Abstract
Street-Level Resistance to Municipal Policies for Schooling of Newly Arrived Migrant Students
Schooling of migrant students has for long been a tale of certain Danish policies’ dubitable effect (Hellesdatter Jacobsen 2012; Moldenhawer and Øland 2013; Li and Enemark 2021). As teachers in the Danish welfare state have a great degree of discretion, they are crucial in ensuring the rights and needs of migrant students are being met (Haas et al. 2011; Hellesdatter Jacobsen 2015). A particularly vulnerable group of migrant students are the ‘newly arrived’. These students and their parents often have a knowledge gap (Brussig and Knuth 2013), when it comes to knowing their rights and consequences of agreeing to what is presented to them by officials. In this regard, teachers and other school staff’s enactment of policy therefore become especially important for migrant students’ further progress in school and beyond. I investigate how a municipality’s schooling policy for newly arrived migrant students meant one teacher struggled with what they felt was a severe violation of national legislation, resulting in a subsequent use of several coping mechanisms (Lipsky 2010).
In this paper, I ask:
How can teachers rely on coping mechanisms when encountering discrepancy between municipal policies and their professional morals (Lipsky 2010; Brodkin 2015)?
Materials include publicly accessible policy documents, personal correspondence from the street-level front worker in question as well as a lengthy interview I conducted with this teacher. I conclude decentralization in the Danish welfare state can lead to significant variation for the schooling of newly arrived migrant students and when combined with limited accountability measures, street-level workers potentially resort to the ultimate coping mechanism of quitting. The paper adds to existing literature on how little power street-level workers can have in adjusting policies to their practice and how those clients who are most marginalized are often those who are subject to negative disparities in provision (Brodkin 2015).
Schooling of migrant students has for long been a tale of certain Danish policies’ dubitable effect (Hellesdatter Jacobsen 2012; Moldenhawer and Øland 2013; Li and Enemark 2021). As teachers in the Danish welfare state have a great degree of discretion, they are crucial in ensuring the rights and needs of migrant students are being met (Haas et al. 2011; Hellesdatter Jacobsen 2015). A particularly vulnerable group of migrant students are the ‘newly arrived’. These students and their parents often have a knowledge gap (Brussig and Knuth 2013), when it comes to knowing their rights and consequences of agreeing to what is presented to them by officials. In this regard, teachers and other school staff’s enactment of policy therefore become especially important for migrant students’ further progress in school and beyond. I investigate how a municipality’s schooling policy for newly arrived migrant students meant one teacher struggled with what they felt was a severe violation of national legislation, resulting in a subsequent use of several coping mechanisms (Lipsky 2010).
In this paper, I ask:
How can teachers rely on coping mechanisms when encountering discrepancy between municipal policies and their professional morals (Lipsky 2010; Brodkin 2015)?
Materials include publicly accessible policy documents, personal correspondence from the street-level front worker in question as well as a lengthy interview I conducted with this teacher. I conclude decentralization in the Danish welfare state can lead to significant variation for the schooling of newly arrived migrant students and when combined with limited accountability measures, street-level workers potentially resort to the ultimate coping mechanism of quitting. The paper adds to existing literature on how little power street-level workers can have in adjusting policies to their practice and how those clients who are most marginalized are often those who are subject to negative disparities in provision (Brodkin 2015).
| Translated title of the contribution | Frontlinjemodstand til kommunale politikker for undervisning af nyankomne migrante elever |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Publication date | 14 Jun 2022 |
| Publication status | Published - 14 Jun 2022 |
| Event | The 4th Street-Level Bureaucracy Conference 2022 - Aalborg University , Copenhagen, Denmark Duration: 14 Jun 2022 → 16 Jun 2022 Conference number: 4 https://www.politics-society.aau.dk/research/projects/lises/conferences/slb-2022/ |
Conference
| Conference | The 4th Street-Level Bureaucracy Conference 2022 |
|---|---|
| Number | 4 |
| Location | Aalborg University |
| Country/Territory | Denmark |
| City | Copenhagen |
| Period | 14/06/2022 → 16/06/2022 |
| Internet address |