The objective of this paper is to describe and discuss the change of discourses in governmental steering documents dealing with the school education of newly arrived in Sweden, and their transformations between 2014 and 2022. This paper is a pilot study within a project focusing on newly arrived students’ learning and assessment processes. We wish to analyze transformations and differences over time and in organizational hierarchy from governmental objectives to municipality realizations. Focusing on steering documents, to begin with, we want to investigate how the parliament, government and governmental agencies did articulate the motivation of their objectives?

Sweden has always been a multicultural and multilingual society to some degree, but in the school's governing documents it was long assumed that Sweden was monocultural and monolingual (Eklund, 2003). Students with other cultural or linguistic backgrounds had to adapt to the students from the majority to achieve success in school. The possibility for pupils with mother tongues other than Swedish receive instruction in their respective languages ​​was introduced in 1966. The obligation for municipalities to offer mother tongue instruction was introduced with the home language reform in 1977. In 1996, the name was changed to mother tongue. The need for study guidance in the mother tongue became more and more articulated and more regulated, especially after 2010. Another adaptation of the school to a changed student composition was the introduction of Swedish as a foreign language, which 1995 changed its name to Swedish as a second language. As a country with a long tradition of immigration and a general reputation of a good standard of social justice and low degree of inequalities Sweden has also got the label of being ‘the consciousness of the world’ (Barry. & Yuill, 2016; Dance, 2006; Svanberg & Tydén, 2005). An educational sector influenced by marketization at least since the late 90-ties, may have changed the preconditions for equality though (Dovemark et al., 2018). Due to the influence of neoliberal policy and a shift from equity and social justice on the education the refugee, asulym-seeking and migrant students is particularly disadvantaged (Devine, 2013; Nilsson Folke, 2017; Pinson, 2020; Taylor, 2008). Previous Swedish research shows that newly arrived students in Swedish schools encounter structural obstacles, for instance teachers’ lower expectations, otherising, and a deficiency perspective. Overall, the difficulties and opportunities the current system entails seems to lead to greater exclusion (Bunar, 2010; Gruber, 2007; Nilsson Folke, 2017; Sharif, 2017).

A societal inclusion of migrants though is an important aspect shaping an equal society. Immigrant families and people with lower education have difficulties entering the labor market. The success of young migrants’ education could be seen as a litmus test for an equal society, and intrinsic for the possibility for employment in the Swedish society (Lindblad 2016; Pinson, 2020). Steering documents give a hint measuring inclusivity and cohesion of the educational system on the one hand and a linkage to the societal discussion on the other.

During the years 2014-2022, the Swedish government has revised legislation aiming at strengthening newly arrived students’ possibilities to accomplish the objectives of the education.  Against this background we think it is of interest to investigate which differences can be detected between 2014 and 2022 in regard to newly arrived students’ success in the educational system.

Method: The empiric material of this study consists of a strategical sampling of steering documents; law documents, governmental inquires and bills, and agreements between governmental agencies, and municipalities. As a starting point of departure, we have applied content analysis continuing with coding of keywords which allow us to detect temporal changes in phrasing and articulation during 2014 and 2022. The keywords are highlighting the level of mandates and organization strategies, which allow us to compare differences of connotations on textual, text producing and societal level. Guiding questions have been on concepts used for migrants and newly arrived students as well as the organization of their education. Questions asked are for instance: which kind of educational obstacles seemed to be identified as relevant and which kind of different solutions are presented during the years. The coding process is inspired by Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1993, Fairclough 2013) and based on our theoretical frame on education which is imbedded in Bourdieu’s praxeology (Bourdieu 1998). We conceptualize the documents as specific historical discourses within fields of power, looking for intertextuality, and differences between different levels – governmental, municipality and public discourse on immigration and responsibilities of school education which would be interesting to compare to other countries further on.

Expected Outcomes: We expect following years being indicators for differences on the timeline: 2015 with the emigrant movement and about 70000 new students in Swedish schools in short notice; new legislation for newly arrived students in 2016 and 2018 followed by a new law on migration in 2021. We do also suppose different discourses on governmental and municipality level. The main differences, we assume, are to be found in different contexts which affect the term-level: whereas 2014 (Prop. 2014/15:45) the governmental intention seemed to center integration, later we perceive a greater focus on language training questions and organization. The changes may show a somehow shifting educational discourse emphasizing assessment outcomes while at the same time organizational conditions concentrating on language impede the student’s success. It seems to evolve an increasing shortcoming and towards 2021 a problem discourse.