Negotiating domination and resistance: English language learners and Foucault’s Care of the Self in the context of English-only education

This article explores the basis for resistance to the normalizing technologies associated with English-only legislation and resulting educational practices. The dominance of English-only education in US public schools has normalized English first language speakers and English language learning by appropriating the technology of language in order to become ‘Americanized.’ Because of the growing number of English language learners (ELL) in US public schools, it is important to understand how the normalizing educational practices and disciplinary power associated with English-only education also cultivate possibilities for resistance. I draw upon Foucault’s analytic care of the self to explore the space of English-only education by asking: ‘What alternatives to the normalization of ELL students might be mobilized for resistance?’ This analysis suggests that to shift from a normalized ‘American’ identity requires questioning the racist and nativist discourse on English-only education, and focusing attention on contradictory and multilayered notions of ‘American’. The article concludes with recommendations for teacher education on how to cultivate prospective teachers’ resistance to English-only education.     

England? Whose England? (Re)constructing English identities in Julian Barnes and W. G. Sebald

This article is an interdisciplinary look at notions of identity construction. Focusing on ‘Englishness’, it examines theories of identity formation, memory creation and nation-building alongside travel writing and notions of the picturesque. The focus of the debate throughout is on two novels of the 1990s: Julian Barnes’ dystopian England, England of 1998 and W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn of 1995 (English translation, 1998). Both novels play with traditional ideas of national identities and stereotypes by presenting their readers with the literal ‘construction’ of alternative versions of England and the English.     

‘Language Background Other Than English’: a problem NAPLaN test category for Australian students of refugee background

Since 2008 Australia has held the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (known as NAPLAN) for all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Despite the multilingual character of the Australian population, these standardized literacy and numeracy tests are built on an assumption of English as a first language competency. The capacity for monitoring the performance of students who speak languages other than English is achieved through the disaggregation of test data using a category labelled Language Background Other than English (LBOTE). A student is classified as LBOTE if they or their parents speak a language other than English at home. The category definition is so broad that the disaggregated national data suggest that LBOTE students are outperforming English speaking students, on most test domains, though the LBOTE category shows greater variance of results. Drawing on Foucault’s theory of governmentality, this article explores the possible implications of LBOTE categorisation for English as a Second Language (ESL) students of refugee background. The article uses a quantitative research project, carried out in Queensland, Australia, to demonstrate the potential inequities resultant from such a poorly constructed data category.     

猜猜看and准封面

我们为什么如此热爱旅行,也许只是为了体验不同,找回第一次睁眼看世界的惊奇。所有的奇迹死于习以为常,而在陌生人的眼里获得重生。借此小小栏目,让我们跟随摄影师的镜头四处游走,去发现,去捕捉那些隐身于日常的小小奇迹。这是摄影师在泰国拍到的一幕,您能猜出这是什么吗?     

猜猜看and准封面

我们为什么如此热爱旅行,也许只是为了体验不同,找回第一次睁眼看世界的惊奇。所有的奇迹死于习以为常,而在陌生人的眼里获得重生。借此小小栏目,让我们跟随摄影师的镜头四处游走,去发现,去捕捉那些隐身于日常的小小奇迹。这是摄影师在新疆拍到的一幕,您能猜出这是什么吗?     

Are Blacks and Hispanics Disproportionately Incarcerated Relative to Their Arrests? Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality Between Arrest and Incarceration

Do large racial and ethnic disparities in prison populations reflect systematic racial and policy discrimination in the criminal justice system, or do they reflect disproportionate involvement of blacks and Hispanics in “serious” or street crime? Our investigation of this question keys off the approach initiated by Alfred Blumstein is his pioneering studies on the topic. While yielding important findings, there are, however, substantial gaps in the empirical literature on the racial disproportionality issue. We attempt to fill those gaps by (1) using both data on prison admission as well as in-stock prison populations, (2) presenting more recent racially and ethnically disaggregated arrest and incarceration data from Pennsylvania for 2003–2007, and (3) including Hispanic offenders in our racial and ethnic disproportionality comparisons. Our results indicate, first, that the representation of blacks, whites, and Hispanics among offenders admitted to state prison and in the prison population corresponds closely to their representation in arrest statistics. Second, using arrests as a marker of violent offending, the overrepresentation of blacks among offenders admitted to state prisons occurs because they commit a disproportionate number of frequently imprisoned (i.e., violent) crimes. Third, for those offenses where there is a within-race difference between arrest and incarceration representation, Hispanics experience the greatest disadvantage. Fourth, failing to account for Hispanics in white and black estimates tends to inflate white proportions and deflate black proportions of arrests, admissions, and prison population estimates, masking the “true” black and white racial disproportionality. We conclude that while there is a need for continued concern with possible racial discrimination in justice system processing, this concern should not distract attention from what arguably is the more important matter—ameliorating the social environmental conditions that foster disproportionate minority (especially black) involvement in violent crime.     

