Critical Refugee Studies & Decolonial Global Citizenship Education (Poster 3)

• In Event: Theory-Stories and Social Studies Education

Abstract

Critical Refugee Studies

In mainstream discourse, refugees are largely presented as problems or burdens for nation-states and humanitarian organizations without considering structural forces such as war, colonization, and imperialism that caused the displacement in the first place. Challenging such dominant understanding, critical refugee studies (CRS) reconceptualizes the refugee as a knowledge producer and centers diverse and divergent refugee voices in the critical juxtaposition of war, displacement, race, and imperialism. Given that war and displacement are everywhere in social studies education, there are many entry points for CRS to inform social studies. Also, refugee history and policy in the United States cannot be understood separately from settler colonialism. CRS further pose powerful civic questions: What positionality should refugees take as persons displaced from their own countries and resettling in the United States, a settler colonial nation that continues to displace and dispossess Indigenous Peoples? How can dialogue, however uneven, be generated on the possibility and necessity of anticolonial collaborations between refugees and Indigenous Peoples? This chapter discusses CRS and its encounter with social studies.

Decolonial Global Citizenship Education

As the global community reels from the Covid pandemic, increasing race-based violence, widening income inequality, socio-emotional challenges, and environmental degradation, schools must find ways to foster consciousness of societies’ interdependence and capacities to address these interrelated challenges. Global citizenship education (GCE) aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills to face global problems in the 21st century. Yet, despite growing awareness of how such challenges are rooted in colonialism, early capitalism, and globalization, GCE curricula are often shaped by Western liberal and neoliberal discourses that emphasize citizens’ competitiveness in the global economy. Moreover, the dominance of English as the language of power, Western constructions of knowledge skewed towards categorical thinking and hierarchical worldviews, economic systems that favor transnational corporations, race-based societal structures, and ongoing marginalization of Indigenous people and cultural minorities underline how GCE operates within narrow colonial-modern imaginaries. This presentation invites teachers and teacher educators to consider their educational experiences and how their teaching can address taken-for-granted colonial knowledges, perspectives, and structures. Employing decolonial GCE theories, we present a framework for educators to reflect on their roles within the social studies curriculum. We then share our stories as we attempt to view our experiences through decolonial lenses.

Authors

• Sohyun An, Kennesaw State University

• Theresa Alviar Martin, Kennesaw State University

• Mark C. Baildon, Indiana University