Transnational students' experiences of EMI in Myanmar's borderlands

Abstract

Based on a large-scale ethnography of Myanmar migrants, the present study examines the experiences of multilingual Myanmar students who received EMI education in secondary schools and universities in Myanmar's borderlands. Data were collected through the use of linguistic autobiography, semi-structured interviews and written materials. Adopting the borderlands theory, the study investigates how Myanmar ethnic minority students encounter and wrestle with the EMI learning challenges in the hybridized border regions. Our findings indicate that Myanmar ethnic minorities appropriate their agentive practices by leveraging their borderland subjectivities to form an assemblage of semioticized resources. Living in an under-resourced EMI context, our participants flexibly deploy their previous multiliteracies, mobilize the local and community resources and maximize the digital and transnational affordances. Our study argues that the successful validation of EMI prospect in the borderlands needs to overcome the essentialist practices and take into consideration sociopolitical power within and cross the border. By revealing the EMI affordances and constraints mediated in the transnational experiences, our study contributes to the knowledge base of EMI inquiry by including the peripheral voices and indigenous practices as legitimate construct and revealing the interplay of multiple forces shaping EMI students' trajectories.