Remembering Michoacán: Transnational Media Flows and Visual Representations of the Homeland in New Migration Contexts

• In Event: 26.080 - Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: 26.080-13 - Asset-Based Approaches to Students' Writing and Literate Activity

Abstract

In this practitioner-inquiry study, we explore the digital media composition practices of immigrant youth and adults in a non-traditional migration context (a small city in the U.S. South), where a great number of Mexican immigrants come from the historically sending state of Michoacán. Our inquiry centers on the ways immigrant adults and youth browse, select, and repurpose visual media about the Michoacán/Tierra Caliente region, in order to compose digital texts about their home country. Findings describe the intergenerational differences in the representation of landmarks, experiences, and conflict in the Michoacán region, and the complexities of encountering and discussing graphic depictions of violence in the classroom, in response to transnational news coverage about armed conflict and cartel wars.

Authors

• Silvia C Nogueron-Liu, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Jamie Jordan, University of Georgia