Inequitable discourses on refugee students resisted and maintained by educators – the perspective of decontextualisation

ABSTRACT

This paper examines discourses that place refugee students in an inequitable position in school. Focussing on decontextualisation – a depoliticising way of seeing education that overlooks contexts – the paper is based on semi-structured interviews with teachers (n = 15) and open questions of a survey data (n = 267) collected from teachers, principals and teacher assistants at the end of 2022 in Finland. After analysing discourses, we found that educators both resisted and maintained the discourse of valuing skills in terms of the starting points/readiness of refugee students and in language hierarchies; the discourse of normality in inclusivity and in behaviour; the discourse of silence in antiracism education for teachers and in addressing racism in students’ peer relations. The paper concludes that decontextualisation is grounded in everyday schooling and fails to recognise the differing intersecting positions and contexts that create inequitable possibilities for different people in society. This paper calls for a continuous systematic effort of antiracism education at all levels, as well as curricular structures that support schools in understanding contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Decontextualisation
• discourse
• education
• refugee

Introduction

The Finnish national core curriculum for basic education requires all schools to adopt an inclusive pedagogy that considers the different needs of students and supports the inclusion of all as part of the (school) community and learning (Finnish National Agency for Education 2014). The ideal of inclusion for all does not always transfer from intentions into practice, and lack of resources is one clearly recognised cause for this (e.g., Alisaari, Kaukko, and Heikkola 2022). One timely example of how this inequity plays out is in schools’ capabilities to ensure equal access to quality education for students with different kinds of refugee backgrounds¹. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent and ongoing war, over 66 000 Ukrainians have arrived in Finland after fleeing their home country (Finnish Immigration Services 2024). This current influx of Ukrainian refugees hasn’t been labelled a ‘refugee crisis’, even though countries like Finland have received more Ukrainian refugees than during the 2015–2016 ‘crisis’², when increased numbers of asylum seekers arrived from the global south (Näre, Abdelhady, and Irastorza 2022). Instead, Western media and politicians have portrayed white Ukrainians fleeing war as more deserving of empathy and support than non-white refugees from other war zones. According to ENAR (2022), the ‘Temporary Protection Directive’ applied to Ukrainians reflects a racist double standard that denies the same legal protection to non-Ukrainians.

Thus, the inclusion of refugees in society or in school is not solely a question of resources, but structural and systemic values. These values inform discourses that shape the ways students are included in school and are reflected in everyday school encounters. This paper scrutinises discourses that position refugee students inequitably. This positioning is often unintentional and happens in relation to schools’ expectations of what is acceptable, desirable or ‘normal’ (Juva and Holm 2017; Lanas and Brunila 2019; Youdell 2006).

By discourse, we mean the complex interconnected webs of being, thinking, and acting, that are in constant flux (Gannon and Davies 2014). These emerge within and reflect specific power relations rendering some ideas as common sense and others as nonsensical (Youdell 2006). In this kind of understanding a subject is constituted through discourses, that is, the meanings through which the world and the self are made knowable and known (Foucault 1977). One is both subjected and simultaneously made into a self-knowing subject through available discourses and positioning within those discourses (Laws and Davies 2000). Therefore, the refugee student is not only the one who actively makes the world but also the one who is already preconfigured and labelled.

Educators participate in maintaining and reproducing inequitable discourses, as well as in recognising and challenging them. Research has shown that inequitable discourses operate through teachers even when they work from a belief that their practices are equitable (Gillies 2011; McGregor 2015). A further problem is that the teaching force in Finland comes predominantly from white, middle-class communities, sometimes with little or no experience of working with diversity (Ennser‐Kananen 2020). Such teachers tend to be less aware of issues such as structural racism, an issue often faced by refugee students (Baak 2019), and their lack of experience in dealing with it may unintentionally contribute to the reproduction of inequities (Duncan 2019). It has also been noted that teachers with little experience with diversity may get stuck in emotions of fear, shame, and guilt while arguing for the importance of love and humanity to overcome the discomfort of antiracism work (Matias and Allen 2013). Overall, research has shown that the Finnish school reproduces whiteness as a norm and privilege through the racialisation of minorities (Helakorpi 2020).

In this study, we look at the discourses resisted and maintained by educators (teachers, teaching assistants and principals) that place refugee students in an inequitable position in relation to other students. We draw on interview and questionnaire data produced with educators in 2022, at a time when large numbers of newly arrived Ukrainian students had enrolled with them. Examining the way children and young people are discursively produced in the education system is important as it not only directly affects how they are seen and encountered in school but also what kind of possibilities open or close for them later in life.

