The Northern European Band: A Swedish school in Africa - An ethnographic study

ABSTRACT

All over the world, there are schools that represent a different educational system and a different curriculum than the country these schools are situated in. Swedish Schools in turn are located in different parts of the world. The main purpose of this study is to describe and analyse some aspects of the social life at one of these schools, as well as some aspects of the relationship between the cultural life at the school and surrounding African environment. The school serves as a protected oasis where children can feel at home and cultivate new acquaintances in a small and safe environment. But the Swedish school also becomes the cultural hub for containing the Swedish teachers’ and parents’ value-system and identities, leaving them pretty much unaltered. Despite the end of formal colonial structures, the West still dominates and controls its former colonies discursively as well as economically and politically.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnography
• Swedish
• Africa
• education
• expats
• postcolonialism

Introduction

All over the world, there are schools that represent a different educational system and a different curriculum than the country these schools are situated in. For example, in Sweden there is the Stockholm International School, The German School and the Lycée Francais Saint Louis (Regeringskansliet 2013). Swedish Schools in turn are located in different parts of the world. These are schools that follow a Swedish curriculum and where teaching and school organisation follows Swedish routines and language requirements as much as possible. At the time of writing, there are 18 official Swedish foreign schools, 15 in Europe, one in Asia and two in Africa. The majority of these schools has pupils who are children to parents who temporarily work abroad. However, to a lesser extent there are also children to parents who have moved to another country on a permanent basis and who still want their children to receive a Swedish education. The main purpose of this study is to describe and analyse some of the aspects of the social life at one of these schools as well as some of the aspects of the relationship between the cultural life at the school and the surrounding African or, more specifically, Migilouian¹ environment.

Foreign schools

The country that this study concerns is located in the southern part of Africa. It has a colonial past and became formally independent in the late 1970s. The country’s economy is based predominantly on agriculture but has increasingly turned to tourism too. In the last few decades, it has enjoyed slow but stable economic and political development. But still, a large part of the State budget consists of foreign aid. The educational institution that we focus on is situated in a large city in the southern part of the country. It is a foreign Swedish school called Sweschool² which was established in 1977. In its neighbourhood, there are also apartments, financial institutions, restaurants and embassies. It is a modern and relatively secure part of the city. About 50 pupils attend school at the primary and secondary level. At the school, two principals and four teachers work full time but some teachers also have full responsibility for smaller and less time-consuming subject matter. The principals have been employed at the school for about ten years. The teachers are recruited from Sweden on three-year contracts. The curriculum is Swedish. Assessment and grading follow Swedish policy. Swedish is also the main language at the school. However, for the pupils that have Norwegian or Danish as their mother tongues, these languages are offered too. However, even though to some extent the school is the result of a Scandinavian cooperative project, for all practical purposes it is a Swedish foreign school.

From the perspective of the teachers it is challenging, of course, having to change one’s culture and environment in order to face new and often totally unexpected challenges. Even if both the country of origin as well as the new country of destination differs between different teachers who chose to work abroad, the critical issues when it comes to work and life in a new country appear quite similar. A number of studies point to the common problems of handling a new and unfamiliar culture that demands new types of action strategies and everyday thinking while, at the same time, getting the teaching job done (see for example, Halicioglu 2015; Roskell 2013; Gillies 2001). Halicioglu (2015) describes the development of successively adapting to a new country as a four-step process. (i) fascination (ii) aggression (iii) superior attitude (iv) adaption and acceptance. However, in order to have a successful transformation, preparation on the part of the teacher is important as is the preparation among working staff at the school to help their new work-colleagues (Roskell 2013). Halicioglu (2015) points out that in those cases where the teacher travels abroad together with her/his family, which is what usually happens, the family’s comfort and well-being, of course, is of major importance to the travelling teachers in order to be able to go through a successful transformation process.

The results in McLachlan’s study from 2007 show that parents often carry a sense of guilt with regard to their kids. In the new country, the families do not have any broad social networks and the family tends to become more important. Gillies (2001) and Halicioglu (2015) argues that in this particular situation the school often has an important role to play as a mediator between the new local context, the old country and the small local expat-communities that often establish themselves around the school. Olsson and O'Reilly (2017) point out that a common trait among emigrants is that they tend to join other emigrants with the same or at least a similar background (see also Woube 2017). Studies have also shown that when the new country differs a lot from the old country, emigrants tend to view the new environment as more hostile and dangerous than it is which increases the tendency to create and join different kinds of expat groups (Lauring and Selmer 2009; Smiley 2010).

