Judith K. Bernhard

Institutionalizing precarious migratory status in Canada

This paper analyzes the institutionalized production of precarious migration status in Canada. Building on recent work on the legal production of illegality and non-dichotomous approaches to migratory status, we review Canadian immigration and refugee policy, and analyze pathways to loss of migratory status and the implications of less than full status for access to social services. In Canada, policies provide various avenues of authorized entry, but some entrants lose work and/or residence authorization and end up with variable forms of less-than-full immigration status. We argue that binary conceptions of migration status (legal/illegal) do not reflect this context, and advocate the use of ‘precarious status’ to capture variable forms of irregular status and illegality, including documented illegality. We find that elements of Canadian policy routinely generate pathways to multiple forms of precarious status, which is accompanied by precarious access to public services. Our analysis of the production of precarious status in Canada is consistent with approaches that frame citizenship and illegality as historically produced and changeable. Considering variable pathways to and forms of precarious status supports theorizing citizenship and illegality as having blurred rather than bright boundaries. Identifying differences between Canada and the US challenges binary and tripartite models of illegality, and supports conducting contextually specific and comparative work.

Affirming plural belonging: Building on students' family-based cultural and linguistic capital through multiliteracies pedagogy

This article reports on a qualitative case study involving pedagogical innovations grounded in culturally and linguistically inclusive approaches to curriculum. In this project, kindergarten children were supported in collaboratively authoring Dual Language Identity Texts. Our findings suggest that as family and teacher conceptions of literacy were extended beyond traditional monolingual print-based literacy, home literacies associated with complex transnational and transgenerational communities of practice were legitimated through their inclusion within the school curriculum. This process invited family members to take up roles as expert partners in childrens biliteracy development. Further, conditions were fostered for parents to consider and articulate their beliefs and values vis-à-vis their childrens multiliterate practice and participation within these multiple, transnational communities.

Struggling to Preserve Home Language: The Experiences of Latino Students and Families in the Canadian School System

Abstract Latinos in Canada are receiving attention because of frequent poor performance in school. This phenomenon turns out to be connected to a number of basic problems that can only be understood through investigation of institutional processes with routine operations that may disadvantage certain minorities. This paper presents and discusses part of the data collected in a larger research project on Latino families and Canadian schools. Bilingual Latina researchers used participant observation and action research techniques to report on the home language practices of 45 Latino families and how the schools routine processes influenced those practices. Findings include the following: (a) parents saw Spanish maintenance as a way to foster family unity. Latino identity, and professional advancement; (b) the strong assimilative pressures experienced by parents often resulted in their doubting the desirability of openly speaking Spanish at home; (c) because the children were losing their home language rapidly, the parents used a number of strategies; and (d) there are several things that parents would like to see happen that would enable them to maintain Spanish. Our findings indicate the necessity for schools to proactively recognize and build on the familys cultural capital, including their home language.

Research‐based teacher education for multicultural contexts

Graduate programs in education face the challenge of preparing teachers and specialists in education to work with English Language Learners (ELLs). Programs must be culturally responsive, while at the same time respecting state and federal standards for scientifically based practice according to best evidence. The focus of the present study is a graduate program in education that sought to prepare graduate students to address the needs of ELL students. Among the articulated goals of the program grant were that teachers enrolled would be able to: (1) use effective English for Speakers of Other Languages and bilingual educational strategies and methods; (2) use findings from testing, assessment and research functionally; and (3) promote multilingualism, and, in a broader sense, respect and equitable treatment of the heritages of home languages. The extent to which graduates of the master’s program who were working as teachers and administrators at the time of the study were able to make culturally competent connections with ELL students and to establish a repertoire of scientific evidence, based on research findings that they could then use to support their teaching theory and practice, is discussed. Findings reflecting the responses of 57 graduates of the program were as follows: (a) the training provided by the master’s program was rated as more useful than the in‐service provided by the state because its emphasis on research allowed graduates to judge the merits of proposed educational reforms and to clarify their own pedagogy; (b) the ability to cite research reports enabled graduates to be heard by colleagues and to depoliticize discussions regarding curricular reforms; (c) in developing their ‘communities of practice’, graduates made connections with others who had been trained in the use of scientific research in education. The study illustrates how a graduate education program focused on transformation and the encouragement of home language use can prepare teachers to work effectively in a political context of ‘evidence‐based practice’.

Agenda Setting and Immigrant Politics The Case of Latin Americans in Toronto

The authors identify and analyze patterns of community organizing among Latin Americans in Toronto for the period from the 1970s to the 2000s as part of a broader analysis of Latin American immigrant politics. They draw on the concept of social fields to map Latin American community politics and to capture a wide range of relevant organizations, events, and strategic moments that feed into the constitution of more visible and formal organizations. Five distinct waves of Latin American migration to Toronto produce three types of community organizations: ethno-national, intersectional panethnic, and mainstream panethnic groupings. This migration pattern also leads to a layering process as established organizations evolve and new migrant groups with specific priorities and ways of organizing emerge. The authors present a case study of the development and agenda-setting process of the Centre for Spanish Speaking People, a mainstream, multiservice, panethnic organization. Agenda setting is defined as the process of defining the vision and mission of an organization or cluster of organizations. The case study captures how a mainstream panethnic organization mediates between diverse in-group agendas of Latin American immigrants and out-group, specifically, state-generated, agendas, and how this agenda-setting process changes over time in tune with shifts in the political opportunity structure. The authors propose, however, that agenda setting is a dialogic social process that involves more than navigating the existing political opportunity structure. Agenda setting involves in-group and out-group dialogues embedded within a complex organizational field. It is an instance of political learning. The analysis of these dialogues over time for a specific group and organization captures immigrant politics in practice.

CULTURALLY SITUATED EXPLORATIONS OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT: A HOME VISIT PROJECT FOR PROSPECTIVE EARL Y CHILDHOOD TEACHERS

As part of a child development course in an undergradute early childhood teacher preparation program, students completed a home visit project with a family of a culture other than their own. This report examines the assignments effectiveness in helping students become aware of the cultural nature of human development and the role of the family in the childs growth and development. Student responses obtained through focus groups, papers, field notes, and course evaluations included 1) reflections on the nature of the experience; 2) reactions to the role of researcher in the home of relative strangers and 3) evaluation of the learning. Although students seem to have achieved some understanding of the role of family and culture, the further step of recognizing culture as fundamental to development was generally not an outcome of the present intervention.