Theoretical framework and previous research

The discourses producing and limiting the possibilities for refugee students, like for all students, are manifold and tied to wider societal movements. In this section, we outline previous literature on inequitable discourses related to refugees’ schooling in receiving countries. Particularly relevant to our argument is to understand how decontextualising education, and its side-products of individualisation and psychologisation, disadvantage students whose past experiences differ from the ‘mainstream’.

When education is decontextualised it is seen as depoliticised, free from normative pressures and free from political agendas (Heikkinen et al. 2021; Säntti, Puustinen, and Hansen 2023). Decontextualisation is part of a larger educational shift in which learning-based discourse overemphasises the cognitive activity of individuals (Biesta 2014), overlooking what happens in the world around them. Learning is often discussed as a neutral activity without a socially, historically, culturally, or institutionally defined context (Simola 2021) and with no acknowledgement of the socially, historically and culturally developed ways of understanding the world (Heikkinen et al. 2021). This approach highlights students’ individual responsibility for their learning (Puustinen, Säntti, and Simola 2022) and suggests that students’ needs and duties are the same for all. This individualistic viewpoint overlooks the ways in which many challenges intertwine with conditions of possibility, which in turn are prefigured by societal problems such as racism, sexual inequality, gender inequality, harassment, heteronormativity, economic or geographical inequalities (Väisänen and Lanas 2021). For instance, racism in schools is often approached in an individual-centred way, mainly as a problem related to students’ migration or cultural backgrounds (Souto 2022). Looking at issues such as racism as individual problems or issues of group dynamics overlooks the fact that racism is structural, stemming from faults in our societal and educational systems (Alemanji 2016).

Framing social problems as individual deficiencies contributes to psychologising education (Ecclestone and Brunila 2015). Overall, educational institutions play a central role in perpetuating the emergence and operation of the psy-disciplines³ as natural, inevitable, ethical, and liberating (Petersen and Millei 2016). Therapeutic traditions have been made highly accessible to the public and suggested as solutions to all sorts of problems, whilst obscuring important differences in their roots and ideological commitments (Ecclestone and Brunila 2015; McLaughlin 2011). A diverse range of projects sharing a common theme of enhancing emotional well-being has become a standard feature of contemporary education systems (Lanas and Brunila 2019). It is important to acknowledge that universalising problem solutions favoured in psycho-emotional interventions and behavioural training can be quite useless when the problems being tackled are gendered, racialised and classed (Allan and Harwood 2016).

In refugee studies, a number of researchers have criticised the pervasiveness of a deficit orientation when it comes to students (e.g., Mitchell 2012; Shapiro and MacDonald 2017) as well as to a lesser extent to teachers (e.g., Helakorpi, Holm, and Liu 2023). Discourse in much of this literature tends to emphasise what refugee students lack instead of what they are or could be. Schools and teachers, in turn, are often portrayed as remedial factors bridging gaps in students’ learning. Frequent replication of these deficit-oriented narratives can result in educational policies and practices that limit opportunities for refugee-background students (Kaukko and Wilkinson 2021). Parallel to the deficit discourse, a discourse on resiliency has emerged, which emphasises the personal capabilities of an individual to resiliently overcome various challenges and highlights teachers and other educators as heroic missionaries (Meyers and Hambrick Hitt 2017), which brings forth different problems. Public and political discourses in countries receiving refugees repeat the view that refugees must become resilient, entrepreneurial and active subjects in order to fulfil the societal expectations targeted at them (Petäjäniemi 2022). And yet, becoming all these does not lead to structural change. Instead, for example, education’s gendering and racialising practices (Kurki, Brunila, and Lahelma 2019), as well as restrictive immigration policies, remain normalised, while structural inequalities are attributed to individual failure (Green 2019).

As Burman (1994) famously claims, developmental psychology and the related ideas of a normal developmental course are among the strongest regulatory discourses of childhood and youth. Such normative discourses detach young people from their sociopolitical and historical contexts, providing homogenised descriptions of child development, idealising young people who fit into such descriptions and pathologising those who do not (Burman 1994; Lanas and Brunila 2019; MacLure et al. 2012). This ends up meaning that a student who is white, Finnish, Finnish-speaking, middle-class, secular Lutheran, lives in a straight family, and meets the competence and behavioural targets of a ‘normal’ student becomes produced as normal (Riitaoja 2013). Lanas (2022) has analysed how ‘proper behaviour’ is discursively constructed in school. In order to behave properly, children should:

express positive emotions and refrain from expressing negative emotions; be active and proactive in ways that teachers want and recognise, but to refrain from activity that appears agitated; accumulate sufficient personal resources to be able to work independently, and also to share these resources by helping others; focus on school and prioritise school over other areas of life; demonstrate submission to adult authority and societal norms; be socially adept in their relationships with both peers and adults. (Lanas 2022, 212)

Souto (2022), in turn, found that behavioural norms differ between Finnish-born and migrant students in Finnish secondary schools. While loud, ‘disruptive’ behaviour was disciplined among both groups, the so-called misbehaviour of immigrant students was commented on in relation to ‘Finnish ways’ of acting and speaking. Thus, the ‘Finnish ways’ were defined primarily as discipline and order, a proper way of acting in the school space (Souto 2022). In summary, requirements are assumed to apply to all children and youth but not all have equitable possibilities to fulfil these requirements. Those who fail to comply may end up viewing themselves as unworthy, incomplete, and inferior (Goffman 1963).

