Session Information
31 SES 13 B, Negotiating Language Legitimacies in Transnational Educational Spaces. Institutional and Individual Perspectives
Symposium
Contribution
Globalisation is an ongoing process that has shaped the world for at least 200 years. Ever-increasing transnational entanglements in all areas of societies and individuals’ daily routines result in growing complexity and diversity, offering both opportunities and uncertainties. In the field of education, such opportunities and uncertainties seem to depend to a high degree on students’ socioeconomic status. Students from privileged families who command the resources necessary to attend international private schools, to participate in student exchange programmes, and to take international university courses have opportunities to acquire transnational cultural capital (Brooks and Waters 2011, p. 10). Uncertainties arise for students from migrant families who have no access to the transnational education market. They often attend regular state schools that usually neither support transnational careers nor provide convertibility of qualifications. From a sociological perspective, the transnationalisation of education creates uncertainties by contributing to a “redefinition of educational advantage” (van Zanten et al., 2015).
Recently, border-transcending dimensions in education have been theoretically framed by the concept of transnational educational spaces (Kesper-Biermann, 2018). According to this approach, social spaces emerge and consolidate themselves through relations, interactions and perceptions across boundaries and nations. They are, therefore, not delimited by political borders or geographical features and comprise a wide range of communication, transfer and construction processes. Transnational educational spaces can develop from the bottom up in response to the practices of individual actors. Accordingly, educational orientations and practices in migration contexts are an object of research (Fürstenau, 2016), as well as increasing numbers of international university students and even families with school-aged students that move for educational purposes (Waters, 2015). At the same time, transnational educational spaces are being developed in top-down processes, for example by the activities of international education providers. In this sense, UNESCO defines transnational education as “the mobility of education programs and providers between countries” (UNESCO and Council of Europe 2001). Objects of research are, for example, international schools and university courses (Adick, 2018). In order to fully understand social processes in transnational educational spaces, it is necessary to take into account both individual and institutional perspectives. Therefore, the symposium will take these perspectives as a starting point to scrutinize the negotiation of language legitimacies.
Language plays an important role in transnational educational spaces, not only as a means of communication but also in view of various manifestations of power relations. According to Bourdieu’s model of the linguistic market (Bourdieu, 1991), national educational systems reproduce the ‘legitimacy’ of dominant languages, that is, the national languages and the official foreign languages taught in schools. In the linguistic market, a ‘legitimate’ language has symbolic value, is an instrument of power, and functions as cultural capital, convertible into material resources. However, Bourdieu’s model is not static, but rather points to the importance of social negotiation around the value of linguistic practices. Based on the assumption that such a negotiation gains significance in transnational, multilingual contexts, the symposium examines negotiation processes influenced by different language and power constellations, both past and present. Three contributions explore the negotiation of language legitimacies in transnational educational spaces that span regions between Europe and Asia (Dittrich), Europe and Africa (Ogden), and Europe and South America (Fürstenau). As a whole, the symposium will discuss how language learning and teaching reflects social hierarchies and power structures in transnational educational spaces.
References
Adick, C. (2018). Transnational education in schools, universities, and beyond: Definitions and research areas. Transnational Social Review, 11 (2), 1-15. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Polity Press Brooks, R., Waters, J. (2011). Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Fürstenau, S. (2016). Multilingualism and school development in transnational educational spaces. Insights from an intervention study at German elementary schools. In: Küppers, A., Pusch, B. and Semerci, P. U. (Eds.): Bildung in transnationalen Räumen. Education in transnational spaces. Wiesbaden: VS Springer Verlag, 71-90. Kesper-Biermann, S. (2018). Transnationalising the History of Education. The Concept of Educational Spaces. In: Käbisch, D./Wischmeyer, J. (Eds.): Transnationale Dimensionen religiöser Bildung in der Moderne. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 61-73. Mayer, C., Lohmann, I. and Grosvenor, I. (Eds.) (2009). Children and Youth at Risk: Historical and International Perspectives. London/New York: Peter Lang. Reagan, Timothy (2016). The Conceptualization of Language Legitimacy. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 13 (1), 1-19. van Zanten, A., Ball, S.J. and Darchy-Koechlin, B. (Eds.) (2015). Elites, privilege and excellence: the national and global redefinition of educational advantage. World Yearbook of Education 2015. London: Routledge. Waters, J. (2015). Educational imperatives and the compulsion for credentials: family migration and children's education in East Asia. Children's Geographies, 13 (3), 280-293.
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