From Refugee to Transformer: A Bourdieusian Take on a Hmong Learner’s Trajectory

From Refugee to Transformer: A Bourdieusian Take on a Hmong Learner’s Trajectory PETER I DE COSTA Monterey Institute of International Studies Monterey, California, United States This ethnographic case study of a male Hmong refugee, Vue Lang, is situated against a backdrop that is characterized by a burgeoning immigrant population in the United States and a growing need to provide them with English language instruction The Bourdieusian concepts of capital, habitus, and field (Bourdieu, 1991) are used to explicate Vue Lang’s development while enrolled in a community English as a second language (ESL) project By drawing on data sources that included videotaped classroom lessons, field notes, and written artefacts, I demonstrate how, over the course of months, he developed participation, curricular, and institutional competence The article closes with implications for both practice and research For classroom practice, it suggests the need for teachers to (a) facilitate habitus transformation, (b) be aware that the ESL classroom is a site of cultural politics, and (c) tap the personal experiences of learners by bringing the outside in (Baynham, 2005) For policy and research, this study highlights the importance of using case studies to trace the trajectories of language learners doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.226856 n the United States, the immigrant population explosion has been framed as ‘‘the browning of America’’ (Rodriguez, 2002, p xii), often in reference to the burgeoning Hispanic immigrant population in the country That immigration issues are intimately coupled with English language instruction in this country is seen from recent statistics on the need for such instruction According to McHugh, Gelatt, and Fix (2007; cited in Schaetzel & Young, 2007, p 64), 5.8 million legal permanent residents will require English language instruction to pass the naturalization test, whereas 6.4 million unauthorized immigrants will need it to secure work permits and legal permanent resident status Significantly, these unprecedented demographic shifts need to be viewed in relation to the wider phenomenon of globalization (Block & Cameron, 2002; Canagarajah, 2006) I TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 44, No 3, September 2010 517 DIFFERENTIATING ADULT ESL LEARNERS To date, the learners represented in adult English as a second language (ESL) research seem to fall into three broad categories: transmigrants, voluntary immigrants, and involuntary immigrants The difference between the former group and the two latter groups is addressed by Block (2006), who observed that, unlike traditional immigrants, transmigrants not make ‘‘a firm commitment as regards personal and cultural loyalties to the host society’’ (p 17) To explicate the differences between the three different categories of adult ESL learners, I turn to several key focal learners in second language acquisition (SLA) literature That transnationals are vastly different from immigrants is apparent when one considers Block’s (2007) description of Carlos, a Colombian in London, who was previously a philosophy lecturer at a university in his home country Using Bourdieu’s (1991) notion of capital to mark distinction, it is clear that Block views Carlos differently from his other focal immigrant learners: ‘‘It was Carlos’s cultural and, to some extent, his social capital that made him feel very different from the majority of SSLs [Spanish Speaking Latinos] with whom he came in contact at work’’ (p 107) Globe-trotting professional transmigrants or professional bilinguals (Day & Wagner, 2009) such as Carlos are less commonly featured in the literature on adult ESL learners, because the bulk of research has been on voluntary immigrants who are oppressed and poor As early as the 1970s and 1980s, researchers had started investigating the development of English grammar of immigrants Schumann (1978), for instance, examined how a Costa Rican named Alberto acquired English in the United States By the 1990s, however, the focus had shifted from the learning of English grammar to wider sociolinguistics A popular example of a voluntary immigrant from more recent research that looks at the sociopolitical factors that impact English language development is Eva in Peirce’s (1995) work Coming from Poland, Eva immigrated to Canada because she wanted ‘‘economic advantage’’ (Peirce, 1995, p 23) Admittedly, she had to endure challenges commonly encountered by many other immigrants, such as the cold reception she initially received from her coworkers But, as trying as her situation may have been, teachers need to realize that she faced a set of circumstances that is quite different from that often encountered by involuntary immigrants This group of learners comprise asylum seekers or political refugees who often have to leave their home countries because their lives are at risk One example is Serafina, the Guatamalan learner in Menard-Warwick’s (2005b) study Unlike Carlos or Eva, whose lives were never in physical danger, Serafina was forced to flee 518 TESOL QUARTERLY Guatemala as she received death threats Serafina noted, ‘‘I had no plans to come [to the U.S.], but they [the local military authorities] threatened me with death (me amenazaron de muerte)’’ (p 175) It is on this group of immigrants—the political refugees1—that this article focuses By choosing to focus on a refugee learner, I join other language scholars such as Menard-Warwick (2005a, 2005b, 2007), who worked with female refugees from Central America; Warriner (2007a, 2007b), who worked with female Sudanese refugees; and Cooke (2006), who worked with both male and female asylum seekers from South America and