All the above-mentioned discourses, and overall, the idea of decontextualisation, focus on the individual while overlooking differences in conditions of human opportunities. This silences the fact that human subjects are not ‘free’ but are instead situational and relational beings, conditioned by the intersectionality of (among other markers) their age, ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexuality, and mental health (Collins and Bilge 2016). Ignorance of these cultural and societal aspects of human life, or the power relations defining our possibilities, ends up reproducing the problem of structural inequality (Brunila and Rossi 2018).

Data and analysis

This paper is based on a research project ‘KOTI: From emergency responses to sustainable practices in refugee education’ (funded by the Kone foundation). In September-October 2022, we conducted a survey asking Finnish teachers, principals, and teaching assistants to share their views on the state and future needs of refugee education in Finland. The survey was distributed via email and social media by the authors of this article. In addition, several Finnish educational organisations and networks⁴ disseminated the survey through their own channels. We received 267 responses to our survey. The ages of the respondents ranged from 23 to 71 (avg. = 47, std. = 10.09). More details of the respondents are visible in Table 1; percentages may exceed one hundred, as the participants were able to choose several options. The survey consisted of 10 background information questions, 6 multiple-choice questions, 4 Likert scale questions, and 12 open questions. In this paper, we focus on the open questions.

Table 1. Details of the respondents.

Profession	Teacher 81%	Principal 12%	Teaching assistant (7%)	Other (15%)
Gender	Female 86%	Male (13%)	Other (1%)
School level	Elementary (47%)	Secondary (32%)	Primary (15%)	Other (12%)
Specifics	Preparatory education (27%)	Special education (16%)

In December 2022, we deepened the findings of the survey by conducting semi-structured group and individual interviews with 15 teachers. Six of these worked as preparatory class teachers, four as Finnish as a second language teachers, two as special education teachers, one as a class teacher and one as a subject teacher. One interviewee worked as both a special education teacher and a Finnish as a second language teacher. Authors 1 and 2 conducted the interviews via Zoom. In the interviews we asked some general questions about educational practices that the respondents found inequitable but also asked more specific questions relating to the support of refugee students, preparatory education, speaking different languages, the war in Ukraine, and discussing refugee issues in classrooms.

Although the invitation to participate in the study was open to all educators, it is likely that the participants were those who were already interested in or concerned about refugee issues, especially the ones who volunteered to take part in the follow-up interviews. Hence, the sample is not representative of all educators in Finland or even those working with refugee students. Also, as always, the knowledge constituted here is partial and situational, produced in response to particular research interests, circumstances, and time (MacLure 2013).

Overall, the interviews were in line with the questionnaire data. The cited discourses had not so much to do with the form of the data sets, but rather the participant’s job description: if the participant was a preparatory education teacher, then they generally ended up resisting the inequitable discourses more than maintaining them. However, the two distinct data sets, to some extent, carried a different undertone: the questionnaire answers were often written as declarative, whereas the interview responses were more reflective. This may have to do with the nature of the data production. When filling out the survey, educators had a larger selection of discourses at use, as social conventions (such as refraining from the use of derogatory terms) did not play as big a role as they did in interviews. During the group interviews, the educators were building a joint understanding of refugees’ schooling and sharing their experiences in relation to the experiences of the group. This produced the group interviews as somewhat tentative, and complementary to the more abrupt questionnaire answers.

We think of discourses in a Foucauldian post-structuralist manner, which means that being (or becoming) a refugee student is bound to the surrounding discourses and power relations that alter people as subjects. Power relations constitute human beings within discursive formations that are only descriptions, albeit sometimes powerful descriptions with very real material effects (St. Pierre 2013). The descriptions may not be rational, intentional, ethical, or progressive, but they are still producing us and the world (St. Pierre 2013), including the (inequitable) practices in daily school life.

