ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the legitimacy of public authorities’ interference in parenting when migrant parents are framed as a target group. The empirical data consist of three parenting programmes developed and implemented in Norway and Sweden, specially designed to address migrant parents. The analysis of programme texts departs from three questions: Why are migrant families targeted? What kind of transitions do the programmes promote? And how are these transitions expected to be achieved? Based on the results from the textual analysis, we discuss how authorities guide but also govern through these programmes. The defining of the target group and their needs, as well as addressing the parents, can be understood as epistemic governance aimed at affecting other people’s views of reality, their conceptions, aspirations, motivations, and, in the end, practices. The friendly bridging and mutual approaches used by the three parenting programmes are elusive. The possible problem of oppression and racialization is immanent in the programmes and embedded in a theoretical framework about modernity that supports taken-for-granted standpoints about cultural differences (as better or worse). All this makes it difficult for migrant parents to take part in guidance from a position as equal peers.
