“Who would they talk about if we weren't here?”: Muslim Youth, Liberal Schooling, and the...

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Harvard Educational Review Vol. 83 No. 4 Winter 2013Copyright © by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

“Who would they talk about if we weren’t here?”: Muslim Youth, Liberal Schooling, and the Politics of Concern

REVA JAFFE-WALTER University of Wisconsin–Madison

With the growing number of immigrant youth moving into new communities and host nations across the globe (Suarez-Orozco, 2007), it is critical that we deepen our understanding of the ways in which schools enable either the civic engagement or the social marginalization of these young people. In this article Reva Jaffe-Walter pre-sents the results of an ethnographic case study of Muslim students and their teachers in a Danish secondary school. Her findings reveal how liberal educational discourses and desires to offer Muslim immigrant students a better life can slide into processes of everyday exclusion in schools. Jaffe-Walter theorizes that immigrants in liberal democ-racies face technologies of concern—that is, policies and practices that champion the goals of fostering the engagement and social incorporation of immigrant students while simultaneously producing notions of these youth as Other, justifying practices of coercive assimilation (Foucault, 1977; Ong, 1996). She argues that beyond just producing negative representations, technologies of concern position youth within hierarchical schemes of racial and cultural difference that complicate their access to educational resources in schools (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Ong, 1996). This article has implications for the education and social integration of Muslim immigrants within liberal societies, as it reveals the troubling persistence of exclusion buried within prac-tices of concern.

Aliyah,1 a fifteen-year-old student who was born in Denmark and identifies as a “Somali from Ethiopia,” mimics the voice of a Danish newscaster and shakes her head, seemingly tired of the ways that she has to negotiate the stereotype of the oppressed Muslim girl in the course of her daily life:

In Denmark, when you watch television and the news, every day they have some-thing new about what the immigrants are doing. They say immigrant girls don’t get to decide who they get married to. “Immigrant girls have to have an opera-

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tion to make sure their parents don’t find out if they have had sex.” Immigrant girls are always in the news. If we weren’t here, who would they talk about?

At the end of a long focus group discussion, Aliyah explains, “The problem is not with the teachers, it’s up here [she outlines a circle with her index finger in the air]—it’s everywhere, in the newspapers and on the streets.”

Denmark is a nation that has prided itself on its commitments to humani-tarian aid, openness to refugees, and social equality. Images of Danish fisher-man in the Second World War smuggling Jewish residents to safety across the waters of the Oresund are imprinted in the national imagination as a symbol of Denmark’s generosity to outsiders, as “a shining beacon to the rest of the world” (Jenkins, 2011). Yet, as Denmark negotiates the transition from being a relatively ethnically homogeneous country to one with a significant immigrant population, we witness the emergence of competing discourses surrounding immigration: on the one hand, stated commitments to social equality and humanitarian concern toward immigrants and, on the other, the propagation of nationalist discourses that position immigrants as racialized outsiders who threaten the national community (Appadurai, 2006; Balibar, 1991).

Given long-standing commitments to social equality, child-centered philos-ophies, and the absence of ability-based tracking, Danish schools might be expected to be at the forefront of immigrant education, providing a best-case scenario for immigrant incorporation. Yet, data reveal that there are stark dis-parities in reading, math, and science Program for International Assessment (PISA) scores, among other educational outcomes, between immigrant stu-dents and their ethnic Danish peers (Egelund, Nielsen, & Schindler, 2011; OECD, 2009). Drawing on an ethnographic case study of Muslim students and their teachers in a Danish secondary school, this article reveals how liberal educational discourses and desires to offer Muslim immigrant girls a better life can slide into processes of everyday exclusion in schools. With the growing number of immigrant youth moving into new communities and host nations across the globe (Suarez-Orozco, 2007), it is critical that we deepen our under-standing of the ways in which schools enable either the civic engagement or the social alienation of these young people. The failure of this best-case sce-nario sheds light on the complex social mechanisms related to the inclusion and exclusion of Muslim students in Western liberal schools. This study offers portable lessons on how we might advance more equitable schooling experi-ences for immigrant and Muslim youth in the United States and within other national contexts.

Following the arc that Aliyah traces in the above passage, I examine how Danish immigration discourses and policies are negotiated by female Muslim students and their educators. Motivated by scholarship that considers schools as sites of everyday processes of governmentality and nation building (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Foucault, 1977; Hall, 2004; Levinson, 2005; Ong, 1996), I engaged in a twelve-month ethnographic study that explored how Muslim youth were positioned and positioned themselves through the everyday practices of pub-

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“Who would they talk about if we weren’t here?”reva jaffe-walter

lic schooling. In this article I theorize that immigrants in liberal democra-cies face technologies of concern: policies and practices that champion the goals of fostering the engagement and social incorporation of immigrant students while producing notions of these youth as Other, thus justifying practices of coercive assimilation (Foucault, 1977; Ong, 1996). Aliyah helps us understand what it feels like to negotiate her identity as she is continually confronted with the stereotype of the “oppressed” Muslim girl in her daily life. Beyond just producing negative representations, technologies of concern position youth within hierarchical schemes of racial and cultural difference that complicate their access to critical relationships and educational resources in schools (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Ong, 1996). This article has implications for the education and social integration of immigrants, particularly Muslims, within liberal societies, as it reveals the troubling persistence of exclusionary practices cloaked within discourses of concern.

Examining the Everyday Politics of Belonging in Schools: Conceptual Framework

Increasing globalization—as characterized by the growth of cross-border flows of trade and people and the proliferation of transnational networks (Appadu-rai, 1996; Castells, 2004; Sassen, 2006)—is challenging the cultural borders of nations’ “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983). While we see national-ism in restrictive immigration laws and outward displays of national identity, we also witness it in quieter ways—in a banal nationalism reflected in everyday practices and routines of schools that reinforce borders by emphasizing who does and doesn’t belong to the national community (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Billig, 1995). Much has been written about how public schools accomplish this by instilling normative ideas of behavior and identity, thereby transforming out-siders into citizens (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Anderson, 1996; Gilliam, 2007; Levin-son, 2005; Ong, 1996). Immigrant youth live within webs of connection that extend beyond cultural and national borders (Katz, 2004; Smith, 2006). Their affiliations with homelands, religious identities, and cultures are often per-ceived to threaten the cultural homogeneity of host nations, where immigrant youth attract increasing attention in public debate and in schools (Appadurai, 2006; Rios-Rojas, 2011).

