Ra(ce)ising Questions About School : Analyzing social structures in a Swedish High School

Sammanfattning: This thesis is based in a Swedish high school and scrutinizes social interaction among students. The material was gathered in semi-structured interviews and observations made outside of classrooms, but inside the school grounds. The study strives to analyze power dynamics that the students adhere to in their social relationships at the school. It uses intersectionality as an analytical tool to understand the gendered and racialized ways in which students understand themselves in the social complex as social beings within a system. Based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted at this Stockholm-region high school during the spring of 2016, this essay also seeks to address the narrow ways in which Swedishness and non-Swedishness are constructed as dichotomous, as well as the power relations attached to acknowledgement of national belonging. Furthermore, the study analyzes ways in which students reinforce and communicate group belonging through attire, body language and speech. The thesis also considers how power dynamics stipulated by homosociality become an important factor in determining agency.