Listening Otherwise to Immigrant Young Children: A posthumanism Reorientation

• In Event: Amplifying Children's Voices for Transformative Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This study reorients listening to immigrant children by attending to immigrant young children by attending to their sonic expressions such as refusals to speak, gestures, vocalizations, and affective sounds not as deficiencies but as politically charged modes of meaning making. Drawing on posthumanist and postfoundational theories of listening (Jackson & Mazzei, Chadwick), I conceptualize emergent listening as a relational and ethical practice that resists extraction and representation. In challenging normative expectations of voice and participation in research, this paper reimagines early childhood literacy education as a space where children’s embodied soundings are honored as epistemic and agentic. By reframing listening as attunement to what resists capture, this study contributes to inclusive, justice-oriented approach to research with immigrant children.

Author

• Naewook Kwon, University of Georgia