Title
"I Don’t Want to Claim America": African Refugee Girls and Discourses of Othering
Publication Date
2015
Document Type
Article
Abstract
In this article I draw from the Imani Nailah Project, a participatory action research initiative with a group of African refugee girls living in the US. I examine a particular fusion of racialized, gendered, and nationalized narratives that discursively construct the refugee girl. I interrogate this discursively produced refugee girl construct and highlight how actual refugee girls interact with this discourse with a focus on resistance strategies and emergent counter narratives of citizenship. Throughout the article, I use italics when I am referring to the refugee girl construct in order to maintain a central focus on interrogating a sociopolitical discourse—the refugee girl—as a construct distinct from actual refugee girls. My central aim is to highlight spaces and moments when actual refugee girls are in conversation with this imposed refugee girl discourse.
Original Citation
Boutwell, L. (2015). "I Don’t Want to Claim America": African Refugee Girls and Discourses of Othering. Girlhood Studies, 8(2), 103-118. https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2015.080208
Identifier
Virtual Commons Citation
Boutwell, Laura (2015). "I Don’t Want to Claim America": African Refugee Girls and Discourses of Othering. In Social Work Faculty Publications. Paper 55.
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/socialwork_fac/55