Juridifiering som demokratiseringsprocess? : Fallet likabehandling i svensk skola

The relationship between education and democracy has long attracted political interest. This thesis takes an interest in the political initiative to democratize education through legal means. This initiative is viewed as a wider national and global societal phenomenon. More precisely the thesis aims at developing knowledge on juridification as a process of democratization in education, by studying the Swedish case of equal treatment in school. Through the introduction of the Child and School Student Protection Act (SFS 2006:67) in 2006, discrimination and degrading treatment were prohibited and new legal accountability measures were introduced. Theoretically, juridification is treated as a multidimensional concept, encompassing different empirical processes of shifts towards law (Blichner & Molander, 2008; Brännström, 2009). Juridification as a process of democratization is approached as a multifaceted phenomenon involving potentially both desirable and undesirable consequences (Habermas, 1987; Teubner, 1987). This complexity also justifies the use of a plurality of perspectives and approaches in the thesis. Through and abductive research process (Peirce, 1931; Andersson & Balldin, 2022) the aim is explored through three sub-studies, using critical policy analysis (Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016), abduction (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012) and an educational philosophical approach (Smith, 2010). The results show how the Child and School Student Protection Act was made possible through an active political practice in which EU-directives on discrimination influenced Swedish education policy. The thesis illustrates a paradox (Brown, 2000) inherent in specifying legal discrimination grounds in the legislation. Furthermore, the thesis proposes a conceptual framework based on six dimensions of juridification, together with an overall understanding of juridification of and in education. This multidimensional concept contributes to an understanding of how different