Centering Asian Immigrant Children and Families’ Transnational Funds of Knowledge in Language and Literacy Research

• In Event: Working in, With, and for Our Communities: Humanizing Method(ologie)s in Transnational Literacies Research

Abstract

While there is a growing body of research on immigrant families in the field of language and literacy education, little effort has been made in understanding how to humanize the ways in which this research is conducted, particularly with children and families who transcend linguistic, cultural, and geographic boundaries. Additionally, issues related to methodological choices researchers make and the ethical dilemmas they face while making such decisions are either omitted or underexplored. This study reports the reflexive accounts of the three Asian transnational researchers who conducted qualitative studies with Asian immigrant children and families living in the US to understand their language and literacy practices.


In this paper, we draw on AsianCrit (Iftikar & Museus, 2018) and transnational funds of knowledge (Author et al., 2019; Basch et al., 1994) in recognizing Asian immigrant children and families’ transnational epistemologies and advocating a humanizing approach in conducting qualitative studies. We argue that their knowledge can serve to challenge the dominant, white and Eurocentric narratives that depict Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners, yellow perils, and model/deviant minorities (Iftikar & Museus, 2018), foster critical consciousness (Freire, 1970; Palmer et al., 2019) among community members, and contribute to challenging epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007). Through collaboratively engaging in caring reflexivity (Rallis & Rosman, 2010), we jointly re-examine the methodological and ethical issues that we encountered during our qualitative research and engagement with Asian immigrant children and families.


In this paper, we highlight four themes: 1) Locating and engaging immigrant families in and across different transnational spaces; 2) Trust and relationship building as key elements of the research process; 3) Taking a learner stance in documenting the complexity of transnational lived experiences; and 4) Co-creating transformative and mutual learning opportunities. We underscore the challenges and opportunities in locating, reaching out to, and recruiting Asian transnational families through entering and engaging in various transnational social spaces including transnational websites (Castro & González, 2014) and transnational local (Ghiso, 2016). We also discuss our subjectivity and positionality, as Asian transnational researchers, in relation to building trust and relationship with Asian transnational children and families. Further, we highlight the stories and encounters that made us recognize the importance of taking a learner stance in documenting the complexity of participants’ transnational lived experiences and co-constructing learning opportunities in centering participants’ voices in language and literacy research.


As Rallis and Rossman (2003) note, research is challenging and messy; researchers learn through the process and grow through reflecting and inquiring. Our study contributes to the important discussion taking place in the field of education around humanizing the research that we undertake alongside Asian immigrant children and families, not on them, and co-constructing our knowledge outside white gaze rather than transmitting what we know (Campano et al., 2015; Yoon & Templeton, 2019). Additionally, this paper underscores the importance of engaging in caring reflexivity and thinking beyond the traditional and limited view of ethics for transformative learning opportunities and dialogic engagements among all those involved in research.

Authors

• Laxmi Prasad Ojha, Michigan State University

• Jungmin Kwon, Michigan State University

• Wenyang Sun, University of Utah