Bhutanese–Nepali Young Women’s Experiences with Racism Inside and Outside of Schools

Abstract

This study explores how young Bhutanese-Nepali refugee women experience racism within and outside of school settings. Using data collected from a 16-month community-based culturally responsive leadership project, we document how everyday racial othering impacts the youth’s already fragile sense of identity and belonging. We explore how racial othering is produced through the denigration of language use, body image and community cultural practices. The research highlights the challenges of responding to anti-immigrant racism when negotiating spaces such as schools, workplaces, and peer culture. The findings illustrate how Bhutanese young women learned to walk away, resorted to talk-back and learned to cope with racism, and are negatively impacted by the verbal violence they encountered. Our research findings indicate how anti-Asian racial othering produces harm, leading the young women to have low self-esteem, self-doubt and anxiety. The young women’s experiences reveal how racism impedes the desire and the ability to claim citizenship. The study calls for the need to recognize how immigrant/refugee experiences of being violated and aggrieved are often silenced or unrecognized and calls for the broader need for schools to engage with the struggles faced by young immigrant/refugee women.

Notes

1 Bhutanese–Nepali is a bicultural identity that connects the young women’s Bhutanese and Nepali heritage. Participants in our study identified as being Bhutanese as well as of Nepali descent and part of the participants’ schooling experience took place in refugee camps in eastern Nepal. All of the participants were born in Nepal and were part of the Bhutanese refugee community. We have utilized both immigrant and refugee identity terms since the youth used both terms to speak of their identities. We realize how refugee experiences often involve being forcefully displaced, encountering violence and carrying generational trauma (Nguyen, 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of the Cultural Leadership Project, which was funded by The Ohio State University, United Way of Central Ohio, and The Columbus Foundation through the Connect and Collaborate Grant Program.