The Ethics and Politics of Precarity: Risks and Productive Possibilities of a Critical Pedagogy for Precarity

Zembylas, Michalinos

doi:10.1007/s11217-018-9625-4

Cited by 20 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In contrast to the prominence of needs assessment in social work with migrants, critical dialogue invites social workers to contextualise the experiences of return migrants within the historical and social hierarchies maintained by forces such as colonialism, neoliberalism and globalisation, which impact migration experiences and reintegration (Kusari, 2019;Rosner, 2016). As Zembylas (2018) summarises, critical dialogue allows social workers to approach return as 'historicized rather than psychologized' (p. 104).…”

Section: Dialoguementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Strategic empathy can also help social workers situate themselves within the system that oppresses return migrants as it requires them to move beyond 'expressing grief' to challenging oppression (Zembylas, 2018). If social workers focus on how 'saddened' they are by the experiences of return migrants, they derive benefit 'as benevolent Western [or upper-class] subjects who feel the appropriate remorse about the suffering' of return migrants (Ruti, 2017, p. 101).…”

Section: Strategic Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

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A social pedagogy lens for social work practice with return migrants

Kusari

Walsh

2021

International Journal of Social Pedagogy

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The number of asylum rejections has increased in recent years, yet successful claims differ dependent on the originating county of the asylum seekers. In 2018, the European Union rejected 25 per cent of the 519,000 asylum requests which it received (Eurostat, 2019). Kosovars were the fourth-largest group of asylum seekers in Europe in 2015 and 96 per cent of them were rejected and returned to Kosova. Rejected asylum seekers and those who lose their temporary status are returned to their countries of origin partly because the EU endorses repatriation, or the return of forced migrants to their country of origin, as a preferred solution to the migration crisis. This, despite a significant body of research which substantiates that repatriation is not sustainable and current repatriation policies have seldom considered the experiences of rejected asylum seekers. Considering that social workers are the first point of contact for many rejected asylum seekers, models of practice which inform social work with this population are needed. This article uses the case of Kosovar returnees to examine the utility of a social pedagogy lens to better prepare social workers to work with returnees. Social pedagogy, with its dedication to social justice, the importance it places on local and regional contexts, as well as its attention to praxis, is well placed to guide social workers in partnering with return migrants as they navigate the complex realities of reintegration. While grounded in Kosova’s context, the social pedagogy framework has global implications considering the increasing number of return migrants worldwide.

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Section: Dialoguementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strategic Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

A social pedagogy lens for social work practice with return migrants

Kusari

Walsh

2021

International Journal of Social Pedagogy

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“…If yes, how can we-educators, in particular-develop more productive theorizations for precarity in ways that serve better those communities who suffer most the impacts of racism, inequality, nationalism, xenophobia, and capitalism? As I have recently suggested (Zembylas, 2019), when one attempts to draw out a pedagogical framework out of theorizing precarity, there are several complexities and risks involved as much as there are opportunities for ethical transformation and action-oriented empathy in schools and other sites of socialization and work. However, it is important that efforts to 'translate' ethics and politics of precarity into pedagogical propositions are accompanied by a reformulation and recontextualization of the meaning(s) of precarity.…”

Section: Open University Of Cyprusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Philosophy of education in a new key: Education for justice now

