Immigration, education and insecuritisation. School principals’ small stories on national immigration and integration policies

ABSTRACT

International migration in general and the recent refugee crisis in particular are complex and much debated topics in European politics. Concurrently, education systems must operate under uncertain and unpredictable conditions. In this situation, migrant children become a group at particular educational risk of exclusion and marginalisation. This paper explores reflections of principals of schools with migrant students regarding how to navigate in those uncertainties related to how migrants are received in Denmark and whether current Danish policies on migration and integration affect the everyday practices in education. Thus, the paper looks at how problematisation and insecuritisation processes stemming from current immigration and integration policies in Denmark influence professionals’ working conditions in the field of education. Drawing on methodological perspectives from narrative theory, a selection of five out of 15 interviews with school principals are analysed, focusing on their small stories about approaching the complex processes of risk production when providing education for migrant children. The conclusion drawn from the study is that immigration and integration policies that do not stem from the field of education still influence the field of education in a way that creates complex dilemmas for school professionals when navigating in the (co-)production of risks.

KEYWORDS:

• Education of migrant children
• school principals
• insecuritisation
• narrative analysis
• small stories

Introduction

In 2018, the Danish parliament introduced what it called a “paradigm shift” in Danish immigration policy that emphasised repatriation to the country of origin more strongly than integration. However, this policy can also be seen as a continuation of the restrictive immigration policies in Denmark over the past few decades, as is the case for policies of austerity in many European countries (European Anti-Poverty Network, 2015; Giglioli, 2016). In this paper, we apply a perspective of risks as being socially produced on the possible relations between immigration policies and the education of migrant children in Denmark. The risk perspective is twofold and looks firstly at how migration is problematised as a risk in the official Danish governmental policies and secondly at whether – and if so how – these very same policies may constitute a risk in the education of migrant children.

Immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants, in Denmark are not only constructed as risks within the welfare state, but they may also experience ontological uncertainty because of the instability created by restrictive and fast-changing immigration policies and a public discourse characterised by scepticism towards immigration (Mouritsen and Olsen 2013; Rytter, 2019). Theories of ontological uncertainty and insecuritisation related to immigration are used as starting points for an analysis of interviews with 15 Danish school principals, exploring how they, as representatives of the authorities, reflect on and relate their professional practice to insecuritisation processes. A situation that becomes even more complicated since the insecuritisation processes often stem from policies from outside the field of education, thus potentially affecting children’s lives in school, though originally aimed at adult immigrants. Combining an approach inspired by the sociological theory on risk and uncertainty, here by using a narrative small story approach, the present study looks at how the narratives of the welfare professionals responsible for educating migrant children relate to topics of insecuritisation found in public and political discourses on immigration.

The current study is part of a wider research project MiCREATE (Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe) exploring how to enhance inclusion of migrant children by adopting a child-centred approach to integration at both the education and policy levels.¹ Underlying this is the idea of a “context of reception” (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006), which the project uses to address the conditions and structures of migrant communities in receiving countries via existing datasets, qualitative data, national government policies and integration initiatives.

The study of 15 school principals’ views on migration and education shows that they have different strategies towards the restrictive immigration and integration policies that can be potential barriers in their students’ lives and in furthering their education. While some principals denied that such policies were an issue in their work, the others showed varying degrees of sincere concern about the processes that may be related to the insecuritisation of migrants. The analysed interviews aim to identify and map risks and benefits for inclusive education of migrant children. Focusing on five interviews of school principals, the interviews both represent aspects of insecuritisation in the 15 interviews and show varieties in small stories about insecuritization and migrant children’s wellbeing in the school context.

Research context

The school as an institution is the central site of encounter between migrant children and the welfare state and thus of state policies on the one hand and children’s everyday lives on the other. Research on education of migrant children has shown how migrant children and children of migrants are being problematised in education because of their family background, religion, and culture (Buchardt, 2018, 2019; Gilliam, 2019) and how school professionals strive to normalise and disperse migrant children indicating “colour blind” strategies (Padovan-Özdemir & Øland, 2020). Studying mother tongue instruction (MTI) in Denmark and the adversities and affordances migrant children experience in school, Li and Enemark (2021) point to the complex and paradoxical positioning of migrant children as both a homogeneous group with “same” needs and as different from majority children, and that MTI has contributed to feelings of belonging among migrant students. A double social identity is also in focus in Moldenhawer and Ruskjær (2017), where the balance between seeing asylum seeking children as individuals with specific mental and emotional needs or as “regular students” in schools is a dilemma, resulting in “permanent temporality” characterising pedagogical approaches to migrant children. Furthermore, Vitus and Lidén (2010) argue that asylum-seeking children in Denmark are legally positioned as asylum-seekers as such, in contrast to Norway where this group is positioned as both asylum-seekers and children with children’s rights. Also, refugee children are disqualified from continuing school and education because of limitation in subjects taught and a lack of educational credits (Vitus & Lidén, 2010). In another comparative study Thommessen and Todd (2018) show how adults looking back at their arrival as refugee children in UK and Denmark understand school and teachers as important for social guidance and advice, and that language-based challenges in school has led to further difficulties in life. A thorough review on refugee children’s education is given in Gunnþórsdóttir, Douglas, Saus, and Paulgaard (2020), comparing integration and citizenship policies in the Nordic countries. Summarising research on refugee and migrant children in Denmark, Gunnþórsdóttir et al. highlight the problematic dual identity as asylum-seekers and children, tending to favour the status of asylum-seekers, in line with Vitus and Lidén (2010). It is also mentioned that the inclusion of refugee children in early childhood and school services poses challenges to the Danish education system, underlining the importance of providing qualified teacher-training when working with newly arrived refugee children. Research findings like those point to tendencies of reproduction of inequality and lack of focus on children’s rights and thus that refugee and migrant children may experience increasing insecuritisation in a Danish education context.

