Språkets roll för integration
en studie om de diskurser som riksdagspartierna och forskare konstituerar
The purpose of this essay was to examine the role of the acquisition of the Swedish language for integration of adult immigrants given by the seven parties currently in the parliament and other players on the field. The questions were meant to bring light upon the arguments used by the different players concerning the role of the Swedish language, to enlighten which discourses that are constructed, and the contradictions that exist between these. We parted from a postmodern position and used social constructionism to back up our method and theory of analysis; discourse theory. The results revealed three different discourses concerning the role of the Swedish language in the integration process; the liberal discourse, the discrimination discourse and the social democratic discourse. The liberal discourse claims that immigrants have a responsibility to learn Swedish to be able to achieve employment and to provide for themselves. The discrimination discourse doesn?t focus on language because that would place the blame on individuals, rather than on the structures of the society, which it considers is to blame. The social democratic discourse agrees with the liberal one on language being a way to achieve employment, but talks about this in terms of rights rather than responsibilities.