Voices of Belonging: Minority Identities, Language and Education in the Netherlands

ended

Youth radicalization is potential triggered by a sense of disconnect from society, and experiences of belonging carry important implications for youth identity formation. Language ideologies, policies, and practices in educational contexts send messages for youth regarding their belonging and/or value in society: the voices heard by youth. In addition, youth communicate their sense of belonging and the belonging of others through their words and actions, including their language choices and social affiliations: the voices of youth. The languages used and preferred by youth may or may not correlate with their educational achievement and identity positions. To illuminate the role of language and education in the development of a sense of belonging by youth in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts, this study is based at a large multicultural school in The Hague and addresses, first, how youth experience, enact, and define a sense of belonging and/or exclusion in their linguistic and educational contexts, second, how the language skills, language use choices, and linguistic affiliations of youth intersect with their educational achievements and sense of belonging, and third, the role of gender and ethnicity in the intersecting influences of language, education, and identity for youth in ethnically and linguistically diverse contexts. These questions are addressed through three stages of research: initial observation as vital for contextual depth and adaptation of appropriate questions, a questionnaire to quantitatively evaluate correlations among language, education, and identity, and a final in-depth stage providing student perspectives and supporting the interpretation of the findings. A broader objective of this research is to inform policies and educational programs that serve ethnically and linguistically diverse youth, providing foundations for the development of more culturally responsive pedagogy in the Netherlands and throughout Europe.