Rethinking the Digital Divide: Smartphones as Translanguaging Tools Among Middle Eastern Refugees in New Jersey

Abstract

The article examines smartphone use among Middle Eastern refugee families recently resettled in northern New Jersey as an opportunity to reconceptualize the language barrier during the early stages of refugee resettlement. Smartphone access and use among families reveal the interlinguistic conditions of life in resettlement, and ethnographic research demonstrates the way a tech‐savvy population, conventionally considered “digitally unprepared,” creatively approaches communication. We explore smartphones as tools of translanguaging: a strategy in which speakers “mesh” and weave linguistic repertoires together. Qualitative research upends the idea of a language barrier as final or surmountable only through formal language instruction. Instead, smartphones offer multimodal communicative strategies with pragmatic and affective dimensions. We argue that refugees’ own culturally specific interactional norms and priorities can be revalorized within host societies as foundations for linguistic and social integration.

Mobile communication and refugees: An analytical review of academic literature

“…Arguing against normative understandings of refugees as victims of digital exclusion or “digitally unprepared,” McCaffrey and Taha (2019) with their study based on Middle Eastern newcomers in New Jersey, USA, emphasize the high level of mobile phone penetration in refugees' households and that host societies and institutions lack adaptability to these tech‐savvy users. Typically, services aimed at refugees do not profoundly engage with their literacies and needs or involve them in the design and implementation processes (Kaufmann, 2018; Leung, 2018).…”

The ‘connected migrant’: A scoping review

“…They prefer to use their own ‘networks of survival’ (Harney, 2013: 547) to crowdsource the information required to navigate the unfamiliar terrain of their new country. Some authors have been critical of service providers’ lack of understanding and engagement with refugees in relation to the design and implementation of digital services (Kaufmann, 2018; McCaffrey and Taha, 2019).…”

Supporting Adult Syrian Learners With Refugee Experience in Canada: Research-Based Insights for Practitioners

“…Empirical studies (see Bigelow et al., 2017; Mccaffrey & Taha, 2019) have shown that embracing multimodal pedagogies may better help learners deal with real-life situations stemming from their migration experience or their current integration challenges. The pedagogical approach originated by the New London Group (1996) stresses the idea of a pedagogy of multiliteracies, which includes “modes of representation much broader than language alone” (64); it also promotes providing “real opportunities for students to express their individual cultural experiences built on their linguistic resources” (69) and constructing meanings through diverse modes of representation (e.g., previously learned languages, images, sounds, gestures, and tools; Laadem & Mallahi, 2019; Reyes-Torres & Rage, 2020).…”