“What Lies Beneath?” Immigrant Minority Pupils' Identity Construction in a Multicultural Flemish Primary Classroom

Abstract

This study investigates how immigrant minority pupils in a primary Flemish 5th Form construct their self-ascribed identities in terms of their cultural and linguistic affiliations. Two generalizable findings emerging from these pupils' discourse seem to shed light on synchronic variation and diachronic change in their strategies of identity construction through the management of their cultural and linguistic belongings. The change is brought by these pupils' experience of “displacement” (Bammer, 1994) when visiting or talking about their parental country of birth. The variation, instead, is reconstructed through these pupils self-reported “polyphonic language repertoires” (Hinnenkamp, 2003) where they show their investment maneuvers in a specific language variety, according to the community of practice of which they are part. Moving away from the notion of maintenance and shift, these processes of identity variation and change suggest that a distinction should be drawn between foreign pupils who are learn...

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