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THE BORDER CROSSED US: EDUCATION, HOSPITALITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT”
Author(s) -
Carlson Dennis
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2009.00318.x
Subject(s) - ethos , hospitality , politics , sociology , praxis , democracy , immigration , environmental ethics , gender studies , social science , law , political science , tourism , philosophy
A bstract In this essay, Dennis Carlson explores some of the implications of Derrida's “hospitality politics” in helping articulate a progressive response to a rightist cultural politics in the United States of policing national, linguistic, and other borders. He applies the concept of hospitality politics to a critical analysis of the social construction of the “problem” of “illegal immigrants” in U.S. public schools. This entails a discussion of three interrelated discourses and practices of hospitality: a universalistic discourse of philosophical and religious principles, a legalistic‐juridical discourse, and a discourse and practice grounded in the ethos of everyday life. Derrida suggested that a democratic cultural politics must interweave these three discourses and also recognize the limitations of each of them. Moreover, a democratic cultural politics must be most firmly rooted in the praxis of ethos, and in the ethical claims of openness to the other.