Selfishness of the affluent? stateless nationalist and regionalist parties and immigration

ABSTRACT

This paper examines stateless nationalist and regionalist party (SNRP) discourses on immigration through an exploration of the economic dimensions of the centre-periphery cleavage. Using qualitative document analysis, the Republican Left in Catalonia (ERC) and the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland are studied in order to see whether and how the relative economic position of a region shapes SNRP discourses on immigration. The period of analysis encompasses the last three terms of office for both parties, during which immigration and decentralisation have been very salient issues in Catalonia and Scotland. Results suggest that the relative economic situations and the economic crisis do not seem to affect general stances, which are positive in both regions. However, the economic contexts have an influence on how each party selects its main issues for debate, and the ways in which these are managed.     

Diasporas and Fragile states – beyond remittances assessing the theoretical and policy linkages

ABSTRACT

There is a need for further refinement of the complex relationship between diaspora communities, their transnational social networks and fragile states. Research clearly shows that many diaspora mobilise to support their causes, but this often creates unevenness in outcomes and inequalities in access to resource especially in fragile states settings. We argue that remittances address only part of the state fragility problematique and that there are other, equally important roles for diaspora beyond remittance flows. We develop this argument by first explaining why a broader definition of state fragility improves our understanding of the importance of different kinds of diaspora linkages between home and host state. We then identify additional factors that can contribute to a reduction of state fragility and evaluate these against six cases.     

Dear Distinguished Professors and Colleagues

ＤｅａｒＤｉｓｔｉｎｇｕｉｓｈｅｄＰｒｏｆｅｓｓｏｒｓａｎｄＣｏｌｌｅａｇｕｅｓＨａｖｅｙｏｕｅｖｅｒｋｎｏｗｎａｎｄｕｎｄｅｒｓｔｏｏｄｏｕｒａｃａｄｅｍｉｃｒｅｓｅａｒｃｈ？Ｄｏｙｏｕｃａｒｅｔｏｒｅａｄｍａｇｚａｉｎｅｓｌｉｋｅｏｕｒｓ？Ａｒｅ...     

Migration Management and Humanitarian Protection: The UNHCR's ‘Resettlement Expansionism’ and Its Impact on Policy-making in the EU and Australia

Since the late 1990s, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been a key actor in the resurgence of refugee resettlement in global debates on asylum and refugee policies. This article investigates the dynamics of the international organisation's ‘resettlement expansionism’ within the UNHCR as well as its impact on policy-making. Firstly, it analyses how the UNHCR has increased its expertise production and dissemination as well as its operational focus on resettlement. Secondly, it assesses the policy-making impact of the UNCR's ‘resettlement expansionism’ in two distinct contexts: the elaboration of the EU's new joint resettlement scheme and the recent increase of resettlement places by 40% in Australia, a traditional country of resettlement. Lastly, it discusses potential implications of this research in regards to the evolution of the global refugee regime and, more conceptually, to the study of knowledge production and expertise in migration and refugee policy.     

‘The orange was dried up and shriveled’: oranges and the crisis of nationalism in Ghassan Kanafani and Smilansky Yizhar

The year is 1948. Palestinians, the majority of whom lived in or near the coastal areas extending from Acre to the northern part of Gaza, were dispossessed of their land. The loss of coastal areas, characterised by the abundance of orange-groves and the citrus industry, is represented in Palestinian and Israeli post-nakba literature. Whilst Kanafani and Yizhar use the orange symbol to link between land, memory, belonging and the necessity of Palestinian/Jewish return, I offer a quintessential comparison between both writers who also employ this symbol to problematise the presence of Arab nationalism and to build an image of Zionism-in-crisis.     

Homicide and ‘Englishness’: Criminal Justice and National Identity in Victorian England

One venue for the formation of national identity that has received comparatively little attention in recent years, is that of the courtroom. In particular, the treatment of serious crimes in Victorian England involved a good deal of reference to notions of Englishness. In the course of their routine work, Victorian criminal courts promulgated particular and generally coherent views as to how ‘an Englishman’, as opposed to a foreigner, was expected to behave. This article examines how the judicial treatment of three types of nineteenth‐century violence – the duel, knife‐fighting and the killing of an adulterous spouse or his or her lover – contributed to reshaping the contours of male English national identity.     

