Mobilizing the Hidden Bodies: Migrant Women Activism and Learning Critical Mathematical Literacy

• In Event: Learning in and for Collective Action: An Intervention Into the Learning Sciences

Abstract

Purpose & Perspectives
In this study, we discuss how a Filipina migrant woman activist, in collaboration with others, contributed to designing a new social infrastructure and designing their own futures. Our study was guided by the ontology of learning and social design, wherein participants become “designers of their own futures” (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016, p.566). In order to understand the experiences of intersectional “marginalization” as a source for epistemic agency, we draw from Puar’s (2005) notion of queer assemblage and Butler’s (2015) notion of assembly of bodies. In the field of the learning sciences, learner bodies came to light in relation to the complex, embodied mathematical thinking (e.g., Hall, & Nemirovsky, 2012; Hwang & Roth, 2011; Lee, 2015; Ma, 2017). We further advance this line of research by shedding light on how certain bodies are forced to be hidden in the public space and how learning to critically mobilize mathematics through activism can assembly the hidden bodies of learners.

Method
The data was drawn from a larger ethnographic study conducted in urban cities of Japan. Our analysis focuses on how Author 2, an activist leader who led a collective to combat violence against fellow migrant women. The data analyzed includes three interviews we engaged together (each interview lasted 90 minutes), ethnographic field notes taken by one of us (Author 1) on Author 2’s activities at her organization and the near-by community, and publicly available reports and interviews written by Author 2 and others at the Filipino Migrant Center.

Findings
We illustrate how an activist woman came to learn critically mobilize mathematics through her activism and how mathematics mediated her becoming an activist. Specifically, we demonstrate how mathematics was enacted as a tool to: 1) analyze the circumstances of Filipina migrant women in Japan and to establish an organization to improve their situation, 2) understand the social and historical roots of the violence that is faced by these migrant women, and 3) document and demonstrate the impact of the organization’s activist initiatives.

Discussion and Significance
This study adds to the discussion on embodied mathematics learning within the learning sciences theoretically and empirically. Led by an influential activist woman, fellow Filipina migrant women suffering from domestic violence made their (hidden) bodies visible and assembly in the public spaces. In accordance with the findings of Esmonde, Curnow and Riviere (2014), the activist woman came to learn mathematics as a tool for storytelling to the public. Centralizing Filipina migrant women’s experiences entangled with economical power differences among nations and gender politics, this study elucidates the power of assembling hidden bodies through social design and illuminates how migrant women learned to use their experiences of oppression to provoke their collective agency with critical mobilization of mathematics.

Authors

• Miwa Takeuchi, University of Calgary

• Virgie Aquino Ishihara, Filipino Migrants Center