Former Burmese Refugees Negotiate Non-/mis-/emerging Recognition: Community Organizing and U.S. Midwest Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Protracted Refugee Situations and Public Scholarship for Democratic Education

Abstract

Background: In the US Midwest, recent refugee resettlement has had significant impacts in schools where personnel have little experience with English Language Learners and even less experience with severely interrupted formal education. Adams Independent School District (AISD) is a mid-sized school district in the Midwest serving approximately 12,000 students. Sixty percent of students are eligible for free or reduced lunches. Over the last 15 years, AISD has shifted demographically from serving mostly White students to serving 39% Black, 33% White, 16% Hispanic, 8% Multiracial, and 4% Asian students. 90% of teachers in the district are White and almost 10% are Black. To serve the 2,500 language minority students, the district employs 19 teachers licensed to teach English as a Second Language across all buildings. As a result of housing agreements with resettlement agencies in the city, most newly arrived (within 5 years) refugees from Burma live in a few apartment complexes in AISD. There are three primary ethnic groups from Burma in the area. The community of approximately 2,000 speak a dozen different languages and spent decades languishing in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border.
The Study: Guerrero and Tinkler note, “For displaced youth who are marginalized by their language, ethnicity, religion, and class, community-based organizations serve as safe arenas for young people to negotiate their identities and contest the stereotypes and negative messages they receive at school and in society” (2010, p. 55). Thus, the importance of community-based organizations (CBO) cannot be understated in the transition of displaced youth. This study centers a grassroots ethnic-based community organization that not only serves the youth and adults of the resettled Burmese communities, it also advocates for students in AISD schools. Drawing from Mouffe’s work on radical democracies, we read our data through concepts of the political, the agon, and the adversary.
We draw on ethnographic methods in this ongoing extended case study (Burawoy, 1998). Beginning in 2010, qualitative methods of participant observation, field notes, document review and interviews were used to study an ethnic CBO established to “empower the newly resettled refugee-immigrant communities from Burma…through formal and informal educational programs leading toward their self-realization, confidence and sufficiency” (CBO website). Field notes from meetings between district and CBO leaders, community strategy meetings, and from CBO leadership meetings were abductively analyzed tacking between the literature and specific data units extracted from the overall dataset for relevance.
While the larger study seeks to understand the community-based organizing efforts of a recent refugee community, this paper reports on the political dynamics observed across CBO and school interactions. Qualitative methods of analysis including data preparation, exploration, and reduction (Hatch, 2002; Mertens, 2010) reveal a number of political tactics deployed by school district personnel and the Burmese community leaders to shape and reshape the emerging community-school relationship. Iterative analysis suggests shifting political dynamics resulting from fiscal circumstances, available resources and visibility of the CBO. Political dynamics were informed by three primary orientations: non-recognition, mis-recognition, and emerging recognition of the CBO as alternatively a non-player/actor, agon, and adversary.

Authors

• Thu Suong Thi Nguyen, Indiana University - IUPUI

• Brendan D. Maxcy, Indiana University - IUPUI