Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 870
Part of Session 130: Language in Multilingual Cities (Other abstracts in this session)
Social and Cultural Capital in the Multilingual Classroom: Educating Immigrant Youth in New York City
Authors: Fee, Margaret Sarah (1); Moore, Sarah Catherine (2)
Submitted by: Fee, Margaret Sarah (Center for Applied Linguistics, United States of America)
The Bronx, New York, is a multilingual city home to residents who speak at least thirty-two languages, including adolescent immigrants labeled Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE), or SIFE students, because of limited prior schooling in their home countries. New York’s rich multilingualism and significant number of SIFE students have resulted in the emergence of newcomer schools designed to meet the needs of this particularly ethnically and linguistically diverse population of recently arrived immigrant students.
This paper illustrates how ELLIS Preparatory Academy, a newcomer school in the Bronx, offers immigrant youth an environment that recognizes and builds on the sources of social capital (Coleman, 1988) and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) they bring to the classroom. Upon arrival in the U.S., the students at ELLIS face obstacles similar to those identified in the theoretical framework of segmented assimilation (Portes & Zhou, 1993). These obstacles are thought to contribute to the struggles and “failures” of many immigrant youth in large urban areas such as the Bronx.
At ELLIS, pedagogy is based on an educational experience that incorporates students’ linguistic and social needs in a way that otherwise may not be available in traditional schools. ELLIS builds on students’ social capital by encouraging parental involvement, building community relations, and coordinating summer-long internships in professional settings. ELLIS staff strives to utilize the rich sources of cultural capital students bring to school by making connections with students’ cultural funds of knowledge and by valuing students’ multilingual proficiency and capacity for translanguaging (García, 2009).
Segmented assimilation (Portes & Zhou, 1993) is a valuable typology for framing the ways in which immigrants incorporate into segments of American society. Prior frames imagined only limited versions of immigrant assimilation, often presuming patterns of necessary language loss and cultural shift in pursuit of the mainstream majority. While segmented assimilation as a theoretical framework may be limiting in how it accounts for the complex process of immigrant integration, it is a starting point for acknowledging how young immigrants simultaneously adapt to new surroundings while also dealing with the pressures of maintaining a home country identity. Because of the approach to pedagogy, ethnic diversity, and multilingualism espoused by the leadership at ELLIS, students maintain ties to their ethnic and linguistic community, while also gaining an understanding of their new context, its assumptions, and expectations. This paper demonstrates how one school adapted education policies to its students’ needs, therefore building a valuable educational model for immigrant education in the multilingual city.
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Coleman, J. (1988) Social capital in the creation of human capital. American JournalOf Sociology, 94, S95-120.
García, O. (2009) Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Portes, A. & Zhou, M. (1993) The new second generation: Segmented assimilation and its variants. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530, 74-96.