In the analysis, we identified meaning-bearing concepts and binary divides that generated dominant meaning-production in what was said (Lenz Taguchi 2008). In practice, we searched for explicit or implicit descriptions in which refugee students became positioned as unequal, or which referred to issues that complicated refugee students’ schooling. As an analytical tool, we utilised the question of ‘what is the problem represented to be’ (see Bacchi and Goodwin 2016) and ended up with a list of problems (e.g., refugee students’ lacking skills, refugee students having no desire for learning, too much work for educators, too few resources, different languages spoken in class, too much diversity, racist discussions in the staff room, educators escaping equity-related in-service training, and so on). Based on their content, we grouped these problems according to discourses that we identified they cited. We ended up with three main discourses. As these problems were limited (being only partial) and limiting (othering a group of people), we also looked for and found several critical counter-narratives that challenged these problematic representations of refugee students and their schooling. In noticing how power works in and through discourse, the ways some of the educators resisted harmful discourses can be seen as antiracist.

It is important to note that the discourses presented in the findings are not something that the educators possessed as individuals. All the quotes presented in the findings could be interpreted individually and in different ways, but when considered together, they accumulate and pass through a group of people that becomes othered. The aim of this paper is not to blame educators for ‘saying the wrong things’, but rather to examine the discourses that circulate around school system sometimes in unnoticed ways. The discourses are part of the arrangements that prefigure educators’ practices. Some of these discourses are natural and understandable within the context of education, but they still unintentionally produced refugee students inequitably in relation to other students. Identifying these discourses is important for dismantling inequalities.

Discourses resisted and maintained by educators

We identified three main discourses produced by the school system and resisted and maintained by educators. We first present the discourse of valuing (certain) skills. It seemed that students’ skills were assessed in a seemingly neutral manner, but the assessment criteria for these skills worked in favour of some students more than others. Second, we investigate the discourse of normality and its effect of pathologising some students as abnormal. Finally, we examine the discourse of silence, which contributes to minimising society’s perception of structural racism.

The discourse of valuing (certain) skills

One of the functional purposes of schooling is to deliver skills. Imprinted in this aim is an idea of the skills one should acquire at particular stages of education. If Finnish-born and Finnish-educated students function as a measuring stick, students arriving from disrupted educational paths are inevitably at a disadvantage as they lack some of the skills which the school system expects them to have. In the discourse of valuing skills, ‘lacking’ becomes a personal characteristic of students. Consequently, the lack is not seen in, for example, unsuitable pedagogical practices or unrealistic goals.

Starting points and readiness

Some of the educators spoke against the discourse of ‘lacking’ while acknowledging the different context surrounding students and valuing things such as safety above a set of skills to be learned.

If there are big worries and sorrows and maybe a traumatic background, we do everything we can to ensure that the child feels safe. I think that perhaps for refugee children, it is particularly important that before we even start thinking about the learning goals, or at least side by side with them, we create an atmosphere that is as safe, caring and trusting as possible, in which the child can feel safe. (Interviewee 3)

The above quote points to the fact that children come from different backgrounds, and it is the educators’ and school’s responsibility to create conditions for their learning. For this educator, those conditions require safety, caring and trust. So, it is the pedagogical environment that needs fixing, not the student.

Like the above-quoted teacher, many of the interviewed teachers recognised the discourse of refugees as lacking as problematic and unfair. At the same time, they acknowledged that this discourse was powerful and impactful in their work environments. The discourse intertwined with the lack of resources, sometimes positioning refugee students as those to blame, for example, for the increased workload of teachers. One of the teachers noted: ‘In the teachers’ coffee room, they say that those … It’s ugly to say this, but immigrants [‘mamut’; a derogatory Finnish word for an immigrant] take up all the resources. (Interviewee 5)’. This quote reflected a discourse which the educator identified as inequitable and even racist (the use of the derogatory term). However, she immediately pointed to the fact that it is hard to address such discourses (‘it’s ugly to say this’). Even if educators recognise and want to challenge harmful discourses, it is difficult if there is no systemic support. Without institutional support, pointing out problems will be the ‘ugly’ duty of individual teachers and may or may not be successful.

Language hierarchies

It was clear from the interviews that not all skills were equally valued in the Finnish school system. This was perhaps most evident in the language discourses. Language-aware pedagogy, emphasising the value of students’ multiple languages, is required of all teachers (Finnish National Agency for Education 2014), yet teaching in many Finnish schools remains largely monolingual (Alisaari et al. 2019). Educators noted that students need Finnish to learn and to be part of the group: ‘They should have sufficient Finnish language skills to be able to genuinely participate in the group’s activities and keep up with the discussions and topics being discussed’. (Questionnaire answer 107). So, while promoting a shared language is a practical necessity in schools, the other side of the coin is that strict language policies pose barriers to participation for students who are not yet fluent in that language. Thus, language makes participation conditional on individual skills and abilities, rather than a subjective right of the student. This problem is not exclusive to refugee students but relevant to many multilingual learners.

