Conference Program

General description on research questions

Special educational support and special needs educators are commonly separated from work with students in the intersection of migration and special educational needs. While the Salamanca Statement on Special Needs Education of 1994 introduced the imperative of accommodating all children regardless of conditions, including those related to language and related marginalized positions, as part of an updated approach to special education, this has not been the case. In Sweden, where this study is situated, staff supporting newly arrived students, such as multilingual classroom assistants (MCAs), are organized separately from the team supporting students with special educational needs (Tajic & Bunar 2023; Tajic, 2024). Previous research, moreover, show how half of the special needs educators do not get involved with newly arrived students in Sweden, while many would like to (Johansson et al. 2021). The aim of this study is to explore how responsibilities for students situated at the intersection of migration, multilingualism and special educational needs are organised and negotiated across multilingual and special educational support practices in Swedish schools. The study builds on interviews with school staff across four municipalities in Sweden. Results make visible how responsibilities are displaced between multilingual support and special educational support, resulting in students’ needs at their intersection remaining insufficiently addressed. Findings are analysed through Nancy Fraser’s tripartite critical social justice theory (Fraser, 1995, 1998; Fraser et al., 2004; Fraser & Honneth, 2003), interpreting segregating deflection as a manifestation of structural inequalities related to recognition, redistribution and representation within broader societal stratification and discrimination, highlighting how such dynamics may contribute to uneven conditions of support for students with migration backgrounds.

Methodology

The study draws on semi-structured interviews with 18 special needs educators, principals, and multilingual classroom assistants across four Swedish municipalities with comparable demographic profiles. The empirical material is examined through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022), enabling attention to patterns of meaning across participants’ accounts concerning how responsibilities for students situated at the intersection of migration and special educational needs are articulated, negotiated and organised.

The analysis is theoretically informed by Nancy Fraser’s tripartite critical social justice theory, which conceptualises justice as parity of participation across cultural, economic and political domains. Fraser’s framework directs attention to processes of misrecognition, whereby certain groups are positioned as culturally devalued; maldistribution, referring to unequal access to resources and professional support; and misrepresentation, concerning limited participation in decision-making and institutional voice. Attention to these interconnected dimensions supports an understanding of segregating deflection as a multidimensional institutional phenomenon situated within structural conditions shaping practice. Fraser’s framework thus provides a lens for examining how organisational arrangements within Swedish special education may reproduce differential conditions for participation, shaping the provision of support for students with migration backgrounds. From this perspective, problematisations of migration evident in school practice can be understood as conditioning micro-level decisions on educational support, contributing to limited assessment and provision for students from migrated families despite articulated needs (Rojas, 2026).