A very ‘prudent integration’: white flight,school segregation and the depoliticization of (anti-)racism

This article explores the contemporary legitimation of institutional racism resulting from the prevailing depoliticized framework of integration, which became prominent in the 1960s and is now hegemonic in political and academic debate in Europe. Integration has helped shift the focus to the supposed cultural inadequacies of ethnically marked populations, who ought to show a willingness to pursue the modern dream; simultaneously, it has invisibilized institutional racism and made an anti-racist repertoire unavailable. This argument is illustrated through a case of white flight and school segregation in a rural area in Portugal, revealing both the enduring racism against the Roma/Gypsies – suppressed and repressed throughout the last five centuries in Europe – and its depoliticization within the normal working of institutions. It draws on qualitative research with representatives from public bodies and mediating agents (e.g. teachers and social workers), as well as on analysis of the official reports by the Portuguese state and European institutions.     

Pakistani parents and their children’s school: parent and school staff perspectives on parental involvement at the foundation stage

The article reports the results of a case study of Pakistani parents’ involvement with their children’s school in a Foundation Stage setting in Southern England. The context includes the difficulties some children and families from ethnic minorities can experience within the English education system and a growing awareness of the importance of parental involvement. Detailed interviews were conducted with parents from twelve families (most in the parents’ mother tongue) and relevant staff. Most parents and school staff were very positive about parental involvement but levels of involvement were mostly low. Many parents did not feel welcomed and got little information and guidance. They did not understand teaching methods in relation to play and mathematics. The school staff attributed low levels of involvement to parents not valuing such involvement and their lack of education. The study shows a significant level of misunderstanding and lack of communication between school and parents.     

Aiming for transitional justice? Diaspora mobilisation for youth and education in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

Education is acknowledged as a component of transitional justice processes, yet details about how to implement education reform in postconflict societies are underexplored and politicized [King, Elisabeth. 2014. From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda. New York: Cambridge University Press]. Local and international actors often neglect the complicated nature of education reform in postconflict societies undergoing transitional justice processes [Jones, Briony. 2015. "Educating Citizens in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Experiences and Contradictions in Post-war Education Reform." In Transitional Justice and Reconciliation: Lessons from the Balkans, edited by Martina Fischer, and Olivera Simic, 193–208. New York: Routledge. Transitional Justice]. The role of the diaspora in transitional justice has been increasingly explored as a participatory transnational actor with influence and knowledge about local dynamics [Roht-Arriaza, Naomi. 2006. The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; Haider, Huma. 2008. “(Re)Imagining Coexistence: Striving for Sustainable Return, Reintegration and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ”International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (1): 91–113; Young, Laura, and Rosalyn Park. 2009.“ Engaging Diasporas in Truth Commissions: Lessons from the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission Diaspora Project.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (3): 341–361; Koinova, Maria, and D?eneta Karabegovi?. 2017.“ Diasporas and Transitional Justice: Transnational Activism from Local to Global Levels of Engagement.” Global Networks 17 (2): 212–233]. This article bridges academic literature about diaspora engagement and transitional justice, and education and transitional justice by incorporating the role of diaspora actors in post-conflict processes. Using empirical data from multi-sited field work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and France, it examines diaspora initiatives which aim to influence local transitional justice processes through translocal community involvement in education and youth policy. It argues that diaspora initiatives can provide alternative and intermediate solutions to the status quo in their homeland, with some potential for contributing to transitional justice and reconciliation processes. Ultimately, diaspora initiatives need support from homeland institutions in order to forward transitional justice agendas in post-conflict societies.     

‘Fast and violent integration’: school desegregation in a Hungarian town

Abstract

Joint European and national initiatives aiming at Roma inclusion in Central-Eastern European (CEE) education systems have repeatedly been assessed by policymakers, lobby groups and researchers as failing their original targets. My article centres on the in-depth analysis of the evolution of the education policy discourse and practice in a Hungarian municipality; and by doing so, it aims to contribute to this debate in two ways. Firstly, it argues that the literature often restricts itself to a national, and occasionally to a regional scope and hence the ways in which policy transforms as it travels back and forth between transnational, national and local scales become obscured. Secondly, it argues that policy evaluations often adopt a narrow perspective, bound to particular scalar positions. Instead, a more sensitive approach to the process of policy re-contextualization can offer a better understanding of complex and diverse policy effects. The analysis shows that national and supranational pressures significantly transformed the patterns of access to schooling in the studied municipality, however, particular sections of the target-group has been affected differently.     

Multilingualism and identity: articulating ‘African-ness’ in an American high school

This paper draws on qualitative research that examines the language practices and learning experiences of ten adolescent multilingual immigrant and refugee English Learners (ELs) from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Specific questions addressed include: How do these students capitalize on home languages as they engage in linguistic practices in English? How do these students take up their identities within the context of a US high school? The project emphasizes a shift away from learning discrete language skills in one language toward a focus on supporting complex language and content learning fluidly across languages and content areas in ways that affirm students’ identities and new learning. Implications for theory and practice will be discussed.     

