Basements, Boutiques, and Land-Based Pedagogy: De-Gentrification of Dual-Language Bilingual Education

• In Event: Love and Loss of Land and Language: Reciprocity With the Earth in Language Education

Abstract

Objectives & Background

Parallel to gentrification of U.S. cities, DLBE gentrification works as neo-colonization, resettling formerly marginalized spaces through rearranging spatial politics in material and discursive ways (Author2, 2020). Language policy often contains anti-immigrant and anti-Indigeneity ideologies (Ovando, 2003) as part of a (neo)colonial, capitalist, anti-nature project (Author1, 2020; Moore, 2015). We argue that the gentrification analogy needs a more literal exploration so that better solutions can emerge. Currently, main solutions proposed to basements and boutiques (Flores & Garcia, 2017) problematic structuring DLBE into second-class, exclusionary spaces has been to argue for either (a) an equity/heritage centered form of DLBE (Author1 et al., forthcoming) or (b) a partially neoliberal version that is truly inclusive of language-minoritized students (Callahan & Gandara, 2014; Author1 et al, 2017). This paper proposes a deeper third option that becomes decolonizing by focusing not just on who is included but also on what is taught, and not just on humans but all of nature.

Perspectives, Methods, and Data Sources

This theoretical piece is grounded in decolonial theory (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018) and bases its argumentation on a review of existing literature of work around DLBE gentrification trends.

Results: Reconceptualization

To begin, we theorize three processes that enact DLBE politics in material (bodies/resources) and discursive (narratives/policies) ways. First, disinvestment in infrastructure and isolation from resources, wherein district and city administrators remove power and resources from minoritized, colonially contained, subaltern(ated) spaces, effectively silencing the voice of the land, as well, through colonialism. Second, through politics of individual (usually White) appropriation, (White) individuals dispossess disenfranchised communities of resources while repossessing as settler-squatters drive color-blind (Bonilla-Silva, 2003) narratives of innovation and regeneration. Lastly, through politics of institutional expropriation, tropes of global marketing and crisis-fixing provide rationales for state seizure of land to publicly subsidize corporate interventionism in the interest of public domain while gutting safety nets for the original inhabitants.
We propose DLBE build on but go beyond human equity, which is usually discussed via questions of who gets in and whose worldviews are valued. Other research suggests that local community leadership is important, or argues for making DLBE widely available and less exclusive. We maintain the land itself (the local part of the Earth where the program is located) also needs a voice, and that DLBE can draw on scholarship detailing how Indigneous knowledges and Western science can collaborate to provide that voice. Land-based education (Bang et al., 2014) seeks Indigenous knowledges about the local area as well as Indigenous knowledges in the ancestral diasporic migrations of the ethnic identities of all students in the program.

Significance

We seek to fill two gaps: a) DLBE gentrification has not yet been connected to curriculum taught as part of the best form of resistance; b) DLBE gentrification has not yet been connected to a closer examination of the literal source of the metaphors of urban gentrification and settler colonialism of Indigenous land. We aim to move the conversation beyond a question of access toward ecological transformation.

Authors

• Garrett Delavan, Georgia State University

• James Arthur Gambrell, Kennesaw State University