Tobias Pötzsch | University of Helsinki (original) (raw)

Books by Tobias Pötzsch

Social Policy & Society, 2024

This article explores the effects of language hierarchies within SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) and... more This article explores the effects of language hierarchies within SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) and LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) national integration programmes and how discourses of civic integrationism framed around monolingualism and neoliberalism position adult migrant students in the liminal spaces between belonging and othering. Based on research findings obtained during multiple case study fieldwork in Finland and Canada, I examine the underlying norms and subtexts upon which practices of host language acquisition are founded. How students are positioned depends greatly on who serves as an arbiter over which expressions of linguistic diversity are deemed beneficial or obstructive to integration. Migrant liminality within integration educations could be debilitating while simultaneously fostering resistance in transgressing and reimagining essentialist integration policy and pedagogical goals, thus creating opportunities for transformation.

Social Welfare Programs and Social Work Education at a Crossroads New Approaches for a Post-Pandemic Society, 2024

This chapter elucidates a digital module for facilitating virtual exchange and increasing interna... more This chapter elucidates a digital module for facilitating virtual exchange and increasing international and comparative competences for students in social work in three Nordic countries. The objectives of the joint module were the following: a) that students were able to identify overall, supranational trends in social policy and social service provision affecting all Nordic countries regardless of their national origin and b) that students were able to reflect on the importance of “context,” both national and local, in shaping the practical nature of social work and how, despite contextual differences, similarities in values and approaches to work continue to exist in the Nordics. In this sense, the authors developed virtual teaching methods and content for one module in already existing courses at all partner universities, that would enable students to actively discuss, compare, and reflect upon knowledge about institutional conditions of social work and their practical implications in Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

Unigrafia, 2020

This thesis explores the process of social inclusion of adult migrant learners enrolled in integr... more This thesis explores the process of social inclusion of adult migrant learners enrolled in integration education programs. It reveals the Inclusectionalities denoting the intersections of inclusion and exclusion through which liminal spaces are revealed that position migrant students as between and betwixt belonging and othering. The study is based on research findings obtained during multiple case study fieldwork in Finland and Canada between 2015-2017 consisting of in-depth and group interviews with migrant students and staff as well as extended periods of participant observation. The Finnish case studies consist of Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) programs at The Swedish Adult Education Institute (Arbis) in Helsingfors and The Civic Institute (Medis) in Mariehamn, on the Åland Islands, while NorQuest College’s Language Integration for Newcomers to Canada program (LINC) in Edmonton represents the Canadian case. Anti-oppressive methodologies (AOP), as well as perspectives integrated from Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) and Critical Migration Studies (CMS) with their ideals of challenging structural racism and working for social change inform the theoretical framework of critical social inclusion as well as the study’s research design.
The empirical findings show that social inclusion within the educations was tangled, episodic, and far from uniform or straightforward. Its negotiations revealed the presence of widely contradictory and conflicted responses which oscillated between Civic Integrationism’s striving to inculcate a “coherent” national narrative and Transformation Inclusion’s more “incoherent,” critical and egalitarian interpretations. The findings, presented in three main themes: Inclusion Within the Walls, Inclusion Beyond the Walls and (Colour) Blind Spots, also reveal that both enabling and disabling factors emerged in implementing critical social inclusion within the case studies’ different educational, social and national environments.
Educational programs where integration was myopically equated with host country language acquisition often lost sight of the breadth and depth – the “real life” focus – broader social inclusion demanded. Secondly, where an integrationist normative narrative – as in, “aren’t we supposed to teach them how to live here?” – justified prevailing power and racial hierarchies, it stood in the way of reciprocal learning and student agency in reshaping curricula and inclusion efforts. A third factor concerned how willing staff, administrators and other stakeholders were to turn the majority gaze inwards in interrogating their own role in maintaining cultural and structural inequalities as well as white entitlements. By diverting this gaze, the white social frame grounding these inequalities became institutional background and “common sense” views of culture, learning and integration eluded critical analysis. The fourth factor refers to the prevailing social and political climates in which integration education programs were embedded. Where these climates emphasized controls and compliances which racialized and othered migrants, they accentuated students’ abjection from the social body. Lastly, social inclusion necessitates robust expressions of joint political agency yet implementations of LINC and SFI were generally characterized by a politics of apoliticality. Because programs were not developed around critical citizenship foundations but emphasized more “neutral” incarnations of language and cultural learning, they extended limited sanctioned opportunities for teachers and students to collectively challenge social and structural injustices.
A key discursive and cognitive transposition is the study’s contention that if critical perspectives of social inclusion are to become a lived reality for all program participants, then majorities must also be subjected to the “integration spotlight.” Turning the majority gaze from the migrant inwards, presumes a sea change in attitudes, aims and program implementations. How one answers the question of who serves as an arbiter over which expressions of migrant diversity are judged as beneficial or as obstacles to inclusion is crucial here.

