“As if I Had a Part‐Time Job… to Teach the White Kids”: Racialized Labor and the Extractivism of Linguistic Capital in World Language Education

Abstract

Recent studies exploring mixed heritage language (HL) and second language (L2) classes have documented how these classes tend to prioritize the needs of L2 students while positioning HL students’ linguistic knowledge as a resource for their L2 peers. While pedagogical solutions have been suggested to address these tensions, less attention has been paid to the broader structural forces shaping these dynamics. This article engages with theorizations of racial capitalism and neoliberalism in education to shift the focus toward how these inequities are produced and sustained. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with four HL students and three L2 students contextualized through classroom observations in a university‐level Arabic world language course, I argue that this course, and world language education more broadly, function as a site for the extractivism of linguistic capital from racialized HL students. These extractivist logics are enacted through questioning racialized students’ right to learn their home language and assigning them roles of racialized labor in the classroom. These dynamics contribute to what I term a raciolinguistic ceiling effect , a condition in which systemic processes and instructional practices prevent racialized students from advancing their language proficiency beyond their White L2 peers. The findings offer insights to reframe how the relational tensions and inequitable learning dynamics in mixed HL–L2 classes are understood, theorized, and addressed.