Obviously, education policies in general constitute the framework for education of migrant children. However, in this paper we focus on how policies that are not directed at the education sector influence the work of education professionals, namely integration and immigration policies.

As responsible for the running of schools, principals or headmasters function as gate keepers or facilitators of the encounter between migrant children and national welfare state. Thus, it is relevant to focus on their experiences and reflections on their practice in a political context of restrictive immigration policies and integration policies increasingly focused on repatriation rather than inclusion.

Mock-muñoz de Luna, Granberg, Krasnik, and Vitus (2020) examine how educators (teachers and leaders) in Sweden and Denmark handle the task of providing equitable education for migrant children under difficult conditions of marginalisation, discrimination, and – especially in Denmark – restrictive immigration policies. Applying a street level bureaucracy perspective (Lipsky 1980), they show how coping practices of professionals in education are shaped by the problematisations of migrant children’s situations. Also, Baviskar and Winter (2017) nuance approaches of child welfare caseworkers in Denmark as street level bureaucrats in an agency perspective.

This paper contributes to research on education of migrant children from another perspective. First, by focusing on how school principals as responsible for school practice respond to policies not stemming from the education field, namely immigration and integration policies. Second, by analysing their approaches via their small stories, opening for sensemaking processes regarding ontological (in)security for migrant children and for the principals themselves in their daily work.

Method and data analysis

As a specific and delimited part of the wider research project, this substudy of the Danish educational community and school system focused on 15 structured interviews with school principals and deputy school principals. In the interviews, the interest was school principals’ experiences from encountering migrant children, and their approach to integration of migrant children in primary and lower secondary school (Chapman, Buckley, Sheehan, & Shochet, 2013; Dubois-Shaik & Dubois-Shaik, 2014; Walton, Priest, & Paradies, 2013). The interviews were conducted in the spring of 2019 in different regions of Denmark at schools with high levels of cultural, religious and linguistic diversity. The aim was to analyse principals’ knowledge, perceptions, attitudes and opinions regarding dynamics and processes of integration of migrant children, as well as to identify practices used in schools to support the integration of migrant children and uphold the cultural, religious and linguistic diversity of students. The interviews focused on questions of how policies on migration and education affect schools’ practices, on teaching aims and on the wellbeing of children and staff. The interview guides were highly structured (Creswell and Poth 2018; Gubrium et. al. 2012; Given, 2008; Wolcott, 2005) and organised in accordance with the project plan and the topics mentioned above, consisting of eight main questions with a number of connected sub questions such as the following: “Why do you think teachers choose to work at this school?”; “Do you have practices for welcoming students who have migrated from other countries?”; or “What do you understand by integration?” The principals often answered using argumentative reasoning and explanations. The interviews were arranged by email or phone or by gatekeepers and were all performed by the project’s researchers face to face at the schools. The duration of the interviews was 40 minutes on average. All interviewees were informed of the project and signed a declaration of consent. All interviews were transcribed, pseudonymised and subsequently coded in NVivo Software version 12.

As argumentative reasoning was prevalent in a range of answers, the question, “Is it your experience that the current policies on immigration have had an impact on the school’s work with migrant children?” gave rise to answers that could be deemed as part of a “moral enterprise” (Brinkman & Kvale, 2018). This question seemed to invoke ethical and moral concerns and, in most cases, was not answered as straightforwardly as other, more argumentative explanations. Brinkmann and Kvale would consider that the question illustrated how the research interview is “saturated with moral and ethical issues” (Brinkman & Kvale, 2018, p. 27) because the principals often answered the questions in a narrative form, involving both ethically and personally oriented “small stories” with the aim of finding meaning in the current policies. Even though the highly structured interview guide could be misperceived as a short-answer survey interview, the principals’ answers were temporally extended and in-depth, showing their experiences and understandings with issues regarding migrant children and wellbeing in general and regarding current policies and insecuritisation in a narrative form specifically (Polkinghorne, 2008).

Topics related to insecuritisation were mentioned in all 15 interviews and centred around (a) the school as a confined space or bubble (mentioned in five interviews); (b) reception policies, (mentioned in five interviews); (c) the “ghetto plan” and future insecurity (mentioned in four interviews); (d) racism and responsibility (mentioned in five interviews); (e) trauma, well-being and master-narratives and, lastly, (f) culture as explanation (both topics were touched upon in all interviews).

We focus on five principals’ small stories regarding insecuritisation, risk and migrant children. These five principals express representative perceptions of central issues raised in the interviews. Representing the school principals’ perceptions in total does not mean an unequivocal perception or generalisation of the issues in focus, as there are variations and different perceptions about insecuritisation and well-being for migrant children in school.

