Race, Language, Religion, and Gender: Newcomer Students’ Stories of Intersectional Racism in Canadian Schools

• In Event: Deconstructing Intersectional Racism in Language and Literacy Education: What’s in It for the Newcomer Student?

Abstract

Objectives:
One of the primary challenges for newcomer students in Canada is to learn English to be able to integrate into mainstream education and society. Within this process of integration, students’ intersectional identities (the intersection of race, language, culture, and religion) not only influence their L2 learning, but also create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination and disadvantage. To this end, this presentation reports on a study documenting how these students, while learning English in an Alberta secondary school, constructed, (re)negotiated, and resisted their intersectional identities, and thereby creating an intersectional nature of racism.

Theoretical framework:
Intersectionality provides a theoretical lens to understand how multiple social identities intersect and create experiences of oppression and privilege (Crenshaw 1989) and helps make the connection between intersecting social identities (e.g., race, language, religion, and culture) and their impacts on “literacy engagement” (Cummins, 2011). Often occurring simultaneously and relationally, the lens of intersectional identities has the potential to illuminate privileged or minoritized racial, linguistic, religious, and cultural identities, which can impact how students’ linguistic and cultural representations are perceived (Rose & Flores, 2017). This process is relational because students may explore their sense of “selves” in relation to other people.

Methods:
The study used “workshop as a research methodology” (Storvang, et al., 2018), which uses generative design tools to help students discuss their experiences and situations, and simultaneously seek ways to challenge those experiences and situations. Twenty-four racialized ESL students participated in four workshops that included: a) dual language book reading followed by focus group discussions; b) identity texts that reflected their lived experiences and allowed them to use their fullest multilingual and multimodal repertoires; and c) walking narratives (Lynch & Mannion, 2016) to examine newcomer students’ placed-based experiences in relation to their identity construction and negotiation.

Results and significance:
The study’s findings highlight how students employed their multilingual and multimodal repertoires as cognitive and ideological tools to portray their ever-evolving sense of “self,” particularly in relation to their peers. This portrayal shed light on their experiences of racialization, based on their intersectional identities that encompassed language, race, religion, and gender. Through a comprehensive analysis of the three workshop activities, the emergence of the students’ unique narratives about their school, peers, and community reflected diverse perspectives on their linguistic, cultural, racial, and religious encounters. These narratives affirmed their intersectional identities and exposed the presence of racism. Notably, their Muslim, new immigrant, English language learner, and Black identities were all represented in these narratives, often juxtaposed with those of their counterparts. Additionally, the walking activity during the workshops offered insights into how certain spaces, where their identities and languages were affirmed, provided comfort, and fostered a connection to their sense of self. Overall, these newcomer students’ narratives underscored the significant role of community and school interactions in shaping their sense of identity and belongingness. They also revealed the influence of their home language, culture, and religion on English language learning, as well as the discrimination and disadvantages stemming from their intersectional identities.

Authors

• Rahat Zaidi, University of Calgary

• Pramod K. Sah, The Education University of Hong Kong