This article explores how the development of mother-tongue instruction (MTI) policies in the Danish welfare state have created varying notions of difference and sameness in the schooling of migrant students and how they experience these notions locally in practice. Based on an analysis of MTI's policy history and oral history interviews with…

This article focuses on mother tongue teaching in Arabic, Dari, Pashto and Somali as it is practised in a linguistically diverse primary school in Denmark. The article draws on a linguistic ethnography of language teaching across the curriculum, and the analysis focuses on three mother tongue teachers. Drawing on classroom observations and…

Preliminary results of an extensive study of 50 native Yugoslav students who migrated to Denmark but still attended mother-tongue classes indicated that most had mastered the Danish language and used it with their peers and most learned their native language from their parents and continued to use it with them. (Author/CB)