Parental Expectations and Educational Outcomes for Young African American Adults: Do Household Assets Matter?

African American children are more likely to be poor and live in households that are “asset poor,” with no or very little net worth. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement, this article explores whether living in a household with net worth above the sample median seems to promote educational success and the development of human capital over time, irrespective of income. Controlling for parental income and education, as well as gender, household wealth in the form of net worth was the best predictor of parental expectations, high school completion, and college enrollment for young African American adults. A brief discussion of possible asset-building policy options follows.     

Contact and conflict between adult children and their parents in immigrant families: is integration problematic for family relationships?

Previous studies have shown that family ties are relatively strong in most non-western immigrant groups in Europe. This paper focuses on differences within the immigrant population and examines how cultural and social aspects of integration affect the relationships that adult children have with their parents. The study is based on survey data with a systematic oversample of persons aged 15–45 with Moroccan and Turkish origins in the Netherlands. The focus is on the amount of contact and conflict that children have with their parents. Findings show that persons of Moroccan and Turkish origins have more frequent contact, but also somewhat more conflict with their parents compared to people without any migration background. Ordinal logit models show that ties to parents are weaker when immigrant children are more liberal in their values and behaviours and when they have more frequent contact with natives. Educational attainment tends to increase conflict between parents and adult children. It is concluded that cultural and social integration may hurt family relationships, pointing to another but less often recognised obstacle for immigrant integration in the west.     

Ideal liberal subjects and Muslim “Others”: liberal nationalism and the racialization of Muslim youth in a progressive Danish school

Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim youth in a Danish lower secondary school, this article explores teacher talk about Muslim immigrant students and how teachers engaged liberal ideals of respect, individualism, and equality in ways that racialized immigrant students. I consider moments of vacillation in teacher talk to explore tensions between teacher’s desires to assimilate immigrant students to national norms of belonging and their desires to be perceived as inclusive and ‘open.’ In doing so, I ask how visions of liberal schooling impose ideas of what a ‘normal’ citizen should be and how teachers produce ‘ideal’ liberal subjects in their talk and in the everyday practices of schools. I argue that teachers engage the ideals of abstract liberalism to establish a colorblind discourse of non-racism. While educators described the school as an idealized space where students are encouraged to freely express themselves, to develop unique individual outlooks, it was clear that this vision of ‘openness’ did not include Muslim students’ attachments to religious and cultural identities.     

Un-American: Latina high school students’ testimonios of American and white conflation in the middle of nowhere

Abstract

Using a combination of counter-storytelling, testimonios, and Chicana feminist epistemology, I report on the findings of an ethnographic study that explores and analyzes the educational experiences of geographically isolated Latina high school students in a rural city in Wyoming. I demonstrate the labeling of these students by peers and teachers as ‘Un-American’ and the ways in which such a label is embedded in intersecting hegemonic discourses of whiteness, rurality and nationhood. It is through such labeling that white privilege is established and maintained and the immediate and future educational biographies of Latina/o students highly circumscribed.     

Public Support for Sickle-Cell Disease Funding: Does Race Matter?

Despite the fact that sickle-cell disease (SCD) is perhaps the most “racialized” medical condition in the USA, very little is known about how “race” impacts public support for health policies related to the condition. We embedded an experiment within the 2011 Cooperative Congressional Election Study in order to assess perceptions about SCD among 1250 participants from diverse backgrounds and evaluate the extent to which these perceptions were associated with support for government spending on SCD-related benefits. We manipulated the racial phenotype of SCD advocates who requested additional government funding and asked participants to indicate how much the government should provide. Overall, participants expressed moderately positive attitudes about SCD, and there were no differences in funding support based on the race of the advocate. However, white participants supported less funding compared to nonwhite participants, even after adjusting for a number of demographic and attitudinal covariates. These findings suggest that a complex relationship between racial identification and implicit racism may shape public perceptions about SCD that negatively influences perceivers’ support for SCD-related policy.     

The construction of ‘illiterate’ and ‘literate’ youth: the effects of high-stakes standardized literacy testing

High-stakes standardized literacy testing is not neutral and continues to build upon the legacy of dominant power relations in the state in its ability to sort, select and rank students and ultimately produce and name some youth as illiterate in contrast to an ideal white, male, literate citizen. I trace the effects of high-stakes standardized testing by using the voices of 16 youth who failed the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) to illustrate how the ‘illiterate youth’ revealed to students, schools, and communities by this test is culturally and socially constructed. In an age where multiple literacies are more and more valued, standardized literacy testing acts as a form of social control projected upon the ‘adolescent’ body that has historically been deemed ‘other’ or ‘deficient.’ Just as colonized subjects needed to be ‘civilized,’ so youth now need to acquire a state defined literacy in a competitive and fast paced learning environment. This article helps to demonstrate how power operates on marginalized youth through standardized literacy testing that is being used transnationally.     

