My interest in this project grew following my immigration to Ireland in 2004, just after Poland’s accession to the EU, making it possible for me to travel to Western Europe for the first time without any particular restrictions or special visa requirements. I am part of ‘generation zero’ that constitutes more than 60% of the Polish immigrant population in Ireland (Poliski Express, 2007). Wandachowicz describes those who comprised the baby boom in the late 1970s and the early to mid-1980s as ‘generation nothing’ or ‘generation zero’. This generation grew up in a changing political system and experienced tremendous changes to social order. I was educated in a communist country but ultimately entered adulthood in a capitalist world. In a sense, many say that this generation can be perceived as a cross-linking element of both systems, a kind of ‘comm-capitalist’ hybrid (Singleton et al., 2013).
I spent my childhood and younger years in the shadow of the Western world. Through little spaces in the Iron Curtain, this world presented itself to me as a world of prosperity and a place where even the boldest dreams could come true. Western records, colorful books, toys and tapes with English language stories were sent to us (myself and my brother) by an aunt (grandfather’s cousin) and later by my father who moved to New York for two years. At the time, this increased my fascination with Western culture – in my eyes synonymous with the English language. I pursued a career as a teacher of English but always dreamt about experiencing this culture more personally. Therefore, when it finally became possible, I decided to travel abroad and thus became part of the 2004 immigration wave. Ireland seemed a great choice at the time and soon after arrival, I was employed as a part-time literacy and language community education tutor with the local Vocational Education Committee. My main duties involved delivering not only English as a second language (ESL) classes but also classes where the emphasis was on improving students’ self-advocacy skills, sociological or intercultural knowledge and general oral language literacy skills. I also taught personal development courses to immigrant parents, students with mental disabilities and students from disadvantaged social backgrounds including juvenile offenders, young people from the Travelling Community (an officially recognized ethnic minority in Ireland) and refugees from all over the world. Many of the adult learners I taught during these years came from Slavic countries such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. It is believed that these immigrants integrate well within Irish society because their ‘Whiteness’ makes them ‘invisible immigrants’, where linguistic features and not race distinguish them from the rest of society.
For many years, I worked with individuals who had experienced learning difficulties or who had come to Ireland with very little or no English language skills. Most of these individuals came from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and some lacked basic literacy skills in their L1 and L2. They often felt culturally distant and alienated from their new society. Some of them had spent many years in Direct Provision (a number of years in a refugee camp). Many brought traumatic experiences with them to their new country, creating enormous educational challenges for most of them.
Most of the parents I met during that time wanted to be part of their children’s education but felt lost in a new system, or were confused about home language maintenance, often receiving contradictory messages from their schools, friends and extended family members. I started noticing power relations operating in society that were having a profound impact on individual people’s trajectories, especially those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. I started asking numerous questions related to culture, cultural hegemony more precisely, and the role of language and education in the process of becoming a member of a given society. This was the first time I had questioned my own identity and my own role as an educator.
It was a breakthrough moment in my professional and personal development because I then decided to resume my education and undertake a research project within the migrant community, with the most vulnerable people, the immigrant children. I wished to hear the voices of those who were not heard or were underrepresented within societal power relations. I embarked on a longitudinal investigation in Trinity College Dublin (a PhD study) on the multilingual and multicultural experiences of immigrants in Ireland. It felt natural to start with my migrant community, with the children going through the transition from childhood to teenagerhood as, in my opinion, they were among the most vulnerable. Whereas some LS researchers such as Baquedano‐López (2011) are now researching in their communities, there remains a need for more LS studies to be undertaken in researchers’ communities. Researching a community from an insider perspective offers numerous benefits, in particular it allows one to study an issue in-depth and with special knowledge about the issue. The unique position of an insider offers access to people and information that can be difficult for an outsider to obtain. As in Fader’s study, her in-depth knowledge of the Hasidic Jewish communities in Brooklyn allowed her to unravel very complex issues of the socialization of morality.
I have two main goals in this book. The first is to examine the social and cultural worlds of Polish immigrant adolescents in Ireland, the way they seek membership and belonging to their communities of practice, the ways in which they develop socio-historical understandings across the languages and cultures of which they are part. The second goal is to shed light on schooling and family communities and the role they play in the socialization processes for these immigrant children and how this is set within a wider societal context. Four adolescents and their families took part in this study and are referred to as Kasia’s, Wiktoria’s, Janke’s and Marcin’s family. Janek and Wiktoria were attending Polish weekend schools at the time of data collection in addition to English medium schools. This situation provided a unique opportunity to observe and examine the role that a heritage education context played in their lives. Marcin and Kasia did not attend Polish weekend school so their socialization trajectory differed in many ways. The book is organized around three main themes: developing belonging and membership within communities of practice (Chapter 3), negotiation of socio-historical competences through languages and exercising agency (Chapter 4) and parental language ideologies and socializing practices (Chapter 5).
Chapter 3 discusses the ways in which the four children obtain access to and membership of different social circles and communities of practice. The children employ specific strategies when negotiating their own understandings of selves with respect to others, often either differentiating themselves from certain groups or trying to display allegiances and loyalty to a group. By reflecting on these examples, including the educational settings, I illustrate and describe different approaches that the children take during these negotiations. The first part illustrates how the children seek membership and participation in certain communities of practice or how they reject participation or are rejected by it. In the second part, I show how accent and specific language choices play an important role in the process.
Chapter 4 conceives that ‘language socialization’ is embedded in the notion that immigrants are socialized into using languages (L2 and L1), not only by acquiring their languages in the local D/discourse contexts, but also by developing their own agency, understanding the historically and culturally rooted values and beliefs of the host society while trying to maintain the values and beliefs developed within their previous cultural communities. This often results in transformation and change but can also be a source of personal conflict. This chapter shows the various ways in which the four children develop their own understandings of L1 and L2 cultural and socio-historical norms and values. The first part of the chapter illustrates the children’s language practices in addressing others and the second part discusses the ways in which the children construct an understanding of sociocultural norms and traditions across two cultures and two languages. It also exposes allegiances and affective aspects of these negotiations.
Chapter 5 illustrates parental attitudes and ideologies with respect to the languages their children speak in Ireland, namely, Polish, English. Particular attention is paid to parental/family practices together with heritage language and culture maintenance strategies. The status of Irish and English is discussed within a greater societal context, highlighting dominant and ecological perspectives