Reva Jaffe-Walter

Coercive Concern

Nationalism, Liberalism, and the Schooling of Muslim Youth

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Reva Jaffe-Walter is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Montclair State University.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. März 2016
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 152mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 476g
• ISBN-13: 9780804796217
• ISBN-10: 0804796211
• Artikelnr.: 44382433

Autorenporträt

Reva Jaffe-Walter is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Montclair State University.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Ethnographic Journeys through Concern
chapter abstract
The introduction familiarizes readers with the author's main arguments,
theoretical framework, and methodologies. Jaffe-Walter argues that in the
context of increased migration and globalization, Muslim youth are
subjected to processes of racialization and assimilationist "concern,"
especially in Western liberal democracies. The anthropology of policy
provides a lens for considering how policies create "figured worlds" of
meaning; that is how policies inform ideas about the kinds of identities
public schools should foster and the role of teachers in encouraging the
development of those identities. Further, this lens allows the author to
consider how policies produce stereotyped notions of Muslim identities
taken up by various actors in schools through what she refers to as
processes of "figuring" identities. This chapter includes a discussion of
the author's positionality, the research site, the ethnographic methods
used, and the book's larger contribution.
1Producing Liberal National Imaginaries in Relation to Muslim "Others"
chapter abstract
This chapter provides an overview of how current discourses on integration
and Muslim immigration reflect historical narratives about "enlightened"
Europeans and "barbaric" Muslims and how politicians take up these
narratives to gain political traction. Through a discussion of ethnic and
civic nationalisms, the author points to the contradictions of liberal
nationalisms that claim to promote a view of the nation as inclusive and
tolerant yet, center on preserving particular ways of being. Jaffe-Walter
considers how the production of "the nation" and "the people" within Europe
and the United States has developed in opposition to notions of ethnicized
"others." After providing a brief history of Danish immigration and Danish
schooling, the discussion moves into the primary site of the author's
fieldwork at Engby school and explores how Danishness and Islam are
negotiated in the space of the school.
2Integration Policies and Immigration: Creating Ideal Liberal Subjects
chapter abstract
This chapter presents an analysis of Danish integration policies to
consider how notions of Muslim immigrants are produced in policies. The
author explores questions such as: What are the ways that government
strategies for policing immigrant communities become accepted by the public
as necessary and warranted? How do policies exert disciplinary power to
cultivate ideal liberal subjects and "empower" immigrants to liberalize
themselves? How are the reforms, technologies, and ways of seeing produced
through policies reproduced by actors in various sites and institutions?
More specifically Jaffe-Walter considers how integration policies call for
the coercive assimilation of Muslim women in the name of preventing
discrimination and promoting gender equality while obscuring the structural
factors that complicate their participation in the labor market. The
chapter concludes with an exploration of how teachers take up narratives
about immigrant ghettos within the community of Engby and at Engby School.
3"Liberalizing" Muslim Girls
chapter abstract
By exploring a series of interactions between teachers and immigrant girls
from multiple perspectives, Jaffe-Walter reveals in Chapter three how some
teachers conceived of their work with Muslim girls through a framework of
concern-more specifically, their desire to share with their students the
freedoms associated with Danish ideals of gender equity, sexuality, and
"democracy" as an escape from what they believed to be a historical cycle
of gender oppression in the Muslim community. The author focuses on the
experiences of female Muslim students in the classroom and examines the
assumptions that some educators make about the lives and development of
Muslim girls such as: the presumed negative influence that Muslim families,
ethnic enclaves, and religious affiliation have on female children; the
belief that sexual liberation is a path to integration; and finally, the
idea that intellectual and emotional development center on becoming a
free-thinking autonomous individual.
4Negotiating Relationships to Hostlands and Homelands: Portraits of Aliyah,
Sara, and Dhalia
chapter abstract
This chapter examines how Muslim youth negotiate the ways in which they are
constructed within policy and discourse and they respond to this figuring
with creative improvisations of identity. The author considers how youths
conceive of their connections to Danish citizenship and peer groups, as
well as their relationships to "home" countries and ethnic communities.
Through an exploration of the lives of three focal participants Aliyah,
Dhalia, and Sara, Jaffe-Walter offer deep insights into what it feels like
to negotiate everyday exclusion as a Muslim immigrant in a Western liberal
democracy, and more significantly, shows how young people pursue fragile
webs of belonging and recognition in the context of transnational
imaginaries and the spaces of diaspora that are produced through the
greater political forces of labor migration, political occupation, and
dispossession.
5"I'm Somali by nature, I'm Muslim by choice, and I'm Danish by paper":
Narrating Identities in the Figured World of Danes and "Others"
chapter abstract
In this chapter Jaffe-Walter explores the ways that Muslim students see
their own identities in relation to Danishness and how they negotiate
multiple selves in schools and communities. She considers the different
ways that Muslim boys and girls are racialized and gendered in various
spaces and their reactions to experiences of public surveillance and
policing. Through an analysis of young people's identity maps, i.e., visual
representations of their identities, this chapter explores the messages
young people receive about their identities and how those messages
influence their feelings of belonging. Significantly, the author finds that
young people respond to social scrutiny of their identities by limiting
their interactions within those contexts and adopting a defensive posture.
6Imagining Spaces of Recognition: Teachers' Counter-Narratives and
Comparative Sites of Possibility
chapter abstract
This chapter presents the voices of teachers at Engby school who challenged
the figured worlds and identities of Danish integration policies. It tells
the story of a Turkish teacher Aysa, her "war" against the stereotyping of
Muslim students, and her efforts to create more expansive notions of
citizenship and belonging within Engby school. In order to suggest ways of
envisioning more equitable modes of schooling for Muslim and immigrant
youth the author then moves into the spaces of schools in the United States
that are explicitly focused on promoting the achievement of immigrant
students. This chapter concludes by calling for schooling that supports the
development of students' critical consciousness to critique and re-frame
nationalist and exclusionary discourses and provides safe spaces where
students experience recognition and a sense of belonging.
Conclusion: Seeing Through "the Wall": Interrogating Liberal Blind Spots
and Silences
chapter abstract
Revisiting the central arguments of the book, the author concludes with a
consideration of how the anthropology of policy offers new ways of "seeing"
and "hearing" the effects of current integration debates on members of
Muslim immigrant communities. This final segment of the book reveals how
policies consolidate understandings of Muslim "others" within the figured
worlds of schools and society and how they inspire processes of figuring
and coercive assimilation. Jaffe-Walter offers a window into the affective
dimensions of policies, how they stir up and exploit feelings of anger,
nostalgia, and care. This concluding discussion has implications for
policymakers and for educators. The author argues that nationalist
integration policies that view Muslim communities through the lens of
concern obscure a genuine recognition of the experiences and needs of these
communities.