Crafting Class: The Gentrifying Effect of Language Immersion

• In Event: 4451 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 4: Segregation and Integration

Abstract

School districts are implementing language immersion programs for the benefit of their native English- speaking population and the foreign- born students. Stakeholders see these new policy changes as a way to better educate ELL students and at the same time, aid English-speaking students better themselves for a burgeoning global economy. An increasing number of White families are enrolling their children in schools that historically served communities of color making language programs a potential site of integration. In this study I examine how the administration, teachers, and parents, work together to develop and advance their notion of the ideal student, termed the global citizen. I use ethnographic methods of interviews and participant observation to understand the changes one school and district make for the success of the language immersion program that acts as a strand of a traditional elementary school, located in a working-class Hispanic community. I find that the language immersion program is attracting middle-class White and Asian parents. They are aware of the benefits of a second language and bring a higher-achieving and a higher economic class of student. I argue that although the immersion program creates a more racially diverse student body, the structure of the program allows the school and parents to create a specific type of student, or class of students. As the immersion program grows, school gentrification increases and the parents that fall within the school attendance boundary may potentially face a decision to join this new class of students or become displaced.

Author

• Edward Watson, University of California - Irvine