An emerging group of scholars considers how current theoretical frame-works for examining the experiences of immigrant youth in schools do not adequately account for the intersection of nation building and national iden-tity formation (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Hall, 2004; Levinson, 2005). Abu El- Haj (2010) suggests that “the capacity of students from immigrant communities to participate as engaged and empowered members of their new society are often comprised by their positioning in relation to national belonging” (p. 244). Her ethnography of Palestinian American students in a U.S. high school examines how teachers unconsciously mobilized political discourses related

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to the war on terror and notions of “the clash of the civilizations” in ways that limited the participation of youth in classrooms and schools (see also Ghaffar- Kucher, 2012; Maira, 2009; Sirin & Fine, 2008). A small body of research explores the complex ways that Muslim girls navigate schooling and negotiate their identities in relation to anti-Muslim discourses, Western development discourses, and their religious values (Buck & Silver, 2012; Zine, 2006). In this vein, my work considers how teachers’ everyday classroom discussions with Muslim girls reinforce discursive narratives and social stereotypes about Mus-lim communities that influence how these students are positioned in schools and the distribution of educational supports.

Complicating Notions of Care and ConcernThe performance and mobility of immigrant youth in schools depends on strong relationships with teachers, resources available in peer networks (Lew, 2006; Valenzuela, 1999), and the “protective resources” accessed through ethnic networks (Stanton-Salazar, 1997; Suarez-Orozco, Suarez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008). Existing research links immigrant and minority student achievement to the establishment of caring relationships between teachers and students (Ancess, 2003) and schools that are characterized by an “ethic of care” (Noddings, 2003). However, some scholars have offered more criti-cal views of educational care. For example, in her study of Mexican American students in a Texas high school, Valenzuela (1999) describes how teachers expect students to “care about” school-sanctioned practices and behaviors that are linked to achievement, yet her findings reveal that students desire more personal forms of “authentic” care that involve the nurturing of personal rela-tionships with students. Rolón-Dow (2005) extends critical care theories by examining how teachers’ care narratives, while claiming objectivity and neu-trality, normalize processes of racism in schools.

I theorize that we are witnessing a proliferation of technologies of concern for and about immigrant communities—that is, policies and practices that are focused on transforming immigrants into disciplined subjects of the nation-state (Foucault, 1977; Ong, 1996). Unlike overt forms of state power, technolo-gies conceal their own operations within the language of science or universal values. As Foucault asserts, they are “anonymous, multiple, pale, colorless” (p.81 as cited in Behrent, 2013; Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982). Technologies are “pro-ductive,” normalizing bodies through subtle manipulations of behavior while also inspiring individuals to reform themselves in light of the norms imposed on them. While technologies are localized in institutions like schools, they also echo broader discourses and regimes of truth. As Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982) explain, normalizing technologies “operate by establishing a common defini-tion of goals and procedures, which take the form of manifestos, and even more forceful agreed-upon examples of how a well-ordered society should be organized” (p. 198). Schools are apparatuses of state power where different actors appropriate technologies to produce particular kinds of citizens.

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I interrogate concern because it encompasses the multiple dimensions and emotions of the relationship between the nation and the immigrant, those who are concerned and those who are the object of this concern. Concern connotes interest and advocacy in its most common usage and, less often, fear, anxi-ety, and dread on the part of those who are concerned. Technologies of con-cern emerge in the context of public outcry that “something must be done” about the contemporary “problems” of Muslim immigration. They mark and amplify particular bodies as objects and targets of state power that require par-ticular kinds of intervention (Puwar, 2004). Second, technologies of concern conceal their own operations through the use of universalized ideas of what is “right and good,” cloaking national processes of normalization and coer-cion within neoliberal discourses of freedom, democracy, and equality (Rose, 1999). Building on Rose’s (1999) analysis of how freedom acts as an instru-ment of government control, my analysis of technologies of concern examines how practices of coercive assimilation are enacted in the benevolent language of concern, of “helping” oppressed Muslim girls to enjoy the benefits of free-dom and equality. Third, technologies of concern produce particular kinds of knowledge about who Muslim immigrants are and what they require. They simultaneously co-construct notions of Muslims as unassimilable Others and notions of liberal societies as enlightened; both constructions are deployed to justify increased coercion and intervention (Abu El-Haj, 2010; Brown, 2006).

Immigration in Denmark

The growth of Denmark’s Muslim immigrant community began in the late 1960s and 1970s when mostly male guest workers were encouraged to come to Denmark from Turkey, Pakistan, Yugoslavia, and Morocco to provide tempo-rary employment during economic prosperity. When, in the late 1980s, Den-mark’s Muslim population continued to grow after guest workers and their families applied for permanent residence and new refugees arrived from Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, Palestine, Somalia, and Lebanon, references to the “Muslim Inva-sion” multiplied within the media and the public discourse (Hervik, 2004; Pederson, 2008).

In the United States and Europe, there has been a recent proliferation of anti-Muslim racism and new regulations of Muslim communities, such as restrictive immigration laws and integration regimes (Bunzl, 2005; Nussbaum, 2012). Racializing discourses have positioned Muslims within a category of “geographically external other” (Silverstein, 2005). Like Jews and Romani people, Muslims have long been represented as “racially suspect” because of their perceived cultural, linguistic, and religious differences and their ties to other countries (Silverstein, 2005). Much has been written about the global spread of neoracist discourses and policies that seek to protect democratic societies from the perceived threat of Islam by invoking a “clash of the civiliza-tions” between enlightened Western societies and “barbaric” Muslim societies

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(Balibar, 1991; Huntington, 1996; Rana, 2011; Razack, 2008; Said, 1993). How-ever, in educational discourse this remains a blind spot, as adequate attention has not been paid to how Muslim youth experience these narratives in puta-tively liberal democratic schools.