Balancing between supporting the Finnish language and students’ other languages requires awareness from the teacher. The quote below is relatable to many educators.

It requires more time from the teacher because you have to teach them separately and illustrate things in different ways, because there is no common language, and they are learning Finnish. (Questionnaire answer 104)

This quote can be interpreted as a neutral account of teachers’ work. However, the educator uses phrasings that imply how something (a refugee student, lack of language skills) has emerged as extra, changing the situation from the ‘normal’. The quote implies that the norm from which the refugee students deviate produces them as an additional task for teachers.

Valuing languages was not limited to the language of schooling. Some educators also recognised a rather random hierarchy of foreign languages, as was noted by the following preparatory class teacher:

We value and appreciate European languages, French, Spanish, English. But then again, we have a lot of linguistic skills in children: Urdu, Arabic and others that are not necessarily seen as valuable. It would be really important for them to be visible and their experience and skills to be seen and heard at school. And not so that, for example, the use of their own mother tongue is banned or so that it should not be visible in any way. (Interviewee 8)

Language is part of identity (Lo Bianco 2014) and suggesting somebody’s language is of less value is discriminatory. It produces refugee subjects as less able, although they are linguistically not weaker (in fact, they are often more multilingual) than the Finnish students. However, this hierarchy positions speakers of ‘Urdu, Arabic, and others’ as different from a pre-determined, standardised norm. Some educators saw this as unacceptable, but many reproduced this discourse in their responses. One teacher noted: ‘[I should] accept their limited skills’. (Questionnaire answer 214), suggesting that they as a teacher are the one to ‘accept’ the student, despite their lack. Another, even more striking response connected the situation, which had at the time of the survey rapidly changed due to increasing numbers of Ukrainian refugee students, with a lack of motivation to teach: ‘Where do I get the motivation to teach them too? This puts a load on top of all the other work’. (Questionnaire answer 74, our emphasis)

The discourse of lack hides the fact that many refugee students are fluent in multiple languages; those just may not be languages that are spoken in the school. Moreover, it positions students not as language learners but as language illiterate, which can be seen, for example, in this response: ‘The teaching assistant works with the language illiterate student’ (Questionnaire answer 154). Positioning students as ‘language illiterate’ sets them in their final status and an endpoint. Such positioning can have long-lasting effects: refugee students are assumed to develop into ‘language illiterate’ adults. This idea poses barriers for the whole life path of refugees and other migrants whose first language is not Finnish; if their destination is to remain ‘language illiterate’, there is little point in trying to learn.

For a couple of years, I fought with the principal, who had hired a substitute teaching assistant who was an immigrant and spoke bad Finnish. It was worth it even though it was hard. The problem however is that the teaching assistants in both teaching groups are immigrants — and they also push completely language illiterate language trainers into the classes. The teachers do not have enough energy and the pupils should have the right to learn proper Finnish at school, not the incorrect language of the assistants. (Questionnaire answer 12)

The above quote reveals how language skills are used as en excuse to “justify” racist and discriminatory attitudes and actions. The above quote also makes visible how reforming practices to be more inclusive, for instance recruiting multilingual people to schools, may be thwarted when facing strong opposition.

The discourse of normality

The inequitable aspect of the discourse of normality is the way that it positions some students as different from the norm and consequently in need of change. In the data, the discourse of normality was connected to (un)inclusivity and behaviour. Overall, some educators considered difference as something they (the ‘normal’ ones) had to ‘tolerate’ (‘[We should] tolerate difference’. Questionnaire answer 132). The idea of tolerator and tolerated suggests that the latter is somehow unwanted. The ‘tolerated’ are judged by how they influence the life of the majority or the ‘norm’: ‘They [refugee students] should be encountered so that the other students would not suffer’. (Questionnaire answer 195). The counter-discourses of normality highlighted how the schools’ must be altered to be able to include diverse students.

Inclusivity

Some educators expressed ideas about how to be sensitive to the contexts students live in, and inclusive in their teaching. They discussed how to consider the diverse backgrounds of students, without trying to push them into the homogenous boxes of normality.

I strive to act and teach in a language-sensitive way, I take cultural diversity into account, I show interest in students’ backgrounds and skills and take them into account in my teaching, and I strive to be a safe and trustworthy adult. (Questionnaire answer 259)

Part of this sensitivity was to make students feel safe. Refugees are, by definition, people in search of refuge, a safe place. They have left their countries of origin because it was impossible for them to continue living there and are now looking for their places as humans both globally and within multiple new communities. This idea was supported by many of the educators: ‘The student knows that they are expected at school. The teacher wants them to come to school. They are seen’. (Questionnaire answer 26). Although it is not clear how these admirable ideals played out in practice, we can say that there was a willingness among the teachers to welcome and include. However, willingness is not enough, especially if the school imposes practices in the same way for all, despite the student’s different backgrounds.

