A central aim of the Danish compulsory school (grade 0-9) is to prepare all students for further education (Folkeskoleloven 2020). However, while 62% of 25-year olds who grew up in a so-called “ghetto area” obtain an upper secondary or vocational education, this accounts for 84% of 25-year olds who grew up in other areas (Ministry of Interior and Finance 2018). This indicates that the location of students’ home and school affects their educational and future possibilities.
Based on in-progress ethnographic fieldwork in three schools in problematized public housing areas, this paper investigates the intersections between class, ethnicity and geography in an analysis of the schools’ educational guidance work with its students. Problematized public housing areas refer to areas that are, have recently been or are at risk of becoming placed on, an official list of “parallel societies” managed by the Danish ministry of Interior and Housing (Ministry of Interior and Housing 2021).
The paper seeks to create new knowledge on how a schools’ location in an area considered problematic by the Danish welfare state affects the educational guidance work taking place inside these schools, and how it affects the students’ dreams for their future. Secondly, the paper engages in the development of a theoretical framework that understands place not as a fixed concept influencing individuals who are physically present in this space, but rather as a concept that is socially constructed throughout the everyday life in the area as well as in dominating public discourse regarding “parallel societies”. This theoretical framework – based on intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991; El-Tayeb 2011) as well as urban feminist geography (Parker 2011; Molett & Faria 2018) – holds the possibility for a dynamic understanding of how the students’ context plays a central role in producing their subject position, educational choices and the educational guidance they receive.
Intent of publication
The paper might have an analytical article to be placed in International Journal of Educational Studies in Education or in e.g. Race, Ethnicity & Education.

Literature
Crenshaw, K. (1991): Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1300.
El-Tayeb, F. (2011): European Others, Queering Ethnicity in Postcolonial Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Folkeskoleloven (2020): Bekendtgørelse af lov om folkeskolen. http: https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2021/1887
Ministry of the Interior and Housing (2021): Liste over parallelsamfund pr. 1. december 2021. http: https://im.dk/Media/637738688901862631/Parallelsamfundslisten%202021.pdf Link accessed 04.12.2021.
Mollett, S. & Faria, C. (2018): The spatialities of intersectional thinking: fashioning feminist geographic futures, Gender, Place and Culture, 25:4, 565-577.
Parker, B. (2011): Material Matters: Gender and the city, Geography Compass, 5:6, 433-447.