylum seekers are seen as ‘not yet citizens’ as they lack certain knowledge and capabilities.

The aim of this paper is to explore how five asylum seekers learned to belong to a local community. In the paper, we elaborate on the following research questions:

1. What did the asylum seekers learn by being asylum seekers in the local community?

2. What are the conditions for learning to belong to a local community and Swedish society?

The formal asylum-seeking process in Sweden

Sweden has a strong international engagement and has given asylum to asylum seekers from all over the world, and more than any other country in relation to its size (Östberg and Andersson 2013). A decade ago, work regulations for asylum seekers were re-established that were very generous in comparison to other European countries (Valenta and Thorshaug 2013). During 2015, many asylum seekers came from Syria and one reason was that they had heard rumours about being granted permanent residence permits (Lundgren Jörum 2015). Among the asylum seekers, 70% were men, 70,000 children, half of them unaccompanied. 7000 were also defined as stateless, having no country of origin (SCB 2016).

However, the post-2015 migration strengthen the populist right-wing party’s migration ideology and other political parties co-opted it in formulating a more restricted migration policy. Thus, Sweden, despite its reputation as ‘humanitarian superpower’ imposed a more restrictive interpretation of asylum law (Krzyżanowski 2018).

According to the immigration authorities, the formal asylum-seeking process consists of four stages: application, investigation, decision, and appeal. This policy aims to ensure an objective, just and informed assessment of the individual applying for asylum. The burden of responsibility is, however, put on the asylum seeker to provide evidence of having the right for protection under Swedish asylum norms. The decision is based on the information from the asylum seeker during an investigative interview, any documentary evidence, as well as the Swedish Migration Agency’s knowledge of the situation in the asylum seeker’s country of origin. An asylum seeker can appeal the decision of the immigration board and is provided with information and a lawyer to assist in the appeal process (Migrationsverket 2020).

Nyström (2014) critically examines the asylum-seeking process and suggests that caseworkers and decision-makers work under time pressure and that the quality of their performance is ignored. Moreover, she stresses that the asylum seeker is generally portrayed as a border transgressor and the caseworkers as border protectors. Besides, the study shows that there is a culture of blame and mistrust at every level in the process, and an avoidance of the ethical issues and dilemmas by either emphasising the objectivity of caseworkers’ evaluations or blaming the Parliament, which enacts the laws they implement. Although asylum seekers can appeal their case, this process can take years, and this puts the life of an individual on hold as will be evident later in this study.

Previous research about asylum seekers learning to belong

While searching for relevant studies on how asylum seekers learn to belong to a new society, we became aware that there was a confusion in the use of the terms: asylum seekers, and refugees. Often research on refugees also includes asylum seekers. Due to our interest in asylum seekers, we primarily used the keywords #asylum seekers#, #learning#, and #belonging# in the EDS system at Stockholm University. We found 13 articles, theses, and books – nine of them focussed on asylum seekers’ children or unaccompanied children’s learning to belong by participating in school. By adding #adult education# and #adult learning#, we found nine publications. To expand our search further, we added #identity formation# and found over 100 titles with different points of focus. To reduce and select more relevant studies, we selected: how asylum seekers are portrayed in their host countries, non-formal activities and different methods for facilitating learning; a sense of belonging and identity formation; and studies of how asylum seekers informally learn in trying to handle their everyday lives.

Among studies that examine how asylum seekers are portrayed in their host countries, Innes (2015) stresses that there is a paradox between asylum seekers’ self-identities and the image produced by the asylum system. While asylum seekers try to actively improve their chances to receive refugee status, the asylum system produces a picture of the real asylum seeker as a passive victim. Kirkwood (2012) asserts that the presence of asylum seekers in the host country is justified there by portraying the countries of origin as dangerous. Kirkwood et al. (2013) stress that asylum seekers are visualised as benefiting from the local community, which is used to legitimise resistance to the asylum-seekers, which in turn limits their possibilities to belong. Khan (2014) suggests that the media play a crucial part in asylum seekers’ identity formation as non-citizens. From these studies, we conclude that the overall picture of asylum seekers and how they are presented in media and the asylum-seeking process creates tensions and gaps that limit their opportunities to learn to belong to the new society.

