ABSTRACT
The plight of refugees fleeing war and persecution has recently dominated the political agenda in Europe and the UK as well as in Australia. As part of Australia’s border protection regime, refugees who attempt to arrive in the country by boat are either returned to their country of origin, imprisoned in off-shore detention centres or have their boats turned around. They are told they will never be permitted to enter Australia. This policy has received bi-partisan support from the two major Australian political parties, despite condemnation from the United Nations. Central to the arguments posited by both parties in defending this policy has been that they care for refugees and do not want to see them drowning at sea, as has happened in the past, and that such draconian policies are necessary to deter people from making dangerous journeys to Australia. Care operates as an exclusionary device to keep people out ‘for their own good’. Whilst perhaps not as dramatic or as punitive, many of the uses of the term ‘care’ in schools reflect a similar concern to patrol the borders of the school in order that only deserving students are able to enrol; but once enrolled then ‘care’ is offered to ensure compliance with school expectations. Teachers and school administrators demonstrate care by being ‘tough’ on students for their own good (encapsulated in the term ‘tough love’); they demonstrate a care for the image of the school (and ostensibly the ‘good’ students who attend it) by excluding students who might damage its reputation; and they demonstrate ‘care’ for their curriculum subjects by adopting gatekeeper approaches that deny access to certain students who are likely to undermine its ‘standards’. The parallel between the political discourses of caring for refugees and caring for students highlights the contradictory and perverse ways that ‘care’ might be deployed to justify distancing and objectifying practices. On the other hand, during our research we noted that teachers deployed ‘care’ to challenge such objectifying practices and to foreground ethical and emotional engagement with students’ lives at school and beyond. We turn now to elaborate on these contesting notions of care in relation to the politics of differentiation.
