1 Hamernick

Researching Transnational Studies

of Refugee and Immigrant
Student Acclimation: A
Comparative Review and
Recommendations for the Future
Samantha Hamernick
North Dakota State University
November 15, 2016

Abstract
With over 65.3 million displaced people around the world due to war and persecution (UNHCR CITE), refugees and immigrants situations are increasingly being studied, especially with a
focus on the relationship between language, identity, teaching, and resettlement, in hopes of
improving the acclimation process for both the newcomers and the host community. The purpose
of this paper is to review literature from prominent scholars, including ADD, in multilingual and
transnational literacy studies who have investigated this relationship or a portion of it. To this
point, researchers have typically studied literacy and education in refugees once they have
arrived in the host community. Based on this comparative research, I suggest future research
expand their focus by addressing refugee and immigrant literacy and educational background in
comparison to their present literacy and educational.

1. Introduction
Literacy is an integral part of assimilation into a new community, especially for refugee
and immigrant students. According to Lutheran Social Services, the only resettlement agency in
North Dakota, in 2015, there were 19.5 million refugees worldwide; of this, 506 were resettled in
North Dakota. 70% of the 400 500 refugees who arrive annually are resettled in Fargo. In the

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recent years, the majority of the refugees resettled in Fargo have arrived from Bhutan, Iraq,
Somalia and Congo.
The purpose of this paper is to review literature from prominent scholars in multilingual
and transnational literacy studies who have investigated educational acclimation of refugees and
immigrants. The literature has a broad national and transnational focus but my experience is from
Fargo, North Dakota. Refugee students coming to the United States from war torn countries have
often experienced traumatic events; these students have survived anything from child marriage
(in the case of females), death of family and friends (often times parents), and rape to abuse, teen
pregnancy, poverty, limited food rations, and so much more.
Though students are often the fastest to learn the language of the host community, in this
case English, and the fastest to socially acclimate among their family members, that does not
necessarily mean it is easiest for them. Since the students linguistically and socially acclimate
themselves quickest into the host community, their elder family members often rely on the
students to assist in navigating the new environment. This can include obtaining a license before
their parents, getting an after-school job, paying the bills, reading the mail, learning the legal and
financial systems of the host community, doing the grocery shopping, and essentially becoming
the head of the household as a high school student. This responsibility combined with a traumatic
past and acclimating to a new community causes many of the students to struggle with their
identity. Since the students integration occurs mostly in the academic environment, given they
attend school regularly, it only makes sense that much of the research of refugee students
revolves at least in part around academic focused studies. SOURCES

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Though literacy is often thought of as fluently reading and writing in a language, I use the
following definition when referring to literacy in this paper: literacy is linked to interpretation
to reading the social environment and engaging and remaking that environment through
communication (Leonard Introduction). Following suit of other scholars, I use the word
transnational to indicate systems of social relations that move literacy across borders (Leonard
VI). This does not mean global or international, rather is refers to how global change impacts
peoples lives.

2. Methods
I began this literature review project in response to an in-progress research project titled:
Home Language Literacy and Educational- Background Impact on Refugee Resettlement in the
Fargo, North Dakota High School Student Population. That research project guided my focus
for this literature review. Stemming from my focus on refugees, literacy, education, and
resettlement, I gathered scholarly resources related to these topics from journals in literacy,
multilingualism, education, pedagogy, refugees, second language writing, sociology, linguistics,
composition, communication, and English.
I did not focus all of my reading materials on studies completed in the United States
because I found many studies outside of the United States that would be applicable to United
States. I did focus my search for pedagogical research on the United States because, after some
research, I decided those would be most application to the United States. However, when I
looked at sociology or anthropology studies of refugees and immigrants in society, I found many
of those studies and articles to be applicable to experiences refugees have in the United States
and thus decided to use them. I also did not limit my search for reading material by date because

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of my interest in exploring how the disciplines evolved over time. The oldest article I include in
this review is from 1988 (Watson-Gegeo) and the most recent is from 2015 (Canagarajah).
For portions of this review I draw on my experience with refugee and immigrant students
in Leah Juelkes English Language Learners English classroom at Fargo South High School in
Fargo, North Dakota. I have spent on average four hours per week every academic week since
September 2015 academically assisting ELL students in the English 4 classroom. The majority of
the experience I draw on for this review is from assisting the students in writing their journey to
America personal narrative stories. I assist in every part of the writing process for over 35
students. Additionally, I draw on experience from courses taken at North Dakota State University
in Education, Grammatic Structure, Linguistics, American Print Publications, and Undergraduate
Research Courses.
This review serves as a guide to entering literacy studies as related to refugees and
resettlement. It also identifies the gaps in the current research and ways to the fill these gaps. The
scope of this study is, however, limited, and should not be treated as if it is extensive.

3. Literature Review
Several of the following pedagogical and academic studies highlight the importance of
studying literacy in refugee and immigrant students (Chang, Haneda, Abasi, Matsuda). The
studies I review in this paper are a limited portion of the greater scope of the discipline. I
attempted to represent the field accordingly by reviewing studies across cultures and academic
levels, including doctoral ELL students in the United States (Chang), Canadian university
students in Japan (Haneda), Canadian graduate students (Abasi), United States High Schoolers
(Hubbarb) among others.

