The cultural and historical configuring of bilingual/bicultural parent participation. (original) (raw)
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2015
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Journal of Family Issues, 2018
The question of how migrants' language use impacts their ethnic identity has received considerable attention in the literature. There is, however, little understanding of how this relationship manifests or is negotiated in interethnic families. This paper presents an in-depth exploration of Spanish mothers' experiences of Spanish-and English-language interactions with their English-born children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Spanish mothers living in Britain in interethnic partnerships and transcripts were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Analysis reveals a process of identity change where participants' shifting ethnic identifications with host and heritage culture is intimately related to their language use with their children. Pivotal to this process is the participants' need to maintain their 'Spanish mother' identity, a desire that can only be fulfilled by transferring their heritage language to their children and speaking it with them. Findings reveal how this dynamic impacts perception of family roles, relationship quality and psychological well-being.
Perezhivanija discovered through narrative analysis: Emotive and motivational foci in parent’s diverse heritage language and cultural sustaining in Australia, 2016
Extensive linguistic research and theorising relating to maintaining the family heritage, as bilingual or multilingual family in differing language contexts, is currently available. Substantial research beneficially explores approaches to multilingual parenting, outcomes for individuals through parent and child perspectives, among linguistic and social realms of being multilingual in differing contexts. Personal experiences as emotive ways of reasoning, actions, and motive for sustaining one’s heritage in a differing context are partially considered, but the cognitive-affective dimension could be more comprehensively explored. This paper conveys research methodology of parents’ subjective sense for sustaining their heritage, as situated and unique for individuals through cultural-historical psychology elements. A cultural-historical framework provides a dynamic and multi-faceted scope of parent’s subjective sense of self, for reasoning and approaches to sustaining their heritage with family. Construction of subjective perspectives involves the temporal motion of past to present, to enlighten motive and ideals for the present and future. Narrative analysis methodologies evidencing perezhivanie represent individuals’ subjective configurations with individuals’ contemporary and transpiring development of the subjective sense of self. This study associates Vygotsky’s original perezhivanie conceptualisation and contemporary advances of subjectivity to cognise the intellectual-affective affiliation for motive substantiated through narrative analysis to show human subjective sense in motion.
2016
Extensive linguistic research and theorising relating to maintaining the family heritage, as bilingual or multilingual family in differing language contexts, is currently available. Substantial research beneficially explores approaches to multilingual parenting, outcomes for individuals through parent and child perspectives, among linguistic and social realms of being multilingual in differing contexts. Personal experiences as emotive ways of reasoning, actions, and motive for sustaining one's heritage in a differing context are partially considered, but the cognitive-affective dimension could be more comprehensively explored. This paper conveys research methodology of parents' subjective sense for sustaining their heritage, as situated and unique for individuals through cultural-historical psychology elements. A cultural-historical framework provides a dynamic and multi-faceted scope of parent's subjective sense of self, for reasoning and approaches to sustaining their ...
