Work and Education in the KNS Textbooks of the "New Style" Inburgering Programme. An analysis of the discourses used to construct the educational and professional progression of immigrants in the Netherlands
Summary
In the present research I will be specifically approaching the field of education and work progression as presented to newcomers in seven textbooks used in the "New Style" Inburgering programme. I will be working with key concepts on education introduced by Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Pierre Bourdieu. The notion of abjection as defined by Julia Kristeva will be crucial to explore the nature of particular jobs used in these textbooks to introduce newcomers to their future positioning in the Dutch labour market. Sandra Harding's work on how colonial representations permeate the manner in which immigrants from developing countries are envisioned by the developed West, will be critical to look into the link these textbooks establish between what counts as (il)legitimate knowledge and newcomers from developing countries. This research emphasizes also the inter-relation and co-dependance -among other axes of signification- of cultural and/or ethnic origin, gender and class. Foucault's theory that all produced knowledge is imbedded in particular networks of shifting power relations has been crucial to establish a theoretical framework from which to question how the particular body of knowledge produced by the Inburgering program is affected by and/or (re)produces specific power relations.