Denmark as context of reception

Denmark as a context of reception of migrants can be seen as characterised by tendencies towards (in)securitisation of refugees and migrants exemplified by the “paradigm shift” in immigration policy and the “ghetto plan” regarding exposed housing areas, both passed in 2018. Before analysing the emergence of insecuritisation in the interviewees’ small stories, we will first give a brief overview of the paradigm shift and the “ghetto plan”.²

In March 2018, the former Danish government published a proposal, “One Denmark without parallel societies. No ghettos in 2030” (Regeringen, 2018). The Danish state’s official naming of certain housing areas as “ghettos” dates back to 2004 (Regeringen, 2004); however, with the “ghetto plan” in 2018 and the laws subsequently ratified by the Danish parliament, the topic became central to the debate on migration in Denmark. With the new plan, a category of “hard ghettos” was introduced. A decisive criterion for an area being determined as a “hard ghetto” was that the proportion of “non-Western immigrants and descendants” – an official categorisation used by Statistics Denmark (Danmarks Statistik, 2020; Elmeskov, 2019) – in any certain area was over 50%. This made non-Western immigrants and descendants the centre of attention, and this is also clearly reflected in the use of the concept of “parallel societies”, referring to areas with inhabitants with non-Western backgrounds. As one example of the former government’s “ghetto plan” stated:

There are holes in the map of Denmark. Many people live in more or less isolated enclaves. Here, too many of the citizens do not take sufficient responsibility. They do not actively participate in Danish society and the labour market. We have got a group of citizens who do not adopt Danish norms and values. Where women are considered less worthy than men. Where social control and lack of equality limit the individuals’ freedom of expression. We see environments where in some cases a negative spiral of counterculture arises. Parallel societies are a major burden on the social cohesion of society as well as on the individual. (Regeringen, 2018, p. 5; authors’ translation).

The plan led to comprehensive legislative changes in the autumn of 2018. These included mandatory day care, teaching “Danish language and values” to one-year-old children living in the areas, potentially demolishing even newly renovated buildings in “hard ghettos”, restricting economic benefits, doubling punishment for crimes committed within “ghetto” areas and so forth. The initiatives and their targeting of citizens with non-Western (often Muslim) backgrounds have a majority backing in the Danish parliament and are endorsed by both the former Liberal-Conservative government and by the current Social Democratic government, which took office in 2019. These policies clearly present migration as an existential threat, thus reinforcing the argument for exceptional changes. However, they have also led to a widespread debate both in national and international media and have often raised questions around the discrimination, harsh rhetoric and restrictions aimed at immigrants (Brändle, Eisele, & Trenz, 2019; Cengiz & Eklund Karlsson, 2021; Hercowitz-Amir & Raijman, 2020).

The “paradigm shift” in immigration policy, which involved several restrictions on foreigners, has also caused widespread debate. In February 2019, the “Bill No. 140 on Amendments to the Aliens Act, the Integration Act, the Repatriation Act and Various Other Laws” was adopted by the former Liberal-Conservative government, the Danish People’s Party and the Social Democrats. Among the main points of the law are that residence permits for foreigners must be temporary, that the Minister for Immigration can limit the number of family reunions each month and that the integration allowance (the public benefit for newcomers to Denmark) is considerably reduced and renamed as “self-support allowance” or “return travel allowance”.

Although the immigration policy in Denmark has become increasingly restrictive during recent decades, the new changes have nevertheless been labelled a “paradigm shift”, a term mainly promoted by the Danish People’s Party. As the Party’s Member of Parliament Peter Skaarup put it:

You must get used to the fact that when you come to Denmark, you are here temporarily, and when you have had temporary shelter, you will go back again … This means that we are turning around the whole policy in this area – from today being about integration, to being about repatriation. (Ingvorsen, 2019; authors’ translation)

From a securitisation perspective, both policies can be seen as insecuritising migrants because migrants are positioned as a threat to Danish society and its social cohesion to such an extent that extraordinary measures are required. It is also clear that these policies not only position migrants as risks, but also pose a risk to migrants. At some schools in our study, children face the concrete risk of their homes being demolished as part of the “ghetto plan”, which, despite promising resettlement for the families affected, still causes a sense of uncertainty. In addition, children of refugees also face the risk of being “repatriated” and having their residence permits revoked, even when they are participating in Danish society such as mainstream schools, similar to Danish citizens.

Small stories as analytical framework

In the analysis of interviews, we draw on Bamberg (2006, p. 2011), and Georgakopoulou’s (2006, 2007, 2015) work on “small stories”. Small stories can be understood as an umbrella term for fleeting, brief, mundane and seemingly insignificant stories of everyday experience and recent events. In narrative theory and methods, new and more pluralistic perspectives are arisen to encompass the situated and contextual perspectives of narratives. Small stories are one of these perspectives and stand out regarding the classical, full-fledged narratives described by Labov (1972) and Labov and Waletsky (1967), for instance. Small stories designate metaphorically less solid aspects of life lived at the micro level (Bamberg, 2006; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008), possibly relating to events at the macro-level.

