Education policies and the dilemmas concerning migrant students in the Northern European welfare states: The case of mother-tongue instruction

Around 1970, the European nation-states began to explicitly state the right to education for “foreign children” following an EU resolution. In Denmark policies were created that, while aiming at equity, simultaneously needed to handle the tension between difference and sameness in schooling for migrant students in the formative period of the new area of policy from the 1970s onwards. By means of comparison with other Northern European welfare states with a similar late 20th-century history regarding labor migration, namely Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, the dilemmas that occur between aiming towards equity and handling difference are explored. With the shifting policies concerning how to provide mother tongue instruction as the case for comparison, it will be explored and discussed how to understand the case of education policy and schooling in light of the welfare-state project and how this rubs against and intersects with the nation-state project in education of migrants.