Methods

Drawing on the methodologies of the anthropology of policy (Shore & Wright, 1996); Shore, Wright, & Pero, 2011), my research traces how nationalist dis-courses and policies are enacted in the everyday practices of public schools. I conducted my ethnographic research between January and December 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark, while I was a visiting scholar at the Danish Peda-gogical University’s Department of Educational Anthropology. It builds on my research in the United States focused on immigrant youth and schools (Jaffe-Walter, 2008; Jaffe-Walter & Lee, 2011). I was drawn into this study as I sought to make sense of what appeared to be contradictory aspects of Danish school-ing. I observed the multiple ways that Danish schools were progressive spaces focused on the needs of students, yet I also witnessed the repetition of racial-ized narratives about Muslim students.

I returned to Denmark for follow-up data collection in May 2009 and July 2010. My primary site of study was Engby School, the lower secondary school where I conducted extensive ethnographic observations and interviews. In Denmark, the public municipal school, or folkeskole, is a comprehensive school that educates students from preschool through the ninth grade. About 87 per-cent of school-age children in Denmark attend public folkeskolen, and 13 per-cent of students attend publicly supported private schools (Danish Ministry of Education, 2013). During the 2007–2009 school years, the student body of Engby School numbered three hundred, of which 45 percent was made up of predominantly Muslim first- and second-generation immigrants from Turkey, Somalia, Croatia, Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon. At Engby School, there were frequent discussions among teachers, students, and the outside community about the school’s image as a “ghetto school” because of its high percentage of immigrant students. Teachers told me about the declining number of eth-nic Danish students and the increased numbers of immigrant youth from the local public housing project. As one Danish student explained, “When parents come and see all the brown faces, they don’t think it’s a good school.”

In 2009 there were sixty-four schools in Denmark with a population of more than 40 percent immigrant students located near urban areas where housing was built for immigrant guest workers. In recent years, there have been new bussing initiatives that address the problems of ghetto schools by distributing the population of immigrant students to predominantly Danish schools. It is critical to point out that the everyday interactions within Engby School were informed by these broader politics, which constructed immigrants as a social problem and amplified the threat of Islam (Puwar, 2004).

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I chose Engby School as my research site because my early observations revealed substantial conversation among teachers and students about the school’s population of immigrant students, making it a rich site for witness-ing the complex dynamics related to the education of immigrant youth. In addition, the school had a high percentage of immigrant students. To bet-ter understand Engby School, I used participant observation; semistructured interviews with teachers, ethnic Danish youth, immigrant youth, the school principal, and the guidance counselor; extended interviews and meetings with focal participants; the collection and analysis of site-based documents; the col-lection and analysis of newspaper articles; and the collection and analysis of Ministry of Education publications and policy documents.

ObservationsFor a period of seven months, I conducted participant observations three days a week in student lounge areas, the teacher workroom, and English classes. Because of my limited Danish-language skills, participant observations pri-marily took place in eighth- and ninth-grade English foreign language classes, where instruction took place in English. As the English curriculum in Danish schools focuses both on learning the language and on developing intercul-tural understandings, these classes provided a window into the treatment of cultural, linguistic, and religious differences. In the first few weeks of observa-tion, I sat in the back of the classrooms and only answered questions that were directed to me by students or the teacher. Over time, I became more involved in the life of the classes and even acted as a substitute teacher on several occa-sions when the teachers were absent.

InterviewsFollowing observations, I invited all members of observed classes to partici-pate in my study and identified a sample of 20 first- and second-generation students (12 girls and 8 boys) and twelve ethnic Danish students (7 girls and 5 boys). I also interviewed 14 teachers who worked at Engby School, 12 of whom were ethnic Danish and two who were born in Denmark but identified as Turkish, as well as the school principal, assistant principal, and guidance counselor. I conducted interviews with teachers in English, as all of the teach-ers were fluent in English. The majority of interviews with students also were in English; however, I was assisted by a translator in interviews with students who were not fluent in English.

Focal ParticipantsIn addition to my interviews with a sample of eighth and ninth graders, I developed a close relationship with three ninth-grade female Muslim students who became focal participants. Dhalia, Aliyah, and Sara seemed eager to share their experiences in the school and the community to help me make sense of the positioning of Muslim immigrants in Danish society. My ability to establish

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rapport with the girls was largely due to the fact that I was an outsider in Den-mark, a friendly stranger. When I asked Aliyah what it felt like to talk to me, she said, “I like talking to someone that I don’t really know because I can really talk about how I feel. No one ever really asks how I feel. It would be really dif-ferent to talk to a teacher or to someone that I see every day.” Aliyah was born in the Somali Ogaden region in Ethiopia and came to Denmark as a baby. Dhalia was born in Denmark but identifies as a Palestinian with strong con-nections to Lebanon. Sara was born in the Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon, identifies as Palestinian, and arrived in Denmark at the age of three. As of the spring of 2013, I was still in contact with these informants via e-mail and Skype and continue to talk to them about their educational experiences, the messages they receive about their identities within their schools and com-munities, and their future aspirations.

Data AnalysisI compared data from observations, focus groups, and interviews, seeking res-onance between different forms of data. I also sought out data that discon-firmed my emerging findings. To analyze these data, I used grounded codes as well as codes that emerged from the relevant literature. Using grounded theory (Charmaz & Mitchell, 2001; Strauss & Corbin, 1998), I conducted the analysis as an iterative process. My analysis moved between the micro world of the Danish folkeskolen and the broader context of political discourse and educational policy making, noting how conceptions of immigrants exist within public discourse, the media, and education policies.

On “Muslim Youth”Here I use the category “Muslim youth” to describe a diverse sample of first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants. In my research focused on immi-grant youth and schools (Jaffe-Walter, 2008; Jaffe-Walter & Lee, 2011), I have been critical of analyses that homogenize the experiences of youth from any one ethnic, religious, or linguistic group, suggesting that there are essential differences between the outcomes and abilities of these young people (Ogbu, 1987). However, over the course of my research, I found that these youth shared common experiences of racialization in their schools and communities that revealed important insights into the inclusion and exclusion of Muslim students in Western liberal schools.