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All the studies presented in this review have a literacy component and an acclimation
component to them. The literacy components of these studies vary from reading to writing to
language acquisition. The acclimation components connect to the literacy and focus on
academics or society or both. In the review, other themes arise as well. Identity is a main theme
that arises as a piece of acclimation to an academic or social setting.
Many of the scholar use an ethnographic approach and include interviews and
observation. Chang and Kanno interview a set of students to unveil the challenges of being a
doctoral student as a non-native-English-speaker and analyze their coping mechanisms in their
study on language and discipline. Chang labels his participants as non-native-English-speakers
(NNES) instead of the more traditional English as a Second Language (ESL) or the recently
adapted English Language Learners (ELL). The key issues that Chang discusses include coauthoring, native speaker assistance, and use of local knowledge.
Regarding co-authoring and native speaker assistance, Chang concludes that native
speaker assistance is helpful to ELL writers, but it can also be a hindrance, highlighting the
importance of diversity among writers; he argues that native speaker assistance diminishes
diversity in the classroom. This view of native speaker assistance as crushing to diversity is
important to consider when teaching ELL students because writing tutoring from a native
speaker is often a component of the ELL curriculum.
Furthermore, Chang discovers that the NNES students tend towards majors in the
sciences rather than the humanities. With these results, Chang raises the question of whether
NNES students intentionally and strategically choose the disciplines in which their cultural
capital would enjoy a higher market value (Chang 690). His discoveries are applicable to
observations I have made among the high school ELL students I work with; often, their career

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goals are in the numbers careers: accounting, math, chemistry, statistics. I have discovered that
ELL students are more successful in the numbers related studies because they do not have to rely
on communicating with a language they are not fluent in.
Haneda suggests that students success in language learning is related to their investment
in learning the language. He makes this suggestion on the basis of evidence he found while
studying Canadian students in composition courses in Japan. He decided to study Canadian
students in Japan to make up for the lack of research surrounding minority ELL settings and
disciplines, such as Japan and composition. Haneda uses interpretive case studies to collect data
from two Canadian college students in Japanese composition courses. He finds that the two
students from different ethnolinguistic background write in different ways. The qualitative data
collected from the students is analyze through a cultural-historical theoretical and interpretive
frameworkwhich builds on the notions of community of practice, identity construction, and
investment [to] provide a viable perspective in terms of which to account for the differences
between the two students (Haneda 287).
Haneda discovers that the success of the student in composition of a non-native language
depended on their investment in learning the language which is tied to their involvement in the
community. Haneda then argues that literacy, language, and writing should be studied in is
transient form in real-life, using classroom studies as support, not vice versa. He argues that a
learners place in the host community impacts their learning of the new language; the more
involved they are in the community, the more invested they are in their composition studies.
While Haneda studies the importance and the impact of the community outside the
classroom on language learning, Shagoury confines her study to the classroom. She argues that
writing, especially personal narratives, in the classroom develops key academic skills along with

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a sense of identity in an unfamiliar world. She studies English Language Learners (though she
refers to them as Second Language Learners) in the high school environment. Shagoury
concludes that stories teach us that knowing who you are is at the heart of education, and
writing helps us discover aspects of our lives and language that surprise, delight, and inform us
(Hubbard 60). Furthermore, Shagoury enters the pedagogical component of ELL students in the
study by addressing educators. She argues that brining personal narrative writing into the
curriculum will aid in refugee and immigrant identity discovery. She argues educators can
empower refugee and immigrant students through storytelling.
Like Shagoury, Abasi focuses his study on identity in English Language Learners.
However, where Shagoury attempted to pedagogically solve the identity crisis in ELL students,
Abasi studies the impact of writing on their identity and vice versa. While this concept is
accepted in the discipline and previously studied, Abasi takes it in a new direction by
highlighting how writing and identity are related to the students desire fit in with their professors
and the other privileged people. This challenges Shagourys argument about how writing helps
students find their identity. Abasi argues that if a student is writing to fit in, then they are not
identifying with themselves but rather with the community they desire to fit into.
Suresh Canagarajah also analyzes how refugees and immigrants personally identify.
While Abasi focuses on writing influence, Suresh Canagarajah focuses on societal influence. He
discovers that identification among refugees and immigrants is directly related to how
community members and scholars label the group. From this discovery, Canagarajah chose to
focus his study on empowerment and ownership in the refugee and immigrant community.
Canagarajah stresses the importance of native speaker ownership and empowering refugees and
immigrants. Stemming from his discover about labeling, he discusses why labeling needs to

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change; the author concluded that this change needs to take place at policy level to make a real
impact on students. His recommendation is to implement translingual practices into the
classroom. He notes that it is often the teachers themselves making the changes in the classroom
to reach a translingual practice. Though it is good that these changes are being made at that level,
NYSBCCIs pedagogy that provides students the language resources needed for global
citizenship (Canagarajah 24). He concludes by emphasizing the need to go beyond monolithic
standards and acknowledge that these standards can be realized differently in different
communities (Canagarajah 24).

4. Conclusion
ADD

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