‘Say it in Swedish!’: Babies,belonging and multilingualism in an integration initiative activity in Sweden

Abstract

The aim of this article is to critically examine ideas about language and integration in a non-governmental integration programme targeting parents of small children in Sweden. Through ethnographic and netnographic fieldwork of parenting experiences it is revealed that monolingual ideologies conflate with iconic figures reproducing and reinforcing language norms. Some parents – i.e. non-white non-Swedish speaking – are made into ‘language projects’ when the white Swedish parents take on the role of the ‘integration teacher’ acting as language and parenting role models. The Others' multilingualism is celebrated from within Swedishness, with multilingualism treated as a commodity. This contrasts with the risk of loss - experience of multilingualism by parents with migration background. The inscription of the harms of segregated society on non-white, non-Swedish mothers shows the powerful mechanisms obscuring that integration initiatives operate from monolingual norms within a neoliberal workfare model which creates programs which have unintended effects.

Vignette

Parents carrying small babies and diaper bags enter the open pre-school foyer and continue into the large playroom, where Isabella1, one of the parent volunteers, tells us to sit in a ring on the floor. The meeting will soon be starting. In Swedish, she begins by welcoming everyone to Language Learning and Babies. Isabella explains, quite lengthily, about the objective of the organization – that it is a non-profit organization program for parents of small children who are either ‘new in Sweden’ or ‘established’ so the new parents can learn Swedish and parents from different backgrounds can meet – and then announces that we will now take turns and introduce ourselves to each other. She starts by saying her name, explaining what part of Sweden she comes from originally and stating that she “immigrated” from that part of Sweden some years ago. Isabella continues by introducing her baby by name and age. She passes on the turn to the couple sitting next to her, Fyodor and Tanya – two parents attending– with their baby in front of them. They both look at Isabella in a clueless way, wondering what is expected of them. “Should I take it in English?” Isabella asks since they seemingly didn’t pick up on the message in Swedish. “Yes, it would be great if you could say it in English”, answers Amrita, another parent attending the meeting, eagerly even though the question wasn’t directed towards her. Isabella repeats her introduction in English. She then says in an assertive voice: “Now we are at Language Learning and Babies'' and “Här talar vi svenska [Here we speak Swedish]”, slowly overemphasizing the Swedish words. This message is repeated in a couple of different formulations. After that, Isabella shortly adds an English introduction of herself and daughter as an example of what is expected during the introductory round and then gives the floor to Tanya. In Swedish Tanya states her name, saying that she is Alan’s mother, who is seven months old and that she is from Russia. Then it’s Fyodor’s turn. He says (in Swedish) “Jag är… [I am…]” and is searching for words. “Pappa [Dad]” Tanya fills in and he uses it to finish his sentence in Swedish. “Jag är pappa till Alan [I am dad to Alan]”. The turn continues in the circle and parents introduce themselves in Swedish until it is Amrita’s turn. Amrita doesn’t speak Swedish, so she introduces herself and her baby in English, providing the information about the languages they speak, English and Hindi. Isabella interrupts her and emphatically says: “Well, we are supposed to learn Swedish. Can you say ‘Jag heter’ [My name is] in Swedish?” Amrita is silent. She looks distressed and tense, looking around for signals of what to do by turning towards the two open preschool teachers also sitting in the circle. Isabella repeats the phrase twice. Finally, Amrita says “Jag” with a questioning voice “…heter…Amrita [My name is Amrita]”. She looks at the open preschool staff closest to her, in a help-seeking way. There is a lot of uneasiness in Amrita’s posture and hesitation is noticeable in her voice.

Backdrop

Through this interventionist approach, Amrita was made visible (through her language use) as an object for the mission of language teaching – Isabella’s interpretation of the undertaking of the non-governmental organization Language Learning and Babies (LLB). This is an integration initiative where “established and new” parents – terms used by the organization to describe non-migrant parents and parents with migrant background respectively – in Swedish society would be given the opportunity to meet, and according to the LLB homepage the new parents would thus be provided opportunities to learn Swedish and become established in Swedish society. LBB was founded in 2012 by two mothers on parental leave and the original idea was to bring added meaningfulness to parents by reaching into the lives and cultures of ‘others’ on parental leave. The activities were soon taken up into a larger Swedish NGO, aimed at creating contacts between Swedish speakers and people wanting to learn Swedish and in so doing, facilitating establishment in Swedish society for the latter group. This was accomplished through securing funding from the state-governed Swedish Inheritance Fund through motivating the project according to what the governmental policies and ruling parties find to be the most pressing problems in equality in society. When it comes to immigrants this very often, if not always, circulates around language and work exemplifying the ubiquity of “commonly arguing that linguistic integration cross-cuts and enables all other forms of (employment, educational, and cultural) inclusion” (Flubacher and Yeung, 2016, 600). In Sweden, the discourse of integration has changed from ‘receiving’ to ‘establishing’ immigrants, which comes to view in the turn to workfare instead of welfare in integration programs (Hansen, 2008; Brännström et al., 2018), as access to support and services are combined with clearly outlined goals to participate in the labor market (Halvorsen and Jensen, 2004; Hvinden and Johansson, 2007). The workline principle, the image of ‘the responsible laborer’ who pays taxes and the ideal of wage work for all adult citizens has a long history in Sweden, and it is in relation to these configurations that the ‘immigrant’ is in large construed (Trädgårdh et al., 2013; Wallman Lundåsen and Trädgårdh, 2016). Also, despite the fact that Sweden is one of the European countries with the highest number of residents born-abroad and is de facto multilingual, the idea of Sweden being one nation, with one people and one language still prevails (Trägårdh et al., 2013; Lundström and Hübinette, 2020). ² When this monolingual mindset (Clyne, 2004) is conflated with the idea of employment as the backbone of civically responsible participation in Sweden, it follows that employability is encased in knowing the majority language – Swedish (Borevi, 2014; Rydell and Milani, 2020). As Pennycook (2013) and others suggest (e.g. Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, 1996) language ideologies operate in forming language policies and thus regulating social, economic, political and linguistic relationships in neoliberal discourses about work and integration. The focus on integration through becoming employable by learning Swedish puts the responsibility of integration on the individuals, thus diverting attention from discriminatory practices and hindering structures in society (Lindberg and Sandwall, 2007; Sandwall, 2013). In this respect the over 25-year-old discussion by Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson of migrants being “still largely seen as workers rather than human beings with equal rights.” (1996, 291) still holds true.

