The book analyses how lines of (non)belonging are traced and how notions of (non)belonging circulate around and are attached to students from immigrant backgrounds. Such circulations coalesce around values and practices linked to gendered, ethnic majority middle-class norms, through which difference is positioned and opposed in hierarchical terms.
This project analyses the relationship between teachers’ identities and their attitudes and pedagogic dispositions towards students from immigrant backgrounds, showing how these affect each other, contributing to their state of (non)belonging in the educational setting and in the wider society. Attention is brought to the pervasive and normalised background of neoliberal ideology, permeating the educational environment. In examining the (problematic) relationship between the previous elements, the book uncovers the intersectional reproduction of lines of belonging - and not belonging.
While the analysis is centred on a study in Italy, it is situated within and provides links to international connections, facilitating a wider and global understanding of issues related to social justice. The book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers across sociology, education, gender, and cultural studies. Due to the intersectional approach and the width of the issues explored, it will be of use to policymakers and practitioners.
Author(s): Stefania Pigliapoco
Series: Routledge Advances in Critical Diversities
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 179
City: London
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 The context
1.1 Inequalities in Covid-19 times
1.2 Students with immigrant backgrounds
1.3 Students with immigrant backgrounds in the Italian education system
1.4 Being Italian, being a foreigner
1.5 Interculturalism as a European policy
1.6 Interculturalism in Italy
1.7 Neoliberal background
1.8 Education in Italy: elitism, democratisation, modernisation
References
2 Key theories and concepts
2.1 An intersectional approach
2.2 Social class: habitus, field, capital
2.3 Performativity
2.4 Teachers and gender
2.5 Ethnicity
2.6 A note on use of terminology
2.7 The collection of data
References
3 Teachers’ perceptions of social class
3.1 Teachers’ classed identities
3.2 Just a normal family
3.3 A simple family
3.4 A family ‘of a certain kind’
3.5 Language as a field of tensions
3.6 Students’ classed identities: it all depends on the family
3.7 It’s not only how poor you are: cultural capital and economic capital
References
4 Teachers’ views on gender
4.1 A job for women: time flexibility
4.2 Disputing a feminine essence
4.3 The teaching environment: lack of gender bias or gender segregation?
4.4 The gendered ‘foreign pupil’
References
5 Constructing (non)belonging
5.1 Drawing lines of (non)belonging: ‘us’ and ‘them’
5.2 Time and language as factors of belonging
5.3 Yesterday’s ‘others’: the Albanians and the Romanians
5.4 Today’s ‘others’: the Muslims
5.5 Values and religion
5.6 A deficit view of immigrant pupils and families
5.7 School tracks
References
6 Teachers’ understanding of neoliberal education policies and the shaping of power relations in the classroom
6.1 The value of citizenship
6.2 The ‘model minority’ individuals and families
6.3 Between policy and practice: benevolence and power in the classroom
6.4 “As if they were all Italians”
6.5 A less Eurocentric view or a tokenistic multiculturalism?
6.6 A neoliberal Western habitus
References
7 Linking teachers’ dispositions and pedagogies
7.1 How teachers’ gender, social class, and ethnicity matter
7.2 Teachers’ identity and attitudes towards students with immigrant backgrounds: a contentious relationship
7.3 Constructions of (non)belonging
7.4 Neoliberal views on education: an uncomfortable acceptance
7.5 Recommendations and implications
7.6 Future research
7.7 Final reflections
References
Appendix: About the participants
Index