Europe abroad

An important factor in the experienced differences between the new country and the old country is the self-image of the national characteristics of the old country that the expats (e.g. expatriates) bring along when they emigrate. In a study about how Swedish peacekeeping forces perceive themselves, the results show that they characterise themselves as typical Swedes with traits such as being calm, stable, maintaining a high-ethical standard, and having great respect for other people (Hedlund and Soeters 2010). According to Öhman (2008) a powerful contributing factor towards the shaping of the Swedish self-image of moral superiority compared to people from other societies and cultures is the long Swedish tradition of giving aid to developing countries. This tradition has resulted in a self-image of Swedish citizens as being active and kind-hearted givers in relation to passive and helpless people in developing countries. This mildly condescending perspective, typical of many Western countries when dealing with developing countries has been discussed and criticised many times in the literature on Late Modernity. The era of colonialism still affects the power balances between states and people (Giroux 2002; Omolewa 2007; Chimbutane 2018).

Tejan-Sie (2018) describes how the education system in many African countries early on aimed at getting the individual to contribute to the local society. With colonisation, however, education in these countries was transformed into more formalised institutions that educated a small group of people that would serve the colonial powers’ interests instead. Education created a new class of African citizen with a Westernised education that in part employed a new and different language (Omolewa 2007). At the same time as the large body of African countries was decolonised, neoliberalism with discourses of privatisation and individualisation had started to dominate the politics of the Western world. However, while these ideas were successively introduced into the Western world as a part of the democratic discussion, instead in many African countries these ideas were implemented by a small elite without the support of the people. Moreover, in addition to not having a developed domestic market, these African countries neither had the industrial nor the sociocultural resources that would make them suited to competing successfully on a heavily Westernised global market. The countries became dependent on foreign aid and investment capital (Tejan-Sie 2018) which was interwoven into a second wave of colonisation. As Chimbutane (2018) points out, it is difficult for the African countries to break with their heritage and the history of colonisation still tends to shape Western views of the world and themselves in it (Öhman 2008; Hedlund and Soeters 2010).

Specific framework

This project has called for some use of theoretical resources that we have been less familiar with up to this point. Even though we are experienced ethnographical researchers, post-colonial perspectives have not been our first choice when researching schools in Northern Europe. During this project, however, our understanding of these perspectives, as well as their importance, has grown considerably. In this article, we do not use post-colonial perspectives in a strict sense, but we do apply some perspectives gained from their lines of argumentation.

The situation today, with Western schools established in different parts of the world can hardly be seen as something else than a continuation of the colonial era. A bitter fact that supports this claim is that there are no African schools in Sweden, only the other way around. The colonial era in modern times began in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the successive expansion of European empires. Even though Europe’s direct control over countries in other parts of the world nowadays is over, domination from the north over the south today takes on different forms. This is the analytical focus of post-colonial perspectives.

Post colonialist approaches today are many and diversified and even the term ‘postcolonialism’ has been contested (Young 1998). Drawing from some of the seminal works in the field (for example, Said 1978, 2003; Bhabha 1994; Spivak 1988) Huggan views postcolonial approaches as

a performative mode of critical revisionism, consistently directed at the colonial past and assessing its legacies for the present, but also focusing on those forms of colonialism that have surfaced more recently in the context of an increasingly globalized but incompletely decolonized world. (Huggan 2013, 10)

A major point here is that, despite the end of formal colonial structures, the West still dominates and controls their former colonies (that is, large parts of Asia, South-America and Africa) discursively as well as economically and politically. Hardt and Negri argue that today’s dominance is not mainly carried out by the idea of a state leading an empire but by the power structures that have followed in the footsteps of global capitalism (Hardt and Negri 2000). This means that we can see a transformation from an empire with a distinct epicentre and central sovereign power to an economic de-centred Empire that today rules via means of discourse; aka., a cultural empire that rules by establishing a particular world and societal view through which it governs the people within it.

Edward Saïd in a well-known analysis of the discursive dominance of the West argues that Western culture’s self-understanding is founded on a dichotomisation between the ‘Occident’ and the ‘Orient’ (Said 1978, 1). The Western world’s hegemonic grip is reestablished in post- or perhaps neo-colonial times through processes of othering that reproduce hegemony through acknowledging Western standards as normal and constituting them as the ultimate norm for knowledge as well as value-production. That is, ‘development’, ‘progress’, and ‘rationality’ derive their meaning from their relationship to the dominant Western culture and civilisation. According to these dominating discourses, the Western way is the only way and the relationship of power is reproduced through the different institutions and cultural productions of the West which constructs a suitable Other in order to reaffirm Eurocentric narratives of superiority.

