Research project Children with Migration Background in Schools for Students with Intellectual Disability (MAID)

The project Children with Migration Background in Schools for Students with Intellectual Disability, addresses the educational and social needs and rights of students with diverse backgrounds – in respect to first language (other than Swedish), ethnicity, culture and migration-status – enrolled in schools for students with intellectual disability (SSID, anpassad grundskola). The aim of the project is to critically investigate how the language, ethnic, cultural and migration-status diversity is made visible or invisible, negotiated and (re)constructed in processes that shape the patterns of assessment and placement in schools for students with intellectual disability, and in daily life in schools, through multifarious relations, teaching, support and learning practices.

This has not previously been studied systematically in Sweden’s school system. Doing so, the project will fill a knowledge gap with empirical findings and develop the methodology required, which lays the groundwork for the emerging research field at the intersection between migration, education and disability. The project runs over a four-year period. Institutional ethnographic methodology will be used to generate and organize the data together with data collected in a number of SSIDs in the Stockholm region. Critical Disability Studies in Education perspectives, which employ the concepts of ableism and linguicism, will be used to interrogate access to quality education and lifelong learning.