During our ethnographic fieldwork in 2016–2017 the political debate in Sweden revolved tightly around problems related to migration and one theme described the problem of how immigrant mothers and newly arrived refugee women were not entering the workforce due to lack of Swedish skills, lengthy periods of childcare in the home and a patriarchal culture (e.g. Feldman and Malmqvist, 2016; Löfven and Andersson, 2017; Svantesson, 2017; Swedish Government Official Reports 2012a; 2012b). Thus, the question of immigrant mothers’ parental leave in relation to establishment in the workforce and the associated policy for its regulation is re-emerging as an issue on the Swedish political scene (Mussino and Duvander, 2016). This is bound up with the broader development of integration discourses in Europe, regarding successful integration of migrant females, who are portrayed as both oppressed victims and social problems (e.g. Bonjour and Duyvendak, 2018; Kirk and Suvarierol, 2014).

Concerns of migrant mothers' establishment is spatially and symbolically connected to segregated superdiverse (Vertovec, 2007) areas in Sweden, which like their counterparts in Europe are becoming “key symbolic sites for welfare reform” (Vollebergh et al., 2021, 744). ³ In the Swedish context, these residential areas are commonly described as ‘immigrant’ in contrast to unmarked but implied ‘Swedish’ middle-class suburbs and wealthy inner-cities. As race is an unspoken but implicit norm in Sweden the residential divide reinforces perceptions of non-whiteness and poverty as foreignness and whiteness and being middle-class as Swedishness (Lundström, 2010). This kind of stereotyping and generalization obscures the heterogeneity of people with migrant backgrounds, and conceals how gender, race, ethnicity, class and language intersect (Lundström, 2017; De los Reyes, 1998). Furthermore, dichotomous configurations in parenting are apparent in how migrants are not perceived to be parenting successfully in respect to the target culture. As Furedi (2008) reminds us, monitoring and intervening practices and structures arise based on ideas that the kind of adult an infant becomes is dependent upon the parents choices, and in this sense parents are potential risk factors in their children’s lives as they could be making the ‘wrong choices’. Adults – especially mothers – who are the carers of future citizens are thus targeted through policies on education, social and health services (Furedi, 2008; Lee et al., 2010; Raffaetà, 2016). Several studies emphasize how the parenting of guardians with a migration background is conceived as lacking in the face of the parenting culture in the (new) Western country, and thus in need of being reformed (e.g. Intke-Hernandez and Holm, 2015; Johanssen and Appoh, 2016; Johansen, 2019; Zhu, 2020). In regard to language, the universal needs of children in Sweden are understood to require Swedish for future establishment in society (Garvis, 2020; Åkerblom and Harju, 2019; SALAR 2021). Which language environment a child is raised in is thus also resurfacing as a political issue in Sweden, seen in policy proposals on language preschools (Swedish Government Official Reports, 2020), expressed as alarm for the “missing 23 000 preschool children not in preschool” (Statistics Sweden, 2019) and migrant stay-at-home mothers portrayed as especially problematic for the future of the nation (e.g. Swedish Government Official Reports, 2012a, 2012b). Thus parenting for citizenship – in this case Swedishness – is culturalized and moralized (cf. de Koning et al., 2015), and also, as we argue, linguicized. It is also in this sense that the ‘immigrant stay-at-home-mother’ arises as an iconic figure (De Koning and Vollebergh, 2019), contrasted with the ‘regular’ but ‘unmarked’ white Swedish mother on parental leave whom at the end of it will return to work and place her child in preschool (cf. Lundström, 2017). The iconic figures appear in discourses about the nation, by being contrasted with images of the ‘regular’ citizen which permeates interaction in everyday life in the form of shadows of these figures in the political and media narratives (de Koning and Vollerbergh, 2019). Perceiving all who have the intersecting characteristics of visual markers of race and ethnicity combined with gender and socioeconomic status contributes to the understanding of them as having ‘problems with the language’ and unemployment.

