Co-constructing Belonging: ‘Voluntary Separation’ in Deaf and Immigrant Education in Japan

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores educational integration and the ways in which ‘difference’ is accommodated in the mainstream Japanese education system by drawing upon two distinct cases of marginalised students: deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students and immigrant students. One form of accommodation to aid the integration of these two groups into mainstream classrooms is ‘special support classes’ such as providing Japanese as a Second Language classes to recent immigrant students and speech training and academic support to DHH students. While ‘integration’ and, more recently, ‘inclusion’ practices are usually placed in a binary system with segregation in the form of separate schools or ‘schools within a school’, we argue that these separate educational spaces have important roles, meanings, and functions for marginalised students who re-imagine them as spaces of belonging (ibasho). Belonging is co-constructed in these physically and metaphorically separate spaces rather than in ‘mainstream’ ones in which they are academically integrated but socially isolated. By analysing the official role of support classes in ‘integrating’ students in mainstream settings, we explore the co-constructed meaning given to such spaces of ‘voluntary separation’ by marginalised students in the Japanese education system.