As Georgakopoulou points out (2006, 2007), small stories are under-represented narratives about ongoing or future events, embedded in interactional engagement (de Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012) in a specific context:

[…] the term locates a level and even an aesthetic for the identification and analysis of narrative: the smallness of talk, where fleeting moments of narrative orientation to the world (Hymes 1996) can be easily missed out on by an analytical lens which only looks out for fully-fledged stories. (Georgakopoulou, 2006, p. 123)

So, if small stories do not fit classical narratives, how do they differ from the canonical definitions? As there are a numerous definition of what a narrative consists of, we will point at Ricoeur and Bruner’s definitions:

[…] a story describes a sequence of actions and experiences of a certain number of characters, whether real or imaginary. These characters are represented in situations which change or to the changes of which they react. These changes, in turn, reveal hidden aspects of the situation and the characters, giving rise to a new predicament which calls for thought or action or both. The response to this predicament brings the story to its conclusion. (Ricoeur, 2016, p. 239)

Bruner defines a narrative as inherently sequential:

[…] a narrative is composed of a unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings involving human beings as characters or actors. […] their meaning is given by their place in the overall configuration of the sequence as a whole – its plot or fabula. (1990, p. 42)

Small stories borrow characteristics and functions from the classical narrative such as a sequentiality, time and change, but as dimensions of narrativity. Small stories could be delimited to one sequence (real or imagined), a limited timeline and diverse characters and/or themes. Some small stories fulfil prototypical definitions like temporal ordering of events, but with an emergent approach on structure, (Georgakopoulou, 2007), while others are non-linear or not focused on past events. As small stories occur in interaction, they are often tellable and with disruption(s) and jumps in content as part of spoken language in a social context. The telling unfolds in the moment of the interview in situated interaction, for instance. As oral narratives and small stories are closely connected to identities and positioning, analysing the principals’ small stories means considering how they establish how to talk about the issues in focus and how identities (the principals, migrant children, teachers, policies etc.) are constructed within interaction (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008; de Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012).

Small stories about recent, unfolding, or prospective events present slices of experiences, reworked and reflected in interaction, as small stories can elaborate arguments, raised before or after in an ongoing conversation or interview (de Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012). As an important methodological angle, looking at small stories on the micro-level, contradictions and countering experiences of macro-level discourses about insecuritisation and well-being can be unveiled:

[…] big stories do not allow analysts to capture the multiple, often contradictory, positions that people take about themselves and others. Small stories show glimpses of these contradictions by seeing how people use small stories as a functional, interactional tool to create and perpetuate their identities. (Sprain & Hughes, 2015, p. 534)

Georgakopoulou (2006, 2007), in her research, found three salient – and interrelated – types of small stories: “Breaking news”, “projections” and “shared stories”. In breaking news, recent events (seeing a girlfriend, getting “news” on social media etc.) are introduced in a conversation and can be further updated. Projections can be understood as future encounters with the breaking news or emergent issues, for instance, and are episodically organised interactions with multiple characters. As breaking news and projections often are intertextually linked and referenced to in a conversation, projections can re-frame prior issues or concerns or point at shift in the oral activity, establishing a mutual reference with the addressee/interviewer. Shared stories can be part of an evaluative perspective in the conversation, as they put forth a view of stories of projected events. They can be references to shared events or present thematic similarities (de Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012). In our analysis of the interviews, we will apply the three types of small stories as part of structuring the principals’ experiences.

Summing up, small stories are characterised by being multi-linear or non-linear sequenced events, focusing on the everyday or mundane experiences. They are often recontextualising a story and are co-constructed with others (teachers, children, the interviewer etc.), as they can be fragments of stories of past, present or future events. Focusing on small stories in the interviews allows us to learn about the social organisation of the school in a specific context, pointing at what could be done or thought about the issues raised, not yet fully considered, emerging at the occasion of the interview (Georgakopoulou, 2007). In our analysis, we will define the selected small stories in the interviews, pointing at the type of the small story and its purpose and how it reflects the issues discussed. The main analysis will be structured in themes, emerging in the interviews. So, in the forthcoming analysis, the focus is on interactions and the narrator’s positioning in and with the story (Georgakopoulou, 2007). Hence, small stories can be analysed as individual “in the making” interpretations of macro-level challenges and restraints in immigration policies.

Theories of insecuritisation and risk

In the analysis, we draw on the concept of insecuritisation as developed by Croft (2012) and as a contribution to security studies, emphasising the ontological security of individuals as being intersubjectively constructed. Insecuritisation refers to the process in which “the dominant power can decide who should be protected and who should be designated as those to be controlled, objectified, and feared” (Croft, 2012, p. 220).

The analysis of interviews show emergence of processes of insecuritisation (Croft, 2012) in school principals’ small stories (Georgakopoulou, 2007, 2015) about working with migrant children. We study principals’ reflections on how insecuritisation processes regarding migrants take place in society in general, analysing how principals make sense of these processes in a narrative form, including whether they take aspects of ontological security into account in their reflections on how to support the integration of migrant children in school. Furthermore, we discuss whether – and if so how – insecuritisation tendencies regarding migrant children emerge through these narratives.

