Theorising decolonisation in the context of lifelong learning and transnational migration: anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives

Abstract

In the age of transnational migration, the practices and policies of lifelong learning in many immigrant-receiving countries continue to be impacted by the cultural and discursive politics of colonial legacies. Drawing on a wide range of anti-colonial and anti-racist scholarship, we argue for an approach to lifelong learning that aims to decolonise the ideological underpinnings of colonial relations of rule, especially in terms of its racialised privileging of 'whiteness' and Eurocentrism. In the context of lifelong learning, decolonisation would achieve four important purposes. First, it would illustrate the nexus between knowledge, power, and colonial narratives by interrogating how knowledge-making is a fundamental aspect of 'coloniality'. Second, decolonisation would entail challenging the hegemony of western knowledge, education, and credentials and upholding a 'multiculturalism of knowledge' that is inclusive and responsive to the cultural needs and values of transnational migrants. Third, decolonisation would lead to the need for planning and designing learning curricula as well as institutionalised pedagogy based on non-western knowledge systems and epistemic diversity. The final emphasis is on the urgency to decolonise our minds as lifelong learners, practitioners and policy-makers in order to challenge the passivity, colonisation, and marginalisation of learners both in classrooms and workplaces.

Humanising and Decolonising Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) in South Africa

“…The North-South global divide has been entrenched by the taking over of the Western knowledge and the domination of whiteness. Maitra and Guo (2019) raise the argument that practices of lifelong learning are associated in the perpetuation of some colonial worldviews by depicting certain groups as deficient.…”

“…These authors also point out that there should be much emphasis to decolonise the minds of lifelong learners, practitioners, and policymakers in order to challenge the passivity, colonisation and marginalisation of learners in both classrooms and workplaces. Lifelong learning ought to accommodate cognitive justice that asserts the diversity of knowledges and the equality of knowers (Maitra & Guo, 2019).…”

Toward Engaging Difference in a Globalized World

“…Transnational migration, the social and geographic movement of people with different ethnicities from one country to another, shows how people are not only moving from one space to another but continue to keep contact with their country of origin due to technology and modern transportation. This results in people being in constant and multiple connections across international borders (Guo & Maitra, 2019). In their special issue, these authors argue a need to look at how colonialization shaped migrants' transnational learning experiences and how Eurocentric assumptions became the norm for knowledge accumulation.…”

Media and government framing of asylum seekers and migrant workers in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Irrespective of their existing skills and expertise, migrants’ ethnic origin, their skin colour (as well as gender and class etc.) lead to their racialisation, devaluing both their knowledge and also their multilingualism (Maitra and Guo 2019 ). Drawing on the work of Ramón Grosfoguel and Ana Margarita Cervantes-Rodriguez ( 2002 ), Srabani Maitra and Shibao Guo argue that there is a need for “a second decolonization in the context of lifelong learning, a more profound one than the ‘juridical-political decolonization’” (Maitra and Guo 2019 , p. 12) to address global inequity and power asymmetries grounded in the current capitalist world system.…”