Department of Anthropology

“Nation and Counternarration: Reflections on Solidarities and Impasses in Educational Research with Newcomer Youth in France”

Roozbeh Shirazi, Associate Professor in Comparative and International Development Education at the University of Minnesota

Register for the free virtual webinar: https://go.iu.edu/3j8t

The question of migration, and attending debates on its political, economic, and cultural effects, is an increasingly prominent aspect of political discourse in France. Schools are often central sites for processes of immigrant ‘integration,’ and yet, the forms of membership available to newcomer immigrant and refugee youth within schools remain limited. Roozbeh Shirazi worked with migrant and refugee youth in French Language Learner classes in government secondary schools in the suburbs of Paris. His research utilized digital storytelling as a means for newcomer youth to produce knowledge of their experiences in France. Dr. Shirazi’s talk explores how a visual participatory approach may enable immigrant and refugee youth to work as active knowledge-makers rather than as passive objects of research, and how counternarration can intervene in broader demands of ‘integration’ that frame the lives of these youth in France.