Race–Ethnicity and Culture in the Family and Youth Outcomes: Test of a Path Model with Korean American Youth and Parents

This study examined the interplay of parental racial–ethnic socialization and youth multidimensional cultural orientations to investigate how they indirectly and directly influence youth depressive symptoms and antisocial behaviors. Using data from the Korean American Families Project (220 youths, 272 mothers, and 164 fathers, N = 656), this study tested the relationships concurrently, longitudinally, and accounting for earlier youth outcomes. The main findings include that racial–ethnic socialization is significantly associated with mainstream and ethnic cultural orientation among youth, which in turn influences depressive symptoms (but not antisocial behaviors). More specifically, parental racial–ethnic identity and pride discourage youth mainstream orientation, whereas cultural socialization in the family, as perceived by youth, increases ethnic orientation. These findings suggest a varying impact of racial–ethnic socialization on the multidimensional cultural orientations of youth. Korean language proficiency of youth was most notably predictive of a decrease in the number of depressive symptoms concurrently, longitudinally, and after controlling for previous levels of depressive symptoms. English language proficiency was also associated with a decrease in depressive symptoms, implying a benefit of bilingualism.     

First Nations,Métis and Inuit presence in the Newfoundland and Labrador curriculum

This article responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada’s 2015 call for the education of Canadians about ‘residential schools, treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada.’ It is an analysis of the Canadian and world studies curricula and texts in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1 of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada. The analysis is based on academic research and consultations with First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples (FNMI) educators, educational administrators and knowledge holders. Although there is evidence of reform, as a whole the curriculum suffers from silences and lack of context, problematic placement and associations, the intrusion of settler perspectives, contradiction over judgement about issues related to FNMI peoples and inconsistency that undermine efforts at reform. This article provides guidance to curriculum designers, textbook writers, teachers and administrators participating in the decolonization of education in Canada.     

The imagined ‘other’ and its shifts: politics and identifications in Turkish Cyprus

This article addresses the puzzling case of shifting identity constructions in northern Cyprus, from ethnic to civic–territorial in 2003 and back to ethnic in 2009. It is argued that these shifts occurred when external factors (EU and Turkey) opened/closed windows of opportunity for internal elites’ reconfigurations. It then explains societal responsiveness to these nation-building changes sustaining that, over time, a process transforming the perception of the ‘other’ took place from below and a civic–territorial identity layer (Cypriotness) developed along the ethnic-Turkish layer. These coexist and fluctuate depending on the given context of choice.     

Popular Culture and Politics: Whispers and the ‘Dramaturgy of Power’ in Kenya

Popular culture has become one of the most visible sites of critical social and political interpretation in post-colonial Africa. It is a site where an alternative public space is created and where various discourses; social, economic and political are invariably debated and negotiated. In many ways its various forms reflect, other times allegorize, fundamental transformation in society. In Kenya, a weekly newspaper column, Whispers, written by one of the country's most prolific fiction writers Wahome Mutahi, became arguably the most visible site of social, cultural and political expression for the last two decades, at a time when freedom to such expression was highly constrained by the state. The column echoed life in Kenya in all its banality but also in its distinctiveness. It interrogated a range of issues but most profoundly, the ‘performance of power’ in the country. Drawing from a pool of cultural resources and various forms of social and political culture, Whispers made legible the ambiguous interactions of ‘political performance’ in Kenya, how the subject population and the polity are all actors in a contradictory carnival of ‘mutual zombification’ which is at once empowering and disempowering. This paper engages with how fiction lays bare the intricacies of ‘political performance’ in the African postcolony using Kenya as a case study.     

Dear distinguished friends and research fellows

NORTHWEST ETHNO-NATIONAL STUDIES is a quarterly jour nal exclusively for the studies on the anthropology of all the minorities cultures of Northwest China. Under the direct leadership of China State Ethnic Affairs Commission,the journal is sponsored by Northwest University for Nationalities and chiefly edited by Prof. Hao Sumin. It includes the reports and the researches on the history and present situation of all the Northwest minorities in the fields of Old Silk Road Study,…     

Dear distinguished friends and research fellows

NORTHWEST ETHNO-NATIONAL STUDIES is a quarterly jour- nal exclusively for the studies on the anthropology of all the minori- ties cultures of Northwest China. Under the direct leadership of China State Ethnic Affairs Commission, the journal is sponsored by North-