“Too Much Earthquakes!”: Imagined Transnationalism and Heritage Language Development Trajectories Two Generations After Exile

Abstract

ABSTRACT International travel is still commonly touted as one of the most effective tools for language learning, yet it remains an elusive activity for those without a certain amount of economic or legal privilege. Although physical return to the home country is not always possible for refugees and their families—even one or more generation after arrival—imagined forms of travel, or ”imagined transnationalism,” is. Drawing on multiple data sources from a year-long, multi-sited ethnographic case study, in this paper I examine how the two young grandchildren of Chileans who arrived in Canada as refugees in the 1970s were imagining their heritage country through different modes, based largely on stories they had been told about it, including those related to their family's exile. The findings suggest that difficult knowledge is a cultural value for some families, and have implications for supporting heritage language learners whose family's experience of migration was spurred by conflict.