Many of the activities provided for adult asylum seekers to learn to belong seem to be in non-formal arenas. Morrice et al. (2017) stress for example that state-funded education for migrants is often limited to language learning, and that adult popular education could play a key role. Other studies address different activities to facilitate asylum seekers’ sense of belonging. Smith (2013), for example, suggests that applied theatre facilitates a functional belonging through the development of language and could also restore a sense of self-worth necessary for belonging. However, she also concludes that a sense of belonging is not created by participating in an art project alone. López-Bech and Zúniga (2017) stress that storytelling is a way to give voice to asylum seekers that also builds bridges between them and locals and thereby facilitates integration. Woodhouse and Conricode (2017) claim that playing football is important for male asylum seekers’ sense of belonging, control, and identity-formation. Sorgen (2015) finds that participation in an informal English conversation club based on mutual accommodation has been a key factor in cultivating social networks and support.

The literature on asylum seekers’ informal learning processes in everyday life provides insights into how the British legislation prohibiting asylum seekers from working impacts on establishing a sense of belonging (Burchett and Matheson 2010). Darling’s (2008) ethnographic study of asylum seekers’ everyday life in Sheffield, UK, suggests that asylum seekers cross between spaces of welcome, charity, and generosity and spaces of secured borders and conflict with emergent modes of ethical sensibility. Curtis and Mee (2012), studying asylum seekers placed in a small town in Australia, claim that a sense of belonging is a process of negotiating between citizens who support and citizens who oppose the idea of a refugee camp, and also that a sense of belonging changes over time concerning participation in everyday practices.

The above-mentioned studies show how asylum seekers’ sense of belonging is shaped by the formal asylum process and prejudice in the host countries, and also the difficulties asylum seekers go through when negotiating their identities in everyday life. Asylum seekers also seem to need the support of social networks and engagement in local society.

Learning to belong – a theoretical point of departure

Halse (2018) claims that theories of belonging can either focus on how individuals belong to a specific group or place, or a form of identification with society. In this paper, we suggest that belonging is a learning process related to a person’s biography and their participation in a community. We also stress that learning to belong is part of identity formation. We define identity as how people see and present themselves in relationships, and regarding others (Thunborg and Bron 2019).

Biographical learning

Biographical learning is defined as the ongoing processes where people construct their life, themselves, and their biography in their current life setting (Alheit 1995). People’s biography relates to the narration of their own social and ethnic background, as well as their previous experiences, their present situation, and their yet unlived life (Bron and Thunborg 2015, Alheit 1995).

Bron and Thunborg (2017) refers to biographical work that takes its point of departure in learning from biographical experiences and struggles as a central part of forming and transforming identity. Struggles in biographical experiences can either lead to processes of ‘anchoring’, i.e. feelings of being able to connect to a new situation and/or to one’s biography, or to processes of ‘floating’, i.e. an emotional state where people lose their history and are unable to go either forward or backward, as in a form of a life crisis (Bron 2000). We argue that processes of anchoring are related to processes of learning to belong, whereas processes of floating could be seen as an emotional state of not belonging to the local community and how that lack of belonging itself becomes a part of one's biography.

Socially situated learning

A socially situated learning perspective departures from the social practice(s) in which people learn (Lave and Wenger 1991, Lave 1993). This perspective is commonly used to study learning settings such as workplaces, professional practices, or education. We argue that this perspective can deepen understanding of how asylum seekers learn to belong through their participation in different communities of practices (CoP) in and outside the local community.

Learning is defined as participation in a CoP where people learn to belong by being directly involved in negotiating meaning and forming identity (mutual engagement), structuring social relationships (joint enterprise) and sharing certain tools and language (shared repertoire) (Farnsworth et al. 2016, Wenger 1998).

To be able to learn, one has to get legitimate access to activities (Lave and Wenger 1991) by seeing oneself and being regarded as a legitimate participant by others. Still a CoP can give unequal access that can lead to different ways of participating and belonging, as well as to different identity formation within the same practice. Wenger (1998) also points out that:

Because the term ‘community’ is usually a very positive one, I cannot emphasise enough that these interrelations arise out of engagement in practice and not out of an idealised view of what a community should be like. (Wenger 1998, pp. 76–77)

Wenger (1998, 2000) discusses three modes of belonging: engagement, imagination, and alignment. Engagement refers to the active involvement in activities, negotiation of meaning, and forming trajectories in CoPs. In the paper, we distinguish between formal, non-formal, and informal CoPs. By formal we refer to formal education, non-formal to work or engagement in civil organisations and informal CoPs engagement with friends. Imagination denotes the process of expanding the self from the specific CoP to images of ourselves in a broader perspective – in the world and history, as belonging to a broader collective or a place and history with common roots and/or a shared heritage. Alignment means a scope of action to fit within broader structures, visions, or procedures such as norms, styles, and discourses that are usable across time and space. Wenger (1998) claims that we can engage with others in a CoP without aligning with the broader context in which we live. We can also be connected with others through imagination and yet not care or know what to do about it.

