Educational strategies across borders

The Proactive, the Reliant, and the Disconnected

Bibliographic Data

ID3616372
AuthorsHelen Pidgorna (0009-0006-8416-8741, Centre for East European and International Studies, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume52
Issue11
Pages1-21
Publication date2025-06-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Community (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369183x.2025.2514798
OpenAlexW4411345577
LanguageEN
References cited25

The full-scale war waged by Russia on Ukraine since 24 February 2022 has led to an unprecedented mass migration of the Ukrainian population. Among the various destination countries, Sweden offers valuable insight into how newcomers navigate their host society without ethnic migrant networks. This study is the first to examine how Ukrainian refugees navigate schooling in their new context and perceive the change in their children’s education trajectories when they cannot rely on existing ethnic networks. Bourdieu’s theoretical framework helps us understand the families’ educational practices in relation to their various forms of pre-migration capital. The findings reveal three distinct patterns in how the families exercise school choice in the new context: proactively utilising the education system (the Proactive), relying on social capital beyond ethnic ties in making education-related decisions (the Reliant), and being unaware of or abstaining from exercising choice (the Disconnected). Transnational habitus formation is observed in the families’ ambivalence about the change in their children’s education trajectory and the ‘double-schooling’ practice resulting from it. This study adds to the literature on forced migration and education of wartime migrant children by shedding light on how the various forms of the families’ pre-migration capital shape the children’s educational trajectories

Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Higher Education Governance and Development

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