Now, following Saïd’s reasoning we can conclude that a major issue with these newer forms of European dominance are the institutions and social life that they presume; ways of dressing, talking, behaving, which also include ways of viewing the world. Or put differently, they convey a Western ontology and epistemology. In education, this is particularly significant. The Global North’s dominance) over the Global South when it comes to knowledge production is not only a matter of the actual knowledge produced, but also a matter of what counts as knowledge as well as ways of viewing the world transmitted by these knowledge-producing institutions. This Western pattern of institutions of knowledge production not only left large parts of the world in a constant struggle to adapt to foreign ideas but also to ‘create new ones and re-elaborate them with a Global North anticipatory view and an accent on Global South localism’. For the African continent, this has been a major issue not least for teacher education programs. The educational system of the West, when re-established in other parts of the world, threatens to become an instantiation of Western culture and Western forms of life and at the same time Western assumptions of what is important to know and how to live and understand the world.

Methodology & empirical material

The ethnographic methods in this project included thick descriptions, participant observation-based investigations, the collection and analysis of documents as well as interviews and informal conversations with informants (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). A major inspiration for our ethnography is found in the Scandinavian ethnographical tradition (see, for example, Erlandson and Beach 2014; Erlandson and Karlsson 2018) developed from the British Birmingham school. Typical of this tradition are long-term fieldwork, integration between locally situated events, relations between agents within institutional frameworks and sociocultural patterns, together with a sensitivity to political and economic surroundings that places the ethnographical site in a larger context.

One of the researchers has spent considerable time at the Swedish foreign school located in the African country where we conducted our research. As a research team, we were thus able to prepare the actual on-site-data-collection well. We also held preparation discussions over the phone as well as follow up discussions following the data collection period. A document analysis was used as a complement to the situated data work. However, the main body of the data that we use as examples in the article is from a period of approximately one month. During this month we were able to visit the classrooms for participant observation as well as to speak with the teachers and the leaders of the school. We were also able to ‘hang around’ after school hours to have interviews and even informal conversations with the school staff and the parents of the children who attend the school.

A particular concern in this study has been that of research ethics. The discussions we put forth in this text and the excerpts we use are not high stakes since they do not concern especially hot topics. But the situation is that there are not many Swedish schools in Africa, only two to be exact. As such we have avoided revealing the name of the African country in order in order to make any identification of the informants as difficult as possible: the school leaders, the teachers, the parents and the children. In some cases, we have also changed the gender and age of informants. These changes do not corrupt our interpretation of the data in any way nor the analytical topics that we put forth. Identification of particular individuals has been made more difficult though. On the other hand, ethics also delimits how accurately we can describe the context surrounding this research project. In the same way, for ethical reasons, it is hard for us to be more precise than we are when describing the local African culture and city in which this school is located. It has been necessary for us to work out a way of finding a balance between conflicting demands of ethics and precision.

Of course, this kind of research also puts some pressure on us as researchers. We cannot deny that as white academic northern European scholars we represent the epitome of Western culture and education. We have been very aware of this fact and have tried our best to maintain a critical distance to the culture that has produced us as well as to our position as researchers. Nevertheless, the entire ‘social science’ project could be questioned and, from a Foucauldian line of argumentation, can be seen as a normative technology for producing values and norms. However, we have found comfort in the fact that our research topic has been about a school from our own culture even though it is embedded in an African environment. In fact, this environment has actually provided a contrastive backdrop to the school we have researched and has even made our own northern European culture more visible.

Results

A Northern European hub in an environment of otherness

It is an October morning and 30 degrees Celsius. The city is already vibrant with life. There are broken pavements and the morning traffic is loud and intense. Well-dressed businessmen and women are on their way to work and children in school uniforms are on their way to school. At the gate of the school, a uniformed guard salutes the children and their parents as they pass through. The school area is surrounded by walls and the only entrance is guarded around the clock by a private security company. The school area is a calm oasis in comparison to the intense and vibrant city outside. In the shadows under large parasols, teachers, pupils, and parents rest and talk a while before the school day starts. The centre of the school area is a three-story building where the administration and most of the classrooms are located as well as the teacher’s room. There is also a smaller building for music classes as well as a library. At the entrance there is a pool area. The pool is quite small but is much appreciated during the hot (and very hot) school days as well as during the afternoons and over the weekends. All school lunches are served beside the pool. Within the school area, there is a tennis court that also serves as a playground and/or a football field during school-breaks. Within the main building, the atmosphere is calm and relaxed. The school is small and the teachers, parents and children all know each other, at least by appearance.