A conceptual framework

In this paper, we define learning to belong to a local community as both a biographical and socially situated process. Through the biographical learning process, asylum seekers construct themselves, their current situation, and the unlived future in narratives. Based on their biographical experiences, we can identify the processes of anchoring and floating. The socially situated learning process focuses on asylum seekers’ participation and engagement in CoPs both inside and outside the local community, but also on their imagination within a broader community and their alignment with procedures, norms, and styles.

These two processes are interrelated and relevant for understanding how learning to belong to a local community is formed both by the access to and participation in social practices and by the integration of biographical experiences.

By combining the theories, we identified four analytical aspects as important in learning to belong: biographical experiences of anchoring, engagement in CoPs, imagination, and alignment.

Method

This paper is part of a 3-year ongoing research project called Spatial pockets of (in)equalities – The educational and life careers of young adults in disadvantaged rural and suburban areas. It is based on biographical interviews with young adults and an ethnographic fieldwork in a small mill town in Sweden. A biographical interview is an in-depth interview where the interviewee tells his or her life story. A biographical story consists of several narratives of the past, present, and future.

This paper is based on the biographical stories of five young asylum seekers living in a small mill town in Sweden. In the project, we conducted interviews with 22 young adults (between 18 and 25) in the small mill town. To recruit them, we contacted different local actors (the municipality, Red Cross, the local football club, and the supermarket) and sent potential interviewees messages through Snowball and Facebook. We also displayed posters about the project in public places.

Among the 22 interviewees, five were asylum seekers and this paper is about them. The interviews were conducted in an apartment at the local hotel. One of the interviews was conducted with two interviewees at the same time. Language was sometimes an obstacle for getting deeper understanding of the interviewees’ experiences. One of the interviews was conducted in English and the interviewee spoke only poor English. The other four were conducted in Swedish and three of the interviewees spoke good Swedish, one rather good. We were aware of the power relations between us and the interviewees, and how gender and ethnicity can impact on the interview situation and the data collected (Hammersley and Atkinson 1983). We tried to be sensitive to these issues in relation to the interviewees.

Hammersley and Atkinson (1983) also stress that the most difficult aspect of doing fieldwork is cultivating close contact with local actors. As researchers, we were both participants and observers at the same time, and in the fieldwork we were ‘strangers’. We went from being tolerated, to gradually being more accepted as a part of the landscape.

Our analyses were conducted in three steps. First, we analysed each asylum seeker’s story presented as vignettes. Secondly, we conducted diachronic analyses, sketching each personal journey through periods of anchoring and floating. Finally, we conducted a synchronic analysis, where we compared their stories of participation in different CoPs with the fieldwork in the mill town. Using both synchronic and diachronic analyses helped to understand the participation in the local community, as well as their biographical processes when they tried to integrate their situated belonging with their biographies (Bron and Thunborg 2017, Thunborg and Bron 2019).

The small mill town

The norms and values in the small mill town are critical to understanding the sense of who belongs and who does not, and it seems to have little to do with ethnicity and other types of ‘otherness’. The small town is situated in Bergslagen, Sweden, and has today about approximately 1800 citizens, about half of them originally from Finland. It is located in a beautiful landscape with forests and lakes. From historical documents, one knows that the town has been a place for ironworks since the fifteenth century. As with most mill towns in Sweden, the population, as well as the social, cultural, and economic life, have been in decline since the 1970s. The population today is older, and the number of young families and young adults is declining.¹

The town and its people could be described as having internalised the mill spirit, which has deep historical working-class roots, defined as a feeling of being an underdog in relation to decision-makers and a sense of ‘we-ness’, in helping and supporting each other (Ekman 1996, Cras 2017). This spirit is a product of an informal psychological contract between the mill patriarch and the local population, where the mill patriarch guaranteed jobs, housing and supported the local associations etc., and the working families provided a long-term supply of trained workers.

Historically, the mill spirit was patriarchal with a ‘paternal’ leadership and distinct gender and class boundaries, typical of the capitalist society (Isacson 2007, Berggren et al. 2011). However, the social order did not exclude a collective spirit and a defence of the weak against abuse. A distinction was made between people who did not belong to the working class, i.e. farmers and officials, and everyone knew their place. The mill spirit was characterised by a sense of loyalty to the neighbourhood, the major company, the environment, the history, and people, etc. Its positive dimension was a strong work ethic, as well as engagement in local sports teams and associations.

