The Migrant Child as a Learner Citizen

Abstract

Within schools, there are as many educational frameworks and discourses which define the ASR student as there are in LEAs. Here our exploratory study of the world of schooling moves deeper into the framing of ASR students, focusing now on the perspectives of teachers and later students themselves. By moving deeper into the politics of compassion at school level we are able to uncover the repositioning of the migrant child from being a refugee or asylum-seeker, a legal entity, into a learner — a child who has come to learn at school and who has the rights of any other child within the education system. Using the child-centred approach that we uncovered at local authority level, teachers in schools that prided themselves on their inclusivity offer care and support for the ASR child . They expressed a caring form of compassion by being aware of such students’ sensitivities, applying imaginative pedagogic strategies and offering surrogate parenting (Arnot, Pinson and Candappa, 2009). For some, such compassion even becomes the litmus test of the genuine inclusivity of the school and therefore of its self-image. At the same time, by moving the needs of ‘the stranger’ in their midst, intentionally or unintentionally teachers and support teachers like the LEA officers we interviewed were repositioned vis-à-vis the actions of the state.