Students’ conceptualizations of monolingual Swedish-language spaces and bilingual practices at a bilingual university in Finland

This paper aims to analyze students’ discourses on language policies and practices in a Swedish-medium study program at the largest bilingual university Finland. In educational discourse practice Finland, position of Swedish as de facto minority has traditionally been understood secured through institutional separation. While declared University Helsinki have witnessed shift towards simultaneous use multiple languages, structure programs still reflect policy parallel monolingualisms (Heller, 2007). By analyzing student interviews using spatially informed framework, we look how students negotiate meaning linguistic space appear them this construct. Our findings show that familiar separation contexts also circulated higher education: monolingual were seen “svenska rum” (Swedish rooms or spaces), material social markers status guaranteeing access education other national language. However, teaching necessary deconstruct borders between different order prevent alienation improve skills. Nevertheless, existing courses oftentimes experienced marginalizing users careful planning was pointed out crucial implementing successful multilingual education.