Giddens’ (1991) concept of ontological security as “bracketing out” questions that disturb “the natural attitude” that is taken for granted to maintain the routine activities of daily life is also useful here. Giddens’ sociological perspective draws on theories of ontological (in)security from psychology, as presented by Laing (1965) and Erikson (1968). Laing describes an ontologically secure person as follows:

A man may have a sense of his presence in the world as a real, alive, whole, and, in a temporal sense, a continuous person. As such, he can live out into the world and meet others: a world and others experienced as equally real, alive, whole, and continuous. (Laing, 1965, p. 39)

In contrast, ontologically insecure people will experience a sense of being unreal and indefinitely differentiated from the rest of the world, always questioning their identity and autonomy. For Erikson (1968), the experience of basic trust, which is developed in an individual’s early years, and a sense of trust and continuity in relations and in biography is at the core of ontologically secure people. Giddens approaches the concept of ontological (in)security in a similar fashion, accentuating that ontological security is crucial, defining it as “the confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding social and material environment of action” (1990: 92). The emotional aspects of this concept are also inherent in Giddens’ notion of ontological security and space:

A sense of place seems of major importance in the sustaining of ontological security, precisely because it provides a psychological tie between the biography of the individual and the locales that are the settings of the time-space paths through which that individual moves. (Giddens, 1984, p. 367)

Ontological security appears to be a central, but often overlooked, component in integration, following the concept of social anchoring that Grzymala-Kazlowska (2016) links to issues of identity, security and social integration to gain a more nuanced understanding of integration processes. Thus, it is interesting to look at whether and how principals touch upon the issues that may be related to migrants’ possible experiences of (in-)security in their new communities when they reflect on their roles in the integration of migrant children in education.

Defining risk as being socially constructed (Beck, 2009), and drawing on theory on the Danish competition state (Pedersen, 2011), we agree with Jensen, Weibel, and Vitus (2017) that migration in the Danish national context is often constructed as an economic and cultural threat to the Danish national welfare state. Thus, the topic of migration becomes securitised and politicised – and it goes beyond the level of ordinary politics, thus justifying exceptional measures (Buzan, Wæver, & de Wilde, 1998), such as when migration is presented as an existential threat to society.

Principals’ small stories on insecuritisation

In the following, we will look at how principals understand and experience the processes of insecuritisation in policies and politics and use small stories as meaning-making devices in the interviews. Focusing on excerpts, where small stories are prevalent in the interviewees’ understanding and where significant moral, ethical, personal, or educational understandings are at play, we highlight how principals navigate insecuritisation and ontological security. Because the five principals in focus accentuate their views in different ways, the overall understandings of risk and insecuritisation are representative in 10 out of 15 interviews. The selection of the five interviews is based on both a representativity of concordance on perceptions of insecuritisation, and on a variety and elaboration of the issues, raised in the interviews. As such, for the five interviews we do not claim representativity regarding principals’ perceptions of migrant children in primary and lower secondary school, but they illustrate voices of insecuritisation in the sample of the 15 interviews.

In the excerpts, the small stories we accentuate will be highlighted with an underlining and are thematically organised in the following six sections: (a) The school as a bubble, (b) reception policies without consideration, (c) the “ghetto plan” and future insecurity, (d) racism and responsibility, (e) trauma, well-being and master-narratives and, lastly, (f) culture as explanation.

School as a “Bubble”

Five principals express insecuritisation from immigration and integration policies as not relevant for their practice. They describe clear boundaries between what is inside school and what is outside. This quote about the school being a “bubble” highlights the metaphoric understanding of schools as partially disconnected from society:

I have seen a few [of reactions towards discrimination], but I think it is not something we experience here in our school, because here we just find ourselves in our own little bubble. Umm, I have experienced a hint of frustration among parents and it is not that they have actually said that it is because of this and that policy, but rather a discouragement, really, uhh, that I somehow relate to ‘we see tightenings and I feel that the system is chasing me’ (…) but it’s such a small thing that I don’t experience in my daily life or anything. (Principal, Pinewood School)

Two interesting small stories are at work in this quotation. The first is describing the school as a bubble that both can secure the everyday life of school from the outside world while at the same time disconnect students’ important experiences in other domains of life. Defining the school as a “bubble”, the small story about the school as a specific space, involving different characters and suspending events and time in that space, points to a metaphorical understanding of “bracketing out” questions that disturb “the natural attitude” (Giddens, 1991), thus maintaining the school routines of everyday life.

However, as the small story in the last part unveils, “that I somehow relate to ‘we see tightenings and I feel that the system is chasing me’”, this “bracketing out” of policies and harsh immigration attitudes seems to be a “simulacrum”. The small story consists of both projections and shared stories: Projections to the “tightenings” are intertextual link to parents’ and policy voices, for instance, and suggest a shift in the conversations, as the principal denies it having influence in the daily life of school. At the same time, it is a shared story about the harsh politics not influencing the school, functioning as an evaluative perspective and supporting the metaphor of the school as a “bubble”, even if parents, for instance, rupture the bubble, connecting life outside the bubble to the school. Even though the principal rejects the importance of insecuritisation and risk in school in her last small story, she is pointing at insecuritisation by claiming that it happens outside the bubble.