Family–school relationships in immigrant children’s well-being: the intersection of demographics and school culture in the experiences of black African immigrants in the United States

This article explores the types of family–school relationships that promote academic, socio-economic, and social and emotional well-being of black African immigrant children in the United States. The data are ethnographic, drawing on one year of participant observation and interviews at two elementary schools. The findings are also set within the context of an analysis of data from the New Immigrant Survey. The article identifies mechanisms by which relationships between black African immigrants and schools are created and argues that intersections between demographics and school culture are central, particularly as related to the possibilities for relational power, which can allow parents and school staff to transcend persistent inequalities of race and discrimination.     

Gluttons for Punishment? African American Celebrities and the Dilemma of Black Leadership

Race and Social Problems - We demonstrate a dilemma for African American celebrities from the policing behavior of the mass publics of both Blacks and Whites. Examination of norms suggests that the...     

A liberalism gone wrong? Muscular liberalism and the quest for monocultural difference

On 5 February 2011, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, addressed the Munich Security Conference on the theme of ‘radicalisation and Islamic extremism’. In his view this was the ‘root cause of the problem’ of ‘home-grown terrorism’ that allegedly thrived in an environment of passive tolerance, a liberalism gone wrong. The solution asserted Cameron was for British society (and by extension Western societies in general) to promote actively those values that allegedly defined it. What was needed was ‘a much more active, muscular liberalism’. This was a curious suggestion given that such an idea harks back to a much earlier time when Britannia still ruled the waves. It might well be dismissed as a throwaway line, if it was not for the fact that it was presented as a solution to a specific problem allegedly rooted in the specific context of managing diasporas and their attendant identities. But what is this idea of ‘muscular liberalism’? What does the resurrection of this mostly forgotten use of the idea of ‘muscularity’ signify in the current era? What might the Prime Minister's appeal to this sort of language mean in terms of illuminating the temper of our times? This paper aims to explore those questions. It is argued that the invocation of ‘muscular liberalism’ is more than a revealing discursive shift exposing the insecurities generated by the presence and political influence of diasporic cultures, as others have rightly noted. Beyond these insecurities lie even deeper fears, specifically that liberalism may be succeeding in empowering those who have previously been considered unimportant or unworthy of inclusion within the idea of British identity. Muscular liberalism, it is argued, is all about ensuring that the very values taken to be archetypically liberal are simultaneously applauded and neutralised.     

‘New concepts for unknown lands’: Deleuze and Guattari's non-nationalitarianisms

This article responds to the arguments of Hardt and Negri through the work of Deleuze and Guattari, seeking to show that the latter offer a range of concepts that reveal the diminishing role of the nation-state and national identity in the contemporary world.     

Feeling like an “Alien” or “Family”? Comparing students and faculty experiences of diversity in STEM disciplines at a PWI and an HBCU

This qualitative exploration of diversity experiences among undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in STEM disciplines at a predominantly White institution (PWI) and a historically Black college or university (HBCU) in a Mid-Atlantic state finds that the level of diversity and inclusiveness may matter to how Students of Color experience inclusion in their academic programs. Participants at the PWI described feeling excluded, voicing concerns about institutional struggles with creating an inclusive campus climate; whereas, participants at the HBCU perceived STEM disciplines to be diverse and viewed their programs and the institution as supportive of their needs.     

‘They don’t look like children’: child asylum-seekers,the Dubs amendment and the politics of childhood

In October 2016, following a campaign led by Labour Peer Lord Alfred Dubs, the first child asylum-seekers allowed entry to the UK under new legislation (the ‘Dubs amendment’) arrived in England. Their arrival was captured by a heavy media presence, and very quickly doubts were raised by right-wing tabloids and politicians about their age. In this article, I explore the arguments underpinning the Dubs campaign and the media coverage of the children’s arrival as a starting point for interrogating representational practices around children who seek asylum. I illustrate how the campaign was premised on a universal politics of childhood that inadvertently laid down the terms on which these children would be given protection, namely their innocence. The universality of childhood fuels public sympathy for child asylum-seekers, underlies the ‘child first, migrant second’ approach advocated by humanitarian organisations, and it was a key argument in the ‘Dubs amendment’. Yet the campaign highlights how representations of child asylum-seekers rely on codes that operate to identify ‘unchildlike’ children. As I show, in the context of the criminalisation of undocumented migrants‘, childhood is no longer a stable category which guarantees protection, but is subject to scrutiny and suspicion and can, ultimately, be disproved.