Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces: Language, Learning, and Love

167 Pages·2015·2.188 MB·

by  Marjorie Faulstich Orellana

IMMIGRANT CHILDREN IN
TRANSCULTURAL SPACES
Grounded in both theory and practice, with implications for both, this book is
about children’s perspectives on the borders that society erects, and their actual,
symbolic, ideational, and metaphorical movement across those borders. Based on
extensive ethnographic data gathered with children of immigrants (mostly from
Mexico, Central America, and the Philippines) as they interact with undergraduate
students from diverse linguistic, cultural, and racial/ethnic backgrounds in the
context of an urban play-based after-school program, it examines how children
navigate a multilingual space that involves playing with language and literacy in
a variety of forms.
Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces speaks to critical social issues and
debates about education, immigration, multilingualism, and multiculturalism in
an historical moment in which borders are being built up, torn down, debated,
and recreated, in both real and symbolic terms; raises questions about the values
that drive educational practice and decision-making; and suggests alternatives to
the status quo. At its heart, it is a book about how love can serve as a driving
force to connect people with each other across all kinds of borders, and to motivate
children to engage powerfully with learning and life.
Marjorie Faulstich Orellanais Professor of Education, Urban Schooling Division,
University of California Los Angeles, USA.
Expanding Literacies in Education
Cynthia Lewis and Jennifer Rowsell, series editors
Comber (cid:129) Literacy, Place, and Pedagogies of Possibility
Orellana (cid:129) Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces: Language, Learning,
and Love
Enriquez, Johnson, Kontovourki, and Mallozzi, eds (cid:129) Literacies,
Learning, and the Body: Putting Theory and Research into Pedagogical Practice
Visit www.routledge.com/education for additional information on
titles in Expanding Literacies in Education
IMMIGRANT
CHILDREN IN
TRANSCULTURAL
SPACES
Language, Learning,
and Love
Marjorie Faulstich Orellana
First published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of Marjorie Faulstich Orellana to be identified as author
of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich.
Immigrant children in transcultural spaces: language learning and
love/by Marjorie Faulstich Orellana.
pages cm. –(Expanding literacies in education)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Immigrant children–Education–California–Los Angeles.
2. Immigrant children–California–Los Angeles–Language.
3. Immigrant children–California–Los Angeles–Ethnic identity.
4. After-school programs–California–Los Angeles. I. Title.
LC3733.L7O74 2016
371.826′9120979494–dc23 2015011685
ISBN: 978-1-138-80494-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-80495-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75261-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
For all young people with whom I have worked and
played over the last thirty years. Special thanks to B-Club
participants, for reminding me how to have fun. For my
own children, Elisa Noemí and Andrés Gabriel, two of
my greatest teachers. And for the children of the future.
“Es bello amar al mundo con los ojos de los que
no han nacido todavía.”
“It is beautiful to love the world with the eyes
of those not yet born.”
Otto René Castillo
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
1 Introduction and Overview 1
2 Blurring Borders at B-Club: Research, Theory, Practice 15
3 Seeing with Our Hearts 31
4 A Pedagogy of Heart and Mind 41
5 Shining Lights in a Globalized World 55
6 Faces of Globalization: The Community Context 63
7 Learning and Love 77
8 Transculturation 87
9 Translanguaging 103
10 Transliteracies 117
11 Policy, Practice, and Possibilities: Imagining Teaching
and Learning for a New World 129
Appendix: B-Club Kids’ Survey Responses 2012–13 137
Index 145
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PREFACE
This book looks at children and young adults’ everyday interactions around
language, literacy, and culture in the transcultural space of a play-based after-school
program, which I call “B-Club.” Centered on the experiences of the children of
immigrants (mostly from Mexico, Central America, and the Philippines) as they
interacted with undergraduate students from diverse linguistic, cultural, and
racial/ethnic backgrounds at a school in the heart of Los Angeles, I examine how
participants navigated a multilingual space that involved engaging in and playing
with language and literacy in a variety of forms. This includes the transcultural
and translanguaging practices we collectively engaged in at the club and that are
part of everyday life in many new immigrant communities. The book examines
tensions between borders that society works hard to erect, and symbolic, ideational,
metaphorical, and actual movement across those borders. It highlights playful and
gentle ways of crossing borders, and what is learned in such crossings when the
movement is driven by love: love for people, ideas, and the tools we use for
connecting (language and literacy).
The analyses presented here are based on extensive ethnographic research,
documented in fieldnotes based on participant observation by myself and many
undergraduates in B-Club, as well as audio and videotapes of interactions in diverse
activity settings, surveys of the youth, and their writing, drawings, and other arti -
facts. I draw as well on my history of experiences over a period of 30 years in this
community. The book is informed by my perspectives as both a researcher and a
teacher, and by efforts to see from the perspective of the children and young people
who participated in the after-school program, attending closely to their words.
Centralizing the perspectives and voices of children and young adults—in
particular the children of immigrants from diverse national and regional origins—
I speak to contemporary issues and debates about education, immigration,