Recent scholarship reveals how English can be disproportionately privileged in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programming (Cervantes‐Soon et al., 2017; Valdés, 1997). Through a program designed to serve Brazilian (im)migrant populations, this study expands the scope of DLBE research. This study took place in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, which has just emerged from a 15‐year period of English‐only legislation. It explores language status in a context of Portuguese Brazilian (im)migrant experience that has been largely unexplored in the TESOL literature. The researchers argue that there are three main dynamics of equity and language practices that need examination. While dual language teachers highly valued instruction in Portuguese, not all community stakeholders viewed Portuguese as a valuable language, accentuating inequalities in the experiences of children in the classroom. Brazilian immigrant children actively positioned themselves as experts during Portuguese instruction, however, often, they did not enjoy the attention and support that their English‐dominant peers experienced. Finally, Brazilian immigrant students' participation in the Portuguese‐led portions of the day was not conducive to further development of their advanced Portuguese knowledge. Through the combination of these dynamics, Brazilian immigrant children elevated the status of the language in their formal instructional environment, but were not themselves afforded a similarly high status.

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Concurrent with the rise in U.S. neo‐nationalism is the growing influx of im/migrant children in the nation's schools. This article explores how a group of eight K‐3 Brazilian bilingual teachers in a Portuguese‐English Two‐Way Immersion (TWI) program in the United States interact with neo‐nationalist discourses pertaining to the theme of immigration. Drawing on recent theorizing about the intersections of neo‐nationalism, language, and bilingual education, this multi‐year ethnographic study leverages multiple formal interviews and informal conversations with TWI educators to understand their perspectives and classroom practices. We found that most of the interviewed teachers were keenly aware that their im/migrant students regularly shared complex narratives of immigration in their classrooms, at times during whole‐group instruction. However, these educators consistently evaded opportunities to engage in conversations about immigration with their students due to a range of perceived obstacles. The teachers also expressed willingness to eventually include a narrow range of “positive” or “neutral” images of immigration in their curriculum and instruction, which further decoupled issues of immigration from U.S. neo‐nationalism. Findings bear implications for language education researchers and practitioners since they indicate how neo‐nationalist discourses may shape elementary‐school educators' orientations and daily moves within bilingual classrooms designed to better serve racialized bilingual students.

This case study examines the co-authoring of unboxing videos by one six-year-old, second-generation Brazilian immigrant child and her mother in the United States. These videos were created in response to boxes filled with gifts they received yearly from relatives in Brazil. To understand this mother-daughter dyad and their video production, this study draws on metaphors of mobility, the logics of reciprocity and obligation in gift-exchange, and the concept of care constellations. The analysis of interviews, field notes, and unboxing videos identified specific routes, rhythms, and frictions that fueled this family digital literacy practice. It also suggested that participants were implicated in a pattern of caregiving through a transnational cycle of gift-exchange. These findings disrupt typical framings of the unboxing genre as a manifestation of U.S. capitalist ethos and foreground the material and discursive production of care in a transnational family’s digital literacy practice.