The Battle for the Black Mind offers a compelling historical analysis of the African American struggle for educational equality and its implications for civil rights and social cohesion. The review examines two dominant narratives that emerge: educational empowerment and desegregation. The empowerment narrative emphasizes culturally affirming education within segregated systems, fostering pride and agency. This is paralleled with contemporary efforts in Sweden, where immigrant-led schools resist assimilation and aim to empower marginalized students. In contrast, the desegregation narrative focuses on dismantling institutional segregation through racially mixed schooling. However, Brown critiques the burden placed on Black students during desegregation, revealing persistent racial inequalities. Drawing comparisons with recent Swedish desegregation initiatives, the review argues that genuine inclusion requires more than physical integration; it demands educational practices that affirm students' identities. Brown's work is bridging historical and contemporary struggles, emphasizing that education remains a vital force for social justice.

The present paper delves into how symbolic boundaries in a school that is undergoing a desegregation process come to shape social boundaries of ‘we-ness’ and ‘otherness’. The theoretical framework of the study starts from an interest in analysing whether symbolic and social boundaries emerge in new encounters during a desegregation process and whether this may produce different modes of incorporation. Peer interactions and schoolwork were observed and interviews with school staff were conducted to investigate school desegregation implementation in a large Swedish town. The town we investigated has formulated a desegregation policy that, over time, has not resulted in desegregation in practice. The results highlight that schools without a coherent pedagogy, idea, or practice for social inclusion face challenges. These challenges, in turn, promote internal micro-segregation and non-incorporation of minority students, despite intentions to promote inclusion.

Pedagogisk och utbildningssociologisk forskning visar att den svenska grundskolan är starkt segregerad vilket har bidragit till försämrad likvärdighet i elevers måluppfyllelse. En följd av detta har blivit att kommuner försöker hantera skolsegregationens negativa effekter genom att aktivt styra skolornas elevsammansättning. Denna artikeln handlar om hur skolledare och pedagoger i en i mindre kommuns lågstadieskola, arbetar med en ny elevsammansättning, organisatoriskt, socialt och pedagogiskt och den betydelse deras arbete får för elevers relationer till varandra och deras skolframgång. Fallstudiens har ett kultursociologiskt perspektiv vars analyser baseras på etnografiska fältanteckningar, intervjuer med skolaktörer, kommundata över elevernas resultat på nationella prov mellan åren 2016–2021 samt ett sociogram som eleverna har fyllt i. Resultaten visar att majoriteten av eleverna som sedan starten av sin grundskoleutbildning har gått i en integrerad skolform umgås i hög grad med elever som har en annan etnisk bakgrund än de själva. Eleverna får också högre resultat på de nationella proven i svenska och svenska som andraspråk i jämförelse med innan och åren direkt efter reformen. De huvudsakliga förklaringarna till denna framgång grundar sig i skolaktörernas genuina tro på en skola för alla, samtidigt som de utvecklat interaktionsförutsättningar som lagt grunden till en inkluderande skolkultur. 

In the knowledge society, the populations’ acquisition to education and knowledge has become of crucial importance for democratic and economic development, but also for each and everyone’s life chances. One sign of such societal process is the introduction of certain general subject courses in Swedish upper secondary education (Swedish, Mathematics, English etc.). At the core of this chapter’s descriptions and interpretations are the readings of four Governmental Bills between 1990 and 2011. This chapter’s point of departure is the changing policy rhetoric regarding what kind of general knowledge different categories of upper secondary school students need in order to meet various demands in society. It will be shown how such policy initiatives come to play an active part in the structuring of young people’s acquisition of knowledge. The ways in which the upper secondary education curriculum is organized predefine who will gain admittance to such knowledge and who will not.