Eastern Europe However, unlike these earlier works, this ethnographic case study is based on a male refugee from Southeast Asia THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNER TRAJECTORIES My decision to examine my focal learner’s language and literacy development during his first year in the United States was motivated in part by recent calls by applied linguists to look into learner trajectories (e.g., Hornberger, 2007; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Wortham, 2006) Hornberger (2007), for instance, has called for researchers to ‘‘trace how individuals’ transnational identities and practices develop, shift, transform and are transformed as they move across space and time’’ (p 330) Longitudinal studies on migrant second language (L2) learners (e.g., Bremer, Roberts, Vasseur, Simonot, & Broeder, 1996; Perdue 1993a, 1993b) have been conducted over the past 30 years Drawing on data from a larger project that investigated adult immigrant SLA in several European countries, Bremer et al (1996), for instance, analyzed the processes of understanding in interaction between minority ethnic workers and majority group members Working specifically with refugees, Huebner (1979) focused on the evolving nominal reference system used by a Hmong-speaking Laotian refugee named Ge, whereas Duff (1993) examined how her Cambodian refugee learner’s English became less topic prominent and more subject prominent over time However, such earlier SLA research, as Duff (2008) herself concedes, failed to take into account the influence of larger structural factors on language learning She noted: Most qualitative SLA research conducted in the 1970s to the 1990s, and especially SLA case studies such as mine, reflected a rather narrowly linguistic, positivist, or postpositivist orientation to research Although According to the United Nations, a refugee is someone who ‘‘has left their country of origin or habitual residence and owing to a well founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion is unable or unwilling to return’’ (United Nations, 2007, p 16) FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 519 qualitative, the analyses were fairly unidimensional and less holistic [emphasis added] than case studies in the social sciences and education generally are now Microcontextual features such as task environment or discourse context were in some studies examined carefully, but larger macrocontextual social, political, and cultural factors were often minimized (p 15) Given these developments in research, studying the learner trajectories of refugees is particularly important if researchers are to better understand the immense pressures these refugees encounter in the language learning process created by social constraints Awareness of the disadvantaged position of refugees is further heightened when one compares the different levels of capital owned by the three migrant learners mentioned in the previous section Although Carlos (Block, 2007) had come to England with tertiary education and Eva (Peirce, 1995) had the equivalent of a high school diploma when she arrived in Canada, by contrast, Serafina (MenardWarwick, 2005b) only had years of formal education when she entered the United States In Serafina’s case, knowing about her past experiences and showing how her language abilities developed over time, as Menard-Warwick has done, deepens understanding of the plight of refugees This understanding is enhanced when one applies a Bourdieusian framework to trace a learner’s trajectory Thus this article explores a framework for tracing the learning trajectory of refugee learners, offers methodological possibilities for exploring this trajectory, describes a study of one adult ESL refugee learner, and discusses theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study Admittedly, some critics may argue that the discussion of one case study is rather limiting However, it needs to be noted that the advantage of conducting a case study is that it allows for, as van Lier (2005, p 195) contended, a complex phenomenon to be researched over time In examining the dynamics surrounding a newly arrived Hmong learner in the United States, this article seeks to show how general principles deriving from a Bourdieusian theoretical orientation manifest themselves in a given set of particular circumstances REVISITING BOURDIEU: A CAPITAL PLUS APPROACH TO LANGUAGE LEARNING Bourdieu left us with a set of powerful conceptual tools to examine domination as everyday practice through his five major concepts: capital, habitus, field, distinction, and symbolic violence Of these concepts, I focus on capital, habitus, and field to illustrate how they can be collectively used to conceptualize the language and literacy development of my adult Hmong learner 520 TESOL QUARTERLY Capital Bourdieu (1991) theorized that people make choices about languages according to the different kinds of resources or capital they possess Working with this economic metaphor, he argued that capital can be converted from one form to another Goldstein (2007), for example, pointed out that linguistic capital can be cashed in for educational qualifications or cultural capital, which in turn can be cashed in for lucrative jobs or economic capital The notion of cultural capital, in particular, has found wide purchase in the language education world since Peirce (1995) used it to explain her participants’ investment in learning English These concepts of cultural capital and investment were subsequently taken up by Menard-Warwick (2005b) in her study of two Latina immigrants and by Cooke (2006) in her description of an asylum seeker, Haxhi, from Kosovo As useful as Peirce’s notion of investment has been to case studies of adult ESL learners over the past