Mobilizing Multilingual Resources Across Borders Among Korean Immigrant Children and Families

• In Event: Cyclical Migration and Education: Transborder Students and Families Between Korea, Mexico, Senegal, and the United States

Abstract

Objectives: This paper draws from a multi-sited ethnographic study documenting immigrant children and their families who are connected to the US and Korea. I focus on how they engage in brokering and connecting languages and cultures intergenerationally and transnationally. By illustrating these practices and the ways the children and their families mobilize their multilingual resources, I challenge the deficit-oriented view toward their language and literacy practices and position them as transnational and multilingual experts.

Perspectives: This work is informed by a transnational lens of language and literacy (Skerrett, 2015; Ghiso, 2016), where I focus on how these children and families engage in language and literacy practices as they move, shift, and stay in place, and build their meaningful connections across national borders. I draw on several concepts that highlight the flexible, dynamic ways in which immigrant children engage in language and literacy, including translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014) and language brokering (Tse, 1996). These concepts, rooted in an asset-based orientation, help us take a holistic view of language in which all languages and cultures are seen as valuable assets.

Methods: Multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995), a method of following, observing, and listening to migrants across borders, is employed in this research. By traveling with immigrant children and their families across countries for a year, I sought to shift attention from one bounded space to multiple locales and see the comprehensive picture of their transnational experiences.

Data sources: I collected the following data from various contexts across Korea and the US: participant observations, fieldnotes, parent questionnaires and interviews, child-centered interview activities, artifacts, and documents. Participants included three multilingual children born in the US who visited their parental homelands during the year of data collection.

Results: Immigrant children in this study actively mobilized their multilingual resources as they moved across borders and engaged in transnational schooling and visits. While they found school in the US to be a space where their transnational and multilingual experiences are disregarded and silenced, they were positioned as "teachers" and "multilinguals" by their extended families and peers in their parental homelands. During the transnational visits, the children carefully observed their family members' language use, accommodated the language needs of others, and drew on comparative perspectives in interacting with others. These experiences enabled the children to build intergenerational connections and come to see their linguistic repertoires as assets. The efforts that their parents made in creating both formal and informal learning opportunities for their children to learn about their heritage and family history further developed the children's understanding of their parental homeland and transnational ties.

Significance: As the 2022 AERA conference call highlights, cultivating an equitable educational system where the "the full range of knowledge, skills, and mindsets" of all students are recognized and respected is important. This study shows that in order to move toward the goal, we need to avoid limiting immigrant children's experiences within the boundaries of nation-states and pay particular heed to the mobility of their linguistic repertoires across boundaries.

Author

• Jungmin Kwon, Michigan State University