The parents that moved to Africa with their families were mostly Aid workers and employees at larger international corporations. They were mainly from larger Swedish cities and represented a well-established, well-educated middle class. When back in the old country, ordinary life for these families was partially structured by well-known social institutions of different kinds. The children usually travelled back and forth to school by themselves on a daily basis, engaged in different activities, or met up with friends. The situation in the new country is quite different, however. The school that hosts children from 6 to 16 years of age became the social hub for almost every activity.

The school is at the center in almost everything we do here. When we arrived, it was the school staff who helped us with the practical stuff we needed to organise … The children’s leisure-time activities happen at school and all their friends attend the same school. The school is also a hub of social life for many of the parents. I mean, since almost all parents follow their kids to school every morning, the school becomes a natural meeting place where people meet up every morning. (Andy, parent, interview)

In many of the families one of the parents works and the other is just tagging along and therefore has a lot of spare time to spend on trying to establish new friendships and learning about the new environment. At the same time, the school has become an information centre for the families for many everyday concerns such as where to go to fix the car. Of course, language is a vital part of these new school-based social relations. The common language and the similar cultural background make it pretty easy to fit in. The ‘world within the world’ character of the expats’ living conditions is thus also re-established for every new family that arrives here. The school fulfils many of the expat families’ demands and becomes a centre for the small European island that exists relatively isolated from the surrounding African society.

Various leisure activities also act as a bond between school and parents. On Thursday evenings, floorball is played on the school's sports field. Already in the first week, the teacher asks me whether I would like to play.

‘Great! I'm putting you on the list!’

When it's time for games, I recognize some teachers from the school and several parents, all from primary school and pre-school. But there are other Westerners there too. A Norwegian couple, a Swiss couple and two Dutch girls. The atmosphere is fun but still quite competitive. Afterwards, most people sit back, enjoy a cold beer and talk a bit. Most people are curious.

‘So, what are you doing here in Africa?’

All of these background stories are exciting and most of the people are interested in talking about them, which makes it very easy to converse. (fieldnote)

Close ties between the school and parents also means close relationships between teachers, students and parents. This means relationships that are not only professional but also friendly. Having said that, these also risk making it difficult to keep the roles apart and might affect them in an unhealthy way. Nevertheless, teachers as well as school-leaders have a predominantly positive view of their close ties.

It is beneficial to have an everyday relationship with the parents. If I compare with previous work in Sweden at a large school, communication with the parents was only aimed at development talks. Here it becomes more spontaneous and with swifter feedback. If, for example, a pupil has not done his homework in the last week it is easy to mention it when you meet a parent. (Elisa, parent, field-interview)

During a coffee break, the researcher talked to some parents about the proximity to the school and the teachers. The parents spoke well of the school and started comparing it to the situation back in Sweden where parents and children had become customers in a school system characterised by increasing marketisation and with that a greater distance between parents and local schools. In contrast, this small Swedish school in Africa is controlled by a parents’ association and a school board that recruits new teachers as well as school leaders. A vital question concerned, then, whether the parents’ association had any impact on the educational activities at the school

Well, I don’t think so … Or rather, it has no impact at all I would say. The parents don’t interfere with the educational activities at all. It is governed by the Swedish curriculum and the board is not involved in our teaching so it does not affect my teaching role. (Nina, parent, field-interview)

A school leader discusses the closeness to the parents

I believe that the fact that you (through the parents’ association) are responsible makes you feel that you can have a lot of influence over the educational practice. That in turn makes you feel confident and that you trust the school. But, of course, I sometimes experience how parents take school for granted. They ‘demand’ immediate answers. I like to be available but sometimes I can feel it draining me. It is positive that they ask us about different things but when they contact us on a Saturday and wonder if we can open up the school because the children have forgotten their homework … .(John, school-leader, field-interview)

The excerpt above illustrates how dependent the parents are on the school, and not only on the school staff but also the network of parents. But the excerpt also reveals that school leaders seem to experience difficulties in keeping their personal and professional lives separate. In fact, what we see is a local and socially well-established tight-knit European community established in Africa. The school is the hub of this community offering both professional and personal connections to the parents, to the teachers and school-leaders, as well as a social and cultural environment where the children can grow up and receive their European, and even Swedish, education. Migilou and Africa, its culture, history and social ties and society, is a decorative backdrop to this European community’s every-day life.

