Identity, capital and community language schooling: teenagers at a weekend Chinese school in Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

Community languages schools (also known as ethnic or heritage languages schools) in Australia have not received much attention from sociologists and educational researchers, even though these schools are important and supplementary to mainstream schooling. This research explores the identity practices of a group of teenage Chinese-Australian students attending Huawen School (pseudonym), a weekend community language school in Victoria, Australia. The conceptual framework of this study draws on the sociological concepts of identity (Ang, 2001b; S. Hall, 1996a) and capital (Borjas, 1992; Bourdieu, 2004; Coleman, 1988; Zhou & Kim, 2006). The notion of capital is used as an analytical tool to understand how the different forms of capital are accumulated, invested and transformed in these young people’s weekend heritage language schooling. The fifteen Chinese-Australian teenagers who participated in this study were either born in Australia (the 2nd-generation) or came to Australia by the age of sixteen (1.5-generation). The parents of these young people migrated to Australia from China between the 1980s and 2000s. Ethnography and related research methods were adopted, including individual interviews with fifteen students, six teachers and the Principal, observations of the teaching and learning activities and some school events, and the analysis of school newsletters and teaching materials. My own positionings as the researcher and as one of the Chinese teachers and parents in the school are also interrogated. Based on the research findings, I conclude that the identities of the participating 2nd and 1.5-generation Chinese-Australian teenagers are multiple, shifting and contextual. My research participants consider physical features (‘White’/Asian), language (English/Chinese) and birthplace (Australia/China) as important markers of being Chinese and Australian and at the same time negotiate the different ethnic and cultural markers depending on the contexts within which they are located. They navigate beyond the binary of Chinese and Australian identity positionings, forging their own particular identities with significant internal heterogeneity due to their various personal experiences in relation to migration, family social-economic backgrounds, and the identity markers they want to, are able to or have to draw on under different circumstances. This group of Chinese teenagers often ascribe their better educational performances and achievements to certain Chinese ethnic markers, such as the hierarchical parent-child relationship, higher educational expectations, being hard working and competitive, while their Australian identities are often perceived as being marked by lenient parents, lowered educational expectations, loving sports, and being laid back. This study has also revealed that heritage language and culture are significant markers for ethnic identity, which provide these Chinese-Australian teenagers with the resilience and agency to negotiate their multiple identity positionings. The weekend Chinese school is an in-between bridging space where these Chinese-Australian teenagers acquire relevant educational information and support for their mainstream education, set up their own ethnic social network and develop their inter-cultural awareness, which are beneficial for them to form positive understandings of their ethnic identity and to accrue various forms of capital for their upward social mobility in Australia as well as globally.