The aim of this presentation is to present a proposal of what it means to be able to analyse societal issues in social studies education. This ability is considered central in both compulsory and upper secondary Social Studies education, and it has been suggested as one of several ways of thinking, that may be significant for Social Studies as a subject (Sandahl 2015). However, we still do not know much about what analysing in the Social Sciences means in general and for students in different age groups (Barton & Avery, 2016). Identifying this is crucial in order to design teaching that effectively enables students in different age groups to develop this ability. The study addresses the question of what it means to be able to analyse societal issues, with a focus on the 2015 migration situation, and was carried out as a learning study with iteratively conducted research lessons with students in year 1, 6 and 8 in compulsory school and year 2 in upper secondary school. The data, consisting of written student responses to open-ended questions (pre- and post-tests), as well as recorded group discussions, were analysed using phenomenographic methods (Marton, 2014) in order to identify qualitatively different ways of analysing the societal issue in focus. Results suggest that the most qualified way of analysing the migration situation was characterised by (i) seeing the migration situation as a dynamic process, where (ii) a consequence can also be a cause and where (iii) different dimensions are related.