Lessons From Immigrant Child Language Brokers for Schools

• In Event: 61.017 - Post-Truth? The Power of Repertoires of Everyday Practice of Youth From Nondominant Communities

Abstract

This paper examines how the children of immigrants use their knowledge of two (or more) languages to speak, read, write, listen on behalf of others. Our main analytic goal is to highlight the interpretive, discursive, linguistic, and literacy resources that immigrant child language brokers draw upon and leverage as they perform essential work, not only for their families and communities, but for society at large (García-Sánchez 2018; Orellana 2009). This goal allows us, on the one hand, to challenge enduring deficit discourses about immigrant children as drains on educational and social resources (Orellana 2009) and as linguistically lacking, even as languageless (Rosa 2016); discourses that current administration policies (and the discussion they have engendered) has put once more into sharp relief. On the other hand, it also allows us to interrogate academic literacy in schools as situated, contested, and ideological, by showing how the literacy practices that immigrant students deploy when language brokering are often more complex than school literacies, and by showing that these children are already doing many of the interpretive and literacy moves that are called for in schools; yet literacy is one of the things immigrant students are perceived as being deficient in by educators.

Our analysis brings together the New Sociology/Anthropology of Childhoods literature (Bluebond-Langner & Korbin 2007; James & Prout 1997) that suggests a more agentive view of children as social actors, with educational scholarship that highlights the sociocultural aspects of educational processes, namely the funds of knowledge (Moll et al 1992), cultural modeling (Lee 2007), and culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris & Alim 2017) traditions. These scholarly traditions help us explore the tensions inherent in what happens outside of school (in language brokering interactions) and what happens in classrooms (García-Sánchez and Orellana, Forthcoming).

The paper builds on our previous ethnographies documenting immigrant child language brokering as an everyday language practice, among other such translingual practices, in different social/familial settings and across several transnational communities (García-Sánchez 2014; Orellana 2009). Using ethnographic methods in discourse analysis and video-analysis, we analyze the communicative practices, literacy strategies/modes of reasoning, transcultural skills/cross-cultural competencies (Guan et al, 2014) and forms of participation that immigrant child language brokers display in these interactions.

Our findings show that in language brokering, immigrant children engage in multiple communicative practices, display sophisticated deployment of bilingual linguistic tools, and exhibit keen reasoning and metalinguistic awareness involving strategic decision-making in translation. Our findings also suggest that while there is a degree of overlap between the communicative practices and literacy strategies displayed in these interactions and what children are expected to do in schools, there are also significant differences. Given these similarities and differences, this paper discusses how schools can tackle literacy in ways that center and build on immigrant children’s strengths rather than their deficits. This is significant because, as models in culturally responsive teaching and culturally sustaining pedagogy have proliferated in our field (see citations above), there is little guidance for educators on how to honor the knowledge and experience of immigrant children in school.

Authors

• Inmaculada Maria Garcia Sanchez, Temple University

• Marjorie E. Laine (Faulstich Orellana), University of California - Los Angeles