Frida Siekkinen

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Att vara och inte vara

The present thesis addresses the division and distinction between the two Swedish subjects Swedish and Swedish as a second language, which result in separation and the categorization of some students as Swedish as a second language students. The overall aim of the study is to examine how Swedish as a second language students are constructed as a category in everyday life at school. A further aim is to explore how students negotiate and relate to the categorization, its meaning and content, as well as how the students position themselves, and are positioned by others, in relation to the category. The study is based on a yearlong ethnography in year nine in a Swedish compulsory school. With a theoretical framework mainly based on Foucault’s theories, the study takes a poststructural approach with a specific focus on the notions of discourse, interpellation, power and resistance. In conclusion, the study shows that Swedish as a second language students are constructed through the school’s institutional conditions: policy documents, the organization of the Swedish subjects, and the talk of the teachers, as well as through the students’ framing of the category. The notions of Swedishness and immigrantness constitute the boundaries between the Swedish subjects and thus play a central role in how, and which of, the students are positioned as Swedish as a second language students in school practice. That in turn impact the students’ (im)possibilities to position themselves as specific subjects and the students resist, accept, as well as take an ambivalence stance on their negotiations of being, and not being, Swedish as a second language students.