Background Immigration often results in changes in family dynamics, and within this process of dynamic relational adjustment youth can be conceptualised as contested sites of culture and associ- ated intergenerational conflicts. This paper considers the experiences of migrant youth in Greater Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia using conflict as a useful lens through which to view issues of migrant youth identity and their sense of social connected- ness, belonging, and agency. The aim of this study was twofold: 1) to explore how migrant youth cope with acculturative stress and intergenerational conflicts, and 2) to better under- stand the systemic and family-related factors that facilitate positive settlement experiences for migrant youth. Methods A total of 14 focus group discussions, comprising 164 people, were carried out in Greater Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. These focus groups targeted newly arrived migrant parents and young adults (aged 18–24) of African, Burmese, Nepalese, Indian, Afghani, Bangladeshi and Iraqi backgrounds. Each focus group was 1.5 hours in duration and was conducted by a team of three people (an experienced facilitator, an accredited interpreter/bilingual worker, and a note taker). Data were collected using a standard inter- view schedule, and an accredited interpreter/bilingual worker asked the questions in the appropriate language and translated participant responses into English. Results The findings highlight how youth in new migrant families become contested sites of culture as they try to balance integration into the new culture while maintaining their originating country’s cultural values. Two themes and four subthemes emerged from the analysis: Inter- generational acculturation gap (loss of family capital and intergenerational conflicts); and factors that successfully protected positive family values while still allowing young people to integrate (the legal system that disarm authoritarian parenting practices and family rules; and parental use of children’s increased knowledge of the new environment to navigate their new environment). Migrant families conceptualised family capital as the social solidar- ity, influence, and control governing obligations and expectations, intergenerational knowl- edge transmission and information flow, social norms, and cultural identity. The loss of family capital was characterised by children’s refusal to associate with or meet family mem- bers, preferring to be alone in their rooms and private space. Migrant youth find themselves caught between and negotiating two cultures, with unwanted negative consequences at the family level in the form of intergenerational conflicts. The new found freedom among chil- dren and their rapid transition into the Australian society gives children an increased sense of agency, which in turn threatens parental authority, allowing children to exercise three forms of power: increased assertiveness due to legal protection of children against any cor- poral punishment; and English language fluency and greater understanding of the function- ing of Australian social institutions. Conclusion Our findings suggest the need for an inter-generational approach to healthy family dynamics within migrant communities when dealing with youth negotiating the complexity and sensitiv- ity of forging their cultural identity.
Critical Philosophy of Race , 2023
This article takes up the idea of language as a home and dwelling, and reconsiders what this might mean in the context of diasporic bilingualism-where as a 'heritage speaker' of a minority language, the 'mother tongue' may be experienced as both deeply familiar yet also alien or alienating. Drawing on a range of philosophical and literary accounts, this article explores how the so-called 'mother tongue' is experienced by heritage speakers in an Englishdominant world. From navigating one's being in-between language-worlds, to the experience of language loss and efforts of reconnection, I argue that bilingual dwelling involves many complex layers often overlooked by philosophical accounts of language that do not attend to the lived world of the migrant and racialised outsider. By turning to the example of bilingual parenting, I then examine how such an undertaking, while labour-intensive, offers opportunities to refresh and co-create language-worlds anew.
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The Immigrant Family: Parent-Child Dilemmas
PsycEXTRA Dataset
Parenting is a difficult challenge for anyone. Immigrant parents find their roles and relationships with their children change, and these children are vulnerable to a number of risk factors especially during adolescence that diminish the influence of the parents in the acculturation process. The risk factors include: Language issues including a linguistic separation between parents and children which becomes symbolic of a profound emotional separation; economic stressors in which the main reason for which many families emigrate, i.e., economic betterment, becomes the source of greatest stress; differing parenting practices including the challenge of raising their children in a new seemingly unsupportive and permissive culture; and identity development where the adolescent identity process can be stressed by the difficulties inherent in negotiating two cultures and the perception of not fitting well into the new mainstream culture. A number of suggestions for culturally-sensitive assessment and intervention are provided as well as suggestions for becoming a culturally-sensitive person and therapist.
International Journal of Education, 2010
This study investigated how Indonesian children in Australia as a foreign country temporarily switch their Indonesian language with English, what parents’ attitudes toward the children’s language is, and how Indonesian parents encourage the use of Bahasa Indonesia by their children at home (in Australia). A case study method with qualitative approach was used. Participants of the study were one family of Indonesian students comprising a 35-year-old mother with 6 and 8-year-old sons. The mother was chosen because she was considered as repositories of culture and responsible for the maintenance of tradition and language. Data collected through observation and open-ended interview. The study showed that the Indonesian children soon adopted English and gradually lost their mother language because of their less frequent use and interaction with the users. The Indonesian mother had to struggle to maintain her children’s mother tongue, since she and her family planed to go back to Indonesi...