In light of the current policy practices mobilizing integration efforts targeting immigrant mothers, a further examination is needed. Therefore, the aim of this article is to critically examine what is produced out of ideas about integration and language in parenting experiences, in a Swedish non-governmental integration programme.

Conceptual framework

The descriptions of ‘lived parenting’ experiences are a phenomenological analysis of space, body and language in parents’ everyday lives. Being in a state of be/longing for a future for one’s self and one’s child in respect to language and culture (Adams Lyngbäck, 2016) is drawing on Sara Ahmed’s theoretical concept of orientation (2006) to describe space as actions between bodies and languages. Here, both directionality and disorientation are put to work in analyzing the social conditions surrounding language use. Experiences of being in racialized and linguicized contexts disorient previous ways of experiencing self and other. The starting point of whiteness also produces the ‘unhomeness’ for some bodies out of place in respect to language and is discernible where the meaning of whiteness becomes noticeable (Ahmed, 2007a). “The alignment of race and space is crucial to how they materialize as givens, as if each “extends” the other (Ahmed, 2006, 121). The issues examined involve how parents’ thoughts about what is within reach for the child through their way of embodying the world are at the center of what occupies parents in processes of be/longing, namely language, culture and attainable social settings like schools and livelihoods (Adams Lyngbäck, 2016). Parents’ thoughts about their language, how they are valued in relation to the family, the community and society are central to the forms parenting takes.

The concepts of monolingualism and institutional linguicism (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, 1996) are used to heighten the awareness of ideologies, power structures and practices upholding ideas about language and experience in the integration programme. A shortened definition of the ways these two concepts are related is that monolingualism as it is manifested as a rational idea or a necessity is in essence a type of oppression where one language dominates at the detriment of other languages. Linguicism is invisible and taken for granted as it saturates social spaces and is tied to the view of monolingualism as the normal state (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2012). The linguicism lens we use is thus concerned with the hidden and passive form that is largely invisible at first glance and is best described as unconscious and unreflected on how views are held. Because linguicism is so ubiquitous it becomes taken for granted and naturalized. This relates to the myths of monolingualism as normal, desirable, or unavoidable (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, 1996). The monolingualism ideology operates as an implicit process through internalization rather than explicit statements and policies about the priorities and values of using a certain language.

Furthermore, numerous scholars show how bodies, in their non-whiteness, non-majority language speaking, non-Christian-ness/non-secularism, are contingent upon the creation of an unmarked category of those seen as naturally occurring in the nation as citizens and that this formation of identity makes it impossible for migrants to attain a sense of belonging in the new country (Koyama and Gonzalez-Dogan, 2021; Pandey, 2016; Joshi, 2006). In this way racialization can illustrate how particular kinds of bodies are connected to Swedish language; alignment with the Swedish identity cannot go through the Swedish language only, it requires the unmarked, assumed, category of whiteness (Hübinette and Lundström, 2014). Thus, in Sweden, Swedishness is connected to whiteness as a norm, entwined with ideas of what constitues ‘correct ways’ of speaking Swedish, making speakers with non-white bodies expected either not to speak Swedish, to be second-language speakers (and thus lacking in their Swedish skills) or where variants of Swedish spoken by non-white bodies are seen as lacking and of not being ‘real Swedish’ (Jonsson and Milani, 2009). In other words, Swedishness and Otherness operate in the integration programme in relation to embodied language use intersecting with gender through the connection between mothers and safeguarding the nation (Lundström, 2017). This contributes to the understanding of how subjectivities are inhabited, an examination of orientations to whiteness and the analytical lens of meanings of experience (Ahmed, 2006) and is accomplished in this analysis through descriptions of iconic figures (De Koning and Vollebergh, 2019) mainly the ‘immigrant stay-at-home mother’.

Embodied ethnography

The fieldwork, drawing on embodied and sensory ethnography (Pink, 2009), was conducted at two different sites where LLB meetings were held: a library and an open preschool. LLB meetings are always organized in collaboration with sponsoring organizations such as open preschools or libraries that host baby cafés, in low-income suburban areas with a high number of people with migrant backgrounds. Open preschools and baby cafés are a service afforded by the public sector to parents on parental leave (which is paid for 480 days) or stay-at-home parents (SNAE, 2000), and are part of the Swedish support systems for parents of infants or small children (Littmarck, 2017).

During our fieldwork LLB meetings were followed once a week at each site during a 6-month period in 2016–2017, and monthly weekend family meetings at the open pre-school. We also joined the local social media groups at each site, as well as the organization’s general social media group. This netnographic part of the fieldwork (Kozinets, 2010) was conducted for 18 months.

The meetings lasted for one and a half to 3 hours, were open to everyone attending with an infant or young child not yet in school, free of charge and with no previous registration necessary. Due to the open character of the meetings the number of participants was constantly in flux ranging from three to 20 sets of parents and babies, sometimes also relatives and grandparents. Some of the parents were volunteer leaders, i.e. parents recruited by the LLB organization to act as hosts at the meetings, supported by open preschool or library staff. A set agenda, consisting of a presentation with a round of introductions of all participants, a small-group discussion on a given topic, song time and a coffee break together structured the meetings. Ideas for discussion topics were available in an online resource that the parent volunteers could access, as well as some mandatory themes decided on by the organization – such as a visit from the local employment office. The volunteers were also offered a 1-day course at the beginning of each semester.

