The role of global imaginaries in shaping the intercultural encounters of immigrant-background children in Primary schools in France and England

• In Event: Navigating institutional culture across borders: Learning experiences in transnational migration

Abstract

Title: Re-visiting Otherness: the role of global imaginaries in shaping the intercultural encounters of immigrant-background children in Primary schools in France and England

This paper explores the role of global representations in the social imaginary of immigrant-background children in two Primary schools, one in France and one in England. It investigates the ways in which global representations participated in children’s intercultural encounters amongst peers in informal school spaces.

Building on findings from a cross-national ethnographic study which investigated the identity narratives of 10 and 11-year old immigrant-background children in Primary schools in France and England, this paper argues that immigrant-background children’s global imaginary participated in constructing alternative representations of Otherness amongst peers. In both the French and English cases, immigrant-background children’s global representations allowed them to transcend traditional national, ethnic and linguistic boundaries in peer-group relations. Inspired by the work of Paul Ricoeur, this paper argued that these children’s global imaginaries built on a dialectic between the self and the other and between ideology and utopia, held together by imagination (Ricoeur, 1986, 1990). In this process, imagination allowed children to re-articulate difference and Otherness by positioning these notions in a global framework. This played a key role in developing new forms of intercultural communication such as multilingual ‘joint-cultural creations’ in relationships with peers.

This role of the global imaginary in children’s intercultural relations holds implications for understanding the role of linguistic and cultural resources in intercultural communication in informal educational settings in Primary schools. It also offers insights into the active role of immigrant-background children in developing their own forms of intercultural communication in traditionally monocultural and monolingual educational systems.

Author

• Oakleigh Welply, University of Durham, UK