The mill towns were built on the relationship between mill owners and workers; the community’s relationship with municipalities and official authorities remains complicated. The mill in our study closed down during the last decade, though the steel and wood industries remain. This mill town was also incorporated in a municipality during a national reform in 1971, but the citizens have always been negative about this. The tension between the municipality and the community has also increased as a result of the lower secondary school closing, which had a serious impact on the life of the town. The decision to open two asylum camps exacerbated the tension among the citizens – not only because of the people arriving but also because the decision was made without consultation. Some of the community claimed that the asylum seekers' ways of behaving and lifestyle were foreign, and sometimes felt like a threat. Others felt that the asylum seekers’ area had become a no-go zone for the inhabitants and that they should be more integrated. Some initiatives were undertaken, such as asylum seekers becoming active in the local football club and a food project collaboration between the Red Cross and the local supermarket.

The five asylum seekers’ learning

In this section, we analyse the five asylum seekers’ learning based on their own stories.

Leah’s story: ‘living here is pretty hard’

Leah is 22 years old. She was born in Iraq and came to Sweden when she was 15 with her sister and her ailing grandmother. When she was a child, they moved to Syria, because of the war in Iraq. When the war started in Syria they were forced to leave and moved to Sweden. They applied for asylum and were placed in an apartment in the mill town. Leah started school, but, just before she turned 20, her claim for refugee status was denied and as an adult asylum seeker without permission to stay, she had no right to finish her upper secondary education. She appealed the decision of the Migration Agency and was still waiting for a decision on her appeal during the interview. After leaving school, she was offered a part-time internship at a pharmacy – first in the mill town, and then in a nearby town. She was offered some courses but did not get any certificates. She then became aware that she as an asylum seeker could not get a Swedish ID or bank account, which made it hard to get a salary. All these made her feel as an outsider. During her leisure time, Leah joined a local church and did some volunteer work with asylum seekers’ children. As she did not meet any young people there, she became active in the church in the nearby town, where she attended Mass and participated in different leisure activities. Leah was also active on Facebook, maintaining her contacts with family and friends outside the town. She claimed that this was her window to the world.

Leah dreamt of continuing to study pharmacology or medicine and leave the town. She found it hard to live there as it was a boring place with no opportunities, no buses, no shopping, and no friends. Besides, she perceived that her life was on hold – she was neither able to leave the town nor pursue her dreams.

Leah’s learning

From our analysis of Leah’s story, her learning process was characterised by constant interruptions leading to periods of floating, for example, moving from one country to the other. However, there were also periods of anchoring, such as when she arrived in the mill town, started school, learned Swedish, and enrolled in natural science – something she had already started in Syria. Her anchoring process, however, was interrupted when her asylum application was rejected. She also started to anchor when she got an internship at the pharmacy and appealed her asylum decision. This was when her interest in pharmacology started and she also learned the importance of having a Swedish ID, which made her start to form an identity as an outsider. When the internship ended, she floated again. Finally, she anchored a third time when she joined the church.

Leah’s story is also a story of how she became a marginalised participant in the mill town and how the formal asylum-seeking process structured her access and participation. She was engaged in formal education, learned Swedish, and started to imagine becoming a student in natural science. She also was engaged non-formally in the pharmacy doing her internship and taking courses. Both these engagements helped her to imagine a future as a student. Changing her non-formal engagement, outside the mill town, in a pharmacy and the church, expanded her social network but also left her with feelings of marginalisation in the local community. She formed an identity, in the mill town as the outsider, and imagined herself as a city person. As she still did not have permanent residency, she had to meet the procedures of the formal asylum-seeking process. Her journey says something about how the asylum-seeking process conditioned her learning to belong to Swedish society, as her life had been on hold for 7 years.

Hawa’s story: ‘it’s not so bad, but it is a bit boring’

Hawa is Leah’s younger sister and she was 19 years old at the time of the interview. She came to Sweden and the mill town when she was 12. When she arrived, and applied for asylum she was enrolled in the mill town school. She recalled that she was bullied and subjected to discrimination and racism. The bullying stopped when she continued her education in a nearby town. She got better grades and loved to study. Like her sister, her application for refugee status was rejected, and they both appealed waiting for the decision. Her dream was to move to Stockholm and study architecture. She also dreamt of moving away from her ailing grandmother and becoming independent. She was, however, aware that if she got no permanent residency, she would not be able to fulfil any of her dreams.

