Educating Students with Refugee and Asylum Seeker Experiences - Maura Sellars

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and that the relationship between power and knowledge are so intricately entwined as to be considered seamless, thus creating the notion of ‘power/knowledge’. Mills (2003), describes this construct.

      Foucault characterizes power/knowledge as an abstract force which determines what will be known, rather than assuming that individual thinkers develop ideas and knowledge (p.70).

      Consequently, in each historical era, what is considered relevant and valued as socially constructed knowledge is then disseminated, regulated and validated through the external institutions of power, currently the prisons, hospitals and schools (Foucault, 1977). While much of the Foucauldian analysis undertaken by educationalists appears to have focussed on the negative nuances associated with normative power (Ball, 2012; Leask, 2012), Panopticism as applied to mandatory schooling and the certainty of disempowerment. Leask (2012) notes;

      Using Foucault, or his toolbox, to understand education would thus seem a decidedly fraught affair: the more that oppressive power-structures are exposed, the less possibility there is for any kind of self-originating ethical intention on the part of teachers or students (p. 58)

      [24] This perspective presents educational contexts as those which are totally dominated by carceral constraints, by authorities whose singular aim is to ‘supervise, transform, correct, improve’ (Foucault, 1979, pp. 302–3). Consequently, in this perspective, the classroom becomes the domain in which publicly accepted values and protocols are enforced in a similar fashion to the ways in which these are enacted in other institutional environments. They are...

      …subject to a whole micro-penality of time (lateness, absences, interruptions of tasks), of activity (inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of behaviour (impoliteness, disobedience), of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body (‘incorrect’ attitudes, irregular gestures, lack of cleanliness), of sexuality (impurity, indecency) ... (Foucault, 1979, p. 178).

      Whilst there may be particular aspects of these measures of disciplinary power that remain embedded in homeland educational contexts of students with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds as repressive power exercised as physical punishment, for the majority, disciplinary power is self -regulated in deference to possibility of being observed, and in deference to ‘norms’ that are accepted as the everyday behaviours, interactions and customary practices in any particular educational context. These ‘norms’ are not arbitrary but are determined by the mechanisms of the ‘biopower’ that is identified by Foucault. The means by which these ‘norms’ are translated into everyday practices and procedures that are taken for granted as ‘the way that things are done’. This process is achieved in schools by means of mandatory documentation. These national and regional laws, curriculum content and detail and policy papers which combine both aspects of power; juridical and normative; in order to regulate and record behaviours, ensure conformity to the ‘norms’ and monitor every aspect of student identity that is considered, by the manufactures of these documents, to be necessary to the sustained efforts of the systems. In this manner, data and statistics are available for the perpetuation of norms and also for the identification of trends which may be considered to be deleterious to society in general.

      Racism and exclusion

      Foucault did not use the term racism in its current meanings of either devaluing others by engaging with negative stereotypes or xenophobia which results in domination or of believing that ‘self’ is superior and therefore rejecting others by exclusion. He used the term in a way that excluded any notion of opinion. In his later [25] work Foucault frequently engaged with the notion of governmentality (Lemke, 2000) which appeared to extend and reframe his concept of biopower. While Foucault did not ever explain the exact relationship between governmentality and biopower or biopolitics, governmentality does appear to include the conception that, not only did authorities gather statistics and data to monitor populations and to improve their circumstances, but that they did so with another purpose in mind. Linked with neo political regimes, Foucault (2003) stated

      The specificity of modern racism, or what gives it its specificity, is not bound up with mentalities, ideologies, or the lies of power. It is bound up with the technique of power, with the technology of power. ...The juxtaposition of – or the way biopower functions through - the old sovereign power of life and death implies the workings, the introduction and activation, of racism. And it is, I think, here that we find the actual roots of racism (p. 258).

      This new idea of modern racism is also intrinsically linked with construct of governmentality. Foucault describes this as,

      The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analysis and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific, albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, its principle form of knowledge political economy, as its essential technological means apparatuses of security (1991 p. 102).

      This definition may, on the surface, present a relatively abstract view of governmentality. However, the means of governance that he describes is currently observed to be status quo in western industrialised countries. This has powerful implications for the inclusion, wellbeing and future prospects of whole categories or groups of populations in these societies.

      Rasmussen (2011), explains this writing of Foucault’s as ‘flexible technology of power that entails a new and novel form of government (p. 40). This new and novel form of government was able therefore to differentiate between those individuals who were to be invested in and those who were not- leaving those who were not to metaphorically ‘die’ in that they were not deemed to be members of society who merited access to resources and benefits that that would facilitate maximum human functioning as part of society. It appears to Foucault that the role of some of the medical sciences changed from one of nurturing and healing to censorship in order to protect society from any abnormalities (Foucault, 1987). Ball (2012), in his work on the history of British education as perceived through a Foucauldian analysis, gives detailed descriptions of the laws which prevented some individuals, at various times throughout history, from participating in education because of their perceived disability; intellectual or physical. In Foucauldian terms, these individuals were not to be invested in as part of society.

      [26] What implications are there for students with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds?

      This brief analysis of some of the key characteristics that Foucault suggest need to be investigated in western societies indicates that, in order to make an authentically humanitarian gesture towards entire populations of society some serious consideration needs to be concentrated on issues that these new members of society cannot raise as a matter of priority. These issues include matters that are decided at various levels of authority and expertise that hold the knowledge power balance, the aims and purposes of governmentality and who is be invested in and who is left to ‘die’ and the extent to which new arrivals within these circumstances will ever be able to engage in powerful discourse. These concerns do not only have long term impact on the individuals who are identified as those with refugee or asylum seeker experiences, but on the fabric of the societies into which these communities are settled, and on the minutiae of the daily lives of these students in schools.

      The very means by which individuals and specific populations are classified and differentiated in these societies provides not only identifiers which determine those with some common experiences of refugees from those with asylum seeker backgrounds. These identifiers are used, not only establish the ascribed (Watters, 2007 p.7) status of these individuals, and the legal implications for both groups of people, they are also used to categorize those which may be classed as students and those who are not, a situation which may determine the future prospects of many young people whose statistical information is vague, unable to be processed or simply not known at all. Additionally, much of the data gathering so important to Foucault’s notion of governmentality, its apparatus and purposes may also have little or no relevance in the countries where many of refugee and asylum seekers originated.

      Watters (2007 p.7) notes that particularly pertinent to the categorization process is the notion of chronological age, with Western perspectives of childhood identifying this group as between 0 – 17 years of age. This

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