Transnational Identity and Migrant Language Learners: The Promise of Digital Storytelling (original) (raw)

As technology enables migrant learners to maintain multi-stranded connections with their countries of origin and settlement, they engage with the world with transnational identities that negotiate a complex network of values, ideologies, and cultures. How teachers and peers recognize that migrants come with specific histories, knowledges and competencies shapes migrant learners' investment in learning. By building on their transnational literacies, the language learning classroom can be a Third Space which acknowledges and affirms their fluid, multidimensional identities. Digital storytelling, by allowing them to share their personal histories, their stories of migration and assimilation, and the material conditions of their lived experiences, holds great potential for enabling migrant learners to be fully invested in their transnational identities and to claim their right to speak. rom the moment migrant families or individuals cross borders through varying immigration categories-as investors, professionals, refugees or temporary workers-the trajectories of their assimilation will vary. Driven by diverse goals, serving different needs of nation-states, and equipped with varying levels of economic, cultural and social capital, immigrants, sojourners, and migrant workers occupy different social locations in their adopted or host country. With the rapid advancement of technology, the structures of migrant socialization have changed, as have patterns of migrant movement and employment. Through more affordable travel costs, mobile communication devices, social media, and online connectivity, migrant learners are increasingly able to navigate more seamlessly between their countries of origin and of settlement, and pursue their lives with a greater sense of transnationalism