Educational clash or educational potential? School aged asylum seekers’ encounters with Swedish health education

The Swedish Research Council has identified ‘the health of migrants’ as a priority subject area. Research suggests however, that health assumes different meanings in different cultures. For asylum seekers who have crossed cultural borders, what it means to be healthy can become unclear and contentious.

This project focuses on school aged asylum seekers’ encounters with health education in the Swedish education system. Asylum seekers are often positioned as problems and as ‘at risk’ when it comes to issues of health and wellbeing.

This positioning of difference results in tensions but also signals potential for educational opportunities.New perspectives on school aged asylum seekers’ experiences of health education are necessary because existing perspectives are problematic, given that research has been conducted on rather than with ethnic minority groups.

The purpose of this project is to create knowledge about what happens when school aged asylum seekers experience health education in different health-related subjects in Swedish schools. This will be achieved by using a strengths-based approach, and decolonial and Southern theories.

Photo elicitation interviews, vignettes and focus groups will be used to produce data.A new perspective will result in (1) new ways of understanding how asylum seekers meet health education from a research perspective, and (2) new ways of conducting health education from a pedagogical perspective.