At the start of each meeting we introduced ourselves as researchers, but also as mothers with migration histories and multilingual backgrounds of our own. Our visual characteristics, white and blonde, have significance for gaining access and for examining whiteness from within white positions. Seeking consent from the parents and the babies’ assent was characterized by being a relational and ongoing process, which meant adopting a high degree of reflexivity and sensitivity in being attuned to both the parents’ and babies’ needs, emotions, and embodied actions (e.g. Hackett, 2017; Orrmalm, 2020). This meant that conversations were constantly interrupted by the babies’ needs. Often the conversations were taken up again, when relocating from for instance the playroom mat to standing by the microwave as the parent heated food, but only if it seemed that the parent was interested in continuing and the baby was content. In this sense the ethical considerations were both sensory and embodied (see Pink, 2009). There was an ongoing element of interacting with the babies as they were always present – for instance in having eye contact and smiling at them. We also held and played with babies as parents used the restrooms or fetched coffee, something we were often asked to do, which we interpreted as signs of trust.

One of us entered the field the first time together with her toddler (aged 2) at a weekend meeting and participated at monthly weekend LLB meetings with the child. This gave access to talk of being a parent with a child of approximately the same age as the participants’ children and since the researcher spoke another language other than Swedish and English with the child it prompted comments about multilingualism. Thereby, the researcher’s child acted as a wedge in the field (Levey, 2009). The child’s participation also meant that the researcher – like the other parents – simultaneously was attuned to her own child’s embodied actions and needs, meaning that participation and conversations sometimes had to be interrupted. Thus, the researcher’s own child was included in the reflexive, relational, sensory and ongoing ethical considerations.

Under the shadow of the “immigrant stay-at-home mother”

Returning to the vignette, it was painfully obvious that from one moment to the next, a seemingly harmless gathering of parents and babies turned into a coercion to engage in a Swedish lesson. However, for Amrita, the main reason for participating in the meetings was to break the isolation she felt as a parent in a new country lacking the support of family and friends. The LLB activity provided an accommodating space for both her and her baby where she would be able to communicate with other parents in English. “I don’t want to just sit at home alone and watch TV”, Amrita told one of us, explaining that she had heard about the meetings from a friend as a good place for getting to know other parents. Amrita had moved to Sweden recently, accompanying her husband through his employment, saying that they would probably move to an English-speaking country in a year or two. Being asked to practice Swedish was not part of Amrita’s expectations or needs. There was no doubt that everyone understood what Amrita said, in fact English would have worked just as well in presenting oneself to the group. But Amrita, who also happened to be the only non-white parent at this particular meeting, was made into a ‘language project’, objectified as in need of Swedish skills. The emphasis expressed by the parent volunteer on “Here we speak Swedish'' manifests a language ideology of hegemonic monolingualism and linguicism (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, 1996) and it is here – in relation to the monolingual norm – that the shadow of the iconic figure of the ‘immigrant stay-at-home mother’ materializes. The tension emerged in the mismatch between different parents’ expectations of what the meetings were for: Isabella, the parent volunteer, embodied the position of a teacher of Swedish, which resulted in the shadow of the iconic figure of the immigrant stay-at-home mother lacking Swedish skills being cast on Amrita. The tension became further observable in how another ‘new’ parent intervened in the charged atmosphere. Elena (originally from Italy) did this by saying to the entire group that it is much easier to practice speaking Swedish in a small group. “There isn’t as much pressure,” she said. Elena continued by expressing how hard it was for her to work up the courage to try to speak Swedish, thus counteracting the framing of the activity as an overt language lesson.

Even if the descriptions of LLB on its homepage as well as its name signifies language learning, the posters on the host organizations’ notice boards read “LLB is for me!” followed with three bullet points in large font: “I want to meet other parents. I have a child between 0-2 years. I want to know more about other cultures.” followed by a description in smaller font about the activities during meetings. Nonetheless, promoting the language learning goal through Swedish lessons was what some of the organization’s volunteers interpreted their role to be which illustrates how the ‘immigrant stay-at-home mother’ iconic figure is connected to monolingual ideas, interpretations and actions during LLB meetings emanating from the organization’s overall aim in its operational plan. There it is stated that it is beneficial for children’s school success if their parents speak the majority language, and hence, the detriment for education of not speaking Swedish is implicit. LLB thus uses both the rhetoric of school problems related to multilingualism as well as the workline principle by labeling participants either as ‘new’, i.e. having a migration background, or as being ‘established’ implying they are Swedish and employed. This is further accentuated by regular activities such as “parent matching” where “established parents are matched with new, born abroad parents to talk about and share tips about jobs, labor market and family life” – as advertised on the organization’s general social media site. There were also recurring visits at all LLB meetings across Sweden from local employment offices and different kinds of career and employment organizations. On one such occasion, a representative from the head office informed the volunteers that such a meeting from the employment office would soon be coming up. To exemplify how the impact of an iconic figure operating from a discursive level is transported into an everyday encounter, we present an account featuring Sofia, a non-white Swedish volunteer:

Before the meeting begins two parent volunteers are discussing the planning of the upcoming meetings. The mention of a visit from the “Job Square” [Jobbtorg] ⁴ representatives is brought up by the LLB representative present and one of the volunteers, Sofia, has a very strong reaction to this: “But we already made our plans for the rest of the term” and “I certainly don’t want to have anything to do with that meeting if that’s the way it’s going to be.” Sofia is unemployed but more importantly had often been mistaken to be considered “new in Sweden” because of relatively darker skin and hair color even though she was a native Swedish speaker. “This isn’t what I signed up for!” she exclaims.