Amplifying the otherness – shelter and fear

The social order of this major African city in comparison to heavily structured northern European societies indeed seems foreign and unpredictable.

For me the traffic situation is completely chaotic. Large cars drive fast on the small one-way streets with broken sidewalks. A major avenue runs 50 meters from the school with three lanes in each direction and cars driving at high speed without functioning pedestrian crossings. (reflections, fieldnote)

For example, some of the young people are allowed to walk by themselves into shops or into certain restaurants in certain areas of the city. However, for the Swedish parents it is a requirement that some of the Migilouian friends join them. ‘They know the language and also the jargon. If they are together, we think the risk of something happening to them will be much less. (Andy, parent, field interview). The city is not particularly violent but there have been kidnappings of European citizens. The crime rate in the city is high, even though most of these crimes are minor ones like pickpocketing and theft.

In contrast to the intense life outside, the school's closed environment offers security. But the closed environment also means that the adult world exercises a firm control over the children's everyday lives and focus on safety permeates the social life at the school.

It is of course a trade-off. As a parent, you are worried about your child but at the same time it is important not to scare the children so that they walk around feeling anxious. / … / We want our children to be able to learn to navigate the world around them and here the contrast to Sweden is major / … / They [the children] end up in a situation where they are constantly dependent on our [the parents’ and teachers’] permission or that we drive them. When they begin to reach high school age, these limitations become a problem for their individual freedom and personal development. (Andy, parent, field interview)

The children are very dependent on the adult world compared to how it was in the old country. This also means that the children also become more passive and reluctant to take responsibility. In one conversation some of the parents explained that the children get used to getting help with more or less everything. In a more secure environment, the parents had higher expectations of what their children could accomplish on their own. In a conversation with the teachers in school, one of them pointed out that ‘here they do not have the opportunity to learn any kind of housework’.

Almost all children who go here have a domestic help at home. She cleans and washes and cooks. This means that the children do not get to learn to help at home in the same way as you might be used to from home in Sweden. We notice it clearly in the children. They tend to just throw things in different places, to forget their books and to be picky about school meals – they are used to having to decide on food at home. (Eric, teacher, interview)

At this Swedish school, the close relationships between pupils/children, parents and teachers have resulted in a safe and well-organised micro-society. This small society follows well-established cultural as well as social rules that keep the level of security high while, at the same time, the high level of organisation also means that the children live their lives according to a pretty strict protocol. As the parent in the excerpts above points out, opportunities are very limited for the children to develop or grow out of the comfort zone provided by the school’s culture, including parents, teachers and school leaders. This local adult world protocol appears sensitive and caring but it is also the only one available.

The atmosphere here is more forgiving, more permissive, than I'm used to. The children do not have to fit into any template and they can play over the age limits … 

We have and work for an open and happy environment where everyone plays with everyone. We teachers show that we care about the children, not just the teaching. We have no bullying at school and if something should happen, we discover it immediately and can deal with it … The children are allowed to be who they are, there is no tough jargon. It makes them more childish and it's great to see grade 8 kids running around and playing instead of sitting and nesting with a cell phone. I do not think it is the children who are different but the context. (Catherine, teacher, interview)

During our time at the school, we ate lunch in the large dining area together with the teachers, school leaders and children. There were few conflicts, and the atmosphere was calm, almost peaceful. The children behaved well to the extent that they were almost docile. Indeed, the children had adjusted well to the school’s rules and regulations and had learnt how to be nice and how to avoid conflicts.

We feel that we have a good climate at school. If a conflict arises, we have the opportunity to quickly intervene and talk to the children about what is happening. I do not like conflicts and like to resolve them as soon as possible. (Margret, school leader, field interview)

From our observations within the classrooms during our stay there, the absence of conflicts was again noticeable. The classes were tightly structured. The teacher was in charge. The teacher also organised the breaks during the day and decided which games and sports activities would occupy their spare time breaks. We asked one of the school leaders about a well-established practice in Swedish schools, that is, student councils. These councils give pupils the opportunity to develop their democratic skills and to have some influence over their own schooling. Margret explained that they had tried it once but the children only discussed the extension of recreation activities ‘so now we have no student councils anymore’.

