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The study presented in this paper focuses upon conceptualisations of language and identity in the institutionalised arena that emerged in the post-Second World War period with the specific intention of teaching Swedish to adult immigrants in the nation-state of Sweden. Our analysis focuses upon the development of the educational programme Swedish for immigrants' over time. Our specific interest relates to how categorisations are framed and what, if any, kinds of labels pertaining to language and identity emerge in national and local policy documents from the 1960s onwards. Taking a sociohistorical perspective as a point of departure, our analyses indicate discursive changes with regards to the categories and aims of the educational programme, making certain identity positions more accessible than others at specific times. Focusing upon categories from sociohistorical perspectives helps to reveal the social organisation and institutional means that enable society to process citizenship issues. The complex relationship between the empowerment of the immigrants, on the one hand, and the need for integration or assimilation into society on the other, becomes visible through the analysis of empirical data that spans half a century.

The study presented here draws upon the ongoing work in project-CIC, Categorization of Identities and Communication. Project-CIC is interested in both the social practices and the discourses that frame a tailored education for adult immigrants in Sweden. The Swedish Language Act from 2009, maintains that “Swedish is the principal language in Sweden”, and that “all residents of Sweden are to be given the opportunity to learn, develop and use Swedish”. The Act furthermore decrees that persons with “a different mother tongue” are to be “given the opportunity to develop and use their mother tongue”. The balance between Swedish as the principle language on the one hand, and a recognition of many language varieties on the other, and which is reflected in such central policy documents, comes also alive in the language learning classroom. Research concerned with the language situation of adult immigrants in different European national contexts is not uncommonly founded upon an understanding of language varieties in terms of being standardized, static and with defined (often national) boundaries. The theoretical framework employed in the study that is presented here approaches language policies in terms of a dialectical relationship between policy and the learning that takes place in the language classroom, using the approach of nexus analysis developed by Scollon and Scollon, wherein the social action is placed into the intersection of discourses in place, interaction order and the collectively framed historical bodies of both participants and institutions. Our analysis sheds light upon how interaction at the micro level is constituted in and at the same time constitutes discourses on a macro level as well as the historical bodies of the participants in the interaction in institutional settings.

Scholars in feminist and postcolonial studies have shed light upon the complex relation between gender equality and integration policies, where in a Swedish context, the perception of gender equality as a central part of “Swedishness” resulted in a hierarchical division between Swedes and immigrants. In this paper, I focus on how gender equality is negotiated in relation to the Other in a specific arena, Swedish for immigrants (Sfi). A tailored education in the Swedish language for persons categorized as adult immigrants has developed since the mid 1960ies in Sweden. In a previous study (Rosén submitted), I analyzed policy documents related to the Sfi education during the period 1967-2011,  showing  how women born in other geographical spaces than Sweden are positioned as less equal, oppressed and/or as victims, thus, reproducing a discourse in which the categories of the Immigrants and the Swedes are negotiated in relation to certain understandings of gender equality. The aim of the study presented here, is to move beyond policy document using an ethnomethodology outlook in order to explore how certain understandings of gender equality and categorizations are constituted and oriented towards by participants in the Sfi-classroom in their everyday practices”.

The theoretical framework employed in the study builds upon the work of postcolonial and feminist research as well as in ethnomethodology. A number of scholars have examined the construction of gender equality as a central core of Swedish national identity or Swedishness. Several researchers in the feminist and postcolonial fields have brought light upon how certain understandings of gender equality (between men and women) and a feminist consciousness are constructed as a central part of Swedish (and Nordic) national identity (de los Reyes, Molina & Mulinari 2005; de los Reyes & Mulinari 2005; Eduards 2007; Carbin 2008; Honkanen 2008; Keskinen 2009; Magnusson, Rönnblom, & Silius 2008; Towns 2002; Tuori 2007). However, by using the ethnomethodological approach, I hope to avoid the implicit determinism often embedded in critical discourse analysis and, instead, to dissolve the polarity between macro and micro/ structure and agency. A central assumption in ethnomethodology is that structure and agency are constituted, oriented to and reproduced by members in social practices. In the study presented here, I analyze classroom interaction from two Sfi-classrooms, created during an ethnographically inspired study at a learning centre for Sfi. In the interaction material presented, I show how gender equality becomes a salient issue for the participants and related to questions of belonging and otherness Thus, the participants orient themselves towards different identity position tied to specific understandings of gender. Moreover, the study raises important questions regarding to methodology in postcolonial, feminist and intersectional studies often concerned with studies on a macro- or structural level.