Whose race problem? Tracking patterns of racial denial in US and European educational discourses on Muslim youth

Constructing and Navigating Belonging along Local, National, and Transnational Dimensions: Inclusive Refugee Education for Syrian Refugee Youth in Jordan

“…The shared social locations and cultural factors, included identities as Muslims and Arabs, combined with the relations that the girls forged with each other and their teachers, allowed for a feeling of home in the FT space. These shared identities stand in stark contrast to the settings of other studies on im/migrant belonging, where Arab and Muslim youth are positioned as impossible subjects, outside the cultural and religious imaginaries (Abu El-Haj et al 2017;Jaffe-Walter 2019). In Jordan, these shared identities open up the possibility of cultivating community and local belonging, though much is still to be Cohen Constructing and Navigating Belonging 233 negotiated within these relationships.…”

“…Much of the literature on belonging in educational contexts centers on students with legal citizenship (or pathways toward citizenship) in liberal democracies with normative expectations of multiculturalism and acceptance (Abu El‐Haj 2015; Jaffe‐Walter 2019; Rios‐Rojas 2014). This literature highlights the racialization particularly of Muslim youth and the ways that they are positioned as impossible subjects of these Western nations (Abu El‐Haj et al 2017). This study of Syrian refugees in Jordan, a country that experiences tensions between deep‐seated ideas of both hospitality and resentment toward refugees (El‐Abed 2014; Mason 2011), illuminates new relationships between local, national, and transnational belonging and the ongoing construction and contradiction of belonging across scales.…”

Artifactual Literacies and TESOL: Narratives of a Syrian Refugee‐Background Family

“…Descriptions of refugee populations as disparaged and stigmatized permeate the political sphere and the media (Court, 2017). Stereotypical representations are particularly accentuated in the case of Muslim immigrants, positioning them as a threat to national identity (Abu El‐Haj, Ríos‐Rojas, & Jaffe‐Walter, 2017), with reports of harassment and even death threats in schools and communities (Abu El‐Haj & Bonet, 2011).…”

Welfare, social citizenship, and the spectre of inequality in Amsterdam

“…How exactly professionals coded, translated, and negotiated complex realities that included intersectional differences in class, gender, race, ethnic background, migration experience, legal status, and religious denomination remained unclear (but see Veltkamp and Brown, 2017). Colour-blind discourses may well draw on deeply racialized stereotypes of good and bad parents, functional and dysfunctional families (Lee, 2016), and thereby create and reproduce racialized social hierarchies and forms of exclusion (Abu El-Haj et al., 2017).…”

“…This was most clearly articulated in discussions of slaan , smacking, which functioned as an iconic case in a profession that struggled to combine normative approaches with a collaborative process, and normative standards with ‘other’ parenting styles. These discussions of smacking illustrate that the universal or generic norms that are part of a colour-blind approach could indeed function to construe self and other, and create hierarchies of value and belonging among clients (Abu El-Haj et al., 2017). They evoked a backward or deviant otherness, in conflict with liberal European understandings of parenting.…”