Hawa once took on work in delivering advertisements in the mill town but felt misused and cheated. However, she felt the mill town was not so bad, if a little boring, with few activities for young adults and limited opportunities to shop. Even though she has lived there for 7 years, she does not feel that she belongs there.

Hawa’s learning

Hawa was floating when leaving Iraq and Syria, and her process of anchoring began when starting school and learning Swedish. Her anchoring process was first interrupted by being bullied in school and again when her asylum application was rejected, but in contrast to her sister, she continued to anchor by being able to study. Her learning process thus seems to be in and out of anchoring.

Hawa's story is a story of how she learned to be a marginalised participant in the mill town, but also formed a sense of belonging to Sweden. As she was mainly engaged in school, a formal CoP, in which she learned Swedish, and loved to study, she formed a sense of belonging and also and identity of being a good student. This identity was important enabling her imagination to become a student in architecture.

When she was enrolled in the local school and found herself a subject of racism, she became a marginalised participant and an outsider in the local community. Her feeling of being an outsider became stronger when she felt misused and cheated. It is, however, important to stress that she felt living in the mill town was not too bad, even if she wanted to move to a larger city.

Hawa’s story also shows how the formal asylum-seeking process conditioned her learning, even if formal education became a refuge from the struggles around her asylum application, and even if she had to align herself with being an asylum seeker.

Tara’s story: ‘if you are young and want a hassle-free life you can live here’

Tara was 21 years old and came from a Roma family. She was born in Montenegro, grew up in France, moved to Germany and Switzerland, and, finally, ended up in Sweden. Her mother died when she was 14 and was buried in Switzerland. Her father lived in Germany, but they had had no contact since he left the family many years ago. Tara got refugee status, but her older sister’s application was rejected. At the time of the interview, Tara was living with her sister waiting. Her dream was to see the world, big cities such as Dubai, before settling down, getting a profession, and having a family. Her dream was to become a policewoman, or a lawyer and live in Switzerland near her mother’s grave. Her perception of the mill town was that it was too small, quiet and had too few people in her age group.

Tara’s learning

Tara had never been able to anchor to a place in her life and had been constantly floating. Since leaving Montenegro as a child, she had constantly moved to different countries and thus developed a nomadic identity.

Tara was engaged in formal education and, in that CoP, she learned Swedish and graduated. Learning languages was, however, something she had done all her life – she also spoke French, Montenegrin, and English. Tara as a young woman was not engaged in any non-formal CoPs in the local community or elsewhere. Informally, she was only engaged with her sister and some of her sister’s friends, who were asylum seekers. Her participation in the mill town could be described as ‘disconnected’. Switzerland seemed to be the only place where she felt belonging because of her mother’s grave.

In Tara’s story, we can see how the formal asylum-seeking process regulated her access to and participation in different CoPs, and her learning to belong. Her engagement in school was crucial for learning Swedish but did not become a CoP in which she became engaged, which could also be seen as part of her biographical experiences where the school was unimportant. Even though she had got a residency permit in Sweden, her sister’s application had been rejected, so she was stuck anyway, waiting for the result of the appeal.

Tara was in a permanent process of floating due to being on the move, and the uncertainty about her future, being disconnected from the local community and imagining a future somewhere else, constantly forming a nomad identity.

Tibe’s story: ‘I just say 'hej, hej'² and nothing more’

Tibe was born in Eritrea but moved to Ethiopia when she was two. She came to Sweden when she was 21, pregnant with her son, who was 3 years old during the interview. She went from Ethiopia to Sudan, Libya, Italy, and Germany, and finally reached Sweden – most of the journey by foot. When she and her husband were about to take the refugee boat from Libya, her husband suddenly disappeared and she had not seen him since then. When she arrived in Sweden, she gave birth to her son and was placed in an apartment in the mill town. Tibe’s application for asylum was rejected, but she could not go back to Ethiopia or Eritrea as she had no documents to prove her national identity. During her time in Sweden, she converted from Islam to Christianity and joined the Orthodox Church in a city about 30 km away. According to Tibe, she became a ‘good’ Christian. Her dream was to buy a sewing machine to design clothes. In the meantime, she wanted her 3-year-old son to join kindergarten so he could learn Swedish. She did not know anyone in the mill town, except other asylum seekers that she sometimes met to drink coffee or have dinner. The only interaction Tibe had with locals was when she met them on the street and said ‘hej, hej’ and nothing more.

