Researching With Educational Communities to Promote Equity in a Post-Pandemic World: Project Overview

• In Event: Crossing Borders to Connect Routes: Understanding Educational Inequities Affecting Immigrants, From a Transnational Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this project is to help create more inclusive societies through education. It interrelates three relevant issues: 1) the impact of the global health crisis on education and particularly on immigrants’ education, 2) the role of immigration laws and educational regulations and policies on framing immigrants’ educational opportunities and obstacles, and 3) the ecosystem of media discourses and anti-immigration narratives that have accompanied the evolution of the pandemic, and its effects on education. The study’s main research objectives are: 1) to analyze systemic and emergent inequities affecting the education of immigrants in five countries, 2) to understand how these inequities intersect with race, ethnicity, gender, social class and legal status in each context, and 3) to identify and transfer the best policies and practices, to break down educational inequities and to fight racism.
This project integrates three main frameworks: (a) an ethnographic and narrative approach to delve into the complexity of the educational experiences of immigrants from a situated and detailed analysis of educational spaces, practices and interactions, (b) the perspective of critical discourse analysis to explore recurrent and emergent public and political narratives that intersect immigration and youth since the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis, and (c) a community-engaged research approach to involve immigrants and their educational communities in exploring potential solutions to overcome educational inequities.
The research design includes a scoping literature review, a critical discourse analysis of legal and media narratives, and qualitative case studies developed in different educational contexts. The following research techniques are being applied: media content analysis, in-depth interviews, open participant observation, and participatory workshops in each educational community.
This project is now in its first year of execution, so it is too early to report global results. However, based on the evidence analyzed so far, in this symposium, we will bring up three main arguments: 1) that the pandemic has deepened educational inequities and educational segregation, which, for several reasons, especially affect minoritized and racialized immigrants, 2) that, in the context of the fear and social tension caused by the pandemic, anti-immigration narratives have been transformed and spread, increasing the stigmatization and disaffection towards immigrants, particularly young immigrants, and 3) that the resulting legal restrictions limit the educational opportunities for immigrants, putting them at greater risk of social exclusion, isolation and loss of cultural and social capital.
Research on the impact of the pandemic on the education of immigrants is highly relevant, although still emerging, and it centers on macro-global views. Research can and should help to understand how the pandemic is affecting the education of these vulnerable groups in different parts of the world. Transnational qualitative studies - such as this one - can help capture the complexity of this phenomenon, so as to enrich the vision provided by the emergent research on this topic, which mostly follows a panoramic and quantitative view, but misses the nuances and textures of the pandemic as a “lived experience.”

Authors

• Adriana Ornellas, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
  Presenting Author

• Amalia Creus, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
  Presenting Author