Papastephanou¹,

Zembylas²,

Bostad³

et al. 2020

Educational Philosophy and Theory

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Since Plato's allegory of the cave two educational-philosophical critical modes have stood out: the descriptive (reality as it is) and the normative (reality as it should/could be). Reality resembles or is felt as an epistemic, political and existential permanent lockdown, 1 a state of isolation where access to ideality is too restricted and rare. Confined to a dystopian(ized) place of limited light and scant possibility the philosopher aspires to help others ascend to a utopian(ized) place of luminosity and promise. Granted, the philosophical-educational community has, as a historical and contemporary collectivity, contrasted the ideal and the real in richer and more complex modes than those of a neat 'descriptive versus normative' binarism. Nevertheless, the search operation for finding the key to unlock the lockdown is persistent and evident in most and otherwise diverse educationalphilosophical endeavours, especially in difficult times. As such a time, the recent pandemic has turned the philosophical, figurative lockdown, literally, into a palpable reality that incites more thinking about the tension between the ideal and the real. Discontent with reality is constitutive of philosophical explorations of education as preparation for an alternative and more desirable situation. Proof of this is the present collective paper and that which (Peters et al., 2020a) has inspired it. Collectively though varyingly, we describe the world of today and normativize the edifying thought and action that could lead to a better world. We lament and revoke a gloomy present to invoke and authorize a brighter future. 'We are stuck in the toxic 'Anthropocene,' while we need to embrace the curative 'Neganthropocene'' (Sturm et al., 2020, p. 15). Thinking and writing together (Madjar et al., 2020, p. 12), in a world of suspicion and fear (Ozoliņ s et al., 2020, p. 7), has produced several possibilities of what the key to opening the gate of a better future might be. 'Among other examples, there are references to a rehumanising of teaching, a revival of the ancient ideal of wisdom, and the development of post-digital pedagogies' (Roberts et al., 2020, p. 16). One such pedagogy, immersive education, redeems much 'yet unexplored philosophical and pedagogical potentiality' (Novak et al., 2020, p. 14). Other escape routes add to collective effort the affectivity of philia: 'we need to reclaim educational, philosophical and political activity through the practice of friendship' (Madjar et al., 2020, p. 13). We deplore the existing state of affairs, while cultivating hope for change; but we often discern glimpses of light and try to make them endure. We do so especially in times when such CONTACT Marianna Papastephanou

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“…Puar, 2012;McCormack & Salmenniemi, 2016;Zymbalas, 2019), and I draw largely from feminist and anthropological scholars who address precarity as an ontological position that rests on indeterminacy, vulnerability, and responsibility (e.g., Berlant, 2011;Butler, 2004Butler, , 2012Butler, , 2016Haraway 2016;Puar, 2012;Tsing, 2016). The connection between precarity and pedagogy has been previously established (Fisher, 2011;Tinning, 2018;Zembylas, 2019), building on Judith Butler's (2004Butler's ( , 2012 theory of precarity. Butler defines the term as both ontological (inherent to the human condition) and situational (located in the politics of the body), each connoting fragility, exposure, interdependency and vulnerability.…”

Section: Storiesßàwalks: Precarious Public Pedagogymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A precarious pedagogy, she argues, acknowledges education as a political and affective project connected to social conditions and public life, and is a pedagogy without guarantees (versus a pedagogy of mastery). Michalinos Zembylas (2019) recognizes implications for a critical pedagogy for precarity, challenging the very ambivalent nature of the concept as a paradox of constraints and possibilities, and calls for educators to reframe precarity so that the possibilities and perils of a universal moralizing of economic and social relationships can be examined in relation to the ways in which vulnerability is differentially distributed. Further, Katrine Tinning (2018) acknowledges the nexus of ontology and situatedness inherent in vulnerability-a key concept in Butler's theory of precarity-suggesting a pedagogy of vulnerability for teaching-learning relations in museum pedagogy that might encourage ethical transformation.…”

Section: Storiesßàwalks: Precarious Public Pedagogymentioning

confidence: 99%

Walking as Precarious Public Pedagogy

Powell

2019

JPP

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This paper is located in extensive walking and narrative community-based research in the historic and ethnic neighborhood of San Jose Japantown, California, in the United States (U.S.). I consider public pedagogy through precarity, drawing from scholars who theorize the term through an ethics and politics of vulnerability, indiscernibility and relationality. In my consideration of walking as precarious public pedagogy, I work with a concept of movement as the gatherings of varying temporalities across histories, activities, humans, and nonhuman agents to underscore the entanglement of US social and economic infrastructures, discriminatory practices of spatialized place politics, and local narratives situated in place politics. I also consider the paradoxical relationship of constraints and possibilities inherent in precarity, arguing that a consideration of walking as precarious public pedagogy is indeterminant, a becoming that is entangled within a vulnerable existence.

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The Ethics and Politics of Precarity: Risks and Productive Possibilities of a Critical Pedagogy for Precarity

Cited by 20 publications

References 45 publications

A social pedagogy lens for social work practice with return migrants

A social pedagogy lens for social work practice with return migrants

Philosophy of education in a new key: Education for justice now

Walking as Precarious Public Pedagogy

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