Rural Education and Migration: A Study of the 2015 Reception of Young Refugees in Sweden

In the autumn of 2015 a large number of mainly Syrian refugees arrived in Sweden. They were unevenly distributed geographically by the authorities and smaller municipalities received proportionally larger numbers than others. The schools became central in the local reception processes. They faced difficulties but also possibilities, both pedagogical, organizational and in relation to social issues. Based on participant observation and interviews with staff in six rural schools in different rural areas from an ethnographic study, in this paper we explore experiences about how schools received the new refugees and how reception influenced teaching. The analyses indicate some changes in forms of teaching (e.g. sensitivity to language differences, more explicit structuring of tasks) that became permanent as they were considered beneficial to non-migrant students as well. In contrast, there were very few signs of changes in the content of teaching, which appears to have largely remained largely the same as before the refugees came.