[Webinar] Practicing classed linguistic practices across borders: Family language policy in ethnic minority families

Taking ethnic minority mothers and children as a transnational social class, this study explores how migrant mothers strategized to construct new class identities and mobilize between different classed communities through their linguistic and cultural repertoire, and how the children aligned their linguistic practices with language policy, both at home and at the societal level. It is found that, while the mothers actively drew on resources (e.g., social-networking, knowledge of governmental policy and languages) from their emigrational experiences to achieve class mobilization, a bounded view towards cultures may have influenced the family language policy, in turn constraining children’s acculturation and socialization into mainstream society and leading to class stabilization. The mothers were found to draw heavily upon their own migrant and social experiences to set up a restrictive family language policy that functionalized the contexts of household, school, community, and society. It is therefore argued that ideological spaces (Hornberger, 2006) should…