The shadow of the immigrant stay-at-home mother iconic figure falls on Sofia because of her appearance. Her motivation for engagement as a group leader was undermined and she resisted her contribution being used to target the assumedly unemployed in the LLB context. The tension following her outburst made visible a dimensional line between political goals of integration through knowing the target language for work (Borevi, 2014; Rydell and Milani, 2020) and an individual experience of the coercion related to being targeted in a ‘for parents and babies’ environment as a person with migrant background, unemployed and therefore a ‘problem’. In a later interview with the representatives from the head office, they explained that as the organization’s current funding was coming to an end they courted municipalities and non-governmental organizations in order to get support and funding through highlighting both the refugee crisis along with the perceived problem of isolated migrant mothers living in segregated areas, not knowing Swedish and being unemployed, thus reiterating the iconic figure of the immigrant stay-at-home mother. In this way the organization was further reproducing the discourse of problematic immigrant women not being part of the workforce due to their lack of Swedish skills and therefore being ‘integration problems’. Thus, the LLB approach normalizes how the non-white, non-Swedish parents are targeted, based on an understanding of them as lacking in respect to language and work, and not on the same terms of being ‘just’ a new parent. Goals of integration welfare programs extend into intimate spaces which then pull non-white parents into projects they perhaps were not expecting (cf. Marchesi, 2020). In this way these mothers, through how they are depicted in media and political debate, are framed in an understanding of an iconic figure which represents future trouble in terms of integration in the view of the dominant language group – regardless of their actual language proficiency, learning or use. This is what De Koning and Vollebergh (2019) mean by the ordinariness of what can be demanded since icons function as frames for interpreting who people are as well as limiting who they can be in everyday contexts. Emerging from a racialized and linguicized discourse, the ‘immigrant stay-at-home mother’ iconic figure casts a shadow on some and not others in LLB in regard to their language use and if they can be perceived to be established, isolated or at risk on the basis of visual markers and language use.

A more meaningful parental leave

Contrary to what we thought before entering the field, there were few newly arrived immigrants at the LLB meetings and no refugees. In fact, most LLB visitors were white Swedes, who traveled to the meetings from the wealthier white residential areas and were in the majority at every meeting in which we participated. The interviews revealed that the main theme for participation for the white Swedish middle-class parents was a desire to add value to the parental leave time which they described as “doing something” about the migration crisis. The next account from Pia, a parent volunteer, clarified the parameters about meaningful activities during parental leave, where her volunteer involvement in LLB was followed by an extended trip with her family to an Asian country. When back at work, Pia wouldn’t have time to contribute towards integration. Integration, the lack thereof, was articulated in multiple ways as the problem which motivated both of these activities which focused on being with people from other cultures, not only for her but also for the sake of her children – to show them other ways of living which differ their own, as she said. The parental leave time was seen as an under-used resource by her, her husband and in her circle of friends.

During the period of the field work reports of the number of refugees in Sweden were almost always described as extreme and related to this was the message of quickly if not immediately being provided with language learning and work opportunities as they were critical to integration. This formed Pia’s expectations of her role as a volunteer, but was then contrasted with what she encountered at the LLB meetings, there being very few visitors who could be identified as new in Sweden or wanting to learn Swedish. There was one participant Pia shared her thoughts about because at one of these first meetings this participant was the only parent there who wasn’t Swedish according to Pia, and as it turns out, knew Swedish quite well. “There was, I suppose, some type of need to practice Swedish, but that isn’t why I thought she was there.” Pia emphasized that language learning perhaps was secondary to coming to this meeting, but that “some type of need to practice Swedish” was signaled by that mother’s non-white appearance and her accent. Pia often repeated in the interview that the primary concern and what shaped her understanding of this time was about others being ‘let into society’ and she was trying to focus on that aspect. Since the societal integration goal was articulated so urgently and repeatedly in the media, this ‘real life integration’ objective was experienced as diffuse and ineffective, and she had an immediate wish to structure the meetings, identify if there were guidelines or protocol to follow when ‘in action’. Pia described that making the schedule and planning the discussions gave her something that could be touched, seen and ordered: “At least I did something”.

Isabella, the volunteer figuring in the vignette, centered also on how she wanted to contribute to the dire refugee situation and stressed that she wished her child to experience other ways of living than their own. Isabella had looked online for suitable volunteer activities to dedicate a part of her parental leave time to and “contribute in some way” before returning to work. However, she had expected the meetings to be more structured and school-like:

I thought it would be more like a classroom. Not that it should be, but in the sense that there would be explaining, showing pictures, instructing. There were a lot of babies who needed this or that. I mean sure, it was nice that it was relaxed and inviting but... I wanted it to be more organized. It’s so easy to just speak English. I want them to try [to speak Swedish], just try! (laughing) It felt conflicting because it feels bad to remind [that we are here to speak Swedish] or correct them. What you can do is encourage them to speak Swedish. The social part they can already get at the open preschool so it is important to stick to the plan, to learn Swedish.

