Languages and Literacies in Translocation

Abstract

Transnational youth represent an increasing demographic in societies around the world. This circumstance has amplified the need to understand how youths' language and literacy repertoires are shaped by transnational life. In response, this article presents a case study of a Mexican adolescent girl who immigrated to the United States and continued to participate in life in Mexico. It examines shifts in her multiple language and literacy practices that she attributed to transnational life and the knowledge she acquired from transnational engagements with languages and literacies. Data include interviews of the young woman, observations of her in a variety of social contexts, and literacy artifacts that she produced. Research on transnational youths' language and literacy practices and theories of multiliteracies and border crossing facilitate analysis. Findings include that language and multiliteracy practices shift in interconnected ways in response to transnational life and engagements with multiple languages and literacies foster transnational understandings. Accordingly, attending to transnational youths' multilingual as well as multiliterate practices can deepen understandings of how people recruit multiple languages, literacies, and lifeworlds for meaning making. Implications of this work are offered concerning the features of a transnational curriculum that can both draw from and build up the language and literacy reservoirs of transnational youth.

Attending to Pleasure and Purpose in Multiliteracies Instructional Practices: Insights From Transnational Youths

“…The NLG's (1996) theory of a pedagogy of multiliteracies has greatly assisted the adolescent literacy agenda of repositioning young people, especially culturally and linguistically minoritized youths, from a deficit perspective to a view of them as full and purposeful users of literacy (Alvermann & Hinchman, 2011;Christenbury, Bomer, & Smagorinsky, 2009;Hull & Schultz, 2001). With growing transnational populations in the United States and other countries, multiliteracies scholars have also applied the NLG's framework to the cultural, linguistic, and literacy practices of transnational youths (Lam & Warriner, 2012;Skerrett, 2012Skerrett, , 2015Skerrett & Bomer, 2013). I have found, through my research, that bordercrossing experiences of all kinds (e.g., physical, virtual, psychosocial) promote transnational youths' senses of multiple belongingness to different national and cultural communities (Skerrett, 2012(Skerrett, , 2015.…”

“…With growing transnational populations in the United States and other countries, multiliteracies scholars have also applied the NLG's framework to the cultural, linguistic, and literacy practices of transnational youths (Lam & Warriner, 2012;Skerrett, 2012Skerrett, , 2015Skerrett & Bomer, 2013). I have found, through my research, that bordercrossing experiences of all kinds (e.g., physical, virtual, psychosocial) promote transnational youths' senses of multiple belongingness to different national and cultural communities (Skerrett, 2012(Skerrett, , 2015. Border-crossing experiences also assist transnational youths in generating critical global perspectives (Skerrett, 2012(Skerrett, , 2015.…”

“…I have found, through my research, that bordercrossing experiences of all kinds (e.g., physical, virtual, psychosocial) promote transnational youths' senses of multiple belongingness to different national and cultural communities (Skerrett, 2012(Skerrett, , 2015. Border-crossing experiences also assist transnational youths in generating critical global perspectives (Skerrett, 2012(Skerrett, , 2015.…”

Bridging In‐School and Out‐of‐School Literacies

“…Similarly, second-language (L2) literacy scholars have explored the multiliteracies experiences of adolescent ELs. Some scholars focused on how adolescents' multiliteracies were shaped by their transnational life (Lam, 2009;Skerrett, 2012;Yi, 2009). Other scholars examined multimodal texts through digital storytelling (Angay-Crowder, Choi, & Yi, 2013), graphic stories (Danzak, 2011), claymations (Hepple, Sockhill, Tan, & Alford, 2014), and podcasts (Wilson, Chavez, & Anders, 2012).…”

Problematizing deficit representations of in‐service teachers

“…Likewise, in her case study of a transnational Mexican adolescent living in the United States, Skerrett (2012) examined how transnational in-betweeness shaped an adolescent's language and literacy repertoires-a positionality that could potentially inform transnational curricula drawing and building from what youth already do in their interactions with the wor(l)d.…”