This is a panel I co-organize with Dr.Yvonne Hébert (U of Calgary) on the 2013 Annual Conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE). My fellow panelists include Angela Contreras-Chavez (University of British Columbia), Lilach Marom (University of British Columbia), and Dr. Yan Guo (University of Calgary). My special acknowledgement also goes to Dr. Handel Wright (University of British Columbia) who kindly and helpfully took up the role of discussant for the panel.

A summary of the panel: focus, concepts and connections

Comparing the Canadian and Chinese contexts, this panel aims to unpack the local knowledge that rationalizes what is ‘right’ and ‘just’ for migrant subjects, and to understand in what ways educational programs and mechanisms have been conducted in responding to such rationalities. With different research methods including policy analysis, ethnographic approach, and critical discourse analysis, the four papers in this panel help spotlight educational spaces where social justice issues are contentious, particularly compounded by the tensions between ‘local knowledge’ – understood as the dominant conceptions of proper settlement in host society, and ‘migrant subjects’ – understood as the prescribed groups of individuals to be governed towards the ends of settlement or only sojourning.

Asking what is ‘right’ and ‘just’ is asking what social justice means. Social justice is the will to render to everyone their due, and Nancy Fraser (2009) argues that “what turns a collection of people into fellow subjects of justice is … their subjection to a structure of governance that sets the ground rules that govern their interaction (p.65)”. However, the structure of governance is not always in consistency, and the ground rules are not always in congruence. This is especially true in migration contexts where the ‘local’ meets the ‘migrants’ in forms of physical and discursive spaces, where a set of prescriptions surfaces on what and how the ‘migrants’ should learn. Local knowledge thus emerge, as the four papers will discuss, in educational forms such as the mechanism of ‘settlement’, the provision of public legal education, the notion of ‘good teacher’, and the English as Second Language (ESL) program. With ‘governmentality’ understood as the will to govern a population based on certain knowledge matrix (Foucault, 2007; Rose, 2003; Rose, O’Malley, & Valverde, 2006), migrants in this case become subjects of a governmentality based on local knowledge. However, such knowledge involves heterogeneous and often conflictual economic, cultural and political interests, which in turn give rises to the un(desirability) of ‘settlement’ from institutional perspective and the (im)possibility of ‘settlement’ from migrants’ perspective.

This governmentality of settlement has in itself contradictory claims and characters of social justice – contradictions that this panel hopes to highlights and contextualizes. On the one hand, issues of educational resource distribution are compounded by legality concerns. In both urban China and urban Canada, there are cases where permanent labors are economically needed, yet only temporary residents statuses are legally permitted. Such contradictory power politics between economy and legality creates, in the Chinese case presented by Yao Xiao, a very marginalized educational space for migrant workers’ children in urban China. It also creates, in the Canadian case presented by Angela Contreras-Chavez, an ambiguous provision of public legal education and information for workers with precarious migration status.

On the other hand, Canada’s educational programs that aim to serve immigrant students better become increasingly entrenched in a set of apparently dominant and assumedly ‘good’ discourses, or what this panel refers to as “local knowledge”. In the case of immigrant teacher recertification programs discussed by Lilach Marom, the notion of ‘good teacher’ – itself remains prototypical ‘west’ and ‘white’ – is embedded in the curriculum as well as the hidden curriculum of recertification programs. Such embeddedness has in turn make difficult the inclusion of immigrant teachers’ ‘indigenous’ knowledge into Canadian classrooms where students’ ethno-cultural backgrounds become increasingly diverse. In the case of English as Second Language (ESL) programs examined by Dr. Yvonne Hébert and Dr. Yan Guo, the typical enrolment of immigrant children in such programs bears much controversy on the students’ emotional wellbeing, learning opportunities and academic attainment – controversy renders ESL questionable as an integrative approach that is socially just for all.

 
References:

Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory and population. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fraser, N. (2009). Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. New York: Columbia University Press (hardback).

Rose, Nikolas, O’Malley, Pat, & Valverde, Mariana. (2006). Governmentality. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2(1), 83-104. doi: 10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.2.081805.105900

Rose, N. (2003). The powers of freedom. Cambridge: Polity

Williams, R. (1973). The country and the city. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This is an initial appropriation (with new theoretical perspective) of my MA research project conducted in urban China (with the supervision of Dr.Yvonne Hébert in University of Calgary). It is a 2010 study exploring the interworking of education, mobility and identity concerning rural migrants in two megacities in China, based on interviews with eighteen migrant families (both parents and children without local residence permit Hukou), observations in migrant communities, and analysis of local policy documents that manage migrant population in and through education.

Xiao, Y. (2013). The good, the bad, and the ugly: Educational narratives of migrant families in urban China. Presented on Asian-Pacific World In Motion (APWIM) International Conference, May 30-31, St.John’s College, UBC, Vancouver.

http://apwim.org/files/APWIM_2013_Conference_Schedule.pdf