Bordering Difference and Reimagining Inclusive Futures: Global Struggles Toward Intersectional Justice

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium examines how disability is constructed, bordered, and resisted at the intersections of race, language, migration, emotion, and other markers of difference. Drawing on critical, transnational perspectives, the session interrogates how institutional, ideological, and spatial borders regulate belonging and enact educational violence under the guise of inclusion. Across diverse global contexts, including the U.S., Ireland, South Korea, and multilingual educational settings, presenters illuminate how historical, cultural, and political forces produce racialized, ableist, and monolingual borders while erasing human differences. Centering the emotional labor and embodied negotiations of youth, families, and educators, the session reimagines inclusive education as a borderland, a generative space for intersectional justice, relational care, and collective struggle that disrupts exclusionary practices and envisions transformative educational futures.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Disability Studies in Education

Chair

• Dosun Ko, Santa Clara University

Papers

• “The Weight We Carry”: A Teenager Addresses a Violent and Unsupportive Ninth-Grade School Year - Helena Donato-Sapp, Vistamar School; Erwin Dionisio Donato, Independent Scholar; Jeff Sapp, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• Biopolitics, Debilitation, and Neoliberal Post-Colonialism: Humanism versus Educational Rights for Ukrainian Refugee Children in Ireland - Nickie Coomer, Colorado College

• Crafting Disabilities: A Critical Examination of Disability Identification for Multicultural Learners in South Korea - Dosun Ko, Santa Clara University; Yehyang Lee, Syracuse University; Jane Y. Jeong, University of Texas at Austin; Byul Yim, Independent Scholar

• Moving Beyond Borders: Toward Liberatory Possibility in Advanced Education - Alejandra Amaris Fernández Morgado, Florida International University

• On the Borderlands across Languaculture and Identities: A Critical Autoethnography of a Transnational Filipina’s Journey - Monaliza M Chian, University of Northern Iowa

Session Organizer

• Dosun Ko, Santa Clara University

Discussant

• David I. Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa