Educational (Im)possibilities: Newcomer Students and Benevolent Imperialism

• Main Author: Gavilanes, Vianney A
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Education; Hispanic American studies; Language; Multicultural Education; Political science
• ISBN: 9798351476445

This dissertation examines the entanglements between the promise of a good American life, the liberal mission of education, and benevolent forms of empire as experienced in a California public high school and its newcomer program (an intervention designed for helping (im)migrant students develop basic English language skills while also providing them with socioemotional support). Specifically Educational (Im)possibilities shows how newcomer programs and the schooling of (im)migrant and refugee students are inextricably entangled within a matrix of benevolent imperialism, liberal education, and the gift of freedom. Set against a professed egalitarian ethos America is upheld—domestically and abroad—as a beacon of freedom and democracy where anyone can achieve the American dream. Furthermore, professing to be a benevolent nation, the United States as an empire of freedom, has militarily intervened in other nations’ domestic affairs under the guise of imparting freedom and democracy (Espiritu, 2006; Nguyen, 2012). Thus, reckoning with the continuity of U.S. empire and its enduring gift of freedom, this ethnographic project asks what are the sources of sustenance for the empire of freedom within the school site?Informed by migration, critical refugee studies, and a critical pedagogical perspective Educational (Im)possibilities features ethnographic data (classroom participant observation and interviews) collected over 12 months at the school site. Findings show that educators’ practices of separation, care, and sanctuary are unwittingly complicit in the sustenance of the empire of freedom. In the case of newcomer students these benevolent inflected practices become entangled in the reproduction of, among others, longstanding processes of racialization and differentiation. In all, this dissertation urges educators and researchers to critically reflect on our own unwitting complicity with benevolent imperialism. To support us in this work it contributes a framework to chart paths of (un)learning required in the deep study and personal reflection on the history of the U.S. in relation to U.S. empire, (im)migration, and liberal education.