This licentiate thesis investigates how migrant participants in the Swedish folk high school’s General Course construct and enact their social identity through communication within the local learning community. Grounded in a critical and practice-oriented perspective, the thesis examines how communicative resources, cultural norms, and expectations shape participants’ opportunities for inclusion. Two research questions are addressed through two empirical articles based on an ethnographic field study involving shadowing four course participants and conducting semi-structured interviews with them and five of their teachers.

Article 1 explores how migrant participants navigate their participation in relation to the languages, norms, and values that structure everyday practices in the learning community. The analysis demonstrates that participation extends beyond the acquisition of academic knowledge and involves negotiating access to shared practices where language barriers, differing educational trajectories, and culturally embedded expectations create both enabling and constraining conditions. The findings underscore the importance of pedagogical approaches that recognise diverse learning processes, support norm navigation, and critically examine how teachers’ own assumptions shape interactional patterns. Inclusive teaching requires balancing linguistic, cultural, and academic dimensions and offering identity-affirming scaffolding that supports participants’ agency without reinforcing marginalisation.

Article 2 examines how migrant participants’ social identity is shaped through the enactment of their individual communicative repertoires within the learning community. Although Swedish-born and migrant participants interact socially and learn from one another, these interactions are constrained when some participants adjust or narrow their repertoires to align with perceived norms. Such adjustments may limit expressive possibilities and, in some cases, result in communicative repertoires that do not align with the expectations of the learning environment, thereby influencing participants’ social positioning and identity formation. The findings suggest that recognising and valuing a broader range of students’ communicative repertoires can strengthen migrant participants’ social identity and support meaningful participation. Conversely, framing diversity as deviation risks reinforcing exclusion.

Overall, the thesis contributes to research on adult education, social identity, and communicative practices by demonstrating how identity formation among migrant participants is shaped through everyday negotiations of language, norms, and repertoires. It highlights the need for pedagogical practices that actively engage with diversity as a resource rather than a challenge, and that support participants in navigating the complex interplay between academic expectations and social belonging.