Encountering Race: Discourses of Race and Racialization and the Education of Immigrant Youth in the United States and Europe

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This panel takes up the question of “race” in the experiences of immigrant youth in schools and communities. It interrogates the categories of “immigrant” and “nation” as objects of critical interrogation. Key questions we will explore include: how does ‘race’ operate as a “principle of power, differentiation, and classification” (Gilroy, 1998) in the lives of immigrant youth? How is race masked in more benign discourses of cultural difference and multiculturalism? How do racializing discourses come to be entangled with the interests of nationalism and empire? Our panel draws upon insights from critical race studies and the anthropology of education to analyze the lived experiences of racialized immigrants coming of age in liberal democratic societies that are seemingly “beyond race.”

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Section 2: Globalization, Decolonization, Transnational, & Ecological Inquiry

Chair

• Reva Jaffe-Walter, University of Wisconsin

Papers

• Children of Immigrants in a Suburban Context: Constructing and Challenging Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity - Jamie Lew, Rutgers University

• The Diffusing and Defusing of Race: Filipino American Youth Negotiating Racial Discourses in High School - Erica Chutuape, Hunter College - CUNY

• The Blurring of Discourses of Liberalism and Nationalism and the Racialization of Muslim Youth - Reva Jaffe-Walter, University of Wisconsin

• Slow Violence, Contested Community, and Neoliberal Education Reform: Low-Income Youth of Color in the Case of One School Closing - Ujju Aggarwal; Edwin Mayorga, The Graduate Center - CUNY

• “Los Racistas Son Los Otros” (The Racists Are Others): Immigrant Youth, Racial Denial, and Other E(Race)sures - Anne Rios Rojas, University of California - Santa Cruz

Discussant

• Thea R. Abuel-Haj, Rutgers University