Ove Sernhede

From learning to labour to learning for marginality: school segregation and marginalization in Swedish suburbs

In this article, using data from ethnographic research, we try to present some glimpses of the way education is described as an experience and possibility ‘from below’, by pupils who grow up and study in schools in the most segregated and territorially stigmatized suburbs on the outskirts of our major cities. What we feel they describe is an experience of schooling for surviving the social and economic consequences of curtailed citizenship in a post‐industrial society rather than one of schooling that offers possibilities of integration and full citizenship or social transformation. Our findings have significant policy implications in this respect. Sweden has historically pursued projects aimed at educational inclusion but has recently taken a significant turn toward neo‐liberalism and educational consumerism, since which time various disadvantaged groups have become increasingly concentrated compared with others in under‐achieving schools in an economically threatened public sector. The article discusses some aspects and possible consequences of this development.

Learning Processes and Social Mobilization in a Swedish Metropolitan Hip-Hop Collective

Based on ethnographic research on the encounter between local culture and schools in multicultural suburban areas, this article explores possibilities suggested by autonomous learning activities in a hip-hop collective that may have a potential to break urban segregation patterns. The collective’s artistic production raises questions that have not been answered in schools, such as how the increasing class divisions between different parts of the urban landscape should be understood and dealt with. Different types of learning are identified connected to the self, others, and careers. Implications for schooling are briefly discussed.

Territorial Stigmatisation, Hip Hop and Informal Schooling

The initial words from Tederico may sound a bit categorical, but it is no exaggeration to say that the school system has great difficulties in many immigrant-dominated areas in the metropolitan cities of Sweden. If, for example, we take a closer look at the 2,500 persons from the Goteborg region who are registered each autumn at Goteborg University, we find that only 65–70 of these are from Angered, an area with more than 40,000 inhabitants. There has been a public debate about the under-representation of immigrants in higher education. Goteborg University has launched diverse projects to attract the youth in Angered, but with little success. The problem is alarming, and to solve it we must go deeper beneath public debate. Segregation, marginalization, and the growth of new forms of poverty in many Swedish cities have created a demarcation line between Us and Them – the immigrant-dominated areas are at the heart of what we might consider as an urbanization of injustice.

The Stockholm Uprising in Context: Urban Social Movements in the Rise and Demise of the Swedish Welfare-State City

In May 2013, an urban uprising shook Sweden and took the whole world by surprise, as reports from international news agencies and news channels such as CNN, BBC World, Al-Jazeera and Sky News reported live from poor suburbs in Stockholm, putting in question the image of Sweden as a calm and prosperous society. Following local mobilization demanding the public investigation of a police killing, the uprisings started on the evening of 19 May in the suburb of Husby, with 12,000 inhabitants, in northern Stockholm, where approximately 100 cars were burnt on the first night. The uprising went on for five more nights, spreading to other poor Stockholm suburbs. The magnitude of attention these events received in the media throughout the week of turmoil contributed to their spread to eight smaller cities around Sweden.

Hip-Hop - What's in it for the Academy? Self-Understanding, Pedagogy and Aesthetical Learning Processes in Everyday Cultural Praxis

Since hip-hop first appeared in New York over 35 years ago, it has been associated with social activism and education. Accordingly, it is not surprising that academic institutions in universities and K-12 schools are interested in hip-hop. In this article, we will highlight the ‘hip-hop academisation’ and map out a new direction in a dialog between hip-hop and the academic world. By investigating the relation between hip-hop and pedagogy through interviews with prominent members of the hip-hop community in New York City as well as an analysis of ‘universal’, collective, and aesthetic learning processes in a local, Swedish youth-based hip-hop collective, we intend to open up a theoretical discourse on hip-hop and emancipatory pedagogy. Our empirical data are collected through ethnographical methods.

In Garageland: Rock, Youth, and Modernity.

Seeking to understand youth culture through its visual and musical expression, In Garageland presents a pioneering ethnographic study of rock bands and their fans. Topics include class as well as sexual conflicts; mainstream and deviant subcultures, and the complex social, psychological and ethical relationships which exist within youth culture. In Garageland develops the notion of youth culture research as a way of mirroring our grown-up identities and of staking out the limits of late modern culture in general.

‘We Are Not Interested in Knowledge for Its Own Sake. Knowledge Should Be Put into Motion…’ Young Adults, Social Mobilization and Learning in Poor, Multi-ethnic Suburbs in Sweden’s Metropolitan Districts

Changes in metropolitan districts of Sweden during the last 30 years have created a situation that in many respects resembles those in big cities of continental Europe. Increasing social and economic disparities have generated a tense social climate that threatens social cohesion. The globally reported riots in the poor high-rise suburbs of Stockholm in 2013 were stark manifestations of the tensions. This chapter examines the social background of the tensions that fostered the riots and a new form of suburban mobilization that has emerged in parallel to police confrontations. It focuses on the prioritization of acquiring knowledge and learning in the political agenda developed by organizations that young adults have established recently in these suburban areas, particularly one called The Panthers for the Restoration of the Suburb. Two key questions are addressed. How should the knowledge-seeking and learning processes related to the informal and formal activities of the Panthers be understood? What can compulsory schools run by the municipality learn from the joyful and purposeful learning in the everyday praxis of an organization like the Panthers?