Sanctuary as Praxis: Engaging Families at the Crossroads of Disability, Education, and Migration

Abstract

ABSTRACT This qualitative study is focused on the political and social connections among disability, race, language, and migration that affect how emergent bilingual students are labeled as disabled and marginalized in schools despite—or, perhaps, through—educational and migration policies. Specifically, this study is concerned with the connections between educational policies at the school-level and the sanctuary policies at the community-level which purport inclusion, belonging, and care without authentically and critically engaging and responding to the diverse needs and perspectives of the stakeholders these policies are intended to serve. Based on the findings of a qualitative study in a mid-sized sanctuary city in Upstate New York, the author offers a reconceptualization of sanctuary as a critical reflexive process, rather than stand-alone policy or political boundary, and what this means for the education and engagement of emergent bilingual students labeled as disabled (EB/LAD) and these students’ families and communities.