Invisible Emotional Labor: An Intersectional Analysis of Family Engagement in Schools

• In Event: Ethnographic Investigations of Educational Neoliberalism: Toward an Intersectional Perspective

Abstract

Objectives: This paper examines the work of school-based personnel charged with increasing family engagement in a high-poverty, racially- and linguistically diverse, urban school district. Drawing from ethnographic research, it explores how family engagement discourse and practice are being reshaped in response to the imperatives of accountability. It aims to apply a critical-ethnographic lens to these processes, in order to better understand how educational neoliberalization affects the reproduction of race, gender, sexuality, and class hierarchies.

Theoretical Perspective: The paper develops a theoretical framework called race-gender neoliberalism, which draws from and integrates multiple critical analyses of neoliberalism including those from feminist (e.g. Hart 2000), black feminist (e.g. Nash 2008), postcolonial (e.g. Kamat, 2004), and race theory (e.g. Roberts & Mahtani 2010) perspectives. This framework positions racism, sexism, heterosexism and neoliberalism as interconnected processes that simultaneously (re)produce racialized and gendered bodies while modifying processes of racialization and gendering. It further posits that normative constructions of “family” are always-already raced and gendered. In education, these constructions are invoked, exploited, and modified further as they interact with the imperatives of neoliberal reform.

Methods & Data Sources: The paper draws from an ethnographic study of family engagement in school and community-based spaces. Data sources include nine semi-structured interviews and one focus-group discussion with school-based personnel charged with increasing family engagement; two group discussions that engaged all forty-six school-based parent liaisons in the district; observations of two district-wide parent liaison meetings; and participant observation at school- and district-sponsored events for parents and families. Individual interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Detailed fieldnotes were taken during and immediately after each observation or discussion. Data were coded using inductive thematic coding procedures.

Arguments: The paper argues that neoliberal discourse structures the meaning and practice of family engagement, (re)configuring them to reflect the imperatives of audit culture and hyper-accountability (Shore & Wright 2000). Second, it argues that school personnel charged with family engagement are exploited workers who perform invisible emotional labor (Guy and Newman 2006; Hochschild 1983). These workers, (predominantly non-college-educated women of color), bear increased responsibility for meeting families’ diverse needs as the neoliberal state retreats from its social welfare role. But much of their labor is invisible, undervalued, and uncompensated. As such, the labor of family engagement in schools is subject to processes of neoliberalization that, (in concert with other neoliberalizing processes), deploy and reinforce race-gender hierarchies.

Significance: Much has been written about the impacts of neoliberalization on classroom practice and teachers’ work (e.g. Apple 2007; Lipman 2011), but comparatively little has been written about how neoliberal reform (re)shapes notions of parent-family-community engagement. A robust body of scholarship from outside education offers insights into how neoliberalization is transforming notions of family as well as public social welfare institutions, including schools. This paper contributes further insight by focusing specifically on shifting conceptualizations and practices of family engagement in schools in the context of neoliberal education reform. Understanding these processes is essential if we are to strengthen public scholarship and public education for a diverse democracy.

Author

• Kysa Nygreen, University of Massachusetts - Amherst