decade, its application has not gone without criticism Menard-Warwick (2005b), for instance, pointed out that Peirce’s concept of investment fails to account for the social constraints encountered by the two Central American immigrant women in the former’s study In other words, Menard-Warwick seemed to be suggesting a need for a construct that would be able to consider both the structural and agentive forces that shape a learner’s language development Additionally, Menard-Warwick faulted Peirce for not offering an adequate glimpse into her learners’ trajectories She noted, ‘‘[while Norton] Peirce touches only briefly on learners’ histories prior to her study, the sources of their investments remain unclear’’ (p 168) In leveling such a criticism, Menard-Warwick appeared to be calling for future scholarly work to trace learner trajectories and their motivation In view of these gaps, I argue that Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, which is characterized by the constitution of one’s cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991), is a useful conceptual tool to track language and literacy development as it takes into account both structural and agentive forces that shape learning An Expanded View of Habitus A common criticism of Bourdieusian frames is that they are often seen as being overly mechanistic in relating how power and dominant relations work in schools and society (Albright, 2007) By overemphasizing the reproduction side of his notion of habitus, Bourdieu’s critics often overlook his acknowledgement that one’s habitus can be transformed as seen by the claim, ‘‘It [habitus] is durable but not eternal!’’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p 133) Habitus transformation FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 521 is also illustrated in Lin’s (1999) study of Cantonese-speaking students in a Hong Kong middle school These students, Lin noted, were able to ‘‘transform their attitude, dispositions, skills, and self-image—their habitus or social world’’ (p 410) Such a transformation can be explained by the fact that ‘‘habitus mediates between the global level of objective structures, the differences of resources [i.e., capital], and the local level of agents’ strategies, that is, what we would call ‘situated action’’’ (Collins, 2007, p 366) In short, habitus can be used as a theoretical lens to trace the language development of learners who engage structural forces while enacting their agentive will This is particularly significant when considered in the light of MenardWarwick’s (2005b) critique of the limits of Peirce’s (1995) notion of investment Field Going beyond this expanded view of habitus, researchers also need to consider the Bourdieusian idea of field, that is, a setting in which agents and their social positions are located (cf Bourdieu, 1984) Each agent’s position in the field results from the interaction between the specific rules of the field, and her habitus and capital Although researchers such as Heller (2006), Lin (1999), and Miller (2003) have applied the Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, symbolic violence, and distinction in relation to their work with adolescent ESL learners, L2 researchers have generally ignored the notion of field in their analyses of language development Kramsch (2007) speculated that this may be ‘‘[b]ecause [the concept of] field is so vague American educators have generally focused on habitus, which seems easier to grasp, especially if understood as the result of early socialization.’’ She adds, ‘‘But in doing so, they tend to ignore the fact that habitus does not exist independently of its dialectic relation with a field within a theory of action’’ (p 44) Rather than seeing the vagueness of field as being a shortcoming, I choose to heed Bourdieu and Wacquant’s (1992, p 96) assertion to think of field in relational terms For this study, the field is interpreted as the politics of English language teaching Indeed, much has been written about this since Pennycook’s (1989) call to interrogate how English is taught in the ESL classroom Specifically, one needs to consider the overt agenda to Americanize learners through ESL instruction Language researchers (e.g., Crawford, 2004; Lippi-Green, 1997) in the United States, in particular, have highlighted the assimilative coercion experienced by adult immigrants learning English Similarly, in commenting on the sociopolitics of English language teaching, Warriner (2007b) pointed out that the master 522 TESOL QUARTERLY narrative generally equates speaking English with becoming and being American She argued, to become insiders, ‘‘outsiders’’ must learn unaccented, ‘‘standard’’ English (p 345) Given the highly political work that goes on in an adult ESL classroom, which includes its socialization agenda, a consideration of the Bourdieusian frames of capital, habitus, and field is apt THE STUDY Following Blommaert (2005), I provide a brief background to Vue Lang’s life before coming to the United States, because it is important to situate the communicative events that follow within larger historical frames In December 2003, the U.S government announced that the last group of Hmong refugees in Thailand would be permitted entrance to the United States The Hmong, an ethnic group from Laos who had been heavily recruited to serve and die for U.S political interests, fled to Thailand after the Vietnam-backed government came into power in 1975 (Tollefson, 1989) With the impending arrival of this last batch of Hmong refugees into the midwestern city where this study is situated, a Hmong literacy, language, and jobs project was created through a partnership between the university, the state refugee service, and the local technical college Such a collaborative arrangement