Transnational Migration and Education

The politics of racism have returned with a bang. What was once a whisper is now a roar in the wake of public outrage over charges of police racism that claimed the lives of racialized minorities and Indigenous peoples. Yet confusion and uncertainty unsettle the challenge of clarifying the nature and scope of racism in general, systemic racism in particular, resulting in a glaring disconnect between public perceptions and lived experiences. Reckoning with Racism is themed around the prospect of problematizing the idea of racism as articulated, understood, and debated in response to new realities, emergent demands, and contested dynamics. A profoundly new racism world is evolving, one so fundamentally different from the iterations of the past, as to trigger a foundational shift in reconceptualizing how see, think and talk about and act on racism. Changing the conversation on racism must also acknowledge its uncanny knack of reinventing itself, while intersecting with other axes of identity and differentiation to amplify the inequalities of exclusion.

At a time of unprecedented human migration, education can serve as critical space for examining how our society is changing and being changed by this global phenomenon. This important and timely book focuses on methodological lenses to study how migration intersects with education.

In view of newer methodological propositions such as the reduction of participant/researcher binaries, along with newer technology allowing for mapping various forms of data, the authors in this volume question the very legitimacy of traditional methods and attempt here to expose power relations and researcher assumptions that may hinder most methodological processes. Authors raise innovative questions, blur disciplinary lines, and reinforce voice and agentry of those who may have been silenced or rendered invisible in the past.

Contributors are: Gladys Akom Ankobrey, Sarah Anschütz, Amy Argenal, Anna Becker, Jordan Corson, Courtney Douglass, Edmund T. Hamann, Belinda Hernandez Arriaga, Iram Khawaja, Jamie Lew, Cathryn Magno, Valentina Mazzucato, Timothy Monreal, Laura J. Ogden, Onallia Esther Osei, Sophia Rodriguez, Betsabé Roman, Juan Sánchez García, Vania Villanueva, Reva Jaffe Walter, Manny Zapata and Victor Zúñiga.

The Vietnamese diaspora is now a truly global diaspora. This collection, one of the first of its kind, traces the Vietnamese diaspora’s multifaceted roots in late 19th and early 20th century French colonialism, the end of the War in Vietnam, and economic migrations to fellow communist states in the 1970s and 1980s. Out of these migrations, Vietnamese communities have now formed in many of the major immigrant receiving countries around the world.

This collection traces the connection between the historically traumatic forms of dispersal from Vietnam and todays transnational Vietnamese communities. It considers questions about how conditions of exit from Vietnam shape Vietnamese diaspora identities and patterns of settlement and economic integration. It also addresses questions of how memory politics shape the ways in which various segments of the Vietnamese diaspora engage with contemporary Vietnam, and shape what is now an intergenerational diaspora.

Contributors are: Tamsin Barber, Gisele Bousquet, Tuan Hoang, Gertrude Hüwelmeier, C. N. Le, Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, Vic Satzewich, Ivan Small, Grażyna Szymańska-Matusiewicz and Anna Vu.

Choice Award 2022: Outstanding Academic Title

The multiculturalization of Canada has catapulted it into the front ranks of countries in advancing a principled diversity governance. Fifty years after the inception of a multicultural governance model that seemingly works and is relatively popular, Canada remains one of the few countries in the world to believe in multiculturalism. Yet the irony is inescapable: Notwithstanding its lofty status as a Canadian icon and an aspirational ideal, an official multiculturalism remains misunderstood both in Canada and abroad in terms of what it means, how it works and for whom, and why it endures. If anything, as the book explains, the idea of multiculturalism remains shrouded in the conceptual fog of a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. An interplay of polite fictions that mask inconvenient truths puts the onus on deconstructing Canadian multiculturalism by conceptualizing strengths (including a probe into why multiculturalism ostensibly works in Canada but rarely elsewhere), analyzing weaknesses, critically assessing its worth, and envisioning its future in responding to the new realities and demands of a post-multicultural world. That Canada’s multiculturalism remains a work in progress, albeit one with innovative possibilities, provides a fitting tribute.

How do international students cope when crises strike at home and abroad simultaneously? Using vivid firsthand accounts from Ukrainian students studying in Kraków during COVID-19 and Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, this book investigates the interplay between institutional responses, social support, and individual adaptation strategies. Jan Bazyli Klakla provides fresh qualitative insights into the understudied experiences of student migrants during crisis situations, highlighting practical recommendations for higher education institutions. Essential for scholars, university administrators, and policymakers interested in understanding and supporting international students through challenging times.