Tibe’s learning

According to Tibe, her journey from Ethiopia to Sweden was a real struggle, as she was pregnant and lost her husband along the way. Her long journey to Sweden, traversing different countries, as well as the asylum-seeking process and subsequent rejection and appeal, has put her in a constant position of floating.

When she arrived in Sweden and gave birth to her son, she started anchoring in motherhood and, by converting to Christianity and joining the Orthodox Church, she started anchoring and imagining herself as a ‘good’ Christian and learning to speak English. She did not talk about her journey from Ethiopia to Libya and Europe but noted that it was terrible.

Tibe’s story shows how she became disconnected in the local community. Her main engagement was non-formal, in the Orthodox Church, and becoming a ‘good’ Christian was her way of belonging to something bigger than herself and her situation in the mill town.

Why she chose to convert to the Orthodox Church was unclear. When she was asked, she responded that she had found Jesus who would help her. She also added that it would be impossible for her to re-unite with her husband as they now belonged to different religions. Maybe, it could also have been an attempt to avoid being sent back to Eritrea, or a way connecting to Swedish society, though most Swedes are barely Christians and, if so, they are Protestants. Her engagement in the church, however, hardly meant that she imagined herself being Swedish. Tibe did not have access to formal education before, and barely spoke English. Neither was she engaged in any CoPs in the local community, apart from informal contacts with other asylum seekers in her neighbourhood, which some of the locals called the ‘no-go zone’. She imagined that her son would help her become part of the local community, particularly when he started kindergarten. Even though she imagined herself sewing and designing clothes, her only real aim was to prevent being deported. She was entirely disconnected from the local community.

Ahmed's story: ‘I live in the mill town and it is pleasant, very pleasant’

Ahmed was 24 years old at the time of the interview. He came from a small place in Pakistan, where his father had a small business in asphalt paving and graduated from upper secondary school before he left. He sought asylum in Sweden when he was 21. On arrival to Sweden, he was placed at a refugee camp in the mill town and realised that he was the only one speaking Urdu there. He then asked the staff if there was a painting firm around and was advised to get in touch with one in the neighbourhood. He got an apprenticeship and a permit for work for 2 years. There were eight painters at the firm, all of them from the mill town, and Ahmed made many friends. He played floorball, went to the gym, and learned Swedish. Wanting to learn faster, he offered to pay for extra classes, but was not successful. Ahmed liked living in the mill town and the people there. He liked his boss, who helped him a lot. At the same time, he had a dream of running his own business. As his father had his own company in Pakistan, Ahmed wanted to have the same. Ahmed wanted to stay in Sweden making plans for the future; He was going to have surgery for his polyps, get a driving licence, and learn Swedish to make his living in the mill town or elsewhere in Sweden.

Ahmed’s learning

Ahmed could be seen as gradually anchoring to both his new life and the local community. Like many asylum seekers, he was in a period of floating when leaving his country of origin and arriving in Sweden. When he arrived in the mill town, he struggled with the language. However, through his apprenticeship (a non-formal CoP), he started gradually anchoring in the local community by working, learning Swedish, and finding new friends. In this process, he had support from his boss, friends, and the male community of the mill town. He made plans for a life in Sweden.

Ahmed’s story shows how he became a co-participant in the town and part of the male community. Through his work with eight other men, he was invited to various informal CoPs to play floorball, go to the gym and meet friends. With the constant support of his boss, he got a work permit. Through local engagement, he also started to learn Swedish. When we met him, he was dressed like other young men in the town and spoke Swedish with the local dialect. Even though Ahmed was keen to learn Swedish, he had not been able to access classes. Despite offering to pay for them himself, and his boss trying to persuade the municipality to take him on board, it had not worked. So he had to learn Swedish informally by listening to Swedish radio and TV. He imagined starting his own restaurant somewhere in Sweden in the future. Changing track from asylum-seeking to work was important in Ahmed learning to belong to the local community, though a temporal solution.

A comparison between the five asylum seekers’ learning

In Table 1 below, we compare the five asylum seekers’ learning.

Table 1. A comparison of the five asylum-seekers’ learning to belong to the local community.

