Stockholm university
Centre for Research on Bilingualism

Higher sem. Biling. Simon Bauer: Good Citizens, Swedish Values, and the Nation

Seminar

Date: Tuesday 11 November 2025

Time: 15.00 – 16.30

Location: Room D480

Higher seminar in Bilingualism. Good Citizens, Swedish Values, and the Nation: Analyzing Civic Orientation for Newly Arrived Migrants. Simon Bauer, Assistant Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, Stockholm University.

In recent decades, a large number of countries in the Global North have converged around common integration policy. More specifically, in establishing educational programs directed at migrants as the main way of achieving such a goal. In this presentation, Simon Bauer critically engages with and analyzes the program Civic Orientation for Newly Arrived Migrants (Samhällsorientering för nyanlända) in Sweden. As such, he is concerned with identifying and analyzing (1) the discourses and discursive constructions that surround Civic Orientation at the level of policy, media, and classroom practices, and (2) the lived experiences of those taking part in this program.

By introducing and applying a multilevel framework for discourse ethnography, the study analyzes (1) policy documents regulating Civic Orientation; (2) media discourses pertaining to the provision; (3) interviews with people involved in interpreting and implementing the program; and (4) ethnographic classroom observations from six courses in three large Swedish municipalities. Thereby, through a granular analysis, Bauer illustrates the processes through which certain values such as gender equality, democracy, and human rights become nationalized and discursively constructed as ‘Swedish values’. He further shows how Sweden as a nation state is constructed in relation to an imagined ‘Arab World’. The study also contributes to describe and analyze how governmentality is executed discursively in very subtle ways in educational and migratory settings. Lastly, the presentation highlights the importance of understanding language as local practice, as context seems to affect what is said just as much as shifting linguistic code. 

Simon Bauer

About the Higher seminar in Research on Bilingualism

Theme
Language, Literature and Culture - Theme page

Last updated: November 10, 2025

Source: Centre for Research on Bilingualism

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