Everyday Life in Schools in Disadvantaged Areas

Abstract

In Finland, urban segregation has been identified as a new and increasing challenge for pursuing the ideal of the egalitarian comprehensive school. Yet very little is known of particular school contexts, and public concern over school segregation runs a risk of reproducing segregation by focusing in a stigmatising manner on schools in less advantaged areas. In this chapter, we draw on interview data from five comprehensive schools in the metropolitan area of Helsinki to examine how students of schools located in areas that may be considered disadvantaged talk about their everyday life in the school and residential area. We build on the idea that young people represent their lives as ordinary rather than adopting ‘in-risk’ positions, and examine ways in which the schools and residential areas are discussed. We argue that despite their awareness of local problems and racialised and social class-based inequalities, young people are attached to their schools and residential areas, and tend to describe the problems encountered as manageable. While there are statistical similarities between disadvantaged residential areas, the particular local contexts and their effects for young people’s everyday lives vary from one area to another and according to the young people’s social class and racialised background. This highlights the need to understand the particularities and connections between schools and residential areas in discussions of segregation and in attempts to address it.