Social Class, Identity, and Migrant Students

Abstract

A necessary component of the neoliberal mechanisms of globalization, migration addresses the economic and labor needs of postindustrial countries while producing new modes of social fragmentation and inequality (Crompton, 2008). As migrant students insert themselves into segmented spaces, their countries of origin are themselves implicated in a global class hierarchy, often positioning them in ways that refract this world economic order (Kelly, 2012). Operating in these transnational contexts, social class plays a significant role in determining life trajectories and the ways by which migrant students of diverse social classes exercise agency. In language education research, however, social class remains largely underexplored, compared to identity categories of ethnicity, race, and gender (Block, 2012). To address this gap, this article employs a Bourdieusian conceptualization of social class, to examine how class differences in transnational contexts can impact the social and educational trajectories of learners. Data from migrant Filipino students in Vancouver, Canada, illustrate how migrant students continually negotiate class positions in these transnational spaces and how the affordances and constraints of their social class can lead to divergent learning outcomes.

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