Refugee Youth’s Identity Expressions and Multimodal Literacy Practices in a Third Space

Abstract

Recognizing the inherent value of refugee youth’s diverse and powerful linguistic and cultural capital, this case study adds to the growing body of research regarding refugee youth’s intersecting identities and multiliteracies by exploring (1) how youth who have settled in the American Midwest as refugees express their emerging notions of identity and culture and (2) in what ways refugee youth perceive a level of access and exhibit desire or reluctance for an American identity. This study focuses on the journal and poetry writing—created in a self-selected and self-segregated third space of a pull-out English-as-a-second language (ESL) classroom—of two 4th-grade Chin refugee girls from Burma. The girls’ writings speak to their ideas and ideals of race, language, culture, and the construction of a bicultural Chin American identity, thereby illustrating youth’s nuanced and varied identity expressions and experiences in an American Midwest elementary school.

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