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Session Submission Summary

Transnational Migration, Refugees, and Education: Case Studies from Across the Globe

Thu, April 18, 3:15 to 4:45pm, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Pacific Concourse (Level -1), Pacific C

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The purpose of this symposium is to critically examine the dominant educational discourses and practices that often shape the schooling experiences of immigrant and refugee youth in public schools and educational spaces across the globe. While discourses like ‘diversity,’ ‘belonging,’ and ‘inclusion’ are often deployed in various social contexts to frame immigrant and refugee education, this panel considers the limitations of such discourses when they potentially inform policies and practices that produce deficit narratives about immigrant and refugee children. Consequently, these ostensibly affirming discursive framings potentially contribute to further marginalizing young people in their particular contexts.

Situated in a time of heightened xenophobia worldwide, this symposium examines the ways in which school actors (teachers, students, etc.) interpret, negotiate, and/or resist such seemingly benign policies and processes that often function to ‘otherize’ them in their particular school contexts. Drawing on ethnographic studies in multiple geographic locations, the panelists consider how macro-level political, cultural, and economic forces intersect with micro-level institutional and educational policies to influence participants’ lives and their experiences with discourses and practices of diversity, belonging, and inclusion in public schools. The panelists interrogate how immigrant and refugee youth and their teachers take up and engage with these discourses and practices to re-interpret initiatives; re-craft them to direct their own experiences; and ultimately re-direct how curriculum and space is demanded and occupied outside of the assimilationist rhetoric that often underlies such discourse. To this end, the panelists address the following questions to explore how schools might move towards the dreams, possibilities, and hope of pubic education:

· How do school actors in immigrant and refugee learning communities interpret and/or reshape discursively-framed and potentially limiting policies and practices so that they are not managed and controlled by them, but rather remain active agents in shaping their educational (and life) trajectories?

· How might centering participant voices and examining youth and teacher agency contribute to research that influences public policies for immigrant and refugee youth in the pursuit of more just possibilities in public schools?

In answering these questions, the symposium considers the ways in which school actors trouble some of the normative assumptions that often define present educational programs, including those intended for their empowerment and inclusion. By examining issues regarding localized experiences, power, and larger structural inequalities among participants, these papers not only uncover the ways in which such discourses manifest, but also explore how they are re-negotiated, re-made and re-interpreted, to present both the possibilities and challenges facing public educational reform.

The 90-minute session will open with the Chair introducing the purpose of the panel and the panelists. Each panelist will then take 15 minutes to present their research in relation to the overarching questions. The discussant will then present a critique and discussion of the papers, putting them in conversation with each other and considering key contributions (10-15 minutes). She then will open the floor for audience questions and comments so that the panelists, together with audience participants, can discuss the implications of the research on immigrant and refugee education research and practice.

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations

Discussant