Towards a (Re)imagined Metalanguage of (Im)migration

• In Event: Reenvisioning Educational Experiences: Lessons From (Im)migrant Communities

Abstract

The hegemonic production of knowledge on (im)migration from the geopolitical and epistemic location of the United States has made legible and knowable a particular conception of (im)migration shaping in turn how (im)migrant subjects are made and remade. As a corpus these conceptions constitute a dominant metalanguage (Higginbotham, 1992, 2017) of (im)migration that is legible through a set of metapragmatic discourses that have, in the particular case of the U.S., contributed to a racialized (im)migrant personhood. The metapragmatic framings of this particular (im)migrant personhood consequently enact materialities in the everyday lives of individuals that fall within this ascription of personhood. This piece interrogates the political nature of the epistemological choices undergirding such production of knowledge with the goal of disrupting the naturalized ways whereby the racialized (im)migrant and (im)migration are conceptualized within the U.S. context. The first part aims to provide, in broad strokes, a discerning of a Westernized epistemic posture on (im)migration reflected through ideas about citizenship, belonging and race that in turn make up the racialized (im)migrant personhood. This broad exploration of the Westernized epistemic posture serves to illustrate the depth and breadth of the dominant metalanguage of (im)migration. The piece ends with a nascent theorization of a (re)imagined metalanguage of (im)migration that inheres dialogic exchanges between (im)migration, settler colonialism, Indigeneity and a decolonial imperative.

Author

• Vianney A. Gavilanes, University of California-Berkeley