Something that I find discriminatory is a common culture where it’s forgotten that not everything applies to everyone. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be Christmas decorations and celebrations, but when every single class involves making Christmas cards, even people whose families don’t celebrate Christmas, that’s an issue. (Interviewee 7)

The quote above describes an example of religion-blindness. It means failing to counter the stigma attached to non-Lutheran religious identities and rather than contributing to the fight against, for instance Islamophobia, it becomes part of it (Rissanen 2021). This cycle is part of producing refugee students as deviant and unwanted, which many of the teachers acknowledged as problematic, but was mostly seen in ‘other schools’.

I don’t know how in other cities, places, but we clearly have in some areas, there is no willingness to take the preparatory education there. I understand that too, it adds a lot of colour to the program in the house. (Interviewee 2)

‘Adding colour’ can be interpreted as refugee students being too different from the norm in terms of their skills and abilities, to be included in the school system. It would require too many changes to the structure of the school days. Another interpretation is that simply by existing, refugee students add a range of colours to school that deviate from white. Whichever was meant, ultimately these ideas produce refugees as ‘exotic’, outsiders, or even subjects rendered outside of the educational endeavour. Interestingly, not all refugee students were necessarily produced as outsiders. This remark was made by an interviewed antiracist preparatory education teacher. In her critical response, she explained witnessing the strikingly different treatment the Ukrainian refugees were receiving compared to previously arrived groups:

Since the war in Ukraine started, something that has become quite clear to me – perhaps even at a societal level – is this strong sense of inequality. It has become something I have been thinking about a lot, because there have always been students with refugee backgrounds, asylum seeker backgrounds, throughout the entire time I have been a teacher, and there have never been any extra resources, extra support, or anything extra. It’s always been up to the teacher’s own initiative, whether they remember to shout, demand, ask, hope, and seek out information and help. But this year, there’s been a lot of extra resources, and it’s all been for the Ukrainian students. It’s been hard for me in the sense that when I go to my classroom, there are other children who came from other wars, and no one even remembers that they exist. (Interviewee 8)

The deployment of logics of Europeanness, whiteness, and sameness in schools constrained the inclusion of refugees who did not fit into those categories. As Borocz (2021) aptly suggests, such a system of racialisation rests on the logic of race that arranges diverse populations into homogenous groups, creates borders between them, and fixes them into a system of subordination.

Behavioral norms

The way students are expected to behave in school is a part of the discourse of normality. Educators participate in producing normality in small and mundane, ordinary acts: ‘I try to thank the timid and quiet student whenever they participate in a lesson. The loud and lively one I level’. (Questionnaire answer 26). What constitutes proper behaviour is seemingly unquestioned but often ambiguous for students. For instance, like in the quote above, students should not be too loud but not too silent either. In the quote below, a disturbance was defined as chattering, talking over, joking around, and using a language other than Finnish.

If it’s something disturbing. If there is chattering and talking over and all sorts of joking around in their own language, then I have said that now in the Finnish as a second language lesson, let’s speak Finnish, no other languages are spoken. (Interviewee 6)

The systemic expectations schools impose on students do not always consider children in their contexts. Many educators acknowledged this, but some also seemed to have views that were in line with the systemic problems of the schools: ‘When children come to us fleeing war and some have no desire to learn the Finnish language and absorb our school culture, how should I deal with such children?’ (Questionnaire answer 240). This quote includes several aspects that can be seen as producing inequity through normalisation. Firstly, while the educator recognises the challenge connected to fleeing war, they assume that being a refugee automatically results in a lack of motivation to learn Finnish or ‘absorb’ the school culture. Moreover, the assumption of ‘absorbing’ the Finnish school culture as a task for the student is in line with the one-way assimilation that has long been criticised in educational literature (e.g., Picton and Banfield 2018).

The behavioural norms within the discourse of normality sometimes extended from refugee students to the students’ families and their lifestyles. This is seen in the following quote: ‘Where and what kind of support is available for families, for example for normal life management?’ (Questionnaire answer 222) The parameters for ‘normal life’ were often defined from a Finnish point of view. The definition of ‘normal family life’ can be whatever is considered to be in line with the ‘norm’, usually set by the privileged and for the privileged. It may be, for example, that refugee families consider themselves to be living good lives, but it appears to differ from the norms of the society and is therefore perceived as problematic.

