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In current educational contexts, there appears to be an increased focus on the work of Foucault (Leask, 2012), with much of the discussion extrapolating Foucault’s notion of institutional power (Foucault, 1977; 1991) and its capacity to regulate human behaviour and diminish the capacity of individuals for agency or personal intent. Tait (2013), comments on Foucault’s work in education indicating,

Rather than concentrating on issues of power and inequality, this paradigm focusses instead on the techniques and practices by which we are shaped as particular types of individual, and by which we have our conduct regulated (p.4).

[20] While Foucault’s work is often considered to be open to interpretation (Ball, 2012), his contribution to understanding the mechanisms of modern power play in educational contexts is important however, as much of what constitutes institutional power has the capacity to challenge, if not exclude, the possibility of authentic educational opportunities for many students with refugee and asylum seekers backgrounds. It also provides one avenue by which the structures, regulations and management systems that have become so integral to educational institutions as to become invisible and invincible to those who are the products and participants of them, can be critically examined and evaluated in relation to their stated purposes, to their officially articulated roles in societies and to their function as arbitrators of epistemologies and intelligences. In many ways, it appears that this endeavour reflects much of the entire purpose of Foucault’s work.

In order to do this effectively, it is important to determine which interpretations of some of Foucault’s key terms are most suitable for this purpose. For example, his use of discourse is not limited to the linguistic interchange that occurs. Rather, Foucault uses the term ‘discourse’ in a way that takes into consideration the context, the content and the power relations of any interaction. Weedon (1997), interprets Foucault’s use of discourse as

Ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledge’s and relations between them. Discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the 'nature' of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern (p. 108).

This definition indicates the foundational understanding from which Foucault utilized his methodologies of archaeology and genealogy to investigate the means by which each historical period developed and legitimized select knowledge systems and beliefs as socially acceptable ‘truths’ whilst simultaneously ignoring or rejecting other ‘epistemes’ as lacking in value or acceptability. Weedon (1997), also provides a definition of power as conceptualized by Foucault, indicating that power is

…a dynamic of control and lack of control between discourses and the subjects, constituted by discourses, who are their agents. Power is exercised within discourses in the ways in which they constitute and govern individual subjects (p. 113).

Foucault dispels that idea that power is confined to specific persons, authoritative bodies or episodes in time (Foucault, 1991). He finds that power pervades as part of the fabric of society, part of the accepted ‘truth’ of any society, and that it is under constant change and renewal. He states, ‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’ (Foucault 1998: 63), it defines society and those who part of it. [21] He identifies different types of power, indicating that each can be asserted in multiple ways in society. He also recognises that different societies have different ‘truths’ which provide a mantle of cohesion and common understanding for those who belong to them. The two major types of power in that he proposes are dominant in western societies are juridical power and normative power. He theorizes that modern societies are largely disciplinary societies in which power is not generally exercised through force, as it was historically. Juridical power is defined by Foucault as power that is used by governments, institutions of law and generally political power. He states

Power was exercised mainly as a means of deduction, a subtraction mechanism, a right to appropriate a portion of the wealth, a tax of products, goods and services, labor and blood levied on subjects……a right to seizure….it culminated in the privilege to seize hold of life in order to suppress it. (Foucault, 1998 p.136)

This is a type of power that prevents or prohibits certain behaviours in a society and imposes penalties or punishments for transgressions. Something is forfeited by the offender if this power is rebelled against, or the rules made by political institutions and governments are broken. This type of power is a ‘top down’ type of power which is applied to all individuals in society, although that results in some members of society having more power than others. Individuals lose power; in terms of something tangible and measurable; when juridical power is operationalized against them for transgressions.

Foucault describes the other aspect of power that co exists with juridical power in western societies. In a comparison of the sovereign power that historically ruled populations and had the right of life and death over the subjects of those societies (right of death), he discusses the ‘transition’ of the nature of this power to the new order (power over life). He argues,

But a power whose task is to take charge of life needs continuous regulatory and corrective mechanisms. It is no longer a matter of bringing death into play in the field of sovereignty, but of distributing the living in the domain of value and utility. Such a power has to qualify, measure, appraise, and hierarchize, rather than display itself in its murderous splendor; it does not have to draw the line that separates the enemies of the sovereign from his obedient subjects; it effects distributions around the norm. I do not mean to say that the law fades into the background or that the institutions of justice tend to disappear, but rather that the law operates more and more as a norm, and that the judicial institution is increasingly incorporated into a continuum of apparatuses (medical, administrative, and so on) whose functions are for the most part regulatory. A normalizing society is the historical outcome of a technology of power centered on life. (Foucault, 1978 p.144).

Foucault views normative power as positive power that seeks to improve and empower the lives of individuals and society as a whole. He is very clear that dwelling [22] exclusively on the deductive power of the juridical neglects the positive potential of normalizing power to be productive, to increase the capacities of individuals and entire populations. He states,

We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production’ (Foucault 1991: 194).

Normative power is not located in formal government institutions. There are no laws that can be studied. Social norms are located in unofficial institutions and are formed by opinion, much of which may be based on the knowledge that is available from scientific expertise and is judged to be the most appropriate, preferred customs and practices of the society. Transgressions against social norms do not attract juridical penalty but various forms of reactions from other members of society who deem the transgression to be against the interests of others in their society. These reactions generally comprise of negative reinforcement, whereas the adherence to societal norms elicit reactions that are considered to be positive reinforcement. This power is everywhere in society and can be exercised by all members of society who consider themselves to be within the parameters of the ‘norm’ in that they are reflecting the consensus of what is considered to be normal behaviours and attitudes in the society to which they belong. Individuals are ‘normalized’ by one of the two types of normative power; disciplinary power. This power is the means by which individuals maximize their capacities and enhance their integration in society by viewing their bodies as ‘a machine’(Foucault, 1978 p.139) which can be regulated and trained to be a productive and compliant member of society. This disciplinary power is enforced through surveillance, which is extrapolated in detail in his earlier work (Michel Foucault, 1991) where he analyses the prison system and the education system as examples of this model of panoptic surveillance. The regulatory force at work in this model is the self. Individuals know there is a possibility, but not a certainty of being observed all the time, and consequently, they regulate their own behaviours so that if, at any time, they are under surveillance, they are seen to be adhering to the internalized social norms.

The other type of normalizing power is known as biopower, which is focussed on the normalization of entire populations. Biopower aims to do this by establishing ‘norms’ using the bell curve. In order to achieve this, government and other bodies collect statistics and data pertaining to every aspect of life (and death) that is pertinent to the population. Every facet of life is placed under surveillance with the aim of establishing the ‘norm’ and identifying anything that doesn’t fit on the curve. Everything needs to fit on the various scale, measures, charts and tests so [23] that every aspect of people can be measured as a mathematical abstraction at the level of the population. This is all done to ensure the health and wellbeing of the people in the society. Resistance to biopower is more difficult than, for example, civil disobedience is to juridical power. In order to resist biopower, it needs to be disrupted from within as the normative disciplines are empowered by repetition. Butler (2001), discusses the difficulty of identifying exactly what Foucault means when he discusses resistance by critique. She concludes that it is the response to a ‘tear’ in fabric of knowledge that is presented as truth. Foucault (1987) himself suggested that critique and resistance of the ‘norms’ of biopower is about not being governed quite as much; about minor disruptions and not rejection or subversion of the entire system of power, which he concluded was not just a necessary but productive aspect of society.