Aspects of belonging	Participation Marginalised participation		Disconnected participation		Co-participation
	Leah	Hawa	Tara	Tibe	Ahmed
Age	22	19	21	24	24
Age when arriving to Sweden	15	12	15	21	21
Previous educational experiences	Primary school in Syria	Primary school in Syria	Different schools in different European countries	No experiences	Graduation from upper secondary education in Pakistan
Biographical experiences	In and out of floating	Out and in of anchoring	Floating	Floating	Gradually anchoring
Engagement in formal CoPs	Interrupted upper secondary education	In upper secondary education	Graduated from upper secondary education	–	–
non-formal CoPs	Ended internship	Church	–	Orthodox church	Apprenticeship
	Church				Floorball
informal CoPs	Facebook	–	Other asylum-seekers	Other asylum-seekers	Friends in the mill town
Imagination	Student	Student	Nomadity	Christianity	Part of the local community and the Swedish society
Alignment	Meeting the asylum-seeking process	Meeting the asylum-seeking process	Meeting the asylum-seeking process	Meeting the asylum-seeking process	Changing from asylum track to work force migration track Adapting to local norms, styles and dialect

In this paper, we have distinguished between three types of participation in the local community: marginalised, disconnected, and co-participating.

Learning to be marginalised in the local community relates to Leah and Hawa’s biographical experiences of going in and out of anchoring and floating. They came as children and got their experiences of participating in different CoPs in the local community, which created identities as outsiders. However, getting access and engaging in formal education seemed to be important in learning Swedish and getting the legitimacy to participate in Swedish society, and imagining themselves as students. This imagination connects with their previous experiences of being good students in Syria. Through access and engagement in non-formal activities outside the local community, they started to plan a future away from the mill town. They thought becoming legitimate refugees and getting a Swedish ID was the key to their future, so aligned themselves to meeting the requirements of the asylum process.

Learning to become a co-participant could be described as an integration of biographical experiences and gradually anchoring in and belonging to the local community. Ahmed re-anchored in his biography and could engaged in the mill town, partly because he comes from a small place and an entrepreneurial family. He sought an apprenticeship in a painting firm in the Mill town and gradually learned to paint and engage in the local community. His boss and colleagues took him under their wings and they became key people in his everyday life, functioning as door openers in the social life of the town. Ahmed fitted into the local community by being a young working man, eager to be part of the ‘we-ness of the town. Though he was not able to get a formal education in the Swedish language, he was eager to learn Swedish informally and make his way in the local community. Changing track from asylum seeker to worker aligned him with the local community, and adopting the local norms, style, and dialect.

Learning to be disconnected from the local community could probably be best seen as floating, i.e. neither being able to connect to their present situation with their biographical experiences from the past, nor an imagined future. Learning to be disconnected, however, also relates to a situation of not participating in CoPs in the local community. Tara went through formal education and Tibe was engaged in the Orthodox Church, but their engagements seemed neither to shape a sense of belonging to the local community nor to the Swedish society. Despite having future dreams, they were not able to change their life situations. For Tibe, the only hope was not to be sent back; for Tara, her sister’s residence permit. Their alignment was to meet the asylum process in the hope of being able to stay; being in limbo made their situation disconnected. However, Tibe imagined herself as a good Christian and stressed her belonging to Christianity, while Tara stayed on the biographical track of her nomadic identity.

Discussion

This paper explores how asylum seekers learn to belong to a local community. From our theoretical point of departure, we stress that learning to belong to a local community is both a biographical and socially situated process. According to Bron (2000), all types of movements and changes in life situations lead to periods of floating where people are stuck and not able to move forward or back. It is, however, important to anchor (Bron and Thunborg 2017). From the biographical experiences of these five asylum seekers, constantly moving from place to place, meant a constant interruption of anchoring and, for some, even became a way of life. The constant interruptions created a pendulum of anchoring and floating that led to a negative perception of society, and learning to be an outsider rather than belonging.

Wenger (1998) addresses three modes of belonging: engagement in CoPs, imagination, and alignment. We have, in this paper, distinguished between the asylum seekers’ engagements in formal, non-formal, and informal CoPs. Three of the asylum seekers arrived at the mill town as children and therefore had access to formal education, which was of high importance in learning Swedish and forming an identity as good students. Svensson and Eastmond (2013) stress how asylum-seeking children find meaning in school, which gives a sense of belonging. In this paper, we also found that formal education gave the asylum seekers hope during an uncertain application process. The paper also explored what it means to become an adult asylum seeker, i.e. losing the rights you used to have as a child by, for example, having to leave school before graduation.

Previous studies have addressed asylum seekers’ participation in non-formal settings such as popular education (Morrice et al. 2017, Smith 2013, López-Bech and Zúniga 2017), but from the results of this study, we stress that adult asylum seekers are limited to participating in non-formal CoPs. Such engagement, however, can be both an opportunity and a trap; the opportunity is to expand social networks and learn (Woodhouse and Conricode 2017, Sorgen 2015), while the trap is to engage only with other asylum seekers and thus become isolated from the local community.