Thus, both Isabella and Pia can be seen manifesting a figure that we call the ‘integration teacher’ arising in this particular space as a response to the ‘immigrant stay-at-home mother’ figure in need of Swedish language skills for future establishment, as well as to the “caffe latte mom” – a (white Swedish) mother on parental leave spending time and money on socializing in cafes and thus not doing anything meaningful – which also is an iconic figure inhabiting the public discourse in Sweden. Imprints from these two interacting iconic figures become discernible in how parents related ‘added-meaning’ projects to the current migration events, forming the figure of the ‘integration teacher’ referring to these high achieving Swedish mothers’ interpretation of their role to instruct Swedish in the line of duty to fight segregation. The framing of LLB in the linguicizing discourse of overt language teaching by providing language for certain parents of babies by certain other parents, explains the white Swedish volunteers’ framing of their own actions within a teacher role, instead of it being about participating on equal terms as new parents just ‘wanting to meet other parents from other cultures’ and thereby provide opportunities for learning Swedish. The volunteers' expectations of what ought to be taking place in existing activities for parents who are new or have migration backgrounds was further framed in ideas of how language must be taught; explicitly as a separate set of skills (e.g. Lankiewicz, 2014), revealing how language ideologies create norms for the volunteer’s actions which in turn reproduces white hegemony in Swedish society, as positioning oneself as the one ‘welcoming’ and teaching the Other (cf. Ahmed, 2009). This perceived teacher role can be contrasted with how the parents who saw themselves as Swedish learners explained LLB as an opportunity provided for language use and practice of Swedish in a friendly environment and in conversations about topics close to home (i.e. babies and parenting). They reported that it wasn’t always easy to become involved with other parents at regular open preschool visits, thus contradicting Isabella’s claim that the parents can get “the social part” at the open preschool. Many immigrant mothers pointed out how hard it is to get to know Swedish people. “I tried to talk to other people but after once or twice I could see that only the Swedes were together.“, one mother said as an explanation to why she preferred LLB to the parenting group she had joined in her residential area where she had felt excluded due to her not being fluent in Swedish. Nonetheless, for the white Swedish parents, parental leave created opportunities for ‘diversity’ experiences, making parental leave ‘more meaningful’, as the white Swedish subject, from their privileged position, can be the one to “accept, welcome and integrate” (Ahmed, 2007b, 235) the immigrant mother. The added meaningfulness for the white Swedish parents, for their children and themselves, is attained through proximity to diversity of ‘something else’ – manifested in the body of ‘a someone else’, either in LLB or an extended visit to another country, as Pia relayed in her interview. In this sense diversity works as a ‘technology of happiness’ (Ahmed, 2009), where the parent volunteer in LLB can adopt the role of the integration teacher tapping into an anti-racist-ideal in a time of societal crisis.

Celebrating multilingualism or lived multilingualism

The white ‘monolingual’ parents’ trips to the meetings resulted in expressions of celebrating other parents' multilingualism (cf. Ahmed, 2009). One example was when Malin – a white Swedish mother who had traveled to the meeting site from the middle class neighborhood where she lived – at her first meeting exclaimed how happy she was to hear multilingual parents speaking their mother tongues with their babies. Malin explained that she admires bilingual children and wistfully hoped that her own baby would learn several languages and have multilingual friends as it would be great for work, traveling and creating contacts around the world. Since the babies were still quite young, there was a great deal of wondering, hoping, planning – quite often summarized as a longing for numerous language futures for one’s child. It was quite common that white Swedish parents celebrated multilingualism, just like Malin, in relation to imagining their child’s future in an outward oriented manner, towards a global cosmopolitan ideal (Gogonas and Kirsch, 2018). In this sense a parent’s identity is construed by what the person sees as possible for the future child (Adams Lyngbäck, 2016) in relation to language ideologies. The power structure of linguicism (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2012) also explains why English is not identified as part of the desired multilingualism – it is taken for granted – which ties in with existing language ideologies where English is considered a lingua franca (Block, 2014). Multilingualism seems also to primarily be the product of collecting languages as commodities (Tan and Rudby, 2008) to use in a globalized market economy thus displaying a reified and elite idea of cosmopolitanism (Block, 2014; Gogonas and Kirsch, 2018). The affirmation of this kind of multilingualism reveals that multilingualism in situ is not the societal norm in Sweden (Hyltenstam and Milani, 2012).

