Critical Social Inclusion as an alternative to integration discourses in Finnish and Canadian Integration Education Programs

This article represents a synopsis of research find-ings obtained during multiple case study field-work in Finland and Canada (2015-2017) exam-ining implementations of critical social inclusion in integration educations, specifically Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) and Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC). Anti-oppressive methodologies (AOP), as well as perspectives inte-grated from Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) and Critical Migration Studies (CMS) with their ideals of challenging structural racism and working for social change inform critical social inclusion as well as the study’s research design. The empirical findings show that social inclusion within SFI and LINC programs was tangled, episodic, and far from straightforward. Its implementation de-pended upon a number of enabling and disabling factors such as the role ascribed to language ac-quisition and critical citizenship perspectives in curricula, interrogations of civic integrationism and institutional whiteness within programs, as well as the prevailing political climates outside of the classroom. A pivotal conclusion is that if crit-ical perspectives of social inclusion are to become a lived reality for all program participants, then majorities must also be subjected to integration regimes.