that adopted a competency-based, vocational skills model in order to secure funding was not atypical, in light of recent federal legislation that has advocated ‘‘welfare to work’’ initiatives such as the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (Murray, 2005, p 69) Given such a work-driven model, enrolled students in this program had just year to make the transition into the working world In September 2005, I started working with a 26-year-old Hmong man I was one of 23 graduate students from the university whose assistance was enlisted to personally tutor participants Vue Lang had come to the United States with his parents, wife, and 2-year-old daughter after living at a Thai refugee camp since he was six Over the 20 years at the camp, he received some schooling in a Thai-medium school (and could therefore speak Thai), but this education was cut short because the Thai government did not allow Hmong children over the age of 12 to attend Thai schools In short, Vue Lang encountered an interrupted education not uncommon among refugees (e.g., Miller, Mitchell, & Brown, 2005; Woods, 2009) Besides being literate in Thai, Vue Lang was familiar with the Romanized Popular Alphabet, a writing system designed by Western missionary linguists for the Hmong language In his last year in Thailand, like many other Hmong refugees who had been accepted for resettlement in the United States, Vue Lang received some basic FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 523 training in English He attended these training sessions at the camp while continuing to work as a silversmith to support his family Vue Lang and I met hours once a week at the community center where his regular ESL classes were conducted In addition to working with him on a personal basis, I also observed Vue Lang during his ESL lessons, which he attended twice a week These lessons were videotaped, in keeping with the microethnographic approach adopted by Erickson (1992) Ethnographic field notes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007) were also made during these lessons and my tutoring sessions with him Additionally, samples of his written work were collected, and I conducted a home visit when Vue Lang invited me to his apartment on one occasion The various types of data were collected to ensure greater fidelity of his world and is in keeping with Holstein and Gubrium’s (2005) call to engage in a ‘‘new hybridized analytics of reality construction’’ (p 492) Relatedly, this practice of collecting various data types was part of a larger agenda to provide a thick description (cf Holliday, 2004) of my data, by piecing things together and understanding how these different elements were interconnected This decision was motivated by two primary reasons First, the different data sources contributed to a more holistic understanding of Vue Lang’s lived reality, which would otherwise have been less clearly conveyed to me because of Vue Lang’s limited English proficiency Next, by providing contextual depth through the collection and subsequent presentation of different data sets, I hope to help readers make their own inferences and see, as Canagarajah (2005) put it, ‘‘[the] surprising connections between the context and me, the researcher’’ (p 313) This connection between my context and me is particularly important, because, like other language researchers who work from a critical perspective, I think it is crucial that researchers take into account the political processes surrounding their focal students and how they (i.e., the researchers) themselves are constituted by and shape the political landscape that characterizes their research site Within SLA, for instance, Kramsch and Whiteside (2007) have called for researcher positioning ‘‘to be explicitly and systematically accounted for and placed in its historical, political, and symbolic context’’ (p 918) In line with this call for positioning transparency, I found myself identifying with three researcher categories—researcher as outsider or insider, researcher as resource, and researcher as befriender—mapped out by Sarangi and Candlin (2003, pp 278–280) According to Sarangi and Candlin (2003), being an insider can provide insights otherwise unavailable to the external researcher Being a graduate student from Singapore, I was not a member of the Hmong community However, I was able to claim partial insider status, as a result of my Southeast Asian racial and ethnic identity and also because, like Vue Lang, I was a foreigner in the United States This is not to suggest 524 TESOL QUARTERLY that our experiences as foreigners in a new country were identical, especially in light of the different levels of capital possessed by us However, conversations about adjusting to life in the United States, for instance, allowed me to ask Vue Lang further questions about his former life in Thailand This consequently provided me with more insight into his lived reality Significantly, from an ethical perspective, I would argue that Vue Lang also profited from our collaboration Given that I was at the community center in the capacity of an English tutor, I helped Vue Lang with his assignments and offered him the option to seek clarification on matters that were salient to him In this respect, I positioned myself as a resource to him At the same time, and in light of my extended presence at the center and my frequent contact with him and his ESL classmates through the various class activities I participated in, I began to embody what Sarangi and Candlin (2003) described as the ‘‘researcher as befriender’’ (p 279) Overall, measures such as these helped to make ours a mutually beneficial collaboration To facilitate data analysis and also to ensure that I remained reflexive about my research process, I kept a research