How to Be Here From Somewhere Else: Learning About Place and Migration

• In Event: 66.073 - Refusing Abstraction: Place-Based Critical Pedagogy as Resistance in a Post-Truth Neoliberal World

Abstract

This paper narrates a transformation in my own work as a theorist and practitioner of critical place-based education. I focus on conceptual and pragmatic dilemmas I have encountered as a professor in a program where international student enrollment has risen sharply (15-60%) in the last five years. I describe the challenge to rethink my courses in Place-Based Education to be more responsive to “unsettled” and vulnerable experiences of international scholars on the move. My conceptual grounding is in critical place theory as applied to education (Calderon, 2014; Gruenewald, 2003a, 2003b; Seawright, 2014), which extends to many fields of inquiry, including migration and immigration (Kress & Lake, 2017). The work is also positioned as a critique of the neoliberal university (Ball, 2012) and its internationalization (Lee & Rice, 2007). In an era where conservative politicians worldwide seek to criminalize immigration, universities are competing harder than ever to recruit internationally because student enrollment has become a key strategy for increasing tuition-based revenue. Most major universities have well developed recruitment operations overseas, especially in Asia, that promise prospective students a high quality education that will translate into career opportunities in the global economic workplace.
International students take major risks to study in North America. They face many challenges in adapting to their new place including culture shock, homesickness, inadequate funds, racism, inadequate English skills, and lack of support structures. These issues have become pronounced in my own teaching throughout our graduate program. In the course Place-Based Education, they also call into question assumptions about the meaning of place from an international student perspective. With a majority of my students now being internationals, I have been revising the course to focus on the experience of migration itself and the tensions that exist between the idea of place as somewhere to settle, and place as a node in a larger journey of movement. My inquiry combines historical and theoretical scholarship with an action research stance toward my own work. In essence I ask, How do the migration stories of my international students necessitate changes in my thinking about place as a cultural and educational construct?
My data sources are varied and include meaning-making of my own experiences as a professor. I draw on journal writing, emails, course materials, and reflections on student work used with permission. I also explore the tensions between an “unsettled” and “settled” experience of place as expressed in student experience in several genres of literature (e.g., Coleman, 2016). My findings feature two layers of outcomes: a) reformulation of a theory of place that is responsive to international student migration, and b) an example of course revision that puts that theory into practice through enacting dramatic narratives of immigration (Kress & Lake, 2017). Critical pedagogies of place need to be continually revised in light of new trends that impact people and place, migration is one such trend. This research provides a working theory and compelling model to help witness and negotiate the tensions between leaving and staying put in university contexts.

Author

• David A. Greenwood, Lakehead University