Session Information
07 SES 03 A, Irish Research on Intercultural Education and Social Justice
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper builds on a paper presented by the same author at ECER 2015, exploring further the relationship between (gendered and classed) ethnic identities and school experiences. Here the importance of an intersectional, translocational approach in considering the experiences of young people from minority ethnic backgrounds in schools is highlighted, with reference to research conducted with young people from Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipino backgrounds in secondary schools in Ireland.
With its unique history as both a post-colonial nation with a long history of emigration, and a ‘developed’ member state of the European Union, Ireland’s immigration and integration patterns and racisms take particular forms (Garner, 2004, Fanning, 2010). Since the formation of the state, narrow constructions of Irishness as the preserve of white, settled Roman Catholics have dominated, and the education system has been an important site for the development and circulation of these exclusive and nationalistic discourses (Inglis, 1998, Bryan, 2008, Kitching, 2015). Policy on immigration and system-wide provision have been slow to develop. While teachers and school leaders struggle to develop supports at school level, immigrants and minority ethnic students experience racism and exclusion in different and complex ways (Nowlan, 2008, Devine, 2009, 2011, Kitching, 2012, McGovern and Devine, 2015, Nowlan, 2015).
The school experiences and subjectivities of students with East and Southeast Asian backgrounds remain largely unexplored in the Irish context, despite increasing immigration from countries in the region, especially in the last 50 years. This study addresses a gap in research in this area, by exploring the specific experiences and positioning of a sample of students with Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipino backgrounds attending secondary schools in the greater Dublin area.
While it is important to explore these young people’s experiences, we face theoretical and ethical challenges in doing so. Such research runs the risk of reifying notions of race and ethnicity - bringing them into being, simply by naming them. Focussing on particular minority ethnic backgrounds risks essentialising further, in the course of the research, racialised categories (such as ‘Asian’) which may work to disadvantage young people. However, if these issues can be overcome, such a focus is worthwhile, since it facilitates an in-depth investigation of the relationship between ethnicities, identities and the school experiences of young people.
With these challenges in mind, this research explores the experiences of these young people with an intersectional perspective. Drawing on post-structuralist and feminist theories, subjectivities and identities are understood as performatively produced by power - the effects, rather than the origin of discourses and practices (Foucault, 1979, 1982, Butler, 1990, 1993). Integrating these concepts of power and performativity with Floya Anthias’ concept of positionality (Anthias, 2002a, 2008), different regulatory regimes - race, ethnicity, gender, social class, age, etc. - are understood as intersecting grids, with differing elements coming in and out of focus for different individuals at different times and in different places.
An important element of positionality is its translocational character, and this makes it especially useful as a tool in exploring the lives of the young people in this research, who are affected by migration and other transitions. A key element of a translocational approach is the potential for recognising changing and sometimes contradictory positionality. This was found to be particularly relevant for young people in the sample, who are positioned both positively and negatively in different hierarchies and discourses in different home and school locations. The agency of individual young people, school cultures and different discourses of ‘good students’, ‘Asians’ and ‘Irish students’ are all salient in this positioning, as are students’ gender and social class positionings.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
ANTHIAS, F. 2002a. Beyond feminism and multiculturalism: locating difference and the politics of location. Women's Studies International Forum, 25, 275-286. ANTHIAS, F. 2002b. Where do I belong? Narrating collective identity and translocational positionality. Ethnicities, 2, 491-514. ANTHIAS, F. 2008. Thinking through the lens of translocational positionality: an intersectionality frame for understanding identity and belonging. Translocations: Migration and Social Change, 4, 5-20. ARCHER, L. & FRANCIS, B. Understanding minority ethnic achievement, Routledge 2006 ARNOT, M. & REAY, D. 2007. A Sociology of Pedagogic Voice: Power, inequality and pupil consultation. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 28, 311-325. BRYAN, A. 2008. The co-articulation of national identity and interculturalism in the Irish curriculum: educating for democratic citizenship? London Review of Education, 6, 47-58. BUTLER, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, New York & London, Routledge. BUTLER, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter, New York & London, Routledge. DEVINE, D. 2009. Mobilising capitals? Migrant children’s negotiation of their everyday lives in school. British Journal of the Sociology of Education, 30, 521-535. DEVINE, D. 2011. Immigration and Schooling in the Republic of Ireland, Manchester, Manchester University Press. FAIRCLOUGH, N. 2005. Critical Discourse Analysis. Marges Linguistiques, 9, 76-94. FOUCAULT, M. 1979. The History of Sexuality - Volume 1, An Introduction, London, Allen Lane. FOUCAULT, M. 1982. The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8, 777-795. HAMMERSLEY, M. & ATKINSON, P. 1995. Ethnography; Principles in Practice, London, Routledge. INGLIS, T. 1998. Moral Monopoly, Dublin, UCD Press. KITCHING, K. 2012. Understanding Class anxiety and 'race' certainty in Changing Times: moments of home, school, body and identity configuration in 'New Migrant' Dublin. In: BHOPAL, K. & PRESTON, J. (eds.) Intersectionality and 'Race' in Education. New York: Routledge. KITCHING, K. 2015. How the Irish became CRT’d?‘Greening’Critical Race Theory, and the pitfalls of a normative Atlantic state view. Race Ethnicity and Education, 18, 163-182. MCGOVERN, F. & DEVINE, D. 2015. The care worlds of migrant children – exploring intergenerational dynamics of love, care and solidarity across home and school. Childhood. NOWLAN, E. 2008. Underneath the band-aid: supporting bilingual students in Irish schools. Irish Educational Studies, 27. NOWLAN, E. 2015. 'They call you Chinese when you’re not.’ Power, performativity, positionality and the experiences of young people from Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipino backgrounds in secondary schools in Ireland. PhD, University College Dublin.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.