The European community taking care of its daily business is doing so in the shadow of a foreign environment: an old, large, and, to the most of the emigrates (or expats), unknown country and continent. At the same time as the large African city is a backdrop to the European visitors’ daily life, it’s a backdrop that very much contributes to the structuring of these lives. By keeping the unknown at bay and keeping the school well structured, secure and calm, the school staff offer shelter from the unknown. At the same time, of course, the school staff’s precautionary structures continue to keep the unknown exactly that: unknown, and for this reason also frightening. This in turn legitimises the high fence surrounding the community and the high level of discipline and security at the school while emphasising the micro society’s seclusion.

The occident and the other – superiority as generosity

Researching a Swedish school in Migilou in an environment so very separate from a Swedish context entails seeing contrasts. The Swedish mini-community represents a piece of Sweden, and the meeting between Sweden and Africa highlighted which traditions that seemed of particular importance to uphold for the Swedish school-staff. An example of such a tradition is the celebration of Lucia on 13th of December. A traditional Swedish Lucia parade was held every year. ‘It's a slightly absurd feeling to stand by the poolside in the 35-degree heat and enjoy a traditional Lucia parade with star boys, small gingerbread men and a lot of Lucias’ (reflection – fieldnote). The parents as well as the staff emphasised that the Swedish school tradition of upholding democratic values, human rights and cooperation was very strong at the school (these values are also stressed in the Swedish curriculum).

For me, the Scandinavian school tradition is very strong. It stands for cooperation and for understanding other people's perspectives. I mean, by understanding other people's perspectives, you can learn more and gain a greater understanding of things … An argument means that you listen to each other and decide what is best, or at least acceptable, for both parties. Other school traditions such as the English or the American tradition are very much based on competition … In both traditions, people talk about learning to argue. According to the Scandinavian tradition, this means trying to get the other party to understand and agree with your argument. The American tradition instead emphasizes argument as a technique, i.e as a way to win the argument. I think this makes a big difference. (Nina, parent, field-interview)

Working through collaboration and seeking consensus is something that permeates both the Swedish curriculum and Sweschooĺs activities. It can be seen both in teaching situations and in the collaboration between students and teachers. Parents who have children at the American school in the same city confirm the different traditions of, on the one hand, cooperation and, on the other hand, competition, as the major difference between the Swedish and American schools.

Joanna, a parent with a son in the American school says: comparison permeates all subjects, whether it is Math, Music or Drama. At each stage, the children's performance is measured. (notes from field-interview)

When we followed the school's work and the way John the school leader interacted with both staff and parents, it was clear that, in more or less all cases, John tried to achieve consensus and a common ground. John also followed these ideas of democratic values and equality when he talked about what it was like to lead a school with staff from both Sweden and Africa:

I have to treat the staff differently and it took a while to find that out. I want my staff to feel involved and that we develop this school together. The Migilou employees had a very hard time when I initially asked what they thought of a certain thing. Many perceived it as a kind of control issue. They are used to the boss being in charge and giving orders. Now, after a few years, we are starting to get to know each other. They [the African staff] have discovered that they can influence the business and I discovered that I have to pursue a slightly different, more clearer, form of leadership. (John, school-leader, field-interview)

Luis, an African-born pre-school teacher, confirmed that the image that John the school leader gave was one of the significant differences between an African and Swedish style of leadership.

In the beginning it was hard to understand John’s leadership. Why does he ask about what I need? But now it works very well. You have more freedom and can develop in a good way and you do not have to feel insecure. One big advantage is that the principal is available for questions and that you can talk to him and say what you think. In an African school, you have to write a letter and ask for a meeting with the principal. (Luis, preschool teacher, field-interview)

Sweden has a long history of development assistance in Migilou. In fact, Migilou is one of Sweden's largest recipient countries. Consequently, many of the Swedish school parents are through their work involved in Swedish aid programs in one way or another. This issue of Swedes as aid-providers to the Migilouians characterises many topics of conversation at school as well as elements of the teaching. Moreover, it is an explicit ambition on the part of the school leaders to connect school education to the Migilouian context and everyday life. For example, during the period when the research was conducted, study-visits were planned to domestic public schools, treatment plants, Christian churches and mosques. Sweschool is in contact with a Migilouian public school where the Swedish pupils are allowed to ‘go to school’ once a year. For many of the Swedish pupils, this is a very transformative experience. During the week they attended the public school they experienced a classroom with very limited resources and 50–70 pupils. The teachers at Sweschool pointed out that after these visits the Swedish pupils tended to be upset by the messy and poor environment at the public school while at the same time viewing their own schooling in a different – and positive – way.

