Uppeldi og menntun - 01.07.2013, Side 98

Uppeldi og menntUn/icelandic JoUrnal of edUcation 22(2) 201398
ViðHorf Ungmenna til mannréttinda innflytJenda og mÓttökU flÓttafÓlks
UM HÖfUnDana
Margrét A . Markúsdóttir (mam6@hi.is) lauk M.A.-prófi í uppeldis- og menntunarfræði
með áherslu á áhættuhegðun, forvarnir og lífssýn frá Menntavísindasviði Háskóla
Íslands í febrúar 2013. Hún lauk kennaraprófi árið 2010 frá sama skóla. Rannsóknar-
áhugi hennar beinist einkum að mannréttindum, borgaravitund ungmenna og við-
horfum þeirra til innflytjenda og flóttamanna.
Sigrún Aðalbjarnardóttir (sa@hi.is) er prófessor við Menntavísindasvið Háskóla
Íslands. Hún lauk doktorsprófi frá Harvardháskóla árið 1988. Helstu rannsóknasvið
hennar eru borgaravitund ungs fólks; félagsþroski og samskiptahæfni barna og ung-
menna; áhættuhegðun og seigla ungs fólks; uppeldisaðferðir foreldra; menntunarsýn
kennara og skólastjórnenda; og skólaþróun. Hún var á árum áður grunnskólakennari
og vann að námsefnis- og námskrárgerð í samfélagsfræði hjá skólarannsóknadeild
menntamálaráðuneytisins (sjá www.uni.hi.is/sa).
Young people’s attitudes towards the human rights
of immigrants and refugees: An interview study
abstract
Research on young people’s civic awareness and engagement has been expanding
from a primary focus on their political views (Kubow, Grossman, & Ninomiya, 2000)
to an emphasis on their views on various societal issues, such as their attitudes to-
wards different social and cultural groups, including immigrants (e.g. Torney-Purta,
Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz, 2001). Most of the research on young people’s attitudes
towards immigrants has been conducted with questionnaires (e.g. Kerr, Sturman,
Schulz, & Burge, 2010). This qualitative study, conducted in Iceland, is part of a larger
research project on „Young people’s civic engagement in a democratic society“ which
uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to collect and analyze data. The study
presented here focuses on two issues: young people’s attitudes towards the rights of
immigrants and their reception of refugees by using semi-structured in-depth inter-
views. Nineteen young people in two age groups, 15 and 19 years old, participated in
the study. Thematic analysis was used to explore their views.
The main results of the thematic analysis suggest two main themes for the issue
of attitudes towards the rights of immigrants: “opportunities” and “we and the other”
(othering) . First, for the theme “opportunities”, three subthemes emerged. The first
was the importance of language . These young people felt that learning Icelandic was
key to immigrants participating in the society, but they also saw the difficulty that
immigrants could face in learning it; thus inadequate competence in Icelandic could