ABSTRACT
The 1980s witnessed a national assault on bilingual education in the United States. The dawn of the new millennium witnessed a new upsurge in interest in bilingual education. The primary rationale for these programs relies on neoliberal discourses that frame bilingualism as a commodity that can make people more competitive on the global marketplace. The chapter examines the text of two initiatives in order to reveal the shift from nationalist framings that position bilingual education as a threat to the production of national subjects toward neoliberal framings that position bilingual education as part of a broader project of producing neoliberal subjects to fit the political and economic needs of global capitalism. The chapter ends with an exploration of alternative framings of bilingual education that resist both nationalist and neoliberal framings by positioning bilingual education as part of broader political and economic struggles of minoritized communities.
