This paper examines the intersections between the social categories class, ethnicity and geography in an analysis of three Danish schools’ educational preparatory work with students in 7th-9th grade. All three schools are placed in what I choose to call problematized public housing areas, referring to public housing areas that are, have recently been or are at risk of becoming placed on, an official list of “parallel societies” managed by the Danish ministry of Interior and Housing (Ministry of Interior and Housing 2021). A central criterion for areas on the list is that 50% of the area’s inhabitants are of non-western descent. Other possible criteria refer to unemployment rates, crime rates, the educational level of inhabitants and the level of income in the area. Areas on the list are targets of various interventions involving inhabitants being moved to other areas, apartment buildings being torn down and land being sold off to private housing projects. Public schools in these areas are also targets of interventions such as students being bussed to schools in other districts, obligatory Danish tests of students, and schools with poor performances being closed down.

This paper has two purposes. First, it seeks to create new knowledge on how a schools’ location in an area considered problematic by the Danish welfare state affects the educational guidance work taking place inside these schools, and how it affects the students’ own dreams for their future. Secondly, the paper engages in the development of a theoretical framework that understands place not as a fixed concept influencing individuals who are physically present in this space, but rather as a concept that is socially constructed throughout the everyday life in the area as well as in dominating public discourse regarding “parallel societies”. This theoretical framework – based on intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991; El-Tayeb 2011) as well as urban feminist geography (Parker 2016; Molett & Faria 2018) – holds the possibility for a dynamic understanding of how the students’ context plays a central role in producing their subject position, educational choices and the educational guidance they receive.

In my understanding of geography and “place”, I draw on urban feminist geography, which notes that categories such as social class and ethnicity “operate within and through spatial relations and differentiated geographies” (Parker 2011:435). Thus, I view geographical locations as just as constructed as gender, race and class (Staeheli & Martin 2000; Molett & Fariah 2018).
Ethnicity is understood as a category that produces and is produced by inequality (El-Tayeb 2011). With this theoretical approach, I understand the students’ ethnicity as something that is produced in their everyday interactions with peers and teachers as well as educational counselors in the school. This makes it possible to study in what ways the students are constructed as ethnic minorities and how difference is produced in the school’s educational guidance work. It also holds the potential to analyze the categorization practices through which the teachers and educational counselors understand the students’ future possibilities.

Thus, the driving research question is: How do the social categories class, ethnicity and geography influence the subject positions that are made available to the students in school, and how do these positions influence the school’s educational guidance work and the students’ own dreams of their future?


Methods/Methodology (400 words)
Empirically, the analysis is based on material produced during ethnographic fieldwork in three schools. The material will consist of: 1) Participant observations of teachers and educational counsellors in interaction with students in their everyday school life. 2) Participant observations of students in- and outside of school. 3) Interviews with students about their thoughts on their educational choices and future work life. 4) Interviews with teachers about their educational counseling work with their students as well as their views of the students’ future possibilities. 5) Discussions in reference groups with teachers and students respectively, where preliminary findings are presented and discussed among the participants.
Schools are selected based upon their placement in or in close proximity to public housing area(s) that are, have recently been on or are at risk of being placed on one of the three lists of parallel societies (Ministry of Interior and Housing 2021).

The material will be analyzed with attention to how place, ethnicity and class interfere with understandings of the students’ competencies and possibilities.
The analyses of the observation material will focus on in what ways the teachers’ and educational counsellors’ categorization practices influence the positions that are available to the students, and thereby which educational and vocational future possibilities that become visible to the students.
The interview material will serve to supplement the observation material. Interviews with students will move between the concrete and the abstract; between concrete experiences from e.g. a spare time job and dreams for the future. Reference groups with both students and teachers and educational counselors makes it possible to involve the participants more actively in preliminary findings of the project and to discuss relevant issues with them in a forum that makes space for these talks and thoughts.


Expected outcomes (300 words)
By making use of participant observations, interviews and reference group discussions, the project is expected to create new insights to ethnic minority students’ own perspectives on their school lives and dreams for the future.

The paper is also expected to contribute with insights to how a theoretical perspective across the disciplines of intersectionality, education, sociology and urban feminist geography holds new possibilities for understanding the school in relation to its geographic location and its position as a central tool for integration in the Danish welfare state toolbox.


Intent of publication
The paper might have either a methodological/analytical article to be placed in International Journal of Educational Studies in Education or an article focusing on results of the analyses to be placed in e.g. Race, Ethnicity & Education.
References (400 words)

Crenshaw, K. (1991): Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1300.
El-Tayeb, F. (2011): European Others, Queering Ethnicity in Postcolonial Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Harris, A., & Leonardo, Z. (2018): Intersectionality, Race-Gender Subordination, and Education. Review of Research in Education, 42:1, 1–27.
Ministry of the Interior and Housing (2021): Liste over parallelsamfund pr. 1. december 2021. http: https://im.dk/Media/637738688901862631/Parallelsamfundslisten%202021.pdf Link accessed 04.12.2021.
Ministry of Transport (2020): Liste over ghettoområder pr 1. december 2020. http: https://www.trm.dk/publikationer/2020/liste-over-ghettoomraader-pr-1-december-2020/ Link accessed 04.12.2021.
Mollett, S. & Faria, C. (2018): The spatialities of intersectional thinking: fashioning feminist geographic futures, Gender, Place and Culture, 25:4, 565-577.
Parker, B. (2011): Material Matters: Gender and the city, Geography Compass, 5:6, 433-447.
Staeheli, L. A., & Martin, P. M. (2000). Spaces for Feminism in Geography. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 571(1), 135–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271620057100110