Papers by Tobias Pötzsch

Routledge eBooks, May 29, 2024

Social Inclusion

Youth and Globalization, 2023

Social Inclusion, 2023

How can integration education programs facilitate the more seamless inclusion of migrant newcomer... more How can integration education programs facilitate the more seamless inclusion of migrant newcomers into working life and civil society? Traditionally, integration policy and practice have been framed within a nation-state discourse in which views of migrant incorporation are grounded within a bordered nationalism embodying a native-migrant dichotomy that reifies the view of the "migrant other" as a subject defined by its "lack" in competence and agency. In our qualitative multiple case study, we explored the bridging potential of integration programs in facilitating the inclusion of migrant students within working life in Helsinki and Edmonton. We examined the "inclusectionalities," referring to the intersections of inclusion and exclusion that position adults enrolled in SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) and LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) language integration programs in the liminal spaces between belonging and othering. Guided by an understanding of critical social inclusion where migrants set the boundaries for interactions with authorities based upon their own needs and interests, we propose a transformational approach. Here migrant learners participate in a structural process where the fluid nature of social, political, and economic arrangements is consistently renegotiated on principles of egalitarianism and the full exercise of critical agency, herein envisioned as deliberate action resisting the social domination of racialized minorities by challenging and redefining institutional structures.

Kan vi stå till tjänst?: Integration på svenska i Finland, 2015

Helsingin yliopisto, Jun 25, 2020

Aside from their differences, however, the cases also share commonalities that facilitated making... more Aside from their differences, however, the cases also share commonalities that facilitated making points of connection. The first of these consisted of common curricular components comprising language acquisition, cultural skills training and short work-life internships which embraced the goal of providing migrant students with opportunities to develop linguistic, cultural and vocational competences. All three programs Extended periods of fieldwork during 2015 and 2016 in Helsingfors, Edmonton and Mariehamn comprising stays from three to six months in each case study environment ultimately yielded a rich source material. It consisted of in-depth interviews with teachers, administrators and support staff, group interviews with adult migrant students within LINC and SFI as well as months of participant observation in classrooms and other learning or extra-curricular environments. Interview transcripts and observation logs generated a multifaceted qualitative database in providing the raw Traversing each of these qualitatively different geographical, cultural and political spaces, I saw certain commonalities emerge. In each, one was forced to confront and mitigate the effects of being a member of a linguistic and cultural minority within majority society. As a child in Canada, labouring over "the sore points" of such negotiations was submerged by fervent wishes of belonging. One simply "got by" and postponed selfreflective ruminations until … However, during my second geographical This monograph is structured around eight separate chapters wherein Chapter 1, Introduction, briefly elucidates current debates on inclusion/exclusion, integration and migration. It also contextualizes the study's theoretical and methodological choices as well as positions the researcher within the critical social inclusion discourse. Chapter 2, Theoretical Perspectives, develops and deepens this discourse by employing a rhetorical device in which competing conceptions of integration and social inclusion are subsumed under separate headings in order to delineate differences in how these terms are given meaning. Anti-oppressive practice is also framed in more descriptive detail as its research practice fundamentally underpins my methodological approach. Chapter 3, Previous Studies, examines current research on social inclusion and the inclusion-exclusion nexus in LINC and SFI educational programs for migrants, while Chapter 4, Case Study Descriptions and Participants contributes representations of NorQuest College LINC and Arbis SFI and Medis SFI as well short descriptions of the students and staff which participated in the study. Chapters 5 & 6, Methodology and Data Analysis comprise descriptions of the methodological choices, processes and ethical considerations employed in the research. Chapter 7, Empirical Findings, presents the three main inductively generated themes; Inclusion Within the Walls, Inclusion Beyond the Walls and (Colour) Blind Spots with interwoven theoretical reflections, while Chapter 8, Conclusions, summarizes the empirical findings in light of the main

This article represents a synopsis of research findings obtained during multiple case study field... more This article represents a synopsis of research findings obtained during multiple case study fieldwork in Finland and Canada (2015-2017) examining implementations of critical social inclusion in integration educations, specifically Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) and Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC). Anti-oppressive methodologies (AOP), as well as perspectives integrated from Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) and Critical Migration Studies (CMS) with their ideals of challenging structural racism and working for social change inform critical social inclusion as well as the study’s research design. The empirical findings show that social inclusion within SFI and LINC programs was tangled, episodic, and far from straightforward. Its implementation depended upon a number of enabling and disabling factors such as the role ascribed to language acquisition and critical citizenship perspectives in curricula, interrogations of civic integrationism and institutional whiteness wi...