The discourse of silence

The discourse of silence means keeping silent about racism by, for instance, choosing to use other words to describe the phenomenon, downplaying or overlooking racism, or not taking action to dismantle racism. Racism is inseparably bound to discourses of whiteness. These discourses can be explicit, but they can also maintain white supremacy implicitly, for example, by limiting spaces for and voices of students of colour and other racialised children and youth by foregrounding white people and their experiences (Ennser‐Kananen 2020). We illustrate these points below.

Antiracism education for teachers

Antiracism education is needed by both educators and students, something recognised by some of the educators we interviewed. A few suggested equity-related in-service training for teachers, however, teachers also noted how some of their colleagues think fighting racism is irrelevant or even useless. One teacher recalled how teachers who would most benefit from antiracism education work hard to avoid it:

But just as, for example, teachers’ in-service training and other such things, if you don’t even see the need for it, this is a bit related to racism. — — When a principal says, for example, that we will now spend one afternoon on this theme and it will be dealt with, it is not quite the way it should be, and then some of the teachers will still be able to slip up under some other excuse. To clean up a ski boot storage during the training or check some tests or make orienteering maps. So, the point is, are we really present with these things and really developing, it would require a lot more. (Interviewee 9)

The colleague who the interviewed teacher refers to can be seen as ‘wilfully ignorant’, which Tuana (2006, 11) has described as a result of a systematic process of self-deception; wilful ignorance is an ‘embrace that infects those who are in positions of privilege, an active ignoring of the oppression of others and one’s role in that exploitation’. In this kind of thinking, silence is the key: if you do not recognise or mention a problem, it does not exist. The person who talks about problems becomes the problem (Ahmed 2012). Wilful ignorance in schools can be addressed by uncovering discriminatory practices and holding responsible people accountable, even if this results in uncomfortable discussions.

Specific values and norms imbued not only with racism but also ableism, sexism, and classism are unquestioningly included in the educational experience in Finland and elsewhere. As many of our participants noted, some of these values and norms become taken for granted as common-sense knowledge, despite their unfairness. Systemic racism can be thought of as a fog we breathe and into which we have grown. It pervades the whole of society and no person is free from it; one is either its target or its beneficiary, sometimes both. Racism exists everywhere including in teachers’ coffee rooms.

And then you notice it in the discussion in the staff room, it is sometimes very difficult when you realise that, okay, now you don’t quite realise that you are in a pretty grey area, talking about things that are racist. Such practices, such things, such themes and they are laughed at in the staff room. So if we don’t recognise them in ourselves, then it may be difficult for us to recognise them in our pupils. (Interviewee 8)

As the quote above illustrates, the discourse of keeping silent about racism is both maintained and identified within education, but very importantly, it is experienced as difficult to resist out loud.

Addressing racism in students’ peer relations

Racism is also evident in students’ peer relations, although often defined as bullying. Speaking of bullying without reference to underlying racism partakes in the discourse of silence and makes addressing it impossible.

We do talk about bullying, but it comes down to the fact that you’re not Finnish, you don’t belong here, and what your ethnic background is. If you are Russian-speaking, then yes, it is visible and audible. (Interviewee 5)

Fortunately, there is very little bullying on ethnic grounds. We talk to the native Finns about cultural differences and try to understand these issues. (Questionnaire answer 265)

The quotes above demonstrate that it is more convenient to talk about ‘bullying on ethnic grounds’ rather than calling it racism, and instead of focusing on antiracism education, it is easier and more comfortable to draw attention to ‘cultural differences’, which again hides parts of the problem. This is at the core of the decontextualisation of education at the school level; problems, as well as everything else in education, are removed from their context.

Some teachers reflected on the difficulty of addressing racism and felt they were not provided with the support they needed: ‘We do bullying surveys once a month, but I’m not 100% sure whether these kinds of degrading practices or situations concerning ethnic groups are visible in them’ (Interviewee 10). The survey was part of an anti-bullying programme ‘KiVa koulu’, which most Finnish schools subscribe to, but this nationwide programme does not consider structural issues such as racism (Juva, Holm, and Dovemark 2020).

Although some of the teachers participating in interviews mentioned the need for antiracism education, none of the 267 questionnaire answers mentioned it. It may mean that the possibility did not come to mind for those answering the survey, or that they did not see racism as an issue. The latter possibility relates to a problem in larger societal and educational discourses, as racism is clearly a problem in Finnish schools and society. If asked, Finnish schools would most likely say they have strict zero tolerance for racism, something also mentioned in some of the questionnaire answers. However, without systematic, active antiracism work the policy will not be implemented in practice. Several teachers mentioned positive pedagogy (stemming from positive psychology) as a solution to problems in peer relations, including racism. The fact that the approach is pedagogical might suggest that the responsibility to address issues is on the teacher, but overall, the roots of positive pedagogy are individual-focused (Ecclestone and Brunila 2015).

