Constructing Threats and a Need for Control: Textbook Descriptions of a Growing, Moving World Population

Year 2014, Volume: 4 Issue: 1, 7 - 25, 30.04.2014

Pia Mıkander Gunilla Holm

Abstract

The population of the world is growing and moving. The overwhelming majority of people are on the
move inside their own country and mostly towards cities while a minority moves from non-Western
areas to the West. In Finnish geography, history and social science school textbooks, this mobility tends
to be depicted differently depending on whether the movers represent “us” or “them.” Global population
growth is most prevalent in the poorest regions of the world, even though Europe is clearly the most
densely populated continent. Still, the talk of “overpopulation” does not usually concern Europe or the
West. The article uses discourse theory analysis and a postcolonial framework to research the discourse
of ‘us’ and ‘them’ with regard to population growth and migration as they are presented in Finnish
textbooks. The results show that the hegemony of a superior West is alive and well in the books, which
portray the non-Western populations as growing and moving in uncontrolled and threatening ways.
Uncontrolled urbanization is seen as dangerous, and the implication is that there are too many people in
non-Western areas. Metaphors such as natural disasters or floods are used to describe the moving
population, while cities are described as “suffocating.” 

Keywords

Population, migration, geography education, textbook research, postcolonial perspective

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