Language and Identity: An Inquiry of Church-Based U.S. Citizenship Education for Refugee-Background Bhutanese Adults

This 17-month ethnographic case study, which is grounded in the notions of citizenship, language, and Bakhtin's ideological becoming, examines the complex interplay of ideologies of citizenship, language, and identity in a church-based citizenship class in a Northeastern U.S. city. This study reveals the disconnects of ideologies of citizenship between refugee-background Bhutanese adults and their instructor. It also reveals the educational, cultural, and linguistic disconnects of citizenship practices in the class. This study illustrates that ideologies of citizenship education are not just about citizenship acquisition alone. Rather, they also index and enact ties of language and culture to being, to becoming, to doing, to valuing, and to knowing. This study contributes to a nuanced, situated, complex, and contested view of citizenship and fills a theoretical gap in the conceptualization of citizenship pedagogy.