Reception policies without considerations

Reception policies are explicitly thematised in five interviews. As the focus on interaction in a specific situation is at core in small stories, the following excerpt illustrates how a principal interprets macro-level challenges and restrains in immigration policies “on the spot” in the interview. Arguments, listings of experiences or descriptions seem not sufficient to make sense of the policies and their significance in practice. Asked about the reception of migrant students in school, he replies:

We have students who have fled from [… an African country where they] had English as a basic subject. When I compare them, also because in [their country of origin] they also had a schooling before they had to flee, when I compare them with, for example, a Syrian refugee who has not had a continuous schooling but has one spoken language and another written language and does not have a continuous schooling, then I can see today, that they perform noticeably differently in, for example, English and mathematics; and also their language acquisition skills in Danish as a second language are very different. (Principal, Meadow School)

The small story about differences, enacting a sequence of action (schooling, the flee, the new school in Denmark) and two characters (an African and a Syrian student), is focusing on the outcome in Denmark, where policies on migration hinder variations and individual consideration about students, regulating migrant students as a homogeneous group, thereby posing an educational challenge which the school has to deal with on the micro-level. By recontextualising experiences with different groups of students, the small story can be understood as a shared story of projected events. The projection of prior and seemingly recurring experiences with students from different educational backgrounds interrelate with the shared story of how macro-level policies interfere on the micro-level, pointing at a critical view on how to deal with educational differences without defining solutions – or a conclusion in the small story. Small stories can function as a backup to and elaboration or extension of, for example, an argument or understanding of educational differences as we see in the excerpt above. In a broader context, small stories stress context specificity and performativity in communication practices (Georgakopoulou, 2015). Thus, looking into small stories in the interviews with the principals, we can access previous or present practices and understandings of how insecuritisation and risk can become an influential part of such practices and understandings.

The “Ghetto Plan” and the future

Recurrent themes of insecuritisation and risk in the small stories in the interviews are seen in small stories in four interviews as an orientation towards the “ghetto plan” (Regeringen, 2018) and social security restrictions for migrants. At school level, there are several small stories about the geographical location of the reception classes, especially regarding the isolation of these classes. Numerous small stories are represented as “vicarious” small stories that are either retellings of former, present or future events or recounting others’ or imagined experiences, focusing on children’s or parents’ fear for the housing policies or precarious legal status, and often pointing at extended pedagogical sensitivity towards migrant students.

One principal recounts an everyday experience of insecuritisation and risk regarding the “ghetto plan”, which generated a narrative orientation towards social interactions within the school:

Well … this new Ghetto plan, which means that some of the buildings here and right beside the school must be demolished … I have had a look at it, and we have 22, we have 22 children living in that block. 17 families, who are now told that this block will be demolished … in about ten years. And obviously things like that do have an influence … Also, the rhetoric that is, ‘are we going to be thrown out of the country or what will actually happen?’ … it causes anxiety and insecurity to the highest degree. (Principal, Hillcrest School)

As highlighted in this small story, the principal positions himself in line with the migrants or asylum seekers, feeling insecure about their future residency. He shows compassion and concern in his brief story about children and families living in the housing blocks that are going to be demolished. In his small story, the processes of insecuritisation suggest a need for practices in school to handle anxiety and insecurity and prospectively protect the children – as well as the school’s job in educating them. In the first part of his small story about the 17 families living in the blocks that are to be demolished, the characteristics of time and change are prevalent, but encapsulated in a timeless limbo of insecurity and threat for the families. The story can be typified as breaking news, as the recent “ghetto plan” is introduced to the conversation and re-framed in the context of school and insecuritisation. The small story illustrates the attempts of “meaning-making” in the moment of the conversation. The principal connects the micro-level “fate” of the 17 families with the macro-level rhetoric about the legal status of asylum seekers in the last part of the small story, using vicarious voices from the families as shared stories about insecuritisation, thereby also positioning the interviewer in a mutual involvement and responsibility.

Insecurity, racism and responsibility

Racism and harsh rhetoric are mentioned in five interviews; interestingly, also by interviewees claiming that the immigration policy as such is not influencing their work. In several interviews, it is obvious that principals experience current rhetoric and policies on migrants as influencing the conditions for ontological security of their students. In the excerpt below, several small stories are interwoven which show an overarching concern for the ontological security of migrant children: there are vicarious small stories about explicit racism (“migrants, go home”, the metaphor of the rubbish bin etc.) reported as societal master narratives of austerity policies and vernacular intolerance, and there are small stories of the housing policies. The principal positions himself as both the hearer of the children’s concerns and as the “storyteller”, recounting the children’s experiences. The social space of the interview – the school itself – allows different participants (children, policies, teachers, racists etc.) to interact within the small stories as meaning-making mediators, documenting the ontological insecurity experienced in schools by migrant children. The principal is both the (re)teller, occupying a position in the school, a character in the interaction with the interviewer and an individual with concerns and decisions about accommodating the distress that both students and teachers experience:

So there, we can simply listen to children, young children saying that ‘there is a man who says that me and my mother and father should not live here, and we must be thrown in the rubbish bin and we must move out of the country’ … It has had a big impact … Everyone has heard it. Even in the young classes.³ … We also have children who say, ‘my home, we do not have, our apartment will be demolished, so we do not know where we are supposed to live’ … and it gives a sense of uncertainty to children. In such cases it’s just our job to be inclusive, because we are also part of the political system … We can’t do anything, after all. We can take care of them and say, yes, it will be a long time before it happens and you are here with us [attending this school] … but in a way you will just have to … be able to accommodate that some children become distressed. (Principal, Spruce School)

Regarding integration policies and social security restrictions, some principals talked about the lack of money for clothes, decent food and leisure activities. Other principals pointed out ontological uncertainty and pedagogical dilemmas, using small stories about their pedagogical practices:

I am clearly opposed to the policy that has been presented so far in the field of integration, and I think it is shameful that we try to teach all our students to go out and be decent human beings in all aspects, and that you have to treat everyone equally … and respect people, and the way that the integration policy is conducted both in terms of ways of living and the way you should treat them [newcomers], and the way you talk about them is so far from the way that we would like to work with the young people. (Principal, Meadow School).