This is a real eye opener. Students are often very humble about and grateful for their own school when they return. I think it has a positive effect on how you talk about and experience your own schooling. It instils a kind of respect. (Catherine, teacher, interview)

Sweschool has a number of established contacts with the surrounding society which allows the Migilouian world to break into the protected Swedish one. One of the local school employees runs a centre for children in his spare time. The children at the centre receive basic necessities (clothes, school supplies and some food) in order to be able to go to school. The centre also offers certain activities for the children in the afternoons and at the weekends. Sweschool arranges for all its pupils to go out to the children's centre with Christmas presents. This reinforced our impression that many Swedes are in Migilou for higher idealistic reasons: they want to do something good by helping others. At the same time, it very clearly exposes the obvious power relations between a people that view themselves as good-hearted givers who share their wealth and knowledge and a people who, through necessity, accept the gifts and the help and therefore have to view themselves as poor recipients.

These differences in heritage are also visible in every-day work. All staff working in services; caretakers, food caterers and so on, are locally employed Migilouian. These structural differences, however, do not seem to have any negative impact on the cooperation between different groups working at the school. Quite the opposite in fact. During our time at the school we did not notice any conflicts. Mark, who grew up in Migilou, is a trained pre-school teacher and works as an educator. He argues that the meetings between northern Europeans and native Migilouian are educative on both accounts.

We (Migilouians) get to learn how to conduct school activities in a good way. For many years we had problems with colonialism and many people thought that Europeans just come here and take things. By working together, we see that white people are also nice. We eat together, get to know each other and then we can pass it on to our children. You learn that Migilouian also wants to be friends with other nationalities and not just quarrel. You see, good things are happening here, not just bad ones, and that we (Migilouians) want the same standard of living as Europeans. (Mark, teacher, interview)

The excerpt above exemplifies the cultural exchange on a very practical level, but it also reflects Marks self-image and how he thinks the Migilouians are seen in other parts of the world. He emphasises that there is something important to learn from the Swedish way of running a school. However, Mark’s reasoning also sheds light on a part of the problem. The idea of how to manage a business and how to organise a school is a one-way street. The contrast between the northern European society and the Migilouian one becomes locked into a kind of highly asymmetrical teacher-student relationship. Migilou has major challenges with regard to corruption and poverty and the education system and the health care sector are partly neglected. This means that, from a standpoint of the well-organised Swedish society, it is difficult to find things you might actually think you could learn from when it comes to managing a school or a society. This of course is part of the problem. Adopting a colonial approach never seems too far away and the only benefit one might gain from Migilou is the pleasant climate.

Discussion

Several processes work together to make the Sweschool a natural meeting place and Scandinavian centre in Migilou. Previous studies (Olsson and O'Reilly 2017; Olsson 2017; Woube 2017; McLachlan 2007; Gillies 2001; Halicioglu 2015) discuss factors that affect how people act when placed in an alien environment. These studies point out that the expats tend to feel insecure when placed in a new environment with often greater challenges confronting them. This is why they tend to seek a sense of belonging in a familiar linguistic and cultural environment. From this perspective, Sweschool offers a place and a community that represents security and relaxation and some respite from the new sense of chaos experienced by expats. Naturally, parents take extra care of their children both because they are in a foreign country but also because they feel responsible for having dragged the children away from their home. The school serves as a protected oasis where children can feel at home and cultivate new acquaintances in a small and safe environment. In the same vein, as show in our data and in previous research (see for example, Olsson and O'Reilly 2017; Olsson 2017; Woube 2017), it seems of great importance to the participants that they are able to maintain traditions, solve practical issues and receive information on the situation in their new country in their mother tongue. In addition to the school, local Swedish and Scandinavian clubs of different kinds also serve the purpose of being a cultural and linguistic hub for newly arrived expats and their children. However, through its status as an established official social institution, Sweschool carries extra weight as a cohesive link to different stakeholders. At the same time, as highlighted in our data the security and solid Swedish structure at the school also tends to prevent the expats from seeking experiences offered by the dynamic social world outside their gated community. In line with our data, research also suggests that a strong parental commitment towards the children’s school situation has a strong and positive correlation to the children’s exam results, as does a calm and peaceful school environment (Olefir and Alonso 2015; Cho, Glewwe, and Whitler 2012).

