Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T21:28:04.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Translingual Narratives in Precarity

Narrativizing Undocumented Immigrant Status

from Part II - Online Activism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2024

By
Lyana Sun Han Chang  and
Suresh Canagarajah
Edited by
Sender Dovchin ,
Rhonda Oliver  and
Li Wei
Sender Dovchin
Affiliation:
Curtin University, Perth
Rhonda Oliver
Affiliation:
Curtin University, Perth
Li Wei
Affiliation:
Institute of Education, University of London
Get access

Summary

Immigrants with an undocumented status or those in mixed-status families live in a state of precarity and vulnerability due to the possibility of separation, detainment, or deportation. To publicly share their stories portends possible surveillance or discrimination. However, many still share their stories – and do so on their own terms – to shift mainstream discourses on immigration. While research on undocumented status narratives has mainly focused on textual structure, story lines, and negotiation of identities, more attention is needed on ways they negotiate precarity. That is, we must analyze how individuals utilize translingual practices to remain faithful to their identities and experiences while also navigating dominant discourses. This chapter will explore how translingual practices such as code alternation (i.e., code-switching and codemeshing) might provide resources for narrators to negotiate this vulnerability by helping them to index in-group values, mask relevant information from outsiders, represent belonging, and construct new textual homes that sidestep surveillance or appropriation. We will draw on two publicly available reclaimant narratives to examine the role of translingual practices in non-academic writing. Our analysis of these narratives will take translingual practices beyond the classroom to social spaces where the rights and livelihood of numerous people are at stake.

Keywords

Translingual NarrativesCodemeshingIdexicalityUndocumented StatusReclaimant Narratives
Type
Chapter
Information
Translingual Practices
Playfulness and Precariousness
 , pp. 141 - 162
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrego, L., & Negron-Gonzalez, G. (2020). Introduction. In Abrego, L. & Negron-Gonzalez, G. (eds.), We Are not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented life in the United States (pp. 1–22). Durham, NC, Duke University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Abrego, L., Coleman, M., Martinez, D., Menjivar, C., & Slack, J. (2017). Making immigrants into criminals: Legal processes of criminalization in the Post-IIRIRA Era. Center for Migration Studies, 5(3), 694–715.Google Scholar
American Immigrant Council (2021). The Dream Act: An overview. Retrieved from www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/dream-act-overviewGoogle Scholar
Anguiano, C., & Chavez, K. (2011). DREAMers’ discourse: Young Latino/a immigrants and the naturalization of the American Dream. In Holling, M. and Calafell, B. (eds.), Latina/o Discourse in Vernacular Spaces: Somos de una voz? (pp. 81–99). Lanham, Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Bishop, S. (2018). ‘Nobody can take our story’: Competing representational narratives of immigrants without legal status. Communication and Society, 31(3), 159–73.Google Scholar
Bishop, S. (2017). (Un)documented immigrant media markers and the search for connection online. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34 (5), 415–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caminero-Santangelo, M. (2012). Documenting the undocumented: Life narratives of unauthorized immigrants. Biography, 35(3), 449–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York, Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canagarajah, S. (2012). Code Alternation Studies: A Trajectory. In Seargent, P. and Swann, J. (eds.), English in the World: History, Diversity, Change (pp. 275–83). New York, Routledge.Google Scholar
Cornejo Villavicencio, K. (2020). The Undocumented Americans. New York, One World.Google Scholar
Das, A. (2020). No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants. New York, Bold Type.Google Scholar
De Fina, A., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2015). Introduction. In De Fina, A. and Georgakopoulou, A. (eds.), The Handbook of Narrative Analysis (pp. 1–17). Hoboken, NJ, Wiley Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Fina, A. (2020a). What is your dream? Fashioning the migrant self. Language and Communication, 59, 42–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Fina, A. (2020b). Biography as a political tool: The case of the DREAMers. In Rheindorf, M. and Wodak, R. (eds.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Migration Control: Language Policy, Identity and Belonging (pp. 64–85). Bristol, Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryden, S., Tankosic, A., & Dovchin, S. (2021). Foreign language anxiety and translanguaging as an emotional safe space: Migrant English as a foreign language learners in Australia. System, 101, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2021.102593CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, B., Gonzalez, R., & Rendon Garcia, S. (2019). The power of inclusion: Theorizing ‘abjectivity’ and agency under DACA. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 19(3), 161–72. https://doi:10.1177/1532708618817880CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzalez, L., Stein, G., Prandoni, J., Eades, M., & Magalhaes, R. (2015). Perceptions of undocumented status and possible selves among Latino/a Youth. The Counseling Psychologist, 43(8), 1190–1210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzales, R. (2016). Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America. Oakland, CA, University of California Press.Google Scholar
Immigrants Rising. (2020). Our story. Retrieved from https://immigrantsrising.org/our-story/Google Scholar
Keyes, L. (2012). Beyond saints and sinners: Discretion and the need for new narratives in the USA Immigration system. Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, 26, 1–41.Google Scholar
Mastro, D., Tukachinskly, R., Behm-Morawtiz, E., & Blecha, E. (2014). News coverage of immigration: The influence of exposure to linguistic bias in the news on consumer’s racial/ethnic cognition. Communication Quarterly, 62(2), 135–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menjivar, C. (2016). Immigrant criminalization in law and media: Effects on Latino immigrant workers’ identities in Arizona. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(5–6), 597–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholls, W. (2013). The DREAMers: How the Undocumented Youth Movement Transformed the Immigrant Rights Sebate. Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orner, P. (2008). Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives. San Francisco, CA, McSweeney’s Books.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. (2008). English as a language always in translation. European Journal of English Studies, 12 (1), 33–47 https://doi.org/10.1080/13825570801900521CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santa Ana, O. (1999). ‘Like an animal I was treated’: Anti-immigrant metaphor in US public discourse. Discourse and Society, 10(2), 191–224.Google Scholar
Sati, J. (2020). ‘Other’ borders: The Illegal as normative metaphor. In Abrego, L. and Negron-Gonzalez, G. (eds.), We are not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States. Durham, NC, Duke University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Silverstein, M. (2019). Texts, entextualized and artifactualized. College English, 82, 55–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sowards, S. K., & Pineda, R. D. (2013). Immigrant narratives in popular culture: Reifying stereotypes, entrenching attitudes, and individualizing responsibilities. Western Journal of Communication 77(1), 72–91. DOI: 10.1080/10570314.2012.693648CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suarez-Orozco, C., Yoshikawa, H., Teranishi, R., & Suarez-Orozco, M. (2011). Growing up in the shadows: The developmental applications of unauthorized states. Harvard Education Review, 81(3), 438–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Things I’ll Never Say (2020). Home. Retrieved from: www.thingsillneversay.org/about-us.htmlGoogle Scholar
Vargas, J. (2018). Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen. New York, Dey Street BooksGoogle Scholar
Wides-Muñoz, L. (2018). The Making of a Dream: How a Group of Young Immigrants Helped Change What it Means to be American. New York, Harper.Google Scholar
Wortham, S. & Reyes, A. (2015). Discourse Analysis beyond the Speech Event. Abingdon, Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, A. (2012). Documenting DREAMs: New media, undocumented youth and the immigrant rights movement. Media, activism and participatory politics project. https://ypp.dmlcentral.net/publications/108.htmlGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×