In 2011, Sweden introduced tuition fees for students from countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland when they enrolled at higher education institutions (HEIs). As a direct consequence, the number of students in Sweden from those countries decreased by 80% that year. Since then, the number of students has increased again…

The Nordic countries are often perceived as a coherent group representing the Nordic model of welfare states, with a strong emphasis on the public provision of universal welfare and a strong concern with social equality. But today we see a change in the Nordic model as part of a global knowledge economy. The aim of this article is to examine…

The Rohingya is a stateless minority group in Myanmar, suffering from ethnic and religious armed conflicts, state persecution, and displacement. Since the escalation of violent conflicts in the early 2010s, they have fled the country and sought refuge in neighbouring countries, and in the biggest numbers, in Bangladesh. Living in densely populated…

This paper aims to understand an emergent social practice of solidarity, that of voluntary shadow education ('social frontistiria'), in its socio-economic context. Perceiving the welfare state as the institutionalized form of solidarity, this paper attempts to analyze its specific nature and the process of political legitimisation stemming from…

This article considers the place of theory within education in two contexts -- Sweden and the UK -- and advances the argument that both governments and academics themselves have contributed to a 'theoryless' education. Examples are offered from the fate of education science in Sweden and, in the UK, from responses to the Research Excellence…

This article focuses on the role of the state in the context of an increasing market orientation in Swedish education policy. It asks if and how a market orientation and privatisation can be reconciled with attempts to reestablish central output control. The controlling function of the state is emphasised in the form of efforts to inspect both…