Everyday Nationalism: Educating Muslim Girls

This article considers how concerns about the integration of Muslim com-munities in Denmark influence teachers’ everyday work with Muslim girls. In exploring a series of interactions between teachers and immigrant girls from multiple perspectives, it also reveals how some teachers conceived of their work with Muslim students through the framework of concern—more spe-

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cifically, their desire to share with their students the freedoms associated with Danish ideals of gender equity and democracy as an escape from what they believed to be a historical cycle of gender oppression in the Muslim commu-nity. The article specifically focuses on the experiences of female Muslim stu-dents in the classroom and examines the assumptions that some educators make about the lives and development of Muslim girls, such as the presumed negative influence that Muslim families, ethnic enclaves, and religious affili-ation have on female children; the belief that sexual liberation is a path to integration; and, finally, the idea that intellectual and emotional development centers on becoming a free-thinking autonomous individual.

“Impossible Love”In my second week at Engby School, I observed an English class in which stu-dents were preparing for the national exam. In the Danish folkeskole system, all students are required to take English-language classes in their third through tenth years, and there is a required national exam in English for entrance into upper secondary school. During the year that I conducted my field work, the themes covered in the exam included “racism, isolation, religion, culture, love/friendship” (classroom handout, September 17, 2007). The curriculum of English classes is intended to promote intercultural awareness—an under-standing of the English language and, as one teacher explained in an inter-view, “the traditions of the English-speaking world.”

One class I observed focused on the theme “Impossible Love,” which explored instances when individuals from different cultures fall in love. When I entered the room, a group of ethnic Danish boys was playing with a soccer ball in the corner of the classroom while the rest of the students were seated and pulling their notebooks out of bags and backpacks. The desks were con-figured in five groups of four. Eight ethnic Danish students sat together at the two groups of desks closest to the front of the room, where the teacher, Lena, stood taking attendance, and seven immigrant students were seated at the tables toward the back of the room. I sat at the group of tables closest to the door with three immigrant girls, Sara, Dhalia, and Aliyah.

Lena took attendance and asked, “Does anyone know where Aasif is? Have you seen him?” A group of boys laughed knowingly and spoke to one another in Arabic. Lena paused and then smiled and said, “Ok then, let’s get started. We have a lot to do today.”

Lena then asked students to silently read a story from the Blue Cat Reader, a Danish English-language textbook. The story, “Fatima and Saret” (McCarthy, 2006) describes a Turkish-Muslim girl, Fatima, who works at home with her family. One afternoon, she takes a walk through the town with her baby brother in a stroller and stops to speak with Saret, a male friend who is from Cambodia. When Fatima’s aunt reports to the family that she was seen talking to a boy, she is berated by her angry father: “Her father came towards her as if he were about to slap her across the face. ‘You talk Turkish. Do you hear me?

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How come you think you can stand with any boy out on the street so everyone can see you like some common slut?’” (McCarthy, 2006, p. 11). The story ends with Fatima’s aunt suggesting that she should leave school to prepare for her impending arranged marriage.

After reading the story, Lena began a class discussion. Standing at the front of the room, she asked the class, “So when you think about what you could write about as a subject on the national exam, one thing would be inter-love. You could write about all these people that are not supposed to love each other. How do we feel about Fatima and her problem?”

An ethnic Danish student said that the story reminded her of the movie Shakespeare in Love, which the class had watched together. Then Lena asked again, “So what do we think of these problems with impossible love?” She asked two Palestinian boys, Mohammed and Jamail, “What would happen if you brought home a girl who is Danish to your parents?” Mohammed replied, “It would be okay.” She then asked a Danish girl, Majbritt, if her parents would approve if she dated a boy who was not Danish, and she said, “It wouldn’t be a problem.” Then she turned to Dhalia, a Palestinian student who was sitting at a table in the back of the room with two other immigrant girls, Aliyah and Sara, and asked, “Dhalia, could you bring home a Danish boyfriend?” Dhalia looked up at Lena seriously and said, “I would not.” Lena continued, “But what if you fell in love with a blond Danish boy.” Dhalia responded, “I wouldn’t.” Lena repeated, “But what if you did?” Dhalia insisted, “I would not.” Lena then asked another way: “But what about your own children—would you accept it if your child came home with a Danish boy?” Dhalia replied, “I would not,” adding, “also my husband might not want it.” When Lena heard this answer, she stepped back, looked at the rest of the class, and said, “And you would have to do what your husband says?” At this moment there was silence in the classroom. Lena then stepped away from Dhalia and asked the students to reflect on Dhalia’s answer. “So . . . how can we help each other to understand these problems with impossible love?” There was silence in the room. Pernilla, a Danish student, responded, “I think that it’s a problem that she has to do what her husband says. It’s very traditional. It’s like during the time of Shake-speare—very traditional.”

Throughout this interchange, I felt a growing tension in the room. Dha-lia’s eyes were serious and fixed on the teacher. I sensed the gravity of the interchange but didn’t quite understand what was being communicated. I was experiencing what Agar (1986) calls a “breakdown moment” during ethno-graphic field work, when one doesn’t have schema for making sense of events, when expectations of what should happen at a particular moment are not met. Why would this interchange about a choice of marriage partner evoke such strong feelings from the teacher? Why would the teacher persist in her ques-tioning despite the student’s growing discomfort?

It was in this early interaction that I began to see how Dhalia was cast as an outsider, a non-Dane who is understood to be out of place in a country

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that conceives of itself as a paragon of democracy and gender equity. In the class discussion, Lena mobilized the characters of the oppressed Muslim girl and her violent father through a discussion of the story “Fatima and Saret” (Wortham, 2008). When Lena asked the class, “So what do we think about Fatima and her problem?” she introduced a set of normalized assumptions about the problematic nature of immigrant girls’ relationships within their families. Throughout this unit, Lena mobilized beliefs about the inherent value of free and romantic love and the ways that religious tradition can sti-fle these feelings. Further, I noticed how tropes in the curriculum fueled an assimilationist critique of Dhalia’s identity. Lena’s questioning gained momen-tum as different actors were recruited to join the teacher in a commentary about Dhalia’s identity. Other Muslim students in the classroom later critiqued the teacher’s questioning in the hallway. Sara said:

She didn’t respect Dhalia’s answer. She kept asking, and then she asked the Dan-ish students what they think, and then she said, “OH, that’s like an old thing, like from the Middle Ages” . . . I think that she thinks that we are like—we can’t do anything, we girls only go to school and go home and that’s it—she thinks we are just at home and doing what our parents want us to do and only go to school. But it’s not like that at all.

