From National Policies and Sentiments to Local Practices and Subjectivities

Abstract

Given increased trends in globalization, there is a significant lacuna in identity research pertaining to rural or town settings and the impact that such locales have on pupils’ educational identities. The question remains as to whether notions of “othering,” or constraining subjectivities, are adopted and ascribed within schools among more recently arrived immigrant groups. Drawing on critical post-structuralist research, the following article illuminates how an assemblage of policies, power flows, performatives, personalities, bodily interactions, and spaces, operating within and outside of schools at particular times, combined to shape minority ethnic pupils’ social and educational identities in two English primary schools located in a West-Midlands town.