Understanding the Transnational Lives and Literacies of Immigrant Children

This book provides targeted suggestions that educators can use to ensure successful teaching and learning with today’s growing population of transnational, multilingual students. The text offers insights based on the author’s observations, interactions, and interviews with second-generation immigrant children, their families, and their teachers in the United States and South Korea. These collected stories give educators a better understanding of how elementary school children engage in language, literacy, and learning in and across spaces and countries; the forms of unique linguistic and cultural knowledge immigrant children build, expand, and mobilize as they move across contexts; the ways in which immigrant children position themselves and represent their identities; and how educators and researchers can honor these children’s identities and unique talents. Featuring children’s narratives, drawings, writings, maps, and photographs, this resource is a must-read for educators and researchers seeking to create more inclusive learning spaces and literacy practices.

Book Features:

• Examples of students’ literacy practices with insights for more effective teaching.
• Practical lessons gleaned from children engaging with language and literacy in flexible and dynamic ways in their everyday lives.
• Targeted suggestions to help educators better understand and utilize children’s unique linguistic abilities and cultural understandings.
• Discussion questions and examples that challenge deficit perspectives of immigrant children and reposition them as multilingual and transnational experts.
• Implications for educators and researchers seeking ways to amplify young immigrant children’s voices and leverage their knowledge.

Jungmin Kwon is an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.

“In this timely work, Kwon offers a valuable educational resource for practitioners and researchers alike, providing suggestions, based upon her ethnographic research, that can be used to support successful teaching and learning of transnational, multilingual learners. Within her work, Kwon aims to transcend the traditional boundaries of language and literacy practices to position immigrant children as experts. As such, the text encourages individuals that work with these learners to honor their identities and unique talents as a foundation for their academic growth and development.”

—Teachers College Record

“Kwon, an ethnographic researcher, challenges today’s educators to rethink literacy strategies that are being taught to young immigrant children in the US.”

—CHOICE

“Kwon invites us to recognize children in immigrant families as transnational and multilingual experts whose stories can teach us all important lessons about caring, learning, and sharing that can make the world a better place.”
—From the Foreword by Catherine Compton-Lilly, John C. Hungerpiller Professor, University of South Carolina

“This evocative book paints a rich ethnographic portrait of Korean immigrant children’s transnational, multilingual, and multimodal expertise. Centering youths’ perspectives, it makes a powerful contribution to the study of language, literacy, immigration, and education by helping readers to expand their own ways of seeing the world.”
—Marjorie E. Faulstich Orellana, professor of urban schooling and associate director, Center for the Study of International Migration, University of California, Los Angeles

“As a transnational researcher, teacher, and mother, Kwon seamlessly takes us into the world of US-born, second-generation immigrant children. She positions the students as teachers, or, as she calls them, ‘transnational and multilingual experts.’ A wealth of multimodal artifacts allows us into their young lives to teach us about their dynamic home, school, and literacy experiences across national borders. This book is a much-needed gift to the fields of education, migration, and literacy studies.”
—Tatyana Kleyn, associate professor, The City College of New York and CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education​

2022 American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Critics' Choice Book Award

2022 Literacy Research Association's Edward B. Fry Book Award Finalist