Antiracism Education In and Out of Schools, Sep 20, 2017

This chapter explores how an anti-oppressive practice (AOP) perspective can inform contested unde... more This chapter explores how an anti-oppressive practice (AOP) perspective can inform contested understandings of social inclusion within the LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) integration program at NorQuest College in Edmonton, Canada. Based on research findings obtained during case study fieldwork, it examines how inclusion is negotiated by program participants and juxtaposes this with anti-oppressive practice principles. In so doing, it offers valuable perspectives for critical and anti-racist discourses in adult education. The data for this studies includes in-depth individual interviews with LINC teachers, administrators and counsellors, group interviews with students and 1.5 months of participant observation. Interview transcripts and observation logs were analysed using inductive content analysis. The empirical findings illustrate the need for educational providers seeking to implement policies of inclusion to transcend their institutional boundaries by adopting structural, cross-sectorial and distinctly political responses. These include creating more egalitarian educational partnerships with all stakeholders comprising teachers, students and community organisations involved in LINC. Responses further entail reexamining institutional procedures, curricular mandates, as well as promoting public education programs and collective political mobilisation to address the structural factors circumscribing the lives of migrant students. A complementary finding in furthering inclusion suggests that components of social criticism and critical citizenship focusing on students' own experiences should become more entrenched within NorQuest's integration educations.

siirtolaisuus-migration journal, 2020

This article represents a synopsis of research findings obtained during multiple case study field... more This article represents a synopsis of research findings
obtained during multiple case study fieldwork
in Finland and Canada (2015-2017) examining
implementations of critical social inclusion
in integration educations, specifically Swedish
for Immigrants (SFI) and Language Instruction
for Newcomers to Canada (LINC). Anti-oppressive
methodologies (AOP), as well as perspectives integrated
from Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) and
Critical Migration Studies (CMS) with their ideals
of challenging structural racism and working for
social change inform critical social inclusion as
well as the study’s research design. The empirical
findings show that social inclusion within SFI
and LINC programs was tangled, episodic, and
far from straightforward. Its implementation depended
upon a number of enabling and disabling
factors such as the role ascribed to language acquisition
and critical citizenship perspectives in
curricula, interrogations of civic integrationism
and institutional whiteness within programs, as
well as the prevailing political climates outside of
the classroom. A pivotal conclusion is that if critical
perspectives of social inclusion are to become
a lived reality for all program participants, then
majorities must also be subjected to integration
regimes.

Book Reviews by Tobias Pötzsch

Youth and Globalization, 2023

Social Policy & Society, 2024

Social Welfare Programs and Social Work Education at a Crossroads New Approaches for a Post-Pandemic Society, 2024

Unigrafia, 2020

Routledge eBooks, May 29, 2024

Social Inclusion

Youth and Globalization, 2023

Social Inclusion, 2023

Kan vi stå till tjänst?: Integration på svenska i Finland, 2015

Helsingin yliopisto, Jun 25, 2020

Antiracism Education In and Out of Schools, Sep 20, 2017

siirtolaisuus-migration journal, 2020

This article represents a synopsis of research findings obtained during multiple case study field... more This article represents a synopsis of research findings
obtained during multiple case study fieldwork
in Finland and Canada (2015-2017) examining
implementations of critical social inclusion
in integration educations, specifically Swedish
for Immigrants (SFI) and Language Instruction
for Newcomers to Canada (LINC). Anti-oppressive
methodologies (AOP), as well as perspectives integrated
from Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) and
Critical Migration Studies (CMS) with their ideals
of challenging structural racism and working for
social change inform critical social inclusion as
well as the study’s research design. The empirical
findings show that social inclusion within SFI
and LINC programs was tangled, episodic, and
far from straightforward. Its implementation depended
upon a number of enabling and disabling
factors such as the role ascribed to language acquisition
and critical citizenship perspectives in
curricula, interrogations of civic integrationism
and institutional whiteness within programs, as
well as the prevailing political climates outside of
the classroom. A pivotal conclusion is that if critical
perspectives of social inclusion are to become
a lived reality for all program participants, then
majorities must also be subjected to integration
regimes.