Between Two Worlds: Mapping Immigrant Literacy Practices and Identity Construction in South Africa

Increasingly, education systems must serve not only its countrys citizens, but immigrants and refugees from the world over who are entering host countries for a variety of reasons: to escape war-torn countries, to provide a better life for their families, to access better education, for employment and health care opportunities, and to engage in business. This book sets out to explore across various sites immigrant youth's early encounters with literacy and the implications of these encounters for their careers as readers and writers, i nd out of school. Given the vast gulf between children who flourish and those who do not, the book further sets out to investigate potential collaborations between and implications of formal classrooms and informal learning that has the potential to flourish in a range of outof-school settings. Through multiple case studies, the authors conduct interviews with immigrant parents, children, and their teachers, as well conduct observations in classrooms and homes. Further, the work aims to explore possibilities around how literacy research can help us rethink and re-contextualise literacy teaching and learning across a range of contexts, as well as their implications for curriculum and pedagogy.