The aim is to address inappropriate behaviour immediately and to guide you towards positivity. (Questionnaire answer 110)

Emotion skills education, positive pedagogy, safe and caring adults (Questionnaire answer 163)

If structural inequities are encountered with training a resilient, positive attitude, it reproduces the discourse of silence and attaches the problem to the individual. In this way the well-meaning utilisation of psy-pedagogies in education could end up being harmful.

Discussion

In this paper, we have examined discourses that place refugee students in inequitable positions in school. According to our findings, educators resist and maintain the discourse of valuing skills in terms of the starting points/readiness of refugee students and in language hierarchies; the discourse of normality in inclusivity and in behaviour; the discourse of silence in antiracism education for teachers and in addressing racism in students’ peer relations. Although the main discourses have been recognised in earlier research, the temporal and spatial contexts of this study brought new dimensions to the reproduction and resistance of these discourses, showing new, specific circumstances, practices and conceptualisations in school (see Helén 2016).

This paper has argued that the educational paths of refugee students stem, not so much from individual children, but from the conditions of possibility shaped by educational discourses. Educators participate in creating these possibilities. However, our critique of the tendency to find fault in individual refugee students works also in relation to teachers. Blaming teachers frames them as responsible for issues that are rooted in larger societal politics of power. While shedding light on discourses that disadvantage refugee students, our desire was not to blame individuals but to understand the discourses of refugee education as part of their larger societal contexts, prefigured by their politics of power.

The discourses of decontextualisation circulating in the school system detach refugee students from their sociopolitical and historical contexts and produce school culture and practices as a static, non-negotiable entities in which the students either fit or do not fit. Maintaining the discourse of valuing (certain) skills disables refugee students. It overlooks an increasingly heterogeneous student and social population by institutionalising the idea of ‘lacking’, thus reproducing learning as an individual practice. The discourse of normality operates in a similar manner, imposing uniformity based on the ideal while at the same time individualising and measuring gaps or differences from the norm (see Lanas and Brunila 2019). It upholds the idea that refugee students, deviating too much from the norm, make ‘equal’ Finnish schools unequal. Resisting these discourses encourages a different way of thinking about skills and being in school than the mainstream school system is used to. It gives space for minority knowledge and reinforces the position of refugee students as knowers and able experts of their own contexts. What is traditionally defined as incompetence, is in fact a potential and positive variation (see also Colebrook et al. 2012). Thinking and doing differently is at the heart of change when moving towards equitable school culture.

Finland is ranked as one of the most racist countries in the EU (Finnish Non-Discrimination Ombudsman 2020). Despite or because of this, the discussion on racism in Finnish education and society is not particularly strong (Leinonen, Seikkula, and Keskinen 2020). The discourse of silence does not recognise racism as a communal and social phenomenon but as a problem between specific individuals, overlooking and downplaying its existence and effects. Resisting the discourse of silence requires racism to be viewed as a structural and historical disorder in the school system affecting the entire school community (see Souto 2022). A positive sign in this direction is that all schools in Finland are now obliged by law to have equality and equity plans to change unfair and discriminatory practices, processes and structures. However, so far, this plays out poorly. These plans are often not made according to the instructions of involving the students and the school staff (sometimes they are not made at all) and the concept of equity is misunderstood as aiming for the same treatment of all students (Okkolin, Miettinen, and Laakso 2022). This underlines how decontextualisation is grounded in everyday schooling and fails to recognise the differing intersecting positions and contexts creating inequitable possibilities for different people in society.

And finally, the system proving attention, resources and empathy to Ukrainian refugee students serves as a welcomed attempt to contextualise their backgrounds. However, what indicates systemic racism is that the needed level of attention, resources, and empathy is not extended to all refugee students. Since the ‘default’ of decontextualisation is to whiteness, white refugees will automatically or implicitly gain more benefit and support from educators and the system. This paper calls for a continuous systematic effort of antiracism education directed to school administrators, educators, teacher students and students, as well as curricular structures that support schools in understanding contexts, such as white normativity.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Kone Foundation.

Notes

1. By refugee students, we mean students who have been forced to leave their country of origin, for example, due to conflict or violence. In line with UNHCR (2016), we do not classify students according to their status as refugees, asylum seekers, or beneficiaries of humanitarian protection. Instead, we mean all students who have been forced to leave their countries of origin.

2. We consider the forced migration in 2015–2016 a crisis of reception rather than a crisis of refugees.

3. Foucault’s collective term for psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis and other psychotherapies.

4. The Trade Union of Education in Finland – OAJ, The Finnish Network for Language Education Policies, and ‘Poiju’, which is a network for the development of linguistic and cultural diversity in basic education.