Education & Migration Seminar Series (EMSS)

This seminar series is organized by the Education & Migration working group at the Department of Education, Stockholm University. All interested researchers are welcome to participate in our forthcoming seminar presentations and discussions.

Many of our planned seminars will be related to the research project: Navigating Places, Negotiating Boundaries: A Multidisciplinary Study of Migrant Children’s Educational Transitions in Sweden

2026

15 September

Presentation by Sazana Jayadeva, University of Surrey

Time: 13.00-15.00

Location: Department of Education, room 2427

Zoom: https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/4087375260

17 November

Panel discussion with invited quests

Time: 13.00-15.00

Location: Department of Education, room 2527

Zoom: https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/4087375260

5 May

”Framtiden bor hos oss” / ”The Future Lives With Us”

The image of vulnerable suburban areas is characterized by gang crime, unemployment, exclusion and racism. But behind the headlines, life goes on, something that is rarely seen in news reporting. In the documentary ”The Future Lives With Us”, journalist Jan Scherman and his friend Khalid Mohammed visit suburban areas in Gothenburg to provide a picture of everyday life behind the headlines – a picture of hope and faith in the future.

Seminar participants will watch the documentary and the following discussion will be lead by prof. Ali Osman and prof. Stefan Lund.

Time: 13.00-15.00
Location: Department of Education, room 2557
Zoom: https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/4087375260

24 February

"Preschool segregation and the transition into school"

Håkan Forsberg, associate professor in the sociology of education at Uppsala University, will give a talk on his recent work on preschool segregation and the transition from preschool to elementary school.

Time: 13.00-15.00
Location: Department of Education, room 1511
Zoom: https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/4087375260

Readings:

Forsberg, H., Waddling, J., & Fjellborg, A. A. (2024). Class-based preschool enrolment—Social stratification and quality differences in the Swedish preschool market. Education Inquiry, 15(1), 104–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2023.2292824

Alm Fjellborg, A., & Forsberg, H. (2023). Even in preschools: Analysing the preschool and neighbourhood segregation gap in Swedish municipalities. European Sociological Review, 39(5), 677–691. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcad004

Fjellborg, A. A., & Forsberg, H. (2022). Commuting patterns of preschool children in metropolitan Stockholm. Regional Science Policy & Practice, 14(4), 960–980. https://doi.org/10.1111/rsp3.12401

11 November 2025

Young foreign-born students in educational transitions, boundaries and pathways

Mini-conference to showcast and discuss the latest research findings, and to foster exchange of ideas on how young migrant students navigate their educational journey.

23 September 2025

Sustainable-Smart Innovations in Marginalised Communities: Lessons Learned from Student Projects in Cape Town, South Africa.

Carolien van den Berg is an Associate Professor in the Information Systems Department and the Acting Deputy Dean of Learning and Teaching in the EMS Faculty at the University of the Western Cape.

Dr Belinda Verster is a registered professional urban planner with the South African Council for Planners and an award-winning senior academic in the Department of Urban & Regional Planning at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

Readings

Bridging Local Realities and Global Goals pdf, 3.5 MB. (3554 Kb)
Exploring Student-Led Sustainable-Smart Innovation Projects in a Marginalised Community. van den Berg, C., Verster, B. (2025)

Quintuple Helix, the Informal Economy and Sustainable-Smart Innovations pdf, 818 kB. (817 Kb)
Lessons to be learned from a transdisciplinary student project. van den Berg, C., Verster, B. (2023)

6 May

New Dissertations

Nubin Ciziri and Isabella Strömberg present their dissertations at this spring seminar.

Cirziri´s thesis, (Dis)Integrating Families: Refugees’ social histories and their encounters with education in Sweden, explores how the backgrounds of Kurdish refugees from Syria shape their encounters with education in Sweden, as the key vehicle of state-led integration.

Strömberg´s dissertation explores the concept of disruptivity in the Swedish public education system, centering on Nya Tallskolan – a compulsory school situated in a territorial stigmatized and socio-economic marginalized area.

