The health of migrants is often considered a priority area for the government. Research suggests however, that health assumes different meanings in different cultures. For migrants who have crossed cultural borders, what it means to be healthy can become unclear. On the one hand, schools can be one of the main sources to learn about health for newly arrived school-aged migrants. On the other hand, schools can also be a contentious place where knowledge about health that does not fit newly arrived students’ beliefs can create issues or challenges. Discussion on the educational potential and strengths of newly-arrived students, and how these strengths interact with the new health-related content in schools, has been missing from the literature. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to shed light into the (missing) potentials for newly arrived students in Sweden when they encounter health education at school.
Inspired by doing Southern theory in and for education, ‘looking south’ (Connell 2007) becomes a source of unique knowledge and at the same time revealing the limits of northern knowings about health and education. In this study, we worked with 20 immigrant students aged 15-19 with different backgrounds. The participants had migrated to Sweden for various reasons although most sought a less risky, more prosperous life. To generate data, we presented the participants with photographs and vignettes during focus group interviews.
In order to present the results, we used creative (non)fiction writing to construct short stories that focus on the advantages that participants identified about moving to Sweden and learning about health in Sweden. However, the last stories are fictional stories informed by decolonial and Southern theory literature. Therefore, this paper is about both, what we found and what we did not find (but were expecting to find) in the data.
The participants identified several advantages about moving to Sweden, and made reference to other broader health-related beneficial aspects of moving to Sweden. The findings show how Global South concepts related to health and wellbeing were absent from our data. The study demonstrates the need to decolonise health education, as mainly Western perspectives of health were found in the data. More research that investigates what would happen if educators were able to integrate non-Western health-related knowledge in their teaching, and the possible implications of these kinds of pedagogies, is needed.
2024.
AARE 2024 - Australian Association for Research in Education. 1-5 December at Macquarie University, Sidney.