Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Brisbane, Australia, Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World provides a critical analysis of the shortcomings and underpinning contradictions of modern multicultural inclusion. It demonstrates how creating a sense of identity among young Sudanese and Karen refugees is a continual process shaped by powerful social forces.
Tony Eaude argues that the foundations of a robust but flexible identity are formed in early childhood and that children live within many intersecting and sometimes conflicting cultures. He considers three meanings of culture, associated with (often implicit) values and beliefs; the arts; and spaces for growth. In exploring how young children's identities, as constructed and constantly changing narratives, are shaped, he discusses controversial, intersecting factors related to power in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, religion, class, physical ability and age. Eaude explores how young children learn, often tacitly, highlighting reciprocity, example, habituation and children's agency and voice. He emphasises the importance of a sense of belonging, created through trusting relationships, and inclusive environments, with adults drawing on and extending children's cultural capital and 'funds of knowledge.' Eaude shows how a holistic education requires a breadth of opportunities across and beyond the school curriculum, and highlights how play, the humanities and the arts enable children to explore how it is to be human, and to become more humane, broadening horizons and helping challenge preconceptions and stereotypes. This radical, inclusive and culturally sensitive vision, for an international audience, challenges many current assumptions about identity, culture, childhood and education.
In DIVERSITY, INCLUSION & BELONGING, Leila McKenzie-Delis explores how D&I today is about more than race, gender, age or sexuality, but extends to how people think via cognitive and neurodiversity, and, crucially, how we make people feel. Statistical research has long proven diverse teams equate to better business. Now we also know that, combined with diversity, inclusion, purpose and belonging are also paramount to bolster employee engagement, profit, performance and growth, whilst enhancing innovation, brand equity, productivity and enabling talent attraction and retention. This book explores the innate human requirement of belonging and what people and organisations alike really need in order to thrive. The book is about getting the most out of every single individual who works with you whilst cultivating trust, empathy and inspiration. It provides a toolkit for existing leaders and those who aspire to lead and provides a framework for leading well in an ever-changing world.
Our multicultural world needs countercultural disciplers. People from all over the world are coming to Christ from a variety of backgrounds. This requires more people who are willing to commit to the effort and sacrifice it takes to invest in new believers. Rooted in over four decades of multicultural discipleship experience, Ajith Fernando offers biblical principles for discipling and presents examples showing how they apply to daily life and ministry. He addresses key cultural challenges, such as the value of honor and shame, honoring family commitments, and dealing with persecution, and helps us think realistically about the cost and commitment required for productive cross-cultural ministry. This practical guide to discipleship will help us help others grow into mature and godly followers of Christ.
This collection of essays examines the racialized and gendered effects of contemporary politics of belonging, issues which lie at the heart of contemporary political and social lives. It encompasses critical questions of identity and citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, emotional attachments, violent conflicts and local/global relationships. The range - geographically, thematically and theoretically - covered by the chapters reflects current concerns in the world today. A timely contribution to the ongoing debates in the field, it will be a valuable companion to scholars working in the areas of multiculturalism, globalisation and culture, race and ethnic studies, gender studies and studies of post-partition societies.
Cosmopolitanism—the genuine appreciation of cultural and racial diversity—is often associated with adult worldliness and sophistication. Yet, as this innovative new book suggests, children growing up in multicultural environments might be the most cosmopolitan group of all. City Kids profiles fifth-graders in one of New York City’s most diverse public schools, detailing how they collectively developed a sophisticated understanding of race that challenged many of the stereotypes, myths, and commonplaces they had learned from mainstream American culture. Anthropologist Maria Kromidas spent over a year interviewing and observing these young people both inside and outside the classroom, and she vividly relates their sometimes awkward, often playful attempts to bridge cultural rifts and reimagine racial categories. Kromidas looks at how children learned race in their interactions with each other and with teachers in five different areas—navigating urban space, building friendships, carrying out schoolwork, dealing with the school’s disciplinary policies, and enacting sexualities. The children’s interactions in these areas contested and reframed race. Even as Kromidas highlights the lively and quirky individuals within this super-diverse group of kids, she presents their communal ethos as a model for convivial living in multiracial settings. By analyzing practices within the classroom, school, and larger community, City Kids offers advice on how to nurture kids’ cosmopolitan tendencies, making it a valuable resource for educators, parents, and anyone else who is concerned with America’s deep racial divides. Kromidas not only examines how we can teach children about antiracism, but also considers what they might have to teach us.
The first major qualitative study of “countering violent extremism” in key U.S. cities Suspect Communities is a powerful reassessment of the U.S. government’s “countering violent extremism” (CVE) program that has arisen in major cities across the United States since 2011. Drawing on an interpretive qualitative study, it examines how the concept behind CVEaimed at combating homegrown terrorism by engaging Muslim community members, teachers, and religious leaders in monitoring and reporting on young peoplehas been operationalized through the everyday work of CVE actors, from high-level national security workers to local community members, with significant penalties for the communities themselves. Nicole Nguyen argues that studying CVE provides insight into how the drive to bring liberal reforms to contemporary security regimes through “community-driven” and “ideologically ecumenical” programming has in fact further institutionalized anti-Muslim racism in the United States. She forcefully contends that the U.S. security state has designed CVE to legitimize and shore up support for the very institutions that historically have criminalized, demonized, and dehumanized communities of color, while appearing to learn from and attenuate past practices of coercive policing, racial profiling, and political exclusion. By undertaking this analysis, Suspect Communities offers a vital window into the inner workings of the U.S. security state and the devastating impact of CVE on local communities.
Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex? Gracia Liu-Farrer illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories—guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of diverse backgrounds while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country.
Arising from the legacies of the twentieth century - unprecedented worldwide migration, unrelenting global conflict and warring, unchecked materialist consumption, and unconscionable environmental degradation - are important questions about the toll of loss such changes exact, individually and collectively. As large-scale and ubiquitous as these changes are, their deep specificity re-inscribes the importance of place as a critical construct. Attending to such specificity emphasizes the interconnections between contexts and broader movements and remains a prudent route to articulating critical interconnections among places and peoples in complex times. This book of essays turns to such specificity as a means to examine the inflections of migration on identity- displacement, disorientation, loss, and difference- as sites of both regression and possibility. Fusing autobiography and cultural analysis, it provides a framework for a critical education attuned to such concerns.
The increased movement of people globally has changed the face of national and international schooling. Higher levels of mobility have resulted from both the willing movement of students and their families with a desire to create a better life, and the forced movement of refugee families travelling away from war, famine and other extreme circumstances. This book explores the idea that the complex connections created by the forces of globalisation have led to a diminishing difference between what were once described as international schools and national schools. By examining a selection of responses from students attending international schools in Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Philippines and Switzerland, the book discusses key issues surrounding identity and cosmopolitan senses of belonging. Chapters draw from current literature and recent qualitative research to highlight the concerns that students face within the international school community, including social, psychological, and academic difficulties. The interviews provide a rich and unique body of knowledge, demonstrating how perceptions of identity and belonging are changing, especially with affiliation to a national or a global identity. The notion that international students have become global citizens through their affiliation to a global rather than a national identity exhibits a changing and potentially irreversible trend. Global Identity in Multicultural and International Educational Contexts will be of key interest to researchers, academics and policy makers involved with international schooling and globalised education.
