Imagined Asian Americanness and Karen youth in U.S. schools

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 4:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Cultural Inclusion and Identity With Asian and Asian American Communities (Table 2)

Abstract

Grounded in the literature of social construction of race, racialization, and Asian American identity, this study explores how Asian/Americanness is constructed through discourses surrounding Karen refugee youth. This paper is coming from a broader ethnographic study conducted during AY23-24 in a public charter school in the Midwest. In particular, this paper presents an initial analysis of how school practices valorize Asian cultural ways of academic rigor. I argue that Karen youth are left behind from the imagined Asian/Americanness, a collective body of high-performing students. This study contributes to the scholarship of Asian American education, and Southeast Asian immigrant and refugee education in particular, by highlighting the ways in which racialization matters for refugee youth’s academic and social development.

Author

• Insil Jeon, University of Minnesota