Buchardt, Mette. ‘Schooling the Muslim Family: The Danish School System, Foreign Workers, and Their Children from the 1970s to the Early 1990s’. in Family, Values, and the Transfer of Knowledge in Northern Societies, 1500-2000, Eds. Ulla Aatsinki, Johanna Annola, and Mervi Kaarninen, New York: Routledge, 2019, 283–299. vbn.aau.dk,
Since the 1970s, the Danish educational politics has handled children of labor migrants from the global South as an object of and a specific problem to schooling, describing these children through their parents; more specifically through their parents’ relation to labor market and through what was perceived as their special behavior and mentality, the latter two often focusing on “traditions” (1970s), religion in relation to “culture” (especially since the 1980s) and “values” (since the 1990s). The chapter explores how school authorities and professionals understood and developed pedagogical strategies which on the one hand saw the parents as a central problem for and central explanation of their children’s school behavior, and on the other hand regarded migrant parents as a resource in order to diversify curriculum and schooling.