Performing the Good (Im)Migrant: Inclusion and Expectations of Linguistic Assimilation

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

Abstract

Objectives
This paper explores how current models of inclusion of unaccompanied, forced migrant youth in Italy produce educational and social exclusions and inequities because of the normalizing processes of racism and ableism. It considers the interworkings of race, disability, migratory status, and language to account for ways in which disabled asylum-seeking and refugee students are positioned at the margins of Italian educational institutions and society. The paper attempts to document how their inclusion often implies violent forms of integration into monolingual and monocultural education settings (Alba & Nee, 1997), demanding the enactment of a Transborder DisCrit approach. This paper also presents forms of linguistic agency, illustrating the values with which disabled forced migrant youth regard their own linguistic practices.

Theoretical Framework
DisCrit (Annamma, et al, 2013) and Raciolinguistics (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Vigoroux, 2017) are used here to understand how external attitudes regarding language, race, disability, and immigrant status influence forced migrant youths’ perceptions of linguistic inclusion in schools and society. We use this integrated framework, a critical disabilities raciolinguistic (CDR) perspective (Author M, 2020), to position the gaze of the Italian professionals as both White and normative.
Methods
This paper draws from a qualitative Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) study conducted in Rome with 10 forced migrant youth and 17 Italian professionals operating in educational and social services between 2014 and 2017. We share a sub-section of data from the larger study to shed light on how the construction of refugee children’s “illiteracy” by Italian professionals serves as surrogates for racialization and disablement.

Data Sources
Data collection involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with 27 participants, 17 professionals in the roles of educators, teachers, social workers, psychologists, and cultural mediators, with varying levels of previous work experience in the field of migration, and 10 unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children, aged 12 to 16, from West African countries at different stages of their asylum request process.

Results
Asylum-seeking youth were conscious about the relationship between race and language and understood/felt that this can serve to lower linguistic expectations within the host country. Understanding the struggles of speaking Italian as West African asylum seekers, the youth feel compelled to perform language proficiency by using Italian to express appreciation for the teachers, convey their sense of isolation, and the motivation/urgency not only to learn but, ultimately, to adopt the language. Professional participants, instead, perceived forced migrant youth’s language acquisition in segregated ‘special’ institutions as a vehicle for assimilation with few, if any, negative implications for the youth.

Scholarly Significance
Adopting a CDR perspective uncovers the complex ways in which refugee status, nationality, race, and language came together to construct students as broken with minimal interrogation of the systemic and colonial roots of these framings. These understandings will greatly aid in the development of holistic and intersectional policies and practices that honor the desires and needs of all participants (e.g, establishing norms, developing structured mentorship opportunities, social exchanges, recognizing their transborder experiences) as well as developing more equitable community-refugee partnerships (Symons & Ponzio, 2019).

Authors

• Valentina Migliarini, University of Birmingham
  Presenting Author

• María Cioè-Peña, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author