journal This journal proved to be especially helpful when the data sets were coded according to themes that emerged during the analysis stage (Duff, 2008) One particular theme—that of Americanization—stood out and subsequently became the focus of this article Combing the data also allowed me to generate a new understanding of Vue Lang’s linguistic processes Although I had started the study with an interest in tracking the transformation of his habitus, I soon realized that my theoretical perspective needed to include the field in which Vue Lang’s language learning was situated This became evident as I cycled back and forth between the data and my conceptual framework to fine-tune my preliminary interpretations (Hornberger, 2006) A CLOSER LOOK AT VUE LANG’S LANGUAGE LEARNING TRAJECTORY The data contained many references to adapting to life in the United States The following excerpts provide the context for my discussion and illustrate Vue Lang’s development over the course of months Locating Vue Lang’s Habitus Pennycook (2007) called for English to be located within a more complex ecology of people’s needs and identities in the face of globalization This, he argued, is important because it ‘‘forces us to view language use and learning as multiple investments that people bring to FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 525 their acts, desires and performances in ‘English’’’ (p 73) A similar view was echoed by Rampton (2006), who called for the analysis of language use to take into account ‘‘the fears, hopes and subjectivities of individuals [that] are shaped by class structure’’ (p 331) During one of our earlier sessions, I asked Vue Lang to write me a short paragraph about his family as he had spoken so fondly of them Here is the text he produced: My family came to America very happy but I sorry very much because my sisters did not come to America I came to America I don’t have sister because they live in Thailand Some time I and my mother and father think about them I think next 10 years I have some money I go back to Thailand again but I don’t know when will I see my sisters again (Vue Lang, September 28, 2005) Vue Lang’s habitus is sedimented within this text In describing his family that is split across two continents, one sees how close family bonds shape his worldview and will continue to influence his future actions— he hopes to save enough money to visit his sisters in Thailand For Vue Lang, the transcultural flows that Pennycook (2007) wrote about are part of his daily lived experience More importantly, these flows have influenced how he views the world: Money is a panacea to his family problems The perception that learning English is an investment (Peirce, 1995) that promises to enhance Vue Lang’s chances of getting a good job becomes more apparent in the next data set Vue Lang lived in a subsidized two-bedroom apartment that was adjacent to the community center where he attended the ESL classes One day after one of our sessions, he invited me to his apartment What follows are field notes that I recorded during my brief visit: The living room was sparsely furnished There was a love seat and a small dining table for four When we entered the apartment, the television was on and his wife and parents were watching a Thai film while his two-year-old daughter was on the floor playing with a stuffed toy After a brief introduction and serving me a drink, his wife brought their daughter into the bedroom and the elderly couple retreated to theirs, leaving Vue Lang and me in the living room Vue Lang then pulled out two photos of his former home in Thailand to reveal a wood-frame house with concrete floor and a zinc roof which had been built with the financial support of his brother who had come to the U.S 20 years earlier Vue Lang lived in this house with his immediate family, his parents, and the families of his two sisters He also informed me that with the money he received from his brother, they were able to purchase a rice cooker and a stove When pressed why he wanted to learn English, he muttered, ‘‘Get good job, give my family good life.’’(Field notes, November 2, 2005) 526 TESOL QUARTERLY From this vignette, one gains an understanding of how refugee migrants collectively manage resources over long distances for purposes of community development in areas of their origin (Vertovec, 2009) The vignette also gives us a glimpse of Vue Lang’s habitus, which, according to Menard-Warwick (2005a), ‘‘refers to the way that an individual has learned to perceive and act in the world based on previous experiences’’ (p 256) In Vue Lang’s case, his perception of the world and his actions are influenced to a large extent by his family For one, they seem to be a prime motivation for him to learn English As a husband, father, and son, Vue Lang feels quite compelled to improve his English, because he believes that gaining proficiency in the language will enhance his prospects of getting a ‘‘good job.’’ In other words, he hopes to convert his newly acquired linguistic capital from learning English into securing economic capital by landing a job Admittedly, some L2 researchers have debunked the myth that improving one’s English will necessarily guarantee a refugee attractive employment Warriner (2007a, 2007b), for example, illustrated this by describing the trials and tribulations encountered by the female Sudanese refugees she worked with Additionally, Waldinger and Lichter (2003) argued that many U.S workplaces in regions attracting large numbers of immigrants are segregated linguistically, with entire shifts or even whole industries dominated by workers who regularly use a non-English language and may never need to interact with English speakers on the job (see also Goldstein, 1996) Although this needs to be noted, such a finding does not diminish or dilute Vue Lang’s investment (Peirce, 1995) in learning English in order to improve the material conditions of his family This desire also needs to be framed within the context of the Hmong patriarchal system in which Vue Lang was raised Although the Portuguese women in Goldstein’s (1996) Toronto-based study lacked ambition to learn English because of their gendered subject positions— they lived in a patriarchal Portuguese culture that relegated women to subordinate positions in all aspects of their lives—the patriarchal system to which Vue Lang belongs incentivizes him to acquire English One also gets a sense of the man’s place in a Hmong household by analyzing Vue Lang’s wife’s behavior when I turned up at their home Although she dutifully greeted me and served me a drink, she also very quickly left the two of us to engage in a private conversation after excusing herself from our company Hence one sees that part of Vue Lang’s habitus is the gendered distinction that characterizes Hmong culture Such a distinction has also been noted by Collignon (1994), who worked with Hmong women enrolled in an adult ESL course in Providence, Rhode Island, in the United States These women, Collignon observed, feared studying alongside men because of the presumed intellectual superiority of the latter group This in turn increased their apprehension of FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 527 learning to read and write in English As one woman in her study put it, ‘‘Women learn like animals Men study in their heads’’ (p 331) However, this view that men are superior to women appears to be under attack in Vue Lang’s world now that he is living in a society that places men and women on an equal footing Additionally, he is confronted by the reality that his wife may also have to work to help support their family In short, and in keeping with Appadurai’s (1996) observation that a person’s ‘‘habitus now has to be painstakingly reinforced in the face of life-worlds that are frequently in flux’’ (p 56), one may assert that Vue Lang’s habitus is far from being fixed Further, it can be argued that the habitus becomes a site of struggle, especially for immigrant men like Vue Lang Such a contestation of manhood and the general emasculation of immigrant men in English-dominant countries has been well recorded in the literature: Teusch-Dwyer (2001) has written about how Karol, a Polish immigrant felt disempowered by his American brother-in-law and male boss because they did not view him as an equal partner in conversations due to his lack of English proficiency, whereas Cooke (2006) noted how Haxhi, an asylum seeker from Kosovo, felt devalued because he was not allowed to gain employment because of immigration bureaucracy However, unlike the two Eastern European immigrants in Teusch-Dwyer’s and Cooke’s study, whose desires to learn English were depressed because of their emasculation, Vue Lang is able to turn an apparent assault on his manhood into an incentive to acquire the language Equally important to note is the dynamic nature of his habitus as a result of this ‘‘threat.’’ That his habitus is open to and undergoes transformation is explicated in the next five data excerpts Developing Curricular and Institutional Competence Part of the ESL curriculum at the community center entailed completing worksheets for homework In the first excerpt, one is introduced to a vocabulary exercise given to Vue Lang by his ESL teacher, which he subsequently brought to our session The following worksheet is part of a four-lesson unit whose theme was ‘‘In the United States.’’ Each lesson, which comprised a set of comprehension questions and vocabulary and grammar exercises, revolved around a central character, Maria Garcia, a 38-year-old Mexican woman whose life in the United States unfolds over the course of the unit Like Vue Lang, she is enrolled in an adult ESL course The extract below appeared in the third lesson of the unit Because of space constraints, only a segment of the worksheet is presented here 528 TESOL QUARTERLY Lesson 3: Classmates & Co-workers: Maria’s Story It is Tuesday Today is our fourth ESL class All of the students in my class work at Memorial Hospital with me We are classmates and co-workers, but we don’t know each other We come from different countries We are different nationalities Four of my co-workers in the kitchen are in my ESL class Dung and Hoa are Vietnamese They come from Vietnam Dung, Hoa, and I get the meals ready Hong is from China Her nationality is Chinese Hong puts the meals on the trays Win is Cambodian He washes the dishes I see my classmates at work We speak different languages, so we don’t talk much I want to talk to my classmates I also want to talk to my supervisor and other people at the hospital Complete each sentence with one of these words Departments Kitchens Maintenance Housekeeping Laundry nationality Supervisor Dung comes from Vietnam His is Vietnamese My is my boss (Artefact 7, December 12, 2005) Some readers may be dismayed by the overt assimilative ideology embedded in the above text, as Maria is positioned as someone who is willing to learn English to become a better worker Hence she seems to embody the master narrative, which dictates that English be used as a bridge language to foster social cohesion More significantly, such a representation of an immigrant ESL learner seems to align itself with the ‘‘general political rhetoric [which] privilege[s] the myth of the hardworking, family-oriented immigrant, who comes from a cohesive community that can meet many social needs ’’ (McGroarty, 2008, p 100) Indeed, it would be hard to dispute the indoctrination that seems to be going on here and the explicit attempt to Americanize learners like