Background: In many countries, educational opportunities and choices may differ according to factors related to location. This may have a significant impact on young people's life chances and trajectories. The in-depth, ethnographic study reported here focuses attention on rural/non-rural variations in transition programmes for school students…

This paper explores learning trajectories in becoming 'rural women' in Sweden, by using a biographical and socially-situated learning perspective. The data is based on in-depth biographical interviews with three young women who moved between rural and urban areas, and finally decided to return to a rural area. The findings show three learning…

This article investigates the situation of Swedish upper secondary school students who have been subject to distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. We understand the transition from onsite education to distance education as a recontextualization of pedagogical practice, our framing follows loosely concepts from Bernstein. Given…

This paper investigates trends in the study of Modern languages or second foreign languages (SFLs) in Swedish lower secondary school between 2000 and 2018. Over the last decades, SFLs, i.e. French, German and Spanish, have been the target of several policy measures as a response to a declining interest. However, few reports on their impact have…

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in six different types of rural area and their schools in different parts of Sweden, this article identifies how rural schools relate to the local place and discusses some of the educational implications from this. Recurrent references to the local community were present in some schools and people there explicitly…

Drawing on post-structural perspectives and analysis of television programs on education, the article investigates the public educational discourse in Sweden. It shows how a dominant neoliberal educational discourse is articulated together with a discourse of equal education, where the two discourses influence and subvert each other so that…

This article is based on a meta-ethnographic analysis of educational research from rural and urban areas in Finland, Norway and Sweden following the reorganisation of educational supply there in line with market policies. Edward Soja's concept of spatial justice shapes the analysis. Using meta-ethnography, we try to present a contextualising…

This article is based on an ethnographic case study and highlights the importance of spatial dimensions and spatial inequality as means of understanding the participation of a group of youths living in a sparsely populated rural area of Sweden. The analysis took as its starting point Doreen Massey's conceptualisation of place and space as…

Studies within the field of rural geography have lately to a noticeable extent enriched the theme of the creation of masculinities and femininities focussing on social constructions of the rural, as well as social constructions of gender. In this study I aim to discuss some expressed discourses of the rural in order to illuminate the power…

This article explores the celebrated film "The Hunters" (Swedish title: "Jagarna") within the context of the discourse of "Internal Orientalism." By juxtaposing a contemporary Swedish film with historical accounts and contemporary news media, I demonstrate how the film reworks and (re)produces representations of the…