Multilingualism was further celebrated by linguistic, cultural and ethnic Othering where difference was personified in an essentialistic manner, as revealed in the following episode:

During songtime at the library, one of the group leaders, a white Swedish mother, Ingrid, turns to Yovana – a non-white Swedish mother originally from Peru (living and working in Sweden for many years) and the only one with a migration background attending this particular meeting – to ask if she has a song to share with everyone in Spanish, preferably a song from her childhood or one that she sings for her infant daughter. Yovana says blandly that she can’t think of any at the moment, unwillingness evident in her face and posture. “But look'', Ingrid exclaims, enthusiasm radiating from her “there are songs translated to different languages in the songbook!” Ingrid points at the song ‘Broder Jakob’ [Are You Sleeping (Brother John)?]’ and all the translations of it to different languages. “Yes, that is in Spanish'', Yovana confirms pointing at the Spanish translation. “Let’s do the Spanish one!” Ingrid enthusiastically cries out, and then the parents sing the song in Spanish with the help of the text in the songbook. After the song is finished Greta, a single white Swedish mother whose baby’s father has Iraqian background, asks – a little timidly – if they could sing the song in Arabic. (In the songbook the Arabic version is written with Latin script). Greta has earlier explained to the group that she hopes that her son and she will learn Arabic even if the child’s father is not part of their lives anymore (and who mostly spoke Swedish). The group readily agrees to Greta’s request and the song is then sung in Arabic, and after that in Swedish. Some jokes are made about the difficult looking Polish translation of the song, and it is tried out for the sake of laughs. At the end of the song time the librarian supporting the meeting calls attention to an activity that will be held at the library during the coming week: Multilingual Storytime for Babies. Everyone is given a copy of a flyer. “Maybe we should go to this together!“, one of the parents eagerly suggests, and several of the other parents agree.

Ingrid asking Yovana to perform a song from “her country” for the group – which she quite obviously was not keen on – shows a naive interest, marking Yovana as a body ‘out of place’ (Ahmed, 2006). She was made to embody the diversity the white Swedish parents wished to celebrate (cf. Ahmed, 2009). Furthermore, the enthusiasm towards participating in multilingual storytime by the ‘monolingual’ Swedish speaking parents reveals multilingualism as an ideal and not as lived; it is manifested as something to be consumed. This is a particular type of Othering, contingent upon the adult’s efforts to access Otherness to provide a multilingual environment for one’s child which is missing from their everyday contexts. Multilingualism and meeting the Other becomes in this way “a happy occasion” (Ahmed, 2009, 46), which is celebrated by praising multilingual parents for speaking their heritage language with their child or as above, by asking Yovana to perform a song in her heritage language to the group, or joining the multilingual storytime, but it is in fact re-producing a view of Swedish language as the (unmarked) norm. These events reveal that knowing languages, as a white ‘monolingual’ Swede, is different from knowing languages when identified as ‘non-Swedish’, i.e. non-white, as being multilingual in the LLB space is made into something exotic spicing up the lives of the ‘ordinary Swedes’.

The ‘right’ language for parenting

In contrast to the ‘monolingual’ parents' efforts of bolstering their child’s possibilities of learning many additional languages for future success, parents with migrant background and/or children of parents with migrant background highlighted the importance of creating connections to family members or to a heritage for their child. In this way parents expressed their hopes to realize language goals or projects for themselves as well as the child, such as a parent learning a language which is significant for the child in some way and/or making sure the child would be able to communicate with grandparents or other significant individuals. This was often underscored in interviews and conversations, like when one of us engaged in a lengthy conversation on language use and learning multiple languages in this day and age with the couple Juan (who had migrated to Sweden as a teen) and Elena (from Italy), who were accompanied to the LLB meetings by the baby’s grandmother, a Spanish speaker, on an extended visit from South America. At home the couple usually spoke Elena’s language, Italian. In the conversation not once was Swedish mentioned or referred to as a project, a problem or a concern for the child’s future or for the parents. The main subject was that Spanish was at risk of being lost and was a deep concern for the parents because of the relationship with the Spanish speaking grandmother. Juan in a short utterance summarized this simply by stating “...and English will come with school...” bypassing Swedish completely, as it was assumed to come naturally.

Thus, what families in migration risk losing are their connections to home, family and place. Nurturing through languages has affective value. If this is lost, there is a risk of losing the intimacy which the language provides through the common history, family story and the question of who the child is, who the parents are. Language use is the basis of these intimate and interdependent relationships and for existential meaning-making, not a skill that has to be acquired in order to be able to become an established (i.e. taxpaying) member of Swedish society. Thus, these new parents’ experiences of an embodied kinship multilingualism diverge from ideas of an expansive multilingualism in use by parents identifying with the dominant language group. None of the parents with a migration background and intentions of staying thought that their children would not become Swedish speakers. The worry was instead about the children’s opportunities of becoming functional users of the family’s languages, which is how parents in inbetween spaces of linguistic differentness contemplate possibilities of be/longing through and for their children (Adams Lyngbäck, 2016). Multilingual parent’s experiences of disorientation (Ahmed, 2006) stemming from contemplating their new linguistic conditions i.e. the birth of their child in a different culture than the one they were born into themselves, reveal the subjectivities inhabitable by them through how they differ from those inhabitable by their children. Specifically, how they feel about language (as objects) that have been given new value as emotional things, directing them towards them or away from them.

