The first critical ethnography of bilingual education in Japan. Based on fieldwork at five different schools, this examines the role of schools in the unequal distribution of bilingualism as cultural capital. It argues that schooling gives children unequal access to bilingualism thus socializing them into different futures.

YASUKO KANNO is Associate Professor of TESOL in the College of Education at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. Her research interests include bilingual education, multilingual and multicultural identities, and sociocultural experiences of language minority students. She is author of Negotiating Bilingual and Bicultural Identities: Japanese Returnees Betwixt Two Worlds. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education and the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.