Den utvecklande förskolan

Språk, svenska och familj i legitimeringar för förskola för flerspråkiga barn

Abstract

The enriching preschool: Language, Swedish and family in legitimations for preschool for multilingual children. This paper contributes to research on immigration and integration by analyzing conceptions of language, Swedishness and multilingual speakers in argumentation for preschool for multilingual children as formulated in a public enquiry. We scrutinize the legitimations for preschool for multilingual children, the construction of social actors such as immigrants and Swedish vs. immigrated parents, as well as conceptions about language and language development. According to our analyses, Sweden is not only constructed as progressive and democratic, but such values are “nationalized” (Bauer, von Brömssen, Milani & Spehar 2023), in relation to which immigrants are often constructed as deviant. We discern deficit approaches toward multilingual parents and families and their abilities to provide for their children’s linguistic and social development. Although advantages of multilingual practices are recognized, these are not considered possible to achieve. However, we argue, such recognition would potentially enhance multilingual children’s learning and second language development of Swedish.