What is it about?
Motivated by my observations as a teacher on Nauru, this research aims to address the ideology dimension of Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment in identity theory by positing that: Adult and adolescent refugee and asylum seekers in transitory settings are ascribed a ‘displacement identity’ through externally imposed normative ideologies. By using the Nauru displacement context as a case study, this contention is explored with reference to autoethnography as well as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) applied to a corpus of texts identified as accessed by many of those displaced on Nauru. This study is exploratory for the very reason that little to no previous identity theory research has been conducted about people displaced in transitory settings. An embodied ‘displacement’ identity and the language learning ramifications have thus not been accounted for for this cohort in the field of Second Language Acquisition.
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Why is it important?
The findings of this study highlight the urgent need for holistic pedagogical approaches to be developed to optimise language learner investment in sites of transitory displacement. In order to counter prevailing ideologies and afford access to symbolic capital for this learner cohort, these pedagogical approaches require the re-purposing of language instruction to be a re-humanizing and transformative experience that prioritizes agency, promotes positive identities, and caters to the future aspirations of language learners. These issues have an immediate bearing on the fields of refugee policy, language pedagogy and policy, and Education in Emergencies.
Perspectives
I hope this study leads to further research into imposed 'displacement' identities, just as gender, class, sexuality, race, and ethnicity based identity ascriptions have been extensively studied over the past twenty years. In this way, both educational and social policies can better meet the psycho-social and associated educational needs and rights of refugee students. I am forever indebted to my former students on Nauru, most of who are still detained there after 5 years, for their warmth, trust and friendship. I continue to mark the days until they are all free.
Tracey Donehue
University of New South Wales
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Displacement identity in transit, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, December 2017, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/aral.17019.don.
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