Affective Categories: Labeling Latina/o Students English Language Learners

• In Event: 082 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session I
  In Refereed Roundtable: A. Table 09. Latino Education

Abstract

This paper argues that the English Language Learners program (ELL) has an affective economy tied to the process of labeling Latina/o students as such and/or placing them outside of mainstream classrooms. I argue that Latina mothers who resist the institutional labeling of their children as ELL students justify their actions through providing a testimony of the injuries in-flicted by the ELL program in the educational system. Using Ahmed (2004) concept of testimo-ny and Perry’s (2011) understanding of categories as producing and productive of inequality, I argue that the mothers’ interviewed are testifying to the injuries they foresee or have experienced through the categorization and/or the potential of their children being categorized as an ELL stu-dent. Furthermore, I argue that these mothers identify ELL as a category that produces inequality for students.

Author

• Katherine Barahona-López, University of California-Santa Cruz