The small story is both a personal and professional critique of immigration policies and schools being positioned as instrumental institutions, forced to push the policies through. This seems to be an urgent issue for the principal, as the personal small story with the moral enterprise is a projection, as the encounter with policies, professional insight and personal frustration is episodically organised (the “I” positioning himself, the Bildung task of schools understood as knowing and following one’s interest and participating in society as a citizen within a democratic and emancipatory frame (Westbury, Hopmann, & Riquarts, 2000), the impact of policies, and the rhetoric about migrants) and has multiple characters (the “I”, the school, policies, migrant children etc.). Here, risk is seen on multiple levels. It is a societal and ontological risk to students and a risk to the very idea of education and Bildung. In the principal’s narrative, such integration and immigration policies would appear to subvert the whole purpose of democratic schooling based on equal rights.

Trauma, well-being and master-narratives

All of the interviewed principals appear to be highly aware of the fact that some migrant students have personal experiences of trauma and persecution and that they have experienced dislocation, relocation and being a newcomer to the country. As one principal puts it, “It is an insanely complex task” (Principal, Maple School). Here, the principal is referring to the school’s educational and democratic tasks in general and the teachers’ jobs in securing the inclusion and development of every student. The small stories about traumatising experiences are often vicarious, told by the teachers or students and retold and put together by the principal. Most of these “trauma stories” appear to be deeply disturbing for the principal because the principal experiences an urge to navigate in and respond to these vicarious small stories. Nevertheless, these stories are also canonical in their generic form because they appear as culturally recognisable small stories of refugees’ experiences and reflect a master narrative of exposure and deficits:

We do have parents, living in [an area on the ‘ghetto list’] with their children, and where they live with seven children and two adults in a 1.5 bedroom flat, right, and Dad is running around and screaming at night because he is traumatised … and how to deal with … Suddenly, students hand in assignments and they write like, well, Mum was raped while travelling through Europe and there were five men keeping her down. And the teacher is in shock … (Principal, Maple School).

By both reflecting master narratives of traumatised and “insane” refugees, not able to cope with their new life, and acknowledging that this are children’s real experiences, brought into the classroom, the principal touches upon conditions, given on the macro-level (small apartments, parents’ untreated traumas etc.) and how to navigate them in the local context of school, pointing at insecuritisation on multiple levels: The school’s responsibility (or not) to handle insecurity, the insecurity in how to handle traumas in class on a personal and pedagogical level and the lack of ontological security for children and families outside the domain of school.

Culture as explanation

For decades, culture has been a central topic in the field of migrant education in Denmark (Buchardt, 2018), which also shows in all 15 interviews. More broadly, several interviewees mention “culture” in the context of small stories as either the main explanation for “behaviour” or reject culture as an explanatory device in the small stories. In both cases, culture is almost always a depiction of the “other” culture, though, of course, there are exceptions. The following small story about socially induced hierarchies within minority groups highlights aspects of risk and insecuritisation, pointing towards the “paradigm shift” in immigration policy that illustrates the tendency to problematise Muslims particularly as a risk to society:

As a society, we look down on the group they are part of; that is, the ethnic minority, and if they are Muslims, well, they are hit twice and if they wear a headscarf, well, that is even worse … (Principal, Maple School).

In the small story, the principal discursively constructs the societal outcome of the rhetoric of the “paradigm shift” where specific groups are positioned not only as a risk but are almost criminalised. The small story is a type of shared story (about hijabs and minorities), as the principal expresses a trenchant evaluative stance towards the vernacular prejudices in society. The hierarchy of risk relates to ethnicity, where hijab-wearing Muslims seem to be marginalised threefold. In this small story, the principal simultaneously regulates different emotions – his own frustrations and the irrational societal emotions of risk – and he tries to make sense of the risk and insecuritisation aspects by pointing at processes of othering and marginalisation. Hence, in his small story, he gives structure to more fleeting understandings and experiences.

To conclude these small story illustrations, we would like to share one principal’s experience, in which he insists on equal rights in and to education but is met with an unanticipated political backlash:

It is absolutely a smear campaign. When we make a stand to ensure that all young people have equal rights to education, then we see a political hunt to trap us because there are certain sections of the population who are not allowed to get an education … (Principal, Meadow School).

In this small story about the political “hunting” of certain schools for being too immigrant friendly, multiple identities of the narrator (here, the principal) emerge. The small story is a composition of “a unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings involving human beings as characters or actors” (Bruner, 1990) on a small scale, but morally and ethically key for the principal. The principal represents an official position, a personal stance regarding immigration policies and a collective “alter ego” for the “population who are not allowed to get an education”. In his interaction with the interviewer, the principal connects everyday experiences with wider socio-political tensions regarding the insecuritisation and education of migrants and refugees. Small stories can capture multiple identities and different levels of interaction in interviews, even in a broader meaning-making sense.

As the main assumption was that small stories can reflect or reveal processes of insecuritisation by making sense of these processes in a narrative form, we saw how school principals used small stories “on the spot” as meaning-making devices and identity negation tools. The narrative orientation to the complex issues raised in the interviews allowed the principals to elaborate, reflect and evaluate their perceptions, which otherwise could be ignored or marginalised if solely relying on arguments or descriptions. The orientation to small stories opened an emic perspective, considering the principals’ own understanding of migrant students, policies on immigration and integration, as well as specific local interactions. However, the tellability of small stories (Georgakopoulou, 2007) helped to scaffold the principals’ understanding of recent processes of insecuritisation and to assess present and future imagined events regarding migrant children in and out of school.

It is obvious that refugee and migrant families have experienced major discontinuities because of migration and that they are also at risk of experiencing insecurity and unpredictability in their everyday lives in the reception context. However, the precarious situation of insecuritised migrant families also seems to affect school principals in their performance of everyday tasks as school professionals and educators. This means that principals may feel challenged by measures that disturb their experience of predictability and normality in their work and, thus, that challenge their own sense of ontological security.

Discussion and concluding remarks

In this paper, we have discussed the emergence of the processes of insecuritisation in 15 school principals’ narratives of working with migrant children under conditions of contrasting policies: on the one hand, education’s inclusive and democratic aims and on the other hand, immigration and integration policies with excluding and othering effects. The analyses of the principals’ small stories point to a variety of strategies regarding the sense making of insecuritisation processes related to current policies and rhetoric. We have witnessed – in broad variations – frustration, acknowledgement of insecuritisation, explanations of the consequences of risk and insecuritisation and sometimes anger – with a few principals denying any recognisable effect of the policies in daily school life. The findings from the analyses of these small stories may be used for further discussion of ontological security as an important aspect of integration. In general, the principals’ small stories are “small” counter-narratives that contradict the national policy master narrative of migration and migrants as a risk. The term counter-narrative refers to a narrative that takes on its meaning – and a stance – through its relationship with other (master) narratives (Bamberg & Andrews, 2004; Lundholt, Maagaard, & Piekut, 2018), as the master narrative of migrants as a risk serves as a “cultural script” at the macro-level, hard to resist on the micro-level. As such, the principals’ small stories implicitly counter the national master narratives on risk; the small stories seem to emerge as counter-stories, which are not always encouraged or accepted in the specific context of school because they challenge the power structures and obligations of schools being “state institutions”, expected to respond loyally to ministries and policy making. The tensions between the small stories and the policy master narratives are striking.

Although on the one hand, the recent “paradigm shift” in Danish immigration politics and the “ghetto plan” in integration politics should be seen in the context of the policies of preceding decades, they can, on the other hand, be seen as ruptures in or as (further) radicalisations of these policies. This leads us to see these policies as examples of securitisation in that they are presented as defending society against an existential threat, justifying the use of extraordinary measures. On a micro-level, these policies (and the political climate they reflect) may be seen as related to the new insecuritisations of refugees and immigrants in Denmark, which we have explored via the small stories of school principals.

As nation-state representatives, school principals have a responsibility for migrant children’s encounters with the receiving country and nation-state. School plays an important role in the integration processes of children and young people. However, the importance of ontological security is often underestimated in discussions of integration that tend to focus on topics such as language proficiency, cultural adaption and community participation. Because of the current radicalisation of immigration and integration policies, schools find themselves in a situation where policies from other fields (such as housing and immigration) aimed at adult migrants complicate the schools’ work in educating the children of migrants in accordance with educational ideals such as democracy and equal rights. The paper aims at contributing to the discussion of the impact of fundamental ontological security in integration and education, as well as of the relations between rhetoric and policies on immigration and the insecuritisation of migrants, specifically their children. The analyses of principals’ small stories of insecuritisation illustrate awareness, perplexity and frustration regarding migrant children’s insecure and precarious conditions, even in cases where the school is a described as a “bubble”, securing the children for a while. Furthermore, they illustrate how principals reflect on how to deal with their knowledge and experiences of these conditions in the professional practice of being responsible for the children’s education. Insights in such reflections may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of integration processes in schools and on how school professionals approach insecuritisation processes in their everyday practices.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

Funding This work was supported by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 822664.

Notes on contributors

Gro Hellesdatter Jacobsen

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Gro Hellesdatter Jacobsen is Associate Professor at the Department for the Study of Culture at University of Southern Denmark. Among her research interests are ethnic minority children in school, pedagogics, Bildung, and multicultural education.

Anke Piekut

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Anke Piekut is an associate professor at the Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark. Her main research interest is the study of narratives in and about education, studies in ethnicity, migration and education and the use of narrative and narrative inquiry in educational settings.

Notes

1. Part of the project consists of studies of reception communities’ “destination effects” on migrant children in various EU countries, including Denmark, regarding national government policies and integration initiatives, best practices in schools and political, media and public attitudes towards migration. As part of this substudy, the analysis of interviews informs a more general discussion about the political discourse and the ideological framework in which the interviews are situated, while also illuminating current challenges in elementary school practice. The project encompasses similar case studies from Austria, Denmark, Poland, Slovenia, and Spain; however, in the present paper, we present findings from the Danish context.

2. In this section, we draw in part on the analyses of Hobel, Høegh, Jacobsen, Piekut, and Jensen (2019).

3. The principal here was referring to the far-right politician Rasmus Paludan in his attempt to deport all Muslims from Denmark. A polarising figure at the time of the interviews (spring of 2019), he extensively promoted himself via YouTube videos that were followed by many children and adolescents.