Informally, the norms and values of the local community, and the areas in which asylum seekers are offered apartments, are crucial for understanding how they learn to belong. The mill town’s residents had different ways of constructing the establishment of the asylum camps and the asylum seekers themselves – and the lack of integration also conditioned their ability to engage and belong (Curtis and Mee 2012). Seeing the areas where asylum seekers live as ‘no-go zones’ also helps us to understand these tensions (Darling 2008). Ahmed was engaged in informal CoPs in the local community, which became part of learning how to become a co-participant. He learned from his friends not only about the local community, but also about being Swedish. The others did not informally relate to the local community, instead were engaged in Facebook or with other asylum seekers, which limited their opportunities to learn to belong. They are thereby constructed and are constructed, as outsiders.

In the study by Fejes and Dahlstedt (2017) and Fejes (2019)), it is stressed that learning Swedish and about Sweden is essential to gain employment. One of our conclusions, from this paper is that learning Swedish is an important but not sufficient condition. Three of the asylum seekers in this study spoke Swedish very well, but still did not belong to the local community. Ahmed’s Swedish was initially very poor, but as he got access to the local community, he improved his Swedish and at the same time learned to belong. Previous research has also stressed the importance of getting a job to learn to belong, and in this paper, we have shown that getting an apprenticeship meant not only getting a work permit but also access to belong to the local community. For Leah, however, her internship only gave her access to working life.

The five asylum seekers each had different dreams and hopes for the future. Both their biographical experiences and their engagement in different CoPs conditioned their imagined future. Their different cultural backgrounds and participation in formal education shaped dreams of a future vocation. Their imagining of being students was a continuation of being good students in school, just as coming from a family of entrepreneurs meant imagining having their own business and being good at sewing created dreams of becoming a designer. Tara, however, even though she had ideas about her future vocation, was generally apathetic about the future and only dreamt of taking care of her mother’s grave. All of them, except Tara, dreamt of a life in Sweden.

Wenger (1998) stresses that alignment is also important for learning to belong. The asylum seekers’ opportunities to align their future was related to the outcomes of their formal asylum-seeking process, which shaped their learning to belong in various ways. As asylum seekers, they had no right to fully participate in Swedish society, and many of them have lived disconnected and marginalised for many years. Innes (2015) asserts that the determination of who is awarded refugee status, and who is not, seems to affect asylum seekers’ self-identities. For all, except Ahmed, it was impossible to align with future projects – their everyday life was defined by waiting and hoping for a positive answer vis-à-vis their asylum application. Getting refugee status, they believed, would allow them to realise their dreams. The process that was intended to guarantee the asylum seekers’ rights has created a situation of being in limbo. Wernesjö (2014) suggests that a residence permit may act as an acknowledgment of being accepted as belonging in Sweden. From the stories of the asylum seekers in this study, not getting refugee status seemed to structure their sense of belonging in the local community. For Tara, however, it meant nothing because her sister’s application was rejected, but for Ahmed, a temporary permit created the conditions for starting to belong to the Swedish community.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have explored how five young adult asylum seekers learned to belong to a local community in the shadow of their formal asylum application process. There are few studies on adult asylum seekers learning and, in this paper, we have argued that there are several ways to learn to belong to the local community. We have also argued that the asylum process negatively shapes learning to belong.

The people we met were not even 25 years of age and had their whole lives in front of them. The asylum process, however, had put some of them into a limbo situation. Some of them were stateless nomads, disconnected from society. Being in limbo can be understood as a trajectory of suffering, which according to Schütze (1987, 1992) means a disorder of life situation.

Others, though marginalised, had the potential to become part of Swedish society and were planning for the future and hoping to get status as refugees. Finally, one had changed track and had learned to belong to the local community. Even though his future was uncertain, he was able to start learning to belong to Sweden as well.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The project is financed by Formas - The government research council for sustainable development. Project number: 2017-00939 [or FR-2017/0009].

Notes

1 In Swedish, these areas are called ‘bruksorter’ and they are of different sizes. In Bergslagen, mill towns have been dominated by ironworks, in other parts they have had paper mills or glassworks industries. This small mill town nowadays has the size of a village, but it was a town with a larger population some decades ago. Therefore, we call it the small mill town.

2 Hej is ‘hi’ in Swedish.