Policies, conditions and student experiences in Arabic and Sámi heritage language education

Heritage language (HL) education is offered in different forms by all Scandinavian public education systems. In addition, community-based complementary schools offering HL education are available across Scandinavia. The current article uses Norway as an example while investigating the following research questions: How do language policies in education influence the conditions for Arabic and Sámi HL education, and what consequences can these conditions have for students’ experiences? These research questions were investigated through ten weeks of ethnographic fieldwork in Sámi HL education in public schools and in a complementary weekend school offering Arabic HL education in a Norwegian city. The analysis demonstrates how both Arabic and Sámi HL education are marginalised forms of education. Nevertheless, the Sámi HL students reported experiencing encouragement from peers and pride in their heritage, while the Arabic HL students reported keeping their HL education secret from their peers in mainstream schools.