The Invisible Linguistic Repertoires of Bilingual Refugee Students in a Public International School

• In Event: 69.056 - Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: 69.056-15 - Language Practices of Bilingual Students

Abstract

This qualitative case study interrogates the assumption that international schools are inherently responsive to the needs of bilingual learners and contextualizes the language journeys of refugee children in an international school context. Drawing from ethnographic observations, focus groups, interviews, and documents/artifacts, this study provides a nuanced understanding of dynamics of linguistic differentiation in a public International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Program (PYP) in one of the largest refugee resettlement areas in the Southeast. Findings indicate that although the school’s covert language policy positioned the ability to speak one or more languages as linguistic capital, the linguistic repertoires of bilingual refugee students were made invisible at school by three interrelated processes: linguistic tokenism, linguistic subordination, and linguistic compartmentalization.

Author

• Ana Solano-Campos, University of Massachusetts - Boston