Session Information
31 SES 13 B, Negotiating Language Legitimacies in Transnational Educational Spaces. Institutional and Individual Perspectives
Symposium
Contribution
Existing literature tells us that African youth migrants cannot easily turn their linguistic skills into cultural capital in German schools (Niedrig 2003; Niedrig 2015; Schroeder & Seukwa 2018). However, this literature focuses on refugee – usually unaccompanied – youth, who are often channelled into low educational tracks (vocational schools). Furthermore, it tends to value all major European foreign languages equally, although English clearly has a higher ‘communicative value’ in the German school system and labour market (Gerhard 2014; Gerhards & Hans 2013). Finally, the discussion around transnational education has focused on institutional perspectives that highlight the movement of education providers and concepts, leaving a gap in our understanding of ‘transnational educational spaces’ from individual perspectives, such as those created through migration and experienced by students (Kesper-Biermann 2016). Departing from these starting points, this presentation will present emerging results from an ethnographic study of Ghanaian-background youth who have completed or are completing secondary school in Hamburg. The study – part of the multi-country MO-TRAYL project (Mazzucato 2015) – investigates how the mobility and educational trajectories of Ghanaian-background youth in Hamburg shape their life chances, including their educational performance and out-of-school transitions. The sample includes 1.5 and second-generation migrants, most of whom are in middle (Stadtteilschulen) or high (Gymnasium) educational tracks. The study has involved over 12 months of multi-sited ethnography in Germany and Ghana, including observations in schools, churches, and homes, and interviews with young people, their parents, teachers, and community leaders. As such, the presentation will address the legitimacy of English in the transnational educational spaces of these young people from individual, rather than institutional, perspectives. First, it will demonstrate how Ghanaian-background youth develop their English language skills transnationally. Second, it will argue that the English language skills of transnational Ghanaian youth can be successfully activated as cultural capital in Hamburg schools, and will describe mechanisms through which this happens: ‘Newcomers’ (1.5 generation) use their English language skills to (a) ease their transition to a new schooling system, gaining confidence and peer recognition for their superior English skills compared with both ‘native’ students and other newcomers. Both newcomer and second-generation Ghanaian youth use English to (b) bolster their school performance, increasing their overall averages with high grades in English; and to (c) strategically invest in future opportunities, for example, by completing a bilingual high school certificate (Abitur) to facilitate entry to English-speaking universities abroad.
References
Gerhards, J. (2014). Transnational linguistic capital: Explaining English proficiency in 27 European countries, in: International Sociology, 29(1), p. 56-74. Gerhards, J. & Hans, S. (2013). Transnational Human Capital, Education, and Social Inequality. Analyses of International Student Exchange, in: Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 42(2), p. 99-117. Kesper-Biermann, S. (2016). Putting the Nation in Perspective: Educational Spaces – a Concept for the Historiography of Education, in: International Journal for the Historiography of Education 6(1), p. 92-95. Mazzucato, V. (2015). Mobility trajectories of young lives: life chances of transnational youths in Global South and North (MO-TRAYL), Maastricht, The Netherlands: ERC Consolidator Grant. Niedrig, H. (2003). Bildungsinstitutionen im Spiegel der sprachlichen Ressourcen von afrikanischen Flüchtlingsjugendlichen, in: Neumann, Niedrig, Schroeder & Seukwa (Eds.), Lernen am Rande der Gesellschaft. Bildungsinstitutionen im Spiegel von Flüchtlingsbiografien, Münster: Waxmann, p. 303-346. Niedrig, H. (2015). Postkoloniale Mehrsprachigkeit und „Deutsch als Zweitsprache”, in: Thoma & Knappik (Eds.), Sprache und Bildung in Migrationsgesellschaften. Machtkritische Perspektiven auf ein prekarisiertes Verhältnis, transcript Verlag: Bielefeld, p. 69-86. Schroeder, J. and H. Seukwa (2018). Bildungsbiografien: (Dis-)Kontinuitäten im Übergang’, in: Dewitz, Terhart & Massumi (Eds.), Neuzuwanderung und Bildung: Eine interdisziplinäre Perspektive auf Übergänge in das deutsche Bildungssystem, Beltz: Weinheim Basel, p. 141-157.
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