Re-imagining Otherness: An exploration of the global imaginaries of children from immigrant backgrounds in primary schools in France and England

Abstract

This article examines the role of global representations in immigrant-background children’s social imaginaries in primary schools in France and England. Increased globalisation, mobility and migration hold strong implications in terms of identity and belonging for children from immigrant backgrounds in schools in European countries, based on traditionally monocultural educational systems. However, most studies of immigrant children’s identities are restricted to national frameworks which overlook the role of the global in children’s experiences and representations. Based on a cross-national ethnographic study, which investigated the identity narratives of 10- and 11-year-old immigrant-background children in two primary schools, one in France and one in England, this article investigates the way in which these global imaginaries participate in children’s identity narratives, through a re-negotiation of fixed national imaginary frameworks. Building on central concepts from the work of Paul Ricoeur on social imaginary and ideology and utopia, this article argues that immigrant-background children’s global imaginary, in both cases, held a utopian function, allowing children to transcend lines of national, ethnic or linguistic differentiation created around the construction of Otherness in school. This utopian function, however, was defined differently in the French and English schools.

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“…This reflects the tendency in research to treat younger children as a homogenous group, which overlooks the way in which forms of Otherness such as race, religion, gender or social class impact on the everyday experience of children (James 2007;Welply 2015). This article contends that there is a need to listen to children's constructions of Otherness and the way in which these shape interactions amongst peers.…”

“…This article draws on findings from a wider cross-national ethnographic study which investigated the experiences of children from immigrant backgrounds in primary schools in France and England (Welply 2015). This paper focuses on the English primary school only.…”

“…To facilitate this, non-verbal methods were used, including illustrated prompts, children's drawings, games and maps (Welply 2015). This gave children ownership of the discussion, which allowed them to raise issues around Otherness in their own words and minimised researcherimposed categories.…”

“…This article holds the view that children's accounts of their experiences participate in a 'politics of scale' which articulates local, national and global contexts (Ansell 2009;Welply 2015). Within this view, this article focuses on the 'micro-picture of interpersonal behaviour' in an attempt to theorise children's perspectives, by connecting their smaller world to the wider socio-economic and political world (Housee 2012, 104-105).…”

“…Whilst a majority of studies has tended to look at discrimination through the lens of race or ethnicity, recent work has shown how these old categories of difference intersect with new categories such as language and religion in young people's experiences (Welply 2015). Religion, in particular Islam, has begun to emerge as central in recent research on children from minority groups in the UK (Archer 2003;Shain 2011Shain , 2012Ipgrave 2013Ipgrave , 2016.…”