Language and Education in Japan: Unequal Access to Bilingualism (Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities)

Language and Education in Japan offers the first critical ethnography of bilingual education in Japan. Based on two-year fieldwork at five different schools, the book examines the role of schools in the unequal distribution of bilingualism as cultural capital. It argues that bilingual children of different socioeconomic classes are socialized into different futures and are given unequal access to bilingualism through schooling. While bilingualism is considered desirable for children of privilege, it is deemed a luxury that immigrant and refugee children cannot afford.