Educating the migrant girl : a politics of difference

Abstract

This paper problematises discourses about integration, their claims for accommodating difference and their implications in conceptualising the education of young migrant women. In thinking about the ethics and politics of integration and particularly those that are promoted through discursive frameworks generated by EU institutional mechanisms I argue that they reflect a politics of assimilation that does not allow educational processes of becoming different. A politics of difference, in spite of the possibilities of generating conflict within schools and classes would better inform our thinking about an education that democratically attends to student differences. I shall draw on situations and examples related to the education of young migrant women to suggest that processes of migration, rather than those of integration, can be important sources in conceptualising education as processes of transformation where becoming different women is possible.