Locations of Racism in Education: A Speech Act Analysis of a Policy Chain

This article explores how racism is located in an educational policy chain and identifies how its interpretation changes throughout the chain. A basic assumption is that the policy formation process can be seen as a chain in which international, national and local policies are "links"--separate entities yet joined. With Sweden as the national example, the article analyses how racism in education is framed at different policy levels and which anti-racist actions are proposed. The article thereby clarifies who or what is, at different policy levels, perceived to be the location of racism. A first finding concerns terminology: throughout the policy chain the problem of racism is discussed in terms of "discrimination". At European, national and local level, discrimination is mostly associated with "ethnicity", thereby removing from policy a possibly stronger language for combating racism. A second finding is that the location of racism in education moves gradually through the chain from an institutional to an individual location of racism, with an increasing focus on the significance of the student rather than the importance of societal structures. The importance of circumstances for policy formation is a third main finding in the article.