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

Abstract

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.