While Dhalia and other students were critical of how they were represented, they were not able to shift the ways in which their teachers and peers per-ceived them. Other students, like Mohammed and Jamail, who had attended the school since preschool, were familiar with these dynamics. Mohammed chose to say he would marry a Dane, even though he explained that he plans to marry someone of the same religion: “I come from Lebanon, and it would not be okay for me to bring home a Danish girl. The Danes view the immi-grants as different and they want to say that like immigrant families are so strict.” It was clear that the Muslim students in the class had a keen awareness of how the stereotypes of the oppressed Muslim girl and her male oppressor were present during the discussion, yet they only voiced critique of the events in the safer space of the hallway after the class.

Immigration Discourses and Teachers’ Work: “We will not see any light”In an interview two weeks later, Lena brought up the subject of the “Impos-sible Love” class. When I asked her about her work with immigrant students, she said about the girls in her class:

They are still suppressed, if I could put it like that, in my opinion, and also I can see in the other girls’ opinion. I mean, you saw, the other day . . . Dhalia sitting there and saying that she would never marry a Dane because her religion would forbid it or her parents would not approve or whatever. And I think it is interest-ing that we have not come any further. I mean, I think we try and try and try, and many of them have been here for generations, and still I am sure that we will not see any light within the next two generations. I think that it is tragic that it is like that . . . but I think that it is correct that it is like that.

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While I had spent several days in Lena’s class after the “Impossible Love” les-son, it was clear that the conversation with Dhalia held particular significance for Lena. She presented the interaction as representative of the problems with immigrant girls in Denmark and echoed the familiar trope of oppressed Mus-lim girls. What was clear in our discussion was that Dhalia’s response carried significance far beyond that of an ordinary fourteen-year-old student offering up her opinion in a classroom discussion. The event became representative of a larger story about Muslim immigrants who resist the values of a “civilized” liberal democratic society (Puwar, 2004). Lena was frustrated that despite the efforts of teachers who “try and try and try,” immigrant girls remain mired in religious tradition, as they have been for generations. Despite all of her efforts, they refuse to “see the light” and the opportunities that are openly available in Danish society.

Lena’s description exemplifies how teachers’ desires to support the wel-fare of Muslim girls are inextricably connected to the nationalist discourse on immigration. By saying, “I think it is interesting that we have not come any fur-ther,” she suggested that Dhalia’s refusal represented a problem on a number of fronts. In Lena’s statement, it wasn’t clear who “we” was. One interpreta-tion suggests that it is tragic that despite the efforts of Danes to integrate the immigrants (over several generations), “we” Danes will not be able to integrate them in the future. It is also possible that she was suggesting that it is tragic that “we” women have not achieved a more equitable status in communities across the world. Finally, she could have meant that it was tragic that “we”—a society of Danes and immigrants—have not come any further together. The last of these possibilities suggests that Lena’s image of Danish society, as one representing equality and democracy, was somehow tarnished by the presence of Muslim immigrants. While there wasn’t a clear interpretation of Lena’s intended meaning, these multiple readings reveal different narrative threads of the liberal discourse of concern. The image of the oppressed immigrant girl is one that invokes teacher advocacy, anger, and collective anxieties about the integrity of the national community (Bénéï, 2008).

As Lena discussed her work with Dhalia and the other Muslim girls, she positioned herself as supporting the girls’ positive integration and positioned the girls as requiring the intervention of teachers.

Of course we should. I mean that’s a big part of our job and I know that a lot of our teachers are working with them very much. And also the education system is working to make them more a part of it. They have to be part of the jobs and the education system . . . and to . . . be open-minded to what is . . . where I can no longer live in my little safe world where I did what my mother did and she did what her mother did . . . and the more we can try to open them up the better it will be for their integration as a whole.

This conversation demonstrates how integration discourses inform teacher identity and position vis-à-vis these young women. As Lena described, it “is a

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big part of our job” to support her female students to move beyond the per-ceived constraints of tradition and ethnic enclaves to join Danish society. For Lena, Dhalia’s response about her choice of marriage partner was represen-tative of the problem of generations of women who are confined to “my little safe world where I did what my mother did and she did what her mother did.” Further, Lena positioned Dhalia as an outsider in need of integration even though she was born in Denmark.

Evident in the escalation of the discussion of “Impossible Love” and in Lena’s reflections on this discussion, nationalist discourses are taken up in the classroom, drawing invisible boundaries between “us” and “them” (Bil-lig, 1995; Carter, 2012). When Dhalia said that she wouldn’t marry a Dane and Lena continued her questioning, the lesson extended beyond its stated goals of preparing students for the national exam in English. Bénéï’s (2008) anthropological work documents how nationalism and citizenship are pro-duced through everyday schooling. She reveals how “emotionality is produced through, and feeds into, political, cultural, social, economic, and gender nego-tiations of nationhood and citizenship central to the everyday production of rights and entitlements” (p. 5). As nationalisms move into classrooms, it is critical that we examine not only how they are embodied and felt by different actors but also the material ways that they inform the educational experiences of immigrant youth.

Assimilation to Danish Norms of Romantic LoveAfter my observation of the “Impossible Love” class, I interviewed Dhalia, who talked about other teachers who made her choices surrounding marriage and romantic love the focus of instructional practice.

This isn’t the only time this happens. In extra-Danish class, the teacher said that it’s okay to date and to have sex before you marry because then you get to know someone. Because she thought I would just be married to someone I don’t know. This never happened before because before this I was in Islamic school. In the beginning, when I came here, it was very difficult for me. It is not fair, but I get used to it I guess.

