“I’m on the Bridge!” Understanding Transnational Children’s Identities Through a Multimethod Model for Teaching and Research

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Transnational Children’s Identities in Literature and Research

Abstract

This is an ethnographic teacher research and arts-based curriculum study of how young transnational Korean children living in the United States negotiate and struggle with multiple ideological positions and discourses while developing their hybrid ethnic/cultural identities. There is a gap in the literature on childhood immigration and identity in the study of such transnationals, a blended category increasingly common in the contemporary era of global transmigration. This study focuses on how young transnational children’s talk and expressive arts reveal their ongoing efforts to negotiate identities that go beyond the hyphenated identity label as “Korean-American.” I study them using the Critical Ethnic Narrative Through Arts (CENTA) approach, which I created as an innovative and multi-method model for teaching and research.

Authors

• Keon-Ryeong Park, University of Georgia - Athens

• Martha A. Allexsaht-Snider, University of Georgia