“Where Are the Rights of the Refugee?” Citizen Production in Urban Public Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Democratic Citizenship in Education Paper Discussion (Roundtable) Session

Abstract

This comparative ethnographic project explores the interplay of forced migration, urban schooling, and citizen production among refugee youth. Investigating how recently resettled Burmese, Bhutanese and Iraqi refugee youth are being made and self-making into particular kinds of citizens through their experiences with urban public schools, the primary state institution youth encounter, the purpose and significance of this project lies in its potential to inform educators about their unique educational experiences. For schools to understand how refugee students’ identities are made manifest in the classroom, in particular how they come to articulate themselves as citizens in the making, qualitative research is needed to excavate the mechanisms behind these complex processes of citizen-production as they occur both within and across educational institutions.

Authors

• Julia A. McWilliams, University of Pennsylvania

• Sally Wesley Bonet, Rutgers University