Education, Asylum, and ‘the Non-citizen’ Child; The Politics of Compassion and Belonging

The paper reports on findings from sociological research undertaken in 2006-7 which were reported in the recently published book Education, Asylum and the ‘Non-Citizen’ Child: the politics of compassion and belonging (Pinson, Arnot and Candappa 2010). This book recently won a Society for Educational Studies 2012 book prize. The project focuses on young people as moral agents, and explores ‘citizen’ students’ negotiations of the politically charged issue of asylum.  It employed qualitative methods, and focused on students and teachers in three ‘inclusive’ schools in England. This paper offers insights into the effects of hostile immigration policy on the relations between children in school, and the complex ways in which asylum-seeking children and their families are understood by ‘host’ citizen children. The ‘political moments’ in which the power of popular and media discourses might be disrupted indicate that students along with their teachers can rally to take a caring and principled stand against injustice.