The Politicisation of Compassion: Campaigning for Justice

Abstract

In previous chapters we explored the many-faceted concept of compassion which the notion of asylum generates at governmental, LEA and school level, and amongst ‘citizen’ students. Different forms of compassion emerged from our empirical data. For example, we have seen government attempts to restrict compassion only to the ‘deserving’ rather than to those seeking asylum. While the schools we researched expressed compassion as sympathy and caring for the whole child irrespective of their political history and civic status, another form of compassion based on humanitarian principles and human rights came through our data. Our research in secondary schools and LEAs suggests that compassion for ASR students, when linked with professional ethics and an inclusive ethos, can move teachers to empathetic personal and pedagogic responses. Schools can value the presence of ASR students as one way of engendering compassion in the community as a whole. They become a resource rather than the problem characterised by the media and by government. However, the policing of immigration control described in Chapter 4 challenges these moral stances and can create the circumstances where compassion becomes overtly political, galvanising schools, teachers and students into political action in the name of social justice.

Becoming political is that moment when the naturalness of the dominant virtues is called into question. (Isin, 2002: 275)