Danish-as-a-second-language classes—informally called “extra-Danish” classes—are relatively new in Danish schools. They were created as a result of mandates in the 2001 Folkeskolen Act that eliminated funding for native lan-guage instruction for students from “third world” countries while calling for increased emphasis on the teaching of Danish language and culture, though, in practice, they lack formal requirements such as number of lessons or assess-ment criteria. These classes are the only time during the school day that immi-grant students are segregated from their Danish peers.

When Dhalia first told me that her teacher was counseling her to have sex before marriage, I was skeptical, thinking that perhaps Dhalia was exaggerating her teacher’s message. But in an interview the next week, Dhalia’s extra-Danish

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teacher, Birgitte, confirmed that she was working to help the immigrant girls learn to fit in better in Danish society. Birgitte said she brought in an article from a Danish newspaper entitled “Falske Jomfruer (False Virgins)” (Thorup, 2007) that describes the case of Muslim girls in Denmark who are choosing to have hymen reattachment surgery so that they can engage in premarital sexual activity and then return to an intact state for their Muslim weddings. Birgitte said that she brought in the article as a way of starting a discussion about Danish norms of romantic love.

They’re very much struggling about—struggling being Muslim girls in the Dan-ish school. They can’t really discuss being a virgin if it’s good—if it’s fair that you have to wait until you get married. They can’t really—they don’t know their opin-ion. They just know that it’s not okay not being a virgin. And they—it’s very hard for them to get rid of their background and say what they mean. I have to show them that I respect their home views, but I have to try to show them that they live here now, and when you choose your husband, I think it’s important that you know who he is, and to tell them that in Denmark a way to learn each other, to know each other, is also to have sex, maybe, or whatever.

Birgitte explained that immigrant girls are caught between the values of Danish society and their families. She said, “They are very much struggling with the whole thing of being Muslim girls in Danish schools.” Her explana-tion homogenizes all Muslim students by assuming that they all accept tradi-tion in one way: “They can’t really discuss being a virgin . . . if it is good or if it is fair to wait until you get married. They don’t really know their opinion; they just know that it is not OK not being a virgin.”

While Birgitte invoked the liberal trope of respect and tolerance for Muslim students’ views, she echoed a racialized narrative that was repeated in many of my interviews: the idea that Muslim girls were fundamentally not individuals, that they lacked the ability to think independently and to function in inquiry-based classrooms, and that they “don’t really know their own opinion.” In interviews, several teachers at Engby School described how they saw their work in terms of helping Muslim girls assimilate to Danish norms—as Birgitte says, “to get rid of their background”—in order to become self-actualized individu-als. They imagined an ideal autonomous, liberal subject who designs her own unique relationship with religion and culture (Asad, 2006).

Within extra-Danish class, these teachers encouraged Muslim girls to scru-tinize their own traditions. Associating the Danish values of sexual openness with increased freedom and autonomy, Birgitte described using readings about forced marriage in the 1800s in Denmark “to show them this world and how women were fighting against that and trying to show them that things can change.” Similar to the “Impossible Love” discussion, Birgitte mobilized the image of the oppressed woman struggling to get her rights in order to imbue her work with a moral purpose (Wortham, 2008). She conceived of herself as “helping” the girls to enjoy the more enlightened values of Danish society. As Brown (2006) argues, liberal discourses act by “valorizing the West, othering

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the rest—while feigning to do no more than distinguish civilization from bar-barism, protect the former from the latter, and extend the benefits of liberal thought and practices” (p. 203). While Birgitte encouraged the girls to cri-tique their own values, she projected a romanticized conception of Denmark as a nation that has achieved gender equality and freedom for all.

Other teachers in the school also encouraged the assimilation of Muslim students, though Birgitte was the only teacher to specifically mention open-ness to premarital sexual activity. Her moral agenda took up the specific ele-ments of Danish national discourse related to sexual openness and gender liberation. Birgitte felt that it was her job to help her female Muslim students conform to Danish norms of sexuality. She described sexual liberation as a path to integration and the cultivation of a Danish identity.

While Birgitte saw the Muslim girls as lacking their own opinions, Muslim girls launched critical counternarratives that challenged the idea that they lack agency within their families. Sara, who identifies as Palestinian from Leb-anon, participated in a focus group with Muslim girls who were critical of Birgitte’s extra-Danish class.

Because we live in Denmark, she wants us to act like Danish people. She thinks that our parents decide what we do for us. She asked me if my parents will decide who I will get married to. I explained, “No, it’s me who will decide who to get married to.” I feel like it is not her business.

Sara challenged Birgitte’s assumption that the Muslim girls are victims of forced or arranged marriages. These students went on to describe how they experienced educators’ concern as an assimilationist critique of their identi-ties and how being singled out and questioned in classrooms about their cul-tural and religious practices made them uncomfortable and complicated their relationships with ethnic Danish peers.

Discussions with ethnic Danish students in the school revealed that the content covered in extra-Danish class was targeted specifically to immigrant students, rather than part of a broader schoolwide sexual education and reproductive health curriculum. Danish students who were in the same ninth-grade class but who did not attend extra-Danish classes indicated that they did not have any sexual education in the ninth grade. They had, in seventh grade, completed a sexual education class where they learned about birth control methods and had discussions about “the right time” to have sex. Aliyah, Sara, and Dhalia spoke critically about extra-Danish class, indicating that it was not the subject matter that was problematic—they were accustomed to sexual edu-cation classes—but rather it was the suggestion that in order to be “Danish” they had to have sex before marriage.

In Birgitte’s and Lena’s descriptions of their work with immigrant students, we hear the ways that stereotyped notions of the oppressed Muslim girl and the enlightened liberal subject “that she could be” provide an educational call to action; they provide teachers with the authority to intervene in the personal

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lives of young women. Here, the discourse of concern constructs Muslim girls as captive within their families and positions Danish society as offering free-dom from that captivity (Abu El-Haj, 2010).

