Asian Immigrant Youth Building Solidarity and Resisting Hegemonic "Standard English" Through Translanguaging

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Pedagogies of Solidarity, Resistance, and Action With Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

Abstract

This paper is based on a multi-case study of Asian immigrant youth activists, who combated school violence in a large Northeastern city through community organizing, communications work, and legal strategies. This qualitative research study, employing ethnographic methods (e.g., interviews, focus groups, and archival research), adheres to the principles of “humanizing research” (Paris & Winn, 2014). The focus in this paper is on the translanguaging practices that the young people employed to build their struggle and community work. Drawing on the work of Garcia, Li Wei, and Prado, Nikita, and others, I pose the youth’s translanguaging practices in terms of building solidarity and resisting dominant language hegemony. The significance of this work lies in the intersection of language, power, and identities.

Author

• Mary Yee, University of Pennsylvania