But although there was an atmosphere of celebration of multilingualism at the meetings, it was questioned by some white Swedish parents when it involved pushing a native language ‘too far’. One such example occurred when one of us shared an account of having attended a Finnish language elementary school in Sweden and only speaking Finnish in the home as a child. A parent volunteer exclaimed in a questioning voice: “Did you think that was good? And you learned Swedish anyway?” – without a trace of irony even though the conversation was held in standard Swedish. This questioning of people’s language choices in regard to child rearing rests upon the same underlying language ideology as in Amrita’s situation in the vignette where she was coerced to try to use Swedish to introduce herself, revealing linguicism (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2012), and illustrates an interwoven understanding of a perceived implicit risk when parenting is not conducted in the right language. This can be understood in relation to the shadow of the ordinary icon of the ‘immigrant-stay-at-home-mother’ and how it is framed in public debate. Multilingualism in this sense does not mean ‘more than one language’, rather ‘less than one particular language’, i.e. Swedish (Wiltgren, 2014). The celebration of migrants’ multilingualism contains the idea of ‘you have to be taught Swedish’ otherwise multilingualism is a peril to becoming established in Sweden and can endanger possibilities for the child, which as a consequence has an immediate as well as long-term risk for Swedish society. In this way integration is conflated with overt language lessons for certain bodies being made into ‘language projects’, and not about embodied languaging and the relationships it upholds.

Discussion

Through the ethnographic descriptions we have shown how language ideologies operate through iconic figures (De Koning and Vollebergh, 2019) in the LLB meetings, thus reproducing and reinforcing language norms (‘Swedish first and foremost’) in the lives of parents and their babies. Integration, “a veritable politics of difference” (Flubacher and Yeung, 2016, 612) gives contours to the iconic figure of ‘the immigrant stay-at-home-mother’ in the intersection of race/ethnicity, language competences, gender and class under the umbrella of a neoliberal ideology of production. Why some non-white, non-Swedish speaking mothers are made into ‘language projects’ through the actions of the ‘intergration teacher’, can be unpacked in light of the power of the integration discourse (Flubacher and Yeung, 2016) in the broader societal ‘Swedish language for work’ ideologies (Rydell and Milani, 2020), particularly in how immigrant mothers are imagined as not meeting Swedish work, gender, and parenting expectations because of their percived lacking Swedish skills. The effects of misguided benevolence by volunteers and LLB representatives and the tensions which arose reveal racialization and linguicism through interpretations of non-white, non-Swedish speakers needing overt language lessons. At the same time celebrating multilingualism as an ideal, reproduces and enacts further categorization of the parents. These -isms of othering, through how the shadow of the iconic figure falls on the non-white parents, even those who are standard Swedish speakers, shows how possible subjectivities for them are limited in these everyday encounters in LLB.

Inviting employment representatives such as the Job Square, a program aimed at groups far from the labor market receiving economic support, shows how LLB explicitly shifted the activities towards employment onto parents with babies, which made assumptions about their goals, education level, employment status and relevance of Swedish language knowledge. The embedded intervention was strongly resisted by one of the non-white parent volunteers; as she, like most of the other parents had come to the meeting mainly for the opportunity to connect with other parents. As pointed out before (e.g. Lundström, 2017) migrant women are not a homogenous group, in fact the migrant mothers in our ethnography were educated, most having university degrees and differing greatly in their plans of residing. However, the organization, tapping into the logic of workfare and the workline principle marks some parents as “established” (thus hinting at being employed, providing for oneself, living in non-segregated areas, speaking ‘real’ Swedish and hence being Swedish, i.e. white) and others as “new” (hinting at being unemployed, relying on benefits, living in segregated areas, lacking Swedish skills, non-white and hence an immigrant or refugee; i.e. non-Swedish). Using this euphemistic device, a new/established dichotomy categorized all the parents with babies as one or the Other, which demonstrates how stigmatizing it is to be considered and called an immigrant in a Swedish context. There are only two categories of inhabitants in Sweden – ‘immigrants’ and the unmarked ‘Swedes’ – according to Hübinette and Lundström (2014), thus obscuring that Sweden is de facto multilingual and superdiverse. Consequently, the strong monolingual ideology (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2012) is creating an exclusionary dynamic where certain bodies are stopped (Ahmed, 2006).

The forms of recognition of the non-Swedish and particularly non-white parents’ be/longing for multilingual futures is precariously conditional. Different (linguistic, cultural and social) investments that parents make and how they negotiate their use of language is related to what futures they see as desirable and possible, a process of be/longing for their children in relation to ideas of who their child could become in terms of belonging to different communities (Adams Lyngbäck, 2016). When it came to the parents with migrant backgrounds this orientation required deliberate actions of investment to not lose family ties, a possibility of loss. The ‘monolingual’ Swedish parents saw language investment mostly in terms of possibility of gain with others and in other places, more distant from their everyday lives and from within Swedishness. Investments of these kinds, whether embodied or imagined, are connected to place and position through which roles and actions in those roles were felt differently. The meanings of these actions for parents in different positions illuminate why Swedish learning, as an investment, was not contested, but Swedish teaching was. ‘Good parenting’ is linguicized through an unspoken curriculum for immigrant (‘new’) parents, and for this reason the Swedish role-models (‘established’) as parent volunteers, are used to embody the ‘good Swedish mother’ (cf. Lundström, 2010). The use of these parents as role-models are examples of governing through intimacy, an engendered and hidden way of steering through the relational labor of citizens (Marchesi 2020; Vollebergh, et al., 2021).

Our hope with this embodied ethnographic approach is that it will explain the need for incorporating broad critical language awareness in integration programs. Further work is needed to explore integration initiatives targeting parents ‘as the carers of the future’ with theoretically grounded understandings of language and race to examine conditions of superdiversity in segregated societies.