Alongside teachers’ expressed concerns for the welfare of Muslim girls, I heard expressions of regret about the influence of Muslim immigrants in Den-mark, the growth of immigrant ghettos, and the growing presence of Muslim students in the school. Yuval-Davis (1999) reminds us that women, as produc-ers of the next generation and carriers of tradition, become the “symbolic border guards who embody collectivities” (p. 129). As such, Muslim girls’ vis-ible expressions of difference in classrooms attract the attention of educators and invite practices of coercive assimilation. Educators contend that they are rescuing young women from the captivity of their oppressive families and cul-ture and “liberalizing” the intolerant ideologies of Islam through exposure to Western norms (Abu El-Haj, 2010).

Some teachers I interviewed perceived particular moments in adolescence as representing a critical turning point in an immigrant girl’s life that signify whether she will follow in the footsteps of her mother or join democratic soci-ety. This heightened scrutiny of adolescence seems somewhat uncharacteristic in Danish schools, which are otherwise antiauthoritarian and encouraging of adolescent experimentation. In Danish schools, some forms of dress are per-ceived as being unique expressions of a student’s individuality, thus resonat-ing with national ideals of openness and freedom. However, wearing hijab is understood to be a sign of oppression rather than a choice, a reminder of the captivity of Muslim girls and the presence of Muslims in Denmark. This high-lights the ways in which Western liberal notions of the individual suggest an unbounded process of development, a flowering of the individual soul. How-ever, in practice, educators’ conceptions of the individual are steeped in very particular national and cultural norms (Asad, 2006).

Creating Ideal Liberal Subjects: The Material Costs of Concern

While official discourses represented the school as welcoming the cultures and traditions of all students, I observed an everyday politics of concern for and about Muslim students in the practices of the school. Like the interactions in Lena’s and Birgitte’s classes, my research revealed other instances in which teachers policed Muslim students’ expressions of cultural, religious, and lin-guistic difference. Aysa, an adult who worked closely with students in the school and who identified as Turkish, explained that many teachers show dis-approval when Muslim girls reveal aspects of their religious and cultural iden-tities. “There are many teachers here who believe that Muslim students have to behave like Danish students. That means doing everything in accordance with Danish culture and not showing that they are Muslims. When the Muslim girls show it, the teacher’s eyes go down.” As Aysa spoke, she looked away from me

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and down at the floor, signaling the ways that some teachers show their disap-proval of Muslim students in nonverbal ways.

In interviews, teachers and ethnic Danish students frequently engaged in particular conversations related to immigrant students, such as immigrant stu-dents’ decisions not to attend a school trip or choices to wear hijab in school. The class trip is a folkeskole tradition that involves traveling for several days with the class to another city or to the countryside. Several teachers expressed frustration about the Muslim girls’ absence and explained that class trips were particularly important for them because they provided opportunities for them to learn Danish ways of living and thinking. Several female Muslim students explained that they didn’t go on class trips because of their concerns about eating and sleeping arrangements. For example, one Turkish student who did go to Germany with her class described being pressured to eat food that contained pork products during a dinner with a host family. Henrik, a math teacher and soccer coach, was particularly upset about the absence of Muslim girls on the school trip:

There are some students that I think, “Why are you here? Go back to your coun-try.” I say to myself, “Why are you here? You must leave the country if you are not going to follow the rules and know how to behave.” Many of them think they can use special rules for themselves, but they must use the same rules as I do. I will give you an example. With the girls, there are some of the foreign girls who couldn’t come with us on the school trip. My job is to take care of them, and the parents must understand that. When you say no to not letting your girl [come], you accuse me of not taking care of your girl, of doing my job. It’s a problem, it’s like they say, I follow the class as long as I like. I don’t like to have to sleep out-side. I told them, you are fifteen now and it’s not normal and it’s not good. They could learn away from their home and be independent.

While it is understandable that a teacher might be irritated by a group of students’ lack of participation with a school-sponsored event, Henrik’s anger about the girls choosing not to go on the trips reveals how the nationalist dis-courses and narratives surrounding Muslim girls are amplified and emotionally embodied within the spaces of classrooms (Bénéï, 2008). In this description, Henrik’s anger is clear as he positions himself as a caring teacher and positions the immigrant parents as refusing his concern. The discourse of concern slides into a discourse of exclusion when he suggests that if the girls aren’t going to “follow the rules and know how to behave,” they should “go back to” their countries. Rebuffed that immigrant families refuse his care and are denied the opportunities of Danish schools (and, by extension, society), Henrik seems to argue that anger is a legitimate response, something that the girls brought on themselves, and establishes an either/or scenario: either the girls conform to Danish notions of belonging and attend trips or they deserve exclusion.

While an analysis of the educational outcomes of Muslim students at Engby School is beyond the scope of my study, my findings suggest that there are ways

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that teachers’ concern for Muslim students complicated students’ relation-ships with teachers and peers. Several of my participants reported that they experienced a loss of support when they started wearing hijab. Aliyah recalled the first day she wore hijab to school: “I remember the first day I put my hijab on, I was like really scared going to school, thinking, what they are going to say to me. But in another way, I felt really strong, like I was saying, I can do what I want.” While Aliyah points to the strength that she feels in expressing her reli-gious identity, she also alludes to the ways in which this choice jeopardizes her positive relationships with her teachers.

In the sixth grade, I began to be really good in math, and he was like my best teacher. And then in eighth grade I didn’t go to the camp because I was in Africa, and he was angry that I missed the overnight. And then when I started wearing the scarf, he was like—he didn’t like me. In the teacher student meet-ing he told my parents that I wasn’t doing well in math, I wasn’t doing my home-work. But I did. I always do my homework. Also, the Danish teacher, that same year, said she isn’t doing well, she is too quiet.

Aliyah felt that her absence from the trip and her choice to wear hijab led to a decline in her grades and her relationships with Henrik and the other teach-ers. She explained that this was particularly troubling because Henrik had always been a supportive teacher who students understood to be someone you could turn to for help. In interviews, ethnic Danish students portrayed Henrik in a positive light. Catherina explained, “When I first got into his class, I wasn’t good at math and I was really shy. He helped me so much, and I wasn’t afraid to ask him questions when I didn’t know something.” While Henrik appeared be supportive and attuned to the needs of his students, it seems that when it came to negotiating religious difference, Henrik believed that it was his role as a “good” teacher to show his disapproval of expressions of religious difference in his classroom in order to foster the integration of immigrant girls.

