Today there is a strong tendency to involve local citizens in community work, and to mobilize social forces in poor urban districts. We will focus on one specific method used to educate and help immigrant parents raise and foster their children. This method is described as part of a wider ambition to integrate and involve immigrants in Swedish society. The aim is to get parents involved, and to create a dialogue and the necessary requirements for equal conditions. However, although the emphasis is on dialogue and shared experiences, this model is also based on and coloured by "governmentality". Through an empirical material consisting of a number of interviews with parents and teachers, we have focused on four thematic subjects: educational policies, homework, values and identities, and the importance of space and belonging. The results indicate that although the Swedish teachers try to create a dialogue and communicate with the parents, they do not succeed particularly well. The results indicate that when communication breaks down, the teachers often use different strategies of governance to implement their values, norms and ideas. In conclusion, it is not merely the clash between different value systems, and the different views on pedagogy and learning that contribute to distortions in the communication between teachers and parents, we also have to look more closely at the material and social conditions that create distance and alienation. Against the backdrop of the perception of whiteness and segregation, many of the communicative failures are understandable and logical. (Contains 1 note.)