Readings - dissertations in full text

(Dis)Integrating Families Refugees’ social histories and their encounters with
education in Sweden Ciziri, N, Uppsala University, 2024

Cycles of Disruption. An Ethnographic Study of Disruptivity in a Swedish Secondary School Strömberg, I, Stockholm University, 2025 (Abstract in English) 

11 February 

Book Launch "Domestic Work in Postcolonial Tanzania"

EMSS will host a book launch where Professor Ann Phoenix and Professor Girma Berhanu will discuss Paula Mählck’s new book, "Domestic Work in Postcolonial Tanzania. Gender learning and Unlearning."

The book analyses domestic work as a process of learning gender, race and class. Moreover, learning to cope as well as possibilities for Unlearning.

24 September 2024

"Rural Education and Migration"

Professor Elisabeth Öhrn, Department of Education and Special Education, Gothenburg University, talked about the findings from a research project about rural education and migration in 2015.

Elisabeth Öhrn

Abstract and readings

In the autumn of 2015 a large number of mainly Syrian refugees arrived in Sweden. They were unevenly distributed geographically by the authorities and smaller municipalities received proportionally larger numbers than others. The schools became central in the local reception processes. They faced difficulties but also possibilities, both pedagogical, organizational and in relation to social issues. Based on participant observation and interviews with staff in six rural schools in different rural areas from an ethnographic study, in this paper we explore experiences about how schools received the new refugees and how reception influenced teaching. The analyses indicate some changes in forms of teaching (e.g. sensitivity to language differences, more explicit structuring of tasks) that became permanent as they were considered beneficial to non-migrant students as well. In contrast, there were very few signs of changes in the content of teaching, which appears to have largely remained largely the same as before the refugees came.

A Study of the 2015 Reception of Young Refugees in Sweden pdf, 259.4 kB. (259 Kb)

12 November 2024

”Supporting teachers in Swedish compulsory schools to support linguistically minoritized second language learners with migrant backgrounds”

Josefin Nilsson and  Karin Petterson, The National Centre for Swedish as a Second Language, Stockholm University.

May 15, 2024: "Symbolic boundaries"

Andrea Voyer (Department of Sociology, Stockholm University) and Stefan Lund (Department of Education, Stockholm University) will talk about symbolic boundaries, superdiverse school cultures and incorporation.
Venue: Room 2519​​

Readings:

‘If the students don’t come, or if they don’t finish, we don’t get the money.’ pdf, 1.5 MB. (1582 Kb)  (Voyer. A)

Immigrant incorporation in Education: High school students’ negotiation of belonging. pdf, 344.9 kB. (344 Kb)  (Lund S.)

21 February, 2024

"Educational Trajectories"

Ben Wilson, Elena Pupaza and Frankseco Junior Yorke (Department of sociology, Stockholm University) and Samaneh Khaef (Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University) talked about educational trajectories and the inequalities that are faced by adult refugees and the children and grandchildren of refugees living in Sweden.

Readings

Persistent educational inequality among the children and grandchildren of refugees? pdf, 1.2 MB. (1249 Kb) Pupaza E, Harber-Aschan L, Wilson B (2023)

September 19, 13.00–15.00​​: "Places and spaces"

Danielle Ekman Ladru (Department of Child & Youth studies, Stockholm University) and Natacha Webster (Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University) will talk about their views and experiences of how to study neighborhoods and urban spaces from a qualitative research perspective.

Reading

Children’s prosthetic citizenship pdf, 571.6 kB. (571 Kb)  Article by Danielle Ekman Ladru et al. published in Social & Cultural Geography

(Re)visiting the neighbourhood pdf, 173.1 kB. (173 Kb)  Article by Natasha Webster et al. published in Geography Compass, 15(12)

November 8, 13.00–15.00​​: "Educational transitions"

Lisbeth Lundahl (Department of Applied Educational Science, Umeå University) and Bo Malmberg (Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University) will talk about school choice, segregation and what guides and restricts migrant students’ educational transitions.

Reading

Winding paths pdf, 221.8 kB. (221 Kb)
Article by Lindblad, M., Lundahl, L. (2020)

Last updated: 2026-06-16

Source: IPD

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