Like Aliyah, Nadifa, an eighth-grade Somali student, described a similar decline in her relationship with Henrik when she began wearing hijab:

When I just put [on] my hijab he looked at me differently, he talked to me in a really mean voice. When I started wearing hijab he changed from treating me sweet, like before when I asked him for help he would come and help. Then after I started wearing hijab he was very strict, he would say, “No you can’t do that.” I don’t ask him for help anymore.

It seems that the sight of a girl wearing hijab or excusing herself from a class is understood to represent a challenge in the Danish school space. While some Danish educators are not comfortable with the presence of Islam in schools, scholars find that immigrant students draw substantial support from their reli-gious beliefs, which translates into higher academic outcomes (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001; Zhou & Bankston, 1994). However, some teachers I spoke with believed that Muslim girls’ attachments to culture and tradition

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were barriers to their individual development. As such, they believed that it was their role to intervene and to show disapproval for those attachments, and in some cases they even withdrew educational supports.

The Muslim girls in my study revealed how in-class public scrutiny of their identities led them to withdraw from social interactions with teachers and peers in those classes and, in some cases, to stop seeking support from teach-ers. When they experienced the painful sting of misrecognition and surveil-lance, they were less likely to feel that they could reach out to teachers and peers for support. As Nadifa said, “I don’t ask him [Henrik] for help any-more.” Faced with this dilemma, the girls in this study employed protective strategies for developing low profiles and avoiding personal interactions with their teachers and Danish peers. However, these strategies prevented them from accessing valuable resources and from fully engaging in the lives of their schools and communities.

I found no evidence that the Muslim girls in my study were subject to prac-tices of forced marriage or other oppressive practices within their families. Many of my female participants described parents who wanted them to learn Danish and to be successful in school so that they would have the opportunity to attend upper secondary school and university in order to get good jobs. It would be naive to argue that practices of forced marriage and violence against women do not exist, or that they should not be the concern of teachers. How-ever, I think we should consider that when that concern takes the form of coercive questioning and assimilative practices, when youth feel the sting of cultural and religious critique in classrooms, students are less likely to feel that they can reach out to teachers and peers for support.

Conclusion

Technologies of concern arise in the context of a shift toward a liberalism of power and disciplining. For example, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced the “failure of multiculturalism” and called for “a much more active, muscular liberalism” (BBC, 2011). Technologies of concern also echo the “civilizing missions” of Western colonial regimes and U.S. foreign policy, which define certain groups as being incapable of self-governance and rea-son (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Razack, 2008). Increasingly, Muslim immigrants are understood to require surveillance, discipline, and intervention, which are enacted through state policies and in state-sponsored schools.

This study reveals the contradictory ways in which technologies of concern that claim to foster the integration of immigrants can actually encourage stu-dent disengagement and marginalization. The young people in my study speak to the importance of human recognition in schools, of being seen in terms of the fullness of their complex experiences and attachments rather than in terms of reductive stereotypes. Their experience is corroborated by social psy-chologists who have described how the integration of immigrants depends on

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the social acceptance of their identities (Barreto & Ellemers, 2002). Though much of the literature points to the centrality of “caring teachers” and “car-ing relationships” between teachers and students, my work seeks to compli-cate notions of concern and to consider the implicit expectations that can sometimes accompany concern for immigrant students. It is critical that we consider how humanitarian desires to help immigrants can impose narrow notions of citizenship that contend that “your life will be better if you live as we do.” My research calls for a critical analysis of the ways in which liberal edu-cational discourses produce notions of barbaric Others who hold no regard for individual rights and ideal liberal subjects who embody enlightenment and modernity (Asad, 2006; Foucault, 1977).

Such a dichotomy obscures the consequences of intervention in Muslim communities in the name of integration as well as the real structural barri-ers facing immigrants in schools and in host societies. While immigration discourses and policies have focused on reforming the perceived problems within Muslim communities, the racial, political, and economic barriers that complicate the mobility of Muslim students are largely left unexamined. Too often, the teachers I observed were resigned to the poor performance of Muslim immigrant students, ascribing their academic challenges to the fami-lies’ cultural practices or the students’ failure to integrate. To address what they perceived as the core of the problem—the students themselves—teach-ers emphasized educational practices and policies intended to expose immi-grant students to Danish ways of being rather than focusing on implementing inclusive and rigorous educational practices that promote the achievement of immigrant students (see Garcia, 2009; Jaffe-Walter & Lee, 2011). Such every-day policies and practices focused on liberalizing Muslim immigrants are local expressions of broader, global anti-Muslim discourses and policies. In the name of promoting gender equity, European countries have passed legislation that prohibits Muslim women from wearing hijab, and seven U.S. states have passed anti-Sharia laws (Nussbaum, 2012; Sacirbey, 2013). Far from being lib-erated by these legal interventions, Muslim women have spoken out about the ways in which bans on hijab can limit their participation in society and have described how anti-Sharia laws deprive them of equal access under the law (Nussbaum, 2012).

The case of Muslim girls in Denmark reflects these broader narratives about Islam, though its connection may be obscured by the discourse of care that permeates everyday interactions between Muslim youth and their teachers. Within technologies of concern, we find both the language of care and the language of worry, anxiety, and burden—desires to reclaim the nation, to res-cue oppressed immigrant girls, and to uphold understandings about the col-lective goodness of nations. But we must ask, what are the blind spots within liberal approaches to integration? And what are the ways that concern slides into coercion as it is mapped onto young peoples’ bodies and biographies?

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Notes1. All names in this paper are pseudonyms.

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Special thanks to Anne Holmen for making this research possible and to Stacey Lee, Michelle Fine, Lesley Bartlett, and Terri McCarty for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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“Who would they talk about if we weren't here?”: Muslim Youth, Liberal Schooling, and the...

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