Partnering with Immigrant Communities

In a period of increasing economic and social uncertainty, how do immigrant communities come together to advocate for educational access and their rights? This book is based on a 5-year university partnership with members from Indonesian, Vietnamese, Latino, Filipino, African American, and Irish American communities. Sharing rich examples, the authors examine how these diverse groups use language and literacy practices to advocate for greater opportunities. This unique partnership demonstrates how to draw on the knowledge and interests of a multilingual community to inform literacy teaching and learning, both in and out of school. It also provides guidelines for reimagining university/community collaborations and the practice of ethical partnering.

Partnering with Immigrant Communities focuses on:

• Minoritized immigrant populations, including groups with undocumented status and those who came to the United States to flee religious persecution.
• The intellectual and activist legacies that are already present in communities as people come together to take action on matters that directly impact their lives.
• A local cosmopolitanism that serves as a refuge for many immigrants who may otherwise be scapegoated within the dominant culture.
• A coalition of multilingual, multiethnic communities whose experiences are intertwined by overlapping histories of colonization and shared present struggles.
• Ethical and effective community-based research, including concrete and theoretically informed examples.

Gerald Campano is associate professor and chair of the Reading/Writing/Literacy Division at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. His books include Literacy Tools in the Classroom and Immigrant Students and Literacy. María Paula Ghiso is assistant professor of literacy education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Bethany J. Welch is the founding director of Aquinas Center in South Philadelphia and a nonprofit management consultant.

"This easy-to-read book includes interesting and succinct history lessons on the immigrants in this locale. The authors appraise the community members as equal knowledge holders who co-create and co-design their learning experiences and advocacy activities. This book will make an excellent addition to any recommended reading for multicultural education, culturally responsive teaching, or any social advocacy courses."

—Teachers College Record

"This text serves as an instructive and powerful framework for how to build coalitions across societal boundaries, demonstrating respect for the experiences of marginalized people as intellectual knowledge and working from place of genuine caring."

—Journal of Language Identity, & Education

" Partnering with Immigrant Communities is a timely and responsible book. The work handles the complexities of immigrant precarity in the U.S., barriers for accessing mainstream literacy resources and institutions, and immigrant agency forged through congregation. Campano et al. push for collaborative research with minoritized communities that recognize and contribute to community agency without reinforcing a white savior complex. Partnering with Immigrant Communities is a significant contribution to current conversations in the field and a fruitful read for both community members and researchers."

—Community Literacy Journal

"This is an inspiring account of participatory research with immigrant communities living in precarity. It describes a longstanding partnership with a multilingual, multiethnic Catholic parish and its school community center, providing us with models of research in service of community. Supported by theory, and written with clarity, it sets the gold standard for research that is both committed and ethical."
—Hilary Janks, emeritus professor,Wits University, South Africa.

"The authors invite readers into the heart of a community institution in which people with varied histories build coalitions around shared goals and commitments toward justice. In this game-changing text, lives and relationships are the sites of expansive theory and practice of the 'transnational local' in community-university partnerships."
—Elizabeth Dutro, professor, School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder

"Partnering with Immigrant Communities: Action Through Literacy offers a transparent examination of the multilevel impacts spurred by a 5-year research collaboration. The significance of this book is not only how it unveils the empowering language and literacy practices within immigrant communities; its long-lasting contribution also includes a powerful illustration of intentional ethical engagement through practitioner and participatory research methodologies to support sustainable community-based inquiries toward social and political transformation."
—Tarajean Yazzie-Mintz, senior program officer for Tribal College and University (TCU) Early Childhood Education Initiatives, American Indian College Fund

"Campano, Ghiso, and Welch have written a powerful and humanizing portrait of a longitudinal, culturally sustaining, and ethically collaborative engagement for educational justice and immigrant rights. Partnering with Immigrant Communities draws on the robust traditions of postcolonialism, participatory action research, and sociocultural theory and provides practical examples along with guidelines for reimagining the practice of partnering in community-based research. The Community Literacies Project at St. Thomas Parish is testament to the promise and possibilities when universities and neighborhood partners work in true solidarity for change."
—Ernest Morrell, Macy Professor of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

2018 NCTE David H. Russell Research Award
2017 Literacy Research Association's Edward B. Fry Book Award