On the Borderlands across Languaculture and Identities: A Critical Autoethnography of a Transnational Filipina’s Journey

• In Event: Bordering Difference and Reimagining Inclusive Futures: Global Struggles Toward Intersectional Justice

Abstract

Objectives
In response to honor histories, this critical autoethnography traces my transnational journey as a multilingual immigrant Filipina student to a transnational scholar across different societies, educational systems, languages, and cultural identities. Using poetic inquiry as a primary data source, I explore how colonial legacies, structural inequalities, and schooling practices influence my identities and quest for belonging. Focusing on my past stories can inspire transformative futures guided by critical reflexivity, cultural responsiveness, and epistemologies from the Global South in teacher learning.

Theoretical Framework
I embraced the concepts of languaculture (Agar, 1994), emphasizing the inseparability of language and culture. The autoethnographic approach places my lived experiences as a transnational Filipina scholar in conversation with global systems of oppression and resistance. Re-storying my transnational journey through deep introspection and reflection, by contrasting the past with the present, can inspire a more socially just future for immigrant multilingual students. The Global South framework (Magalhães Teixeira, 2024) questions how colonial and systemic forces have “disabled” communities and erased alternative forms of knowledge. Rooted in the Global South, I seek to highlight non-Western perspectives on intersectionality, language, and belonging.

Methods
This paper employed a complementary method, combining critical autoethnography (e.g., Holman Jones, 2016) and microethnographic discourse analysis (Author, 2020), to analyze multiple sources of data for triangulation.

Data Sources
I employed poetic inquiry, utilizing a personally authored poem as both an anchor dataset and analytical lens. These poems were drawn from my positionality statements and reflections on my geographic and emotional journey across three countries: the Philippines, the United States, and Hong Kong. I also used my positionality statements to address intersectionality, including my roles as a multilingual educator, immigrant, mother of third-culture children, and spouse in a biracial and bilingual family. I employed microethnographic discourse analysis, focusing on language features that signal power, exclusion, and resistance.

Results
The analyses show that deficit-based language labels (e.g., “ELL”) devalue multilingual assets and reinforce colonial practices in U.S. schools. Discourse patterns in the poems reflect my struggle to maintain my identities, despite being compelled to assimilate, leading to a redefinition of educator identity grounded in justice, relational care, and cultural hybridity. My (re)storying of selected vignettes and writing of my positionality statements highlight how transnational experiences in Hong Kong, Southern California, and the Midwest U.S. shape my professional and pedagogical commitments. These insights aim to support the development of teacher education that focuses on asset-based approaches, emotionality, and the integration of global and local knowledge.

Scholarly significance
By choosing to use critical autoethnography, I incorporate values-based, poetic, decolonial, and reflexive methodologies. It provides a roadmap for leveraging personal and collective migration histories to foster inclusive, pluriversal futures in teacher education. Additionally, I seek to highlight the potential of integrating Global South perspectives, critical reflexivity, and discourse analysis to develop more just and responsive educational systems. In doing so, it addresses the call to create a new vision of education that honors histories, healing, and hope.

Author

• Monaliza M Chian, University of Northern Iowa