Named, Unnamed, and Coded Oppressions: Applying Intersectionality to Dual-Language Bilingual Education Programs

• In Event: Dual Language Bilingual Education: Trends, Policy, Pedagogy, and Future Directions

Abstract

Objectives: The study and application of intersectional analyses can be one way to address the enduring call to realize the action-component of critical, or sociopolitical, consciousness so that DLBE programs may garner greater equity in the pursuit of social justice. In service of this aim, the question that guides this theoretical literature review is: How has intersectionality (not) been explored in the DLBE literature. This presentation is organized by the three major themes in the research.
Methods and Frameworks: Intersectionality has been described as a theory, a metaphor (Brochin, 2018; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Tefera et al., 2018), a radical ontology (Bilge, 2013), a practice (Nash, 2011), and an analytic tool (Collins & Bilge, 2016) “for explaining how social divisions of race, gender, age, and citizen status, among others, positions people differential in the world, especially in relation to global social inequality” (p. 13).
I began by locating key texts on intersectionality, including Crenshaw’s (1989, 1991) germinal articles and Hill Collins and Bilge’s (2016) comprehensive book. Afterward, I used the search terms “intersectionality” and “bilingual education” and “intersectionality” along with “dual language” in EBSCO Host and ERIC to explore publications from 1990 to 2021. There were comparably few studies that explicitly drew on intersectionality as a framework or analytic tool; out of over 100 articles, 45 articles addressed intersectionality in some way, 35 of which expressed a direct connection to the theory or analysis.

Results: The major findings delineate those oppressions that are named (employed), unnamed (yet to be employed), and/or coded (obscured) in the DLBE research.

Named. Only 35 studies explicitly addressed intersectionality in DLBE programs in some way. Roughly half (n = 17) of all articles examine two or three overlapping systems at a time. While this can provide deep, rich analysis, it also necessarily ignores the many other intersecting systems that are inextricably connected to Emergent Bilinguals positionings, experiences, and identities.

Unnamed. Perhaps just as important as considering which systems and intersections have been explored are the systems and intersections yet to be explored—or explored in depth. There are ripe opportunities to study sexual orientation, gender expression, colonialism, age, and religion/spirituality in DLBE to shed light on how privilege and oppression at these nexuses affect the positioning and experiences of DLBE students.

Coded. Coded oppressions refer to those that are named as one system yet hide another. The explicit study of racialization and how it intersects with other oppressive/privileging systems is relatively recent in DLBE. Second, while racialization appears to be a major lens in intersectional analyses, this is deviation from the greater norm in DLBE research that uses “culture” and “language” as a gloss for race (Chávez-Moreno, 2020; Flores, 2016).
Significance: The multiple lenses afforded by intersectionality illuminate with fine gradation intragroup differences between Emergent Bilinguals typically treated as a (mostly) homogenous group. Ultimately, with fine-grained illumination of the problems, there arises the possibility that the redressing of the problems will also be fine-grained.

Author

• Alexandra Babino, Texas Woman's University