Rethinking the Production of Racialized Subjects in Canada: Immigration, Multiculturalism, and Heritage Language Education

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Global Perspectives on Education Policy, Immigration, and Neoliberalism (Table 37)

Abstract

Building on an externally-funded historical inquiry into the Heritage Languages Program in Ontario, Canada, this paper offers a theoretical analysis of intersectional conflicts between language education policies and racism in immigration and multicultural policies. Drawing primarily on a materialist, anti-racist approach (Flores & Chaparro, 2018) to language policy, this paper examines the production of racialized subjects in the historical discourses on Canadian immigration and multiculturalism. In each of these domains, language has been used as a proxy to produce and organize “the ideal” migrant subject (Haque, 2012). Based on the project’s archival data, we focus on how racialized populations themselves have challenged and negotiated the formation of a consensus about migration and multiculturalism within the context of heritage language education.

Authors

• Mayo Kawaguchi, University of Toronto

• Sudhashree Girmohanta, University of Toronto - OISE

• Mingyi Li, University of Toronto

• Xiaoyue Chen, University of Toronto - OISE

• Jeff Bale, University of Toronto - OISE