“Without English There Are No Rights”: Educating the Non(citizen) In and Out of Adult Education

Abstract

Drawing from a three year ethnographic study with Iraqi refugees who had recently resettled to the U.S., this chapter examines how refugees’ pre-resettlement lives shape their educational aspirations, while their (lack of) access to education in the U.S. shapes their understandings and embodiments of citizenship. Focusing on the lives of Samah, a high school graduate who hoped to pursue college education, and Nadia, a mother who aspired to learn English upon arrival to the U.S., I argue that refugees’ encounters with public schools and adult literacy programs are critical to their ability to become full members of their new communities. Samah and Nadia experience various barriers to accessing adult education and language learning due to increasing market fundamentalist attacks on state institutions that are critical for refugees. Staging interventions to improve the lives of refugees involves bucking current resettlement trends that re-traumatize refugees and dispossess them of the ability to aspire to and realize better futures. Rather than following through with its current course of action, which has prioritized self-sufficiency; ever-decreasing case management periods; and the lack of bilingual case workers, we need to reinvest in refugee resettlement. Otherwise, refugees will continue to be dispossessed, again, of their rights.