Biopolitical pedagogy: Living spaces as learning spaces

• In Event: Evidence-based decision making in education
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Global migration: biopolitics, interruptions, and trends in theory and method

Proposal

This presentation interrogates the ways in which housing/spacial placement acts as education practice for adult refugees and asylum-seekers. It suggests that where and how newcomers are housed ((un)intentionally) teaches them various aspects of life, social context, culture, politics, networks, agency and interactions about and with their host community/country. It relies on theory about institutionalization and the regulation of bodies and liberty as playing an important role in the history and practice of schooling (Foucault, 1986; Donald, 1992), and extends this concept to other forms of physical being (i.e., living spaces). The presentation will describe housing policies over time in one Swiss community as well as asylum-seekers’ and refugees’ reflections on their current living spaces in that community. It will conclude with notions of bodily regulation and pedagogy that affect both opportunity and well-being.

Author

• Cathryn Magno, University of Fribourg