When Sanctuary Isn't Enough: Toward a Critical Reflexive Praxis of Sanctuary for Emergent Bilingual/Labeled as Disabled Families

• In Event: Centering Belonging in DisCrit: Toward the Dismantling of "Citizenship" and Imagined Boundaries

Abstract

Objectives/Theoretical Framework:
Education and im/migration policies are methods to surveil and control the “crises” of emergent bilingual children labeled as disabled (EB/LADs) and their families, especially when educators suspect an underlying disability or deficiency as a result of their migration experience or racial identity (e.g., Migliarini, 2017). As migration and “diversity” are constructed as societal burdens and political threats, schools circulate discourses of pathology and misrecognition of migrant and/or EB/LAD students (Crawford & Hairston, 2020) to articulate and define categories under the guise of benevolent social intervention. Schools and other institutions become “heterotopic spaces” which “process the immigrant body—through an industrialized choreography, through a regime of vision, and through layers of anti-immigration discourse” (Dolmage, 2011, 27).

The double logic of these policies decenters the needs and experiences of refugees and im/migrants whom they are designed to protect or include. Instead, the deployment, practice, and contentious discourse around policies and spaces concern the social and political power dynamics of white, predominantly class-privileged Americans who benefit from the rhetorical and material positioning of refugees and im/migrants as racial threats to the status quo. This paper aims to disrupt public construction of sanctuary and inclusive education policies as a binary state of being. The author highlights how constructing sanctuary and education policies as rigid ideological positions results in inadequate support of the lives and wellbeing of EB/LADs living at the intersections of language, migration, and disability. Engaging Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit; Annamma et al., 2013; 2016; Annamma et al., 2022) and Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT; Charmaz, 2014), this paper addresses these research questions:
What are the connections between the rhetorical and practical promises of sanctuary policies and inclusive education policies for EB/LADs?
How do migrant- and parent-lead community organizations resist the dehumanization of EB/LADs and their families at the crossroads of race, disability, and language as a result of these policies?

Methods/Data Sources:
Project draws from a larger qualitative case study of refugee families, educators, and interpreters supporting EB/LADs in community-based settings. The author conducted intensive, semi-structured interviews with educators and parents of EB/LAD children residing in a mid-sized sanctuary jurisdiction in Upstate New York. The author used DisCrit in tandem with CGT in an integrative theoretical framework to mediate their theoretical orientation, positionality, and methodological training throughout the project.

Results/Significance:
The data reveal how political leaders establish sanctuary policies without foregrounding the perspectives and dynamics of refugees and (im)migrants. Meanwhile, school-based educators attempt to establish top-down procedures for extricating signs of disability from perceived “conditions” of migration and bilingualism without critical reflexivity. Such attempts at cultivating sanctuary in many forms are failing the refugee EB/LAD families. Participants demonstrated critical aspirations and praxis for themselves and their families. Following Houston’s (2019) concept of sanctuary as a process, the findings of this study contribute recommendations for how critical reflexivity can more effectively support and develop connections, belonging, and safety across school- and community-based settings.

Author

• Chelsea Stinson, SUNY - College at Cortland
  Presenting Author