However, it is difficult not to view the atmosphere at the school as also being part of a particular Swedish (and to some extent Scandinavian) self-image and culture. Consensus seeking and avoiding conflict, at least in public spaces, are well documented distinctive Northern European cultural traits (Öhman 2008; Hedlund and Soeters 2010) and the observations in this study point in the same direction. The principals embrace their leading role by seeking cooperation with the staff. At Sweschool, the solution-oriented view of working together, which was stressed particularly by some of the parents, is expressed and conveyed in the educational activities as well as in teachers educational work and in the ways in which pupils respond to challenges.

The differences between Swedish and Migilouian life, as well as conditions in school, are obvious and very clear in our data. The children at Sweschool walk around with mobile phones that may cost the equivalent of an annual salary for a person on the street outside. Parents who work in the field of development aid are responsible for allocating millions to various projects. Life for the expats is comfortable. They need a place to feel secure and to receive assistance when they experience difficulties in their new and peculiar situation. Most understandably too they want the quality of education and cultural climate in the school to be as close to home as possible and they want the school to follow the Swedish curriculum. The school becomes the cultural hub for containing their value-system and identities and leaving them pretty much unaltered.

At the same time, European school institutions in Migilou help to reproduce and consolidate a European way of life and value system. The Swedish school echoes the dreams of the big surrounding city. The entire social structure in the city, and especially in the neighbourhoods around the school, conveys and maintains traditions and institutions that reflect a European lifestyle. Both the spoken and written language are a European language from the old colonial power. Superiority and subordination are in many cases obvious. Those who arrive to the city and are able to, tend to choose a highly privileged lifestyle. In small grocery stores you can buy pieces of chevre cheese, and air-dried ham from Parma, and at a South African sports bar you may watch English football and drink Dutch beer. For the rest of the inhabitants, the European life style is inaccessible.

When we once again broaden our perspective, that is, socially and politically as well as historically, that the main concerns about this school become visible. The particular way in which the superiority of the West is manifested in this school is very much typical of Swedish middle-class culture. As Hedlund and Soeters (2010) show, Swedish peacekeeping forces characterise themselves as typical Swedes with traits such as being calm, stable, keeping a high ethical standard and having great respect for other people (Hedlund and Soeters 2010). This Swedish self-image that Öhman (2008) argues is a consequence of the long Swedish tradition of giving aid to developing countries, has resulted in Swedish citizens tending to view themselves as being active and kind-hearted givers in relation to passive and helpless people in developing countries (Öhman, 2008). That is, by letting the children from the Swedish school give Christmas presents to the African kids is as much an act of recreating a self-image of moral superiority in Swedish kids (as well as in their parents and school teachers) as it is an act of creating a more joyful Christmas for the poorer Migilouian children. Likewise, we do not question the seriousness with which the aid-workers that had their kids in the Swedish school conducted their daily business, but we can’t help but notice that their work perfectly corresponded with the cultural self-image recreated at the school. Through the bias of the school’s cultural heritage, the school fosters a mildly condescending perspective of other cultures, nations and societies.

Via the cultural schooling at these European institutions both European heritage and its view of the world and what counts as knowledge are re-established. Following Said’s post-colonial perspective (Said 1978), we are able to argue strongly that the axis between world-view and knowledge production, on the one hand, and pure economic superiority, on the other, creates a culture image of the West as ‘doing things the right way’, meaning, a way that the Africans countries still have to learn about. That is, the African countries are produced as culturally inferior or as infants in the global arena. Western educational institutions put heavy pressure on the African self-image since the way of life there is measured in terms of economic prosperity. The Western pattern of institutions of knowledge production has left large parts of the world in constant struggle, not only through having to adapt to foreign ideas but also through having to create new ones (Leite, 2010). Following Hardt and Negri’s line of argumentation, carrying a particular world-view on how society and, not least, how the economy should be organised, Western countries’ de-located educational systems and aim-programs may be seen as part of a late modern wave of discursive neo-colonial power ambitions (Hardt and Negri 2000). When the educational system of the West is inherited by other parts of the world, Western culture, the Western way of life, Western presumptions of what it is to know, as well as what it is important to know, risks becoming a form of power to fuel aspirations of recolonisation.

With that said, we argue that oppression is neither carried individually nor visible through any bad actions aimed at one’s fellow men or women. Rather, superiority is manifested through good intentions carried out by well-meaning people who, by helping and carrying out their good deeds, uphold and recreate the social and cultural structure of oppression that the African continent has had to continually live under, and still does. Thus, our main concern with this Swedish school located in Africa is that it is there at all.

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Migilou is a fictitious name of the African country we visited. We use this name in order to secure anonymity.

2 Sweschool is a fictitious name.