ABSTRACT
Based on a policy-ethnographic study, this chapter investigates how the project of transforming adult immigrants into citizens and labour market participants has been articulated in state-sanctioned education mandatory for immigrants in Sweden. The analysis makes visible a deficiency perspective and how its articulations relate to the self-understanding of both the professionals engaged in the education and those immigrants who are the targets of transformation. This chapter shows how state-sanctioned education initiatives involve attempts to transform the subjectivities of both professionals and immigrants. It is also shown how both groups provide narratives of resistance, for example, by questioning the devaluation of and low expectations on immigrant course participants characterising the governmental rationality of state-sanctioned education for immigrants. Furthermore, the chapter illustrates how governing attempts aimed to produce active and responsible citizens and self-entrepreneurship, also unintendedly produced resignation and docility.
