CfP: SI on Disputing Deindividualisation: Learning from refugees and migrants to make education more inclusive
CALL FOR PAPERS
Disputing Deindividualisation:
Learning with and from refugees and migrants to make education more inclusive.
Description of the Special Issue
Viet Thanh Nguyen (2018, p. 7), who, in 1975, came with his family to the U.S. as child refugee from Vietnam, has written of the ways displaced people confront “the usual dilemma of anyone classified as an other”, since:
The other exists in contradiction, or perhaps in paradox, being either invisible or hypervisible, but rarely just visible. Most of the time we do not see the other or see right through them, whoever the other may be to us, since each of us – even if we are seen as others by some – have our own others. When we do see the other, the other is not truly human to us, by very definition of being an other, but is instead a stereotype, a joke, or a horror.
While the Bosnian-American author, Aleksandar Hemon has spoken of the “bigotry directed at migrants and refugees”, which is “contingent upon their dehumanization and deindividualization” and which sees them “presented and thought of as a mass of nothings and nobodies,” in short, as “a faceless mass” (Hemon, 2018, p. 92).
This special issue aims to bring together researchers from the Global South and North who are committed to understanding and addressing the kind of hypervisbility and individualization that Nguyen and Hemon bring to our attention. Investigating current trends of refugee education in inclusive education, this call for papers aims to address the void in work with refugee communities that followed initiatives following 2015. Despite other major crises forcing many individuals to leave their countries of origin, research and communal efforts seem affected by economic crises and the multitude of issues inclusive education would need to address. National policies, and thereby also the educational agenda, have been increasingly affected by populist and right-wing thought, threatening inclusive efforts, and limiting options to provide welcoming learning and teaching environments for and with refugees.
Despite ever increasing crisis and crises-associated situations leading to a need for more diversified educational answers, policies appear to increase in offering one-size fits all coping strategies. Mostly deficit-oriented testing schemes or educational intervention strategies deceive actual demands of diverse populations of migrants and refugees.
We welcome theoretical approaches, empirical research as well as accounts of effective practices, which address the following questions:
- What does it mean to conceive refugees and migrants, not as the subjects of educational intervention and care, but as actors in the world with much to teach those of us who are willing to learn?
- What types of practices, cultures, structures, and policies reduce a multiplicity of diverse lives to monolithic signifiers and generalised entities?
- What does it mean for non-refugees and non-migrants to stand in solidarity with refugees and migrants to navigate more inclusive ways of living and learning together? How can the complexity of agency be navigated?
- Are there ways of theorising and/or presenting educational practices, relationships and cultures that generate dialogues of becoming, and not assimilation, in educational institutions?
- Are there examples of teachers working with refugees and migrants to cultivate inclusive educational spaces where no one has to prove themselves worthy, since their worth, as human beings and as contributors to an ongoing and expansive educational conversations, is presupposed from the outset?
The papers must fulfil all of the established requirements of the journal and will be subject to the usual process of independent review. The instructions for authors may be found at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=tied20
In the first instance could you please send the title and an abstract of 200 words for your proposed paper to Wayne Veck at the following address: wayne.veck@winchester.ac.uk by March 29th 2024.