Racism and anti-racism in elementary school - A study on how everyday racism emerge and is challenged in different school contexts

The purpose of the project is to contribute with knowledge about how everyday racism emerge and is challenged in elementary school in Sweden. Racism is a part of many students´ everyday school life and contributes a systematic inequality between students.

Laws and curricula state that the school must work to counter racism, simultaneously there is great uncertainty among school staff about what racism means and how it can be handled.

Previous research on racism in school has mainly studied explicit racism among teenagers, there is thus a need to study everyday racism more closely among students of younger ages.‘Everyday racism’ is a central concept in the project (Essed, 2002), which refers to patterns of everyday actions that create unequal conditions for students in school.

In addition, we have an interest in whether and how everyday racism interacts with social class and gender.

The study builds on ethnographic data collection (interviews, observations, etc.) conducted at three elementary schools over 2.5-years.

The choice of schools is based on demographic variation, which enables analyzes of the importance of the local context for how racism is expressed and responded to in diffrent schools.

The project is based on the following research questions:How does everyday racism emerge and is challenged in the schools?How does everyday racism interact with social class and gender in the schools?How does everyday racism emerge and is challenged in different school contexts?