Citizenship in the Face of Conflict: Educating Palestinian (American) youth

Thea Abu El-Haj

In this research project, I examine the everyday discourses and practices through which one group of immigrant youth, Palestinian Muslims, define and contest what it means to be an American. Through an ethnographic study of a local Palestinian community, I will track how Palestinian youth position themselves and are positioned in relation to being American as they traverse multiple contexts: educational institutions (a public and an Islamic school), a local community center, the mosque and their homes. I pay particular attention to the ways that Palestinian youth in the U.S. experience liberal and Islamic traditions, and allegiances to America and Palestine as integral to their lives. One important goal of this study is to expand the frames through which educational researchers understand the contexts within which immigrant youths construct their identities to include global political conflicts. In contemporary liberal societies, the relationship between democracy and difference continues to be hotly contested. In this contest, education is positioned as a primary vehicle for forging inclusion into an ever-expanding multicultural nation. This process of social incorporation into the nation is often premised on an uncontroversial, apolitical and essentially static accounting of non-dominant groups. With this research I engage the shifting nature of what it means to be an American in an increasingly globalized world, and I focus on the central role education plays in the process of configuring (American) citizens.

About Thea Abu El-Haj

Thea Renda Abu El-Haj is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Swarthmore College, and was previously a Research Fellow at the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Pennsylvania. A central concern of her research agenda is how difference and inequity are produced in particular educational settings (through discourse and practice) and how school practitioners and students understand and contest inequality and work to create more equitable educational environments. Currently, Abu El-Haj is writing a book that explores the relationship between everyday claims about justice and discourse about difference through an ethnographic study of two schools. In addition, she is completing a four-year study of an urban teacher network that examines how professional development can effectively support public school teachers to build bridges to students and the families across the boundaries of race, ethnicity and class. Her postdoctoral research (an ethnographic study of a local Palestinian community) will track how Palestinian youth position themselves and are positioned in relation to being American as they traverse multiple contexts: educational institutions (a public and an Islamic school), a local community center, the mosque and their homes.