Voices of refugee youth in a restrictive educational language policy context in Arizona: narratives of language, identity and belonging

This qualitative study investigates the experiences of ten focal youth who came to the United States as refugees and were placed in Structured English Immersion (SEI) programs in Arizona high schools. The educational language policy for Arizona’s public schools (during the 2014-2015 school year) mandates SEI include four 60-minute classroom periods devoted to reading, writing, grammar, oral English exclusively. Students in SEI thus have restricted access to the full-range of general education courses required for graduation, as well as limited opportunities for social interaction with peers enrolled in the “mainstream” curriculum.

The study investigates how youth understand and navigate the school language policy, practices and discourses that position them, and specifically seeks to learn how being identified as an “English Language Learner” interacts with youth’s construction of academic and social identities. Adopting a critical sociocultural theory of language policy (following McCarty, 2011), employing ethnographically-informed research methods, and using social-positioning as an analytic lens, I aim to learn from an emic youth perspective and to amplify their voices. Eight Somali and two Iraqi students took part in two individual in-depth interviews; five students participated in a focus group; and all engaged in numerous informal conversations during 22 researcher site visits to an ethnic community-based organization (ECBO) and a family apartment.

Narratives recounting the participants’ lived experiences in the socio-cultural context of high school provide powerful examples of youth asserting personal agency and engaging in small acts of resistance to contest disagreeable positioning. The findings thus support the conceptualization of youth as creative producers of hybridity in response to their environments. This work also confirms the perennial significance of social categories and “othering” in high school. Though the institutional structure of separate classrooms and concomitant limited access to required courses hinder the study participants’ academic progress, the youth speak positively about the comfort of comradery and friendship in the shared safe space of the separate SEI classroom. The dissertation concludes with participants’ recommendations for educators, and the people refugee youth interact with in the context of high school, to improve refugee youth’s experience.