Overview
- Analyses the construction of national identity in migrants through the interdiscursive links they make between discourses about nationhood, nationalism and religion
- Draws on a four-year ethnographic study of a Mirpuri family’s migrations to show that literacy practices are part of broader language practices used to build ties with those around them
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About this book
This book explores the language and literacy practices which sustain transnational migration across generations and across traditional boundaries such as school and home. The author has conducted extensive fieldwork in Pakistan and the UK to study migration between the two countries. Individuals’ access to the dominant literacies of migration are contrasted with the vernacular practices which migrants take up at home as part of their digital literacies. The study explores the blurring of boundaries between home and school as well as the blurring of boundaries between language varieties. Tracing access to literacy in this way also shines a light on the literacy mediators migrants turn to for help with English language learning and when trying to access the bureaucratic literacies of migration. The study ends by exploring how migrants use all of their language resources, not just English, to fit into their new homes once they have arrived in the UK.
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Keywords
Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“The volume is a timely contribution on a major topic of growing significance. With a particular focus on the complex issues of multilingual reality in the context of migration and power inequality, it provides rich and fascinating insights into how migrants mobilise their available multilingual resources to stay connected with their support networks, to deal with institutional gate-keeping requirements and to get on with their lives. These practices represent migrants’ grassroot responses to linguistic hierarchies imbued by power differentials in the society at large and can only be understood from a close examination of migrants’ trajectories, histories and aspirations.” (Zhu Hua, Professor, Birkbeck, University of London, UK)
“Tony Capstick's Multilingual literacies, identities and ideologies is an innovative fusion of literacy studies and migration research. It highlights the role of literacy in the migration process in an ethnographic study that is rich in insights intoboth literacy practices, both in Pakistan and the U.K., particularly literacy mediation and cultural brokering as well as into migration processes. It is written in a lucid and readable style.” (Mike Baynham, Professor, Leeds University, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Tony Capstick is Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading, UK where he teaches on the MA and BA programmes including the module Literacy: Social, Educational and Cognitive Perspectives. Prior to this he was the BA Linguistics and Language Programme Director at Birkbeck, University of London. As a teacher educator, Tony has worked in Pakistan, Indonesia and Cambodia. He has also carried out work exploring the language in education needs of Syrian refugees in the Middle East.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Multilingual Literacies, Identities and Ideologies
Book Subtitle: Exploring Chain Migration from Pakistan to the UK
Authors: Tony Capstick
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56978-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-56977-6Published: 04 November 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-56978-3Published: 25 October 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 255
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 13 illustrations in colour
Topics: Sociolinguistics, Migration, English, Language Teaching, Discourse Analysis, Literacy