Immigration and the Different Routes of Citizenship Education Politics in Denmark and Sweden

In Scandinavian school politics most accept comprehensive public schooling as a cornerstone of an egalitarian society. Yet, confronted with globalization and increasing cultural diversity in the late 1990s, Denmark and Sweden concluded very differently what this implicated for how the school should approach citizenship education. The debate in both countries took off from a concern that globalization creates ontological insecurity. The Danish debate quickly shifted towards being mainly about the societal withdrawal of Muslim youth and the answer, particularly with the new centre-right government in 2001, was to strengthen an already official monocultural approach with more lessons in core subjects in a curriculum more centrally controlled. Here the school’s role is to promote equality based on a highly mechanic type of solidarity, that is, to reproduce in new generations a deep-seated relationship to a historically rooted, non-negotiable notion of nationhood. The Swedish response is wholly different. Here politics largely left concerns for ontological insecurity aside and began emphasizing strongly the enrichment of cultural diversity, anti-discrimination and human rights in contrast to more exclusive notions of nationhood. It is a turn away from a singular national culture as the basis of equality and trust. Why do Denmark and Sweden take almost opposite routes? Exploring the ideational and political context for significant political decisions taken since the mid-1990s, this paper offers an account the political dynamics behind these decisions focusing on the interplay between national philosophies of integration, party ideologies and political opportunity structures.