From National Policies and Sentiments to Local Practices and Subjectivities

Given increased trends in globalization, there is a significantlacuna in identity research pertaining to rural or town settings and the impact thatsuch locales have on pupils’ educational identities. The question remains as to whethernotions of “othering,” or constraining subjectivities, are adopted and ascribed withinschools among more recently arrived immigrant groups. Drawing on criticalpost-structuralist research, the following article illuminates how an assemblage ofpolicies, power flows, performatives, personalities, bodily interactions, and spaces,operating within and outside of schools at particular times, combined to shape minorityethnic pupils’ social and educational identities in two English primary schools locatedin a West-Midlands town