"I Was Born Here, but My Home, It's Not Here": Educating for Democratic Citizenship in an Era of Transnational Migration and Global Conflict

Abstract

In this article, Thea Renda Abu El-Haj shares her research on how a group of Palestinian American high school youth understand themselves as members of the U.S. community, of the Palestinian American community, and of communities in Palestine. She argues that, for these youth, coming to terms with who they are has a great deal to do both with how they view themselves and how Palestinian Americans are viewed in the imagined community of the United States, especially after September 11, 2001. Her research reports on the tensions these youth face as they deal with school issues, like pledging allegiance to the U.S. flag, teacher harassment, and disciplinary sanctions related to being framed as "terrorists," that affect how they think about citizenship and belonging. Given the complex way these and other youth experience belonging, Abu El-Haj ends with a call for a greater commitment to, and a more nuanced understanding of, citizenship education.

Becoming Citizens in an Era of Globalization and Transnational Migration: Re-imagining Citizenship as Critical Practice

“…When youth living in the U.S. today must constantly combat the widespread belief that they are dangerous enemies, and must find ways to assert their rights as members of this society. At the same time, they are cognizant of the impact of U.S. foreign policy on the countries from which they or their families migrated and they are often critical of these policies (Abu El-Haj, 2007;Maira, 2004). Samira's words suggest the ways that, in contemporary times, belonging and citizenship are no simple matter.…”

“…) Moreover, these models do not question the premise that rights should be bequeathed to those who hold national citizenship, failing to address contemporary "facts on the ground." As more and more people live lives across the boundaries of nation-states, we may need more inclusive models that help all people realize economic, civil, social, political, and human rights (Abowitz & Harnish, 2006;Abu El-Haj, 2007;Bosniak, 2006;Soysal, 1998). In what follows, the perspectives of Arab American youth from immigrant communities suggest how our practices of citizenship education can, and indeed must, transform to reflect the changing meaning of belonging in the modern era.…”

Untitled

“…In expanding the term to its international dimension, I am inspired on the one hand by the tradition of undergraduate international education in the United States, especially the work of the anthropologist Ellen Skilton-Sylvester and her colleagues at Arcadia University who have been working successfully to open undergraduate educational requirements to include experiences in local, international and cross-cultural contexts (Skilton-Sylvester, 2010; Shultz, Skilton-Sylvester & Shultz, 2007). In addition, I draw on the critical and action-oriented work of those educational anthropologists who insist on the need to change our notions of citizenship education to reflect intercultural and international diversity and thus work towards more just and open notions of citizenship and belonging in the global context (Abu El-Haj, 2007Levinson, 2005). Based on these interdisciplinary inspirations, I define international learning communities as a pedagogy of building learning spaces that foster a shared learning experience by culturally and internationally diverse groups of learners in the course of an interdisciplinary educational process that seeks to cultivate social solidarity, critical consciousness, sense of agency and participation toward engaged local and global citizenship.…”

“…We are particularly inspired by the work of those engaged educational anthropologists who have combined in their approach the anthropological method with PAR to motivate practical community-based emancipatory action (Abu El-Haj, 2007Cammarota, 2008;Cammarota & Fine, 2008;Guajardo, Guajardo & Casaperalta, 2008;Lipman, 2005;Trueba, 1993). In their work and in ours, the goal of the anthropological method and research is not the accumulation of ethnographic data by an academic anthropologist/ethnographer in order to produce an interpretation of the observed cultural reality.…”

Beyond the “English Learner” Frame: Transnational Funds of Knowledge in Social Studies

“…As students cross borders, so too does their knowledge. We focus on the funds of knowledge concept in order to highlight Mr. Reid's approach, one that stands in contrast to other teachers' work with immigrant youth (e.g., Abu-El Haj, 2007;Jaffe-Walter, 2013;Ríos-Rojas, 2011;Valenzuela, 1999).…”