Christian Slaaen

Troublemakers in Search for Belonging: Newly Arrived Pupils in a Oslo School Christian Slaaen

The thesis is about immigrant pupils in Sogn School in Oslo, where my aim was to discover different form of belonging. The school?s role when it comes to integration varied for the different actors, both in terms of establishing social relations, and in terms of acquiring knowledge. The different immigrant pupils generated groups and social relations based on different criteria as language, age, school ambition, gender, interests and nationality. I ended up following two groups of troublemakers in the class. The first group, The Serbs, was made up of two boys: Javor (20) from Serbia and Dimitiar (20) from Serbia. The second group was made up of Sifaw (18) from Morocco, Andre (18) from Portugal, Bernard (16) from Poland and Diana (17) from Lithuania. I looked what into what troublemaking meant for group belonging and identity negotiation.