Conscripted into thinking of scarce, selective, privatized, and precarious seats in dual language bilingual education: the choice discourse of mercenary exclusivity

ABSTRACT This multimodal critical discourse analysis is part of a larger equity audit of how the websites of 11 of the largest U.S. school districts discussed access to dual language bilingual education (DLBE). Prior research has frequently documented how administrators utilize DLBE programs to compete with one another for the supposedly necessary resource of privileged students, while deprioritizing language-minoritized students in ways that resemble gentrification. This study assessed how website content of these large (and thus influential) districts reflected or contradicted this pattern. Findings showed DLBE programming was linked frequently and strongly to themes of the school choice movement and exclusive tracking or within-school segregation. The themes were (1) a normalized scarcity of seats, (2) the privatized responsibility for transportation to those seats, (3) a discourse of having to earn one’s seat, and (4) the potential to lose one’s seat. We theorize this framing of DLBE policy as based in what we term mercenary exclusivity, which inequitably benefits privileged populations by inviting stakeholders to see their participation through a competitive, warlike lens. We offer equity recommendations for scholars and policymakers and call for the adoption of countervailing peaceful discourse and praxis for the benefit of language-minoritized and racialized students within DLBE.