Description
Book SynopsisLanguage and Muslim Immigrant Childhoods Documenting the everyday lives of Moroccan immigrant children in Spain, this in-depth study considers how its subjects navigate the social and political landscapes of family, neighborhood peer groups, and the institutions of their adopted country. García-Sánchez compels us to rethink theories of language and racialization by offering a linguistic anthropological approach that illuminates the politics of childhood in Spain's growing communities of migrants. The author demonstrates that these Moroccan children walk a tightrope between sameness and difference, simultaneously participating in the cultural life of their immigrant community and that of a host society that is deeply ambivalent about contemporary migratory trends.
The author evaluates the contemporary state of research on immigrant children and explores the dialectical relations between young Moroccan immigrants' everyday social interactions, and the broader cultural logi
Trade Review
“Overall, Garcia-Sanchez presents linguistic analysis and data in a way that balances sophistication of argument with clarity and accessibility to those without extensive linguistic training. As a result, this monograph should be appealing both to seasoned scholars and undergraduate students in linguistics and linguistic anthropology, as well as to cultural anthropologists and social scientists interested in Europe, migration, and childhood.” (Anthropos, 1 October 2015)
“...García-Sánchez’s book adds to the current literature on socialization, identity construction, and immigration by showing how these larger issues can have direct impact on how the children of immigrants perceive themselves as accepted members of their societies.” (Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 18 May 2015)
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Moros en la Costa: The Moroccan Immigrant Diaspora in Spain 28
3 Learning About Children’s Lives: A Note On Methodology 61
4 Moroccan Immigrant Childhoods in Vallenuevo 88
5 The Public School: Ground Zero for the Politics of Inclusion 125
6 Learning How to Be Moroccans in Vallenuevo: Arabic and the Politics of Identity 183
7 Becoming Translators of Culture: Moroccan Immigrant Children’s Experiences as Language Brokers 221
8 Heteroglossic Games: Imagining Selves and Voicing Possible Futures 257
9 Conclusion 289
Appendix 1: Working with Video-Recorded Discourse Data 307
Appendix 2: Arabic Transliteration Symbols 310
References 311
Index 349
