Building a New Future – Young Ukrainian Refugees in the Liminal Space and Transitional Educational Phase in Finland

In this presentation, we will explore the experiences and aspirations of young adults who fled the war from Ukraine to Finland in terms of engagement, belonging, and language learning. These young people are living in a liminal space concerning their present and future. The first years spent in Finland, social relations and language training play an important role in how to start building a new life in a new country.

Our participatory team-ethnographic data was gathered during 2023−2024 academic year in two educational institutions (in Finnish rural area and in the middle-sized city) which provide transitional phase education for immigrant students who have completed their comprehensive education but need to improve their Finnish skills to move on to the secondary level. Our longitudinal data consist of observations in classrooms (7 months) and narrative interviews of the Ukrainian students aged 16-18 (35) and their teachers (9).

We analyse our data applying nexus analytical framework (Scollon & Scollon 2004). We aim to understand the engagement and language learning processes of Ukrainian youth in the nexus of three elements: First, The historical bodies of the participants: their bodily memories and experiences that are brought to the communicative situations in school; secondly, the interactional orders: what are the expected roles for the students and the teachers in these communicative situations, and thirdly, the discourses in place: what kind of discourses are constructed and negotiated within student groups and in the institution, and how do these reflect broader discourses prevailing in society. These discourses relate, for example, to whether students are positioned as responsible for their own choices or whether they are seen as young people who still need strong support.

Based on our results, we will discuss how to build a more justice and socially sustainable education for students with a refugee background.