Migrant youth from West African countries enacting affective citizenship

ABSTRACT

Civic education is critical to the preparation of migrant youth for democratic living by instilling in them a sense of belonging to the polity. However, liberal conceptions of the citizen as a rational individual actor do not explain the relationship between emotions and belonging or how affective boundaries can limit civic participation. This study highlights issues faced by migrant youth from West African countries whose identities as African, Muslim, and migrant make them frequent targets of an affective politics of fear. Adopting a critical visual research methodology, this study seeks to better understand how five West African youth attending an urban high school for late-arrival migrants constructed belonging within and across nation-state boundaries. The youth mobilized emotions, including solidarity and conviviality, in order to constitute themselves as affective citizens, thus providing insight into how social studies educators can incorporate emotion in the classroom as civic resources for political engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• emotion
• affect
• citizenship
• civic education
• West Africa

Notes

1. I use the term migrant in this study in order to accurately reflect my participants’ life trajectories, which were more flexible than one-way movement to the United States. For example, some of my participants were born in the United States but migrated back and forth between Senegal or the Gambia.

2. Since becoming President, Trump has continued to refer to migrants using derogatory language. For example, in a bipartisan meeting with members of Congress to discuss The Diversity Visa Lottery Program, he referred to migrants from Africa as being from “shithole countries” (Watkins & Phillip, 2018).

3. Late-arrival migrants are defined as persons who have lived in the United States for five years or less.

4. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, also known as The Hart-Celler Act, was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It ended national-origins quotas previously favoring European migrants and ushered in a new wave of migrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The 1965 Act made migration easier for those who had family ties to U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. Today, approximately two-thirds of migrants have relationships with family already living in the United States. (Chishti, Hipsman, & Ball, 2015).

5. All names of schools and participants used in this study are pseudonyms.

6. The New York City Department of Education collects data on the “places of birth” of students designated as English Language Learners but does not disaggregate this data at the school level. Schools collect data about students using broad demographic categories, such as “Black,” which includes students from West African countries and Haiti.