Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language, and Culture

Notes

147 Notes Introduction 1. I use the term immigrant because my focus is on children and families’ actions in the country to which they have moved (in this case, the United States). This term presumes the vantage point of the receiving context; other labels, such as “migrant” emphasize movement across geopolitical borders more than entry into the host country. The term “emigrant” has had some recent take-up; see, for example , Coutin (2007), and Fitzgerald (2008). These serve as good reminders that transnational movements can be examined from the perspective of the home country as well as that of the host. “Emigration” has also been used in reference to the earlier major wave of movement from Europe to the United States. See Cordasco and Cordasco (1990) and Foerster (1924). Other terms, such as “transnational” or “transmigrant,” emphasize people’s movement between countries and their ongoing connections to each. For work establishing transnationalism as a focus of study, see Smith and Guarnizo (1998). Researchers have described active transnational social fields developed and to some degree sustained by different groups of migrants; see, for example, the detailed ethnographies of Levitt (2001) and Smith (2005). Barrie Thorne, Wan Shun Eva Lam, Anna Chee, and I examined children’s participation in transnationalism, using data from the California Childhoods project (1995). Nevertheless, very real political borders generally prohibit living fully transnational lives, and other questions about the explanatory power of the concept have been raised. See Waldinger and Fitzgerald (2004). The families I worked with maintained varying degrees of ties to their home countries, but my focus in this book is on their activities in the United States. 2. All names are pseudonyms. Most were selected by participants. In earlier work, “Junior” was “Miguel.” Junior requested the change when he read the manuscript of this book; he noted that it “felt weird” to read about himself as Miguel because his family had “had problems” with someone named Miguel. When they read the final manuscript before publication, Estela and María recognized their pseudonyms , but were perplexed to see a different last name attached to their parents and a different name for their city. 3. Portes and Rumbaut (2001). See also Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001); they note that 12.4 percent of the U.S. population were immigrants in 2005, and 20 percent of children growing up in the United States have immigrant parents. 148 Notes to Page 3 For additional statistics on changing demographics in the United States, see Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, and Todorova’s comprehensive summary (2008) of the current state of immigrant children in the United States, which is based on their longitudinal mixed-method study. Such statistics about immigrant children are used by many writers for dramatic effect, as children are used to symbolize adults’ hopes and fears for the future. 4. For example, Berrol’s classic (1995) offers many fascinating details about the work, school, and play experiences of the children of immigrants to the United States in the early 1900s. She considers intergenerational conflict and other aspects of parent -child relationships without mentioning children’s activities as linguistic or cultural brokers. Similarly, Klapper’s report (2007) on children’s experiences as immigrants at the turn of the century makes only minimal mention of language issues; in reporting on one family’s experiences she notes, “They relied on other Mexican immigrants with a better command of English to help them when they needed to see a doctor or go to court or fill out a money order” (p. 55); there is no specific discussion of children’s role in such negotiations. 5. In his autobiography, Covello (1958) recounts his experiences growing up as the child of immigrants from Italy in New York in the early 1900s, and later working with immigrant youth in Harlem. (See also the abridged version of Covello’s story in Perrone (1998), which includes Perrone’s reflections drawing connections between historical and contemporary immigration issues.) Covello addresses the prestige value of Italian as a foreign language in schools and makes brief mention of communication challenges between home and school, but he does not describe language brokering. I surveyed other memoirs about growing up as the children of immigrants at the turn of the century, and in most I found only brief mention of language issues and no discussion of translation; see, for example, Antin (2001), Shyne (2202), and Yezierska (1925). Hoffman (1990) highlights her own experiences translating...