Vue Lang through language learning While acknowledging the external social forces and the ideologies that shape Vue Lang’s learning, I would like to suggest an alternate interpretation to this context by arguing that Vue Lang is strategically transforming his habitus while maintaining a high level of agency To this, I draw on two types of competences that Curry (2007) invoked in analyzing cultural capital in the English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) classroom The first type of competence is curricular competence, which she defines as the ability to grasp ‘‘both the implicit larger pedagogical purposes behind decontextualized classroom activities and how current coursework is related to the broader contexts of the FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 529 educational field’’ (p 280) The second form of competence is institutional competence, that is, ‘‘knowing how to draw on resources and negotiate restrictions’’ (p 280) Vue Lang was able to exhibit both forms of competences during my sessions with him, which often ended with Vue Lang asking me to sign his attendance sheet to acknowledge that we had completed yet another session together This sheet was then submitted by him to the community center as proof of his attendance at these sessions Once, when he had to take his daughter to the doctor, he called me to reschedule our session, illustrating that he had figured out how to negotiate the system Together, these self-initiated actions reveal that he had developed institutional competence, because he had found ways to work within the system while being distinctly aware that he had to fulfill the project’s expectations Next, it needs to be noted that Vue Lang never complained about having to complete the worksheets assigned to him He worked on them diligently, knowing that the language exercises in these worksheets afforded him opportunities to practice his language skills One grammar skill that was taught in a relatively decontextualized manner was prepositions Earlier in the semester, Vue Lang had been given a grammar worksheet that looked at how to express one’s location The expressions introduced to him in his ESL class through a series of pictures included ‘‘down the street,’’ ‘‘around the corner,’’ ‘‘across the street,’’ and ‘‘next door.’’ The students in his class were then asked to listen to a series of conversations bearing these newly introduced expressions, and subsequently to identify the expressions that emerged in the conversations An extract of the worksheet is presented below: Where are the people? Listen to the conversations Then listen again and circle the letter Conversation Conversation Conversation a down the street a around the corner a around the corner b across the street b across the street b next door (Artefact 4, October 12, 2005) Language exercises that covered the use of prepositions and other grammatical items were not uncommon, and Vue Lang was often given similar exercises for homework, which he brought to our sessions In fact, on completing his homework with me, he often expressed equal enthusiasm when we worked on the additional materials that I brought to our sessions Hence one can argue that he had also acquired 530 TESOL QUARTERLY curricular competence, because he was able to see how these exercises helped to develop a grounding in grammar and vocabulary In short, Block and Cameron’s (2002) observation that ‘‘individuals are not the dupes of overpowering social structures and events, but active, reflective agents in the ongoing construction of social reality’’ (p 4), appears to be borne out in Vue Lang’s willingness to take learning into his own hands; this is demonstrated further in the following episode A week before Thanksgiving, Vue Lang brought an envelope that contained his brother’s address By then, he had already been driving his 15-year-old Oldsmobile—a gift from his brother—for months and was confident of taking his first road trip to the city where his brother lived Having heard about MapQuest (a free online software that provides driving directions, www.mapquest.com), Vue Lang was eager to find out how to get to his brother’s home We usually met in a large study room at the community center, which was equipped with several computers Aware of this, and a further indication of Vue Lang’s institutional competence, because he knew how to mobilize the center’s resources for his use, he led me to one of the computers I asked him to type in his own address (the start point) and that of his brother’s home (the end point) Because of constraints of space, only a segment of the directions are presented here: Merge onto I-794 E via EXIT 310C on the LEFT 0.9 miles Take the SMITH ST exit, EXIT 1E, on the LEFT 0.2 miles 10 Take the ORCHARD ST SOUTH ramp 0.1 miles 11 Turn RIGHT onto E ST MICHAEL AVE 0.1 miles (Artefact 5, November 20, 2005) Initially, Vue Lang encountered some difficulty in understanding the genre of electronic driving directions, because he had never seen a sample of it before We therefore studied the table format more closely, and I explained to him the function of each column as we moved from left to right During the course of our discussion, it dawned on him that he had seen the icons, such as the exit sign in the first column, on the road before By analyzing these icons in relation to the use of prepositions in the third column, he was then able to realize the utility of this online software One can argue that previous grammar drills on prepositions (as illustrated in the earlier worksheet excerpt) that he had done seemed to pay off as he was able to harness the linguistic skills, which had developed as a result of his curricular competence, and effectively apply them to reading this multimodal text Hence between FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 531 October 12, 2005 (i.e., when prepositions were introduced in his ESL class), and November 20, 2005 (i.e., when I worked with him on getting directions to his brother’s home), Vue Lang’s understanding of this grammatical item appeared to have moved from a decontextualized level to one that not only bore real world relevance and association but also exhibited a level of flexible application on his part More importantly, Vue Lang’s language trajectory was characterized by his growth into a central agent who was capable of participating in an act of reconstruction rather than reproduction, that is, one who is engaging in ‘‘semiotic restructuring instead of [a] repetition of prior grammatical structures’’ (Pennycook, 2007, p 70) At the same time, his linguistic habitus appeared to be undergoing a transformation, as he seemed to have added multimodal literacy (Kress, 2003) to his linguistic repertoire Developing Participation Competence Earlier, I drew on two types competences that Curry (2007) invoked in analyzing cultural capital in the ESOL classroom Now, I turn to a third kind of competence—participation competence—that she identified According to Curry (2007), participation competence refers to the ‘‘beneficial ways to engage with the instructor and the curriculum’’ (p 280) This form of competence, I would add, requires the collaboration and cooperation of the teacher and is depicted in the next two excerpts Commenting on the social turn in ESOL, Roberts, Cooke, Baynham, and Simpson (2007), observe that, ‘‘The adult ESOL classroom is one site where adult ESOL learners face communicative challenges and barriers to access, as well as opportunities in their life and learning trajectories’’ (p 24) In both excerpts, Vue Lang is observed as succeeding in negotiating the challenges that Roberts et al alluded to The first excerpt, produced below, captures an after-class conversation between Vue Lang and John, his ESL teacher, in early March Excerpt 1 Vue Lang: Yesterday is bad day for me John: Yeah, why? Vue Lang: Drove a car to the parking lamp John: Parking ramp? Vue Lang: Yeah, I don’t know, I had ticket in the machine and, and I saw they wrote I had to put credit card John: Credit card, yeah Vue Lang: Yeah Oh, I haven’t got, I don’t have credit card I had to talk to cashier 532 TESOL QUARTERLY John: Well, hey you, you knew Good There’s a problem, but you went and found someone, and you told them the problem Vue Lang: Yeah 10 John: In English, and they explained it to you, so that’s good I mean it’s bad, but it’s good 11 Vue Lang: Yeah 12 John: Maybe six months ago you could not ask someone for help, right? 13 Vue Lang: Oh yeah (Transcript 6, March 5, 2006) Not having a credit card is but one of the many material challenges a refugee learner like Vue Lang has to encounter in his daily life This, however, does not deter him from confronting the parking payment problem that emerges Admirably, as one sees from Vue Lang’s narration of the event (Turns 1, 3, 5, and 7) and John’s subsequent compliment (Turn 8) that Vue Lang was able to resolve the problem by seeking assistance from the cashier As John (Turn 12) himself points out, Vue Lang had made enough progress to be able to ask someone in English for help Although that itself is no mean feat, equally commendable is how Vue Lang manages to initiate a conversation with John once the class was over It is he who starts talking about his bad day Save the initial confusion over the word ‘‘parking ramp’’ (Turn 3), what follows is an elaborated and fluid conversation between John and Vue Lang Particularly striking is the collaborative nature of their talk, as illustrated through the agreement marker ‘‘yeah,’’ which characterizes much of the conversation (Turns 2, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13) Such a frequent use of this marker not only establishes a sense of solidarity between the two speakers but also underscores Vue Lang’s strategic ability to enlist John’s assistance in moving the conversation along The ‘‘yeah’’s that Vue Lang produces in Turns 9, 11, and 13 are hardly empty markers; rather, they are a clear indication of how he is able to successfully enlist his teacher’s interest in the conversation topic, while also securing John’s commiseration and admiration (Turn 10) This honed ability is evident in the next excerpt, which takes place during a health lesson later that month In keeping with the lesson theme of ‘‘Hurting and Healing,’’ John introduces the word immunization to the class Excerpt 32 John: This is hard It’s hard (walks across the room) Im/mu/ ni/zation 33 Barry: I’m, I’m wondering if some children need immunization to go to school 34 John: Yes FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 533 35 Vue Lang: Oh (softly) 36 John: In America, all children (points to the board and moves his left arm in a circular motion) before kindergarten or school they get immunization 37 Vue Lang: Yeah, like like me when we arrive in into America they, they gave me immunization 38 Barry: Yes, yup, or vaccination Immunization 39 John: When you came into America you had to have immunization, probably shots (simulates a shot in his left arm) Vaccines (nods) 40 Barry: Uh hmm Oh yeah, vaccines (softly) 41 John: Ok, in in Thailand, vaccines (writes ‘vaccines’ on the board) 42 Vue Lang: Vaccine, yeah (softly) 43 John: Vaccine and immunization are the same thing, very similar (Transcript 8, March 21, 2006) Performance competence, as discussed earlier, requires the collaboration and cooperation of the teacher In the above excerpt, Vue Lang exhibits that he knows the rules of the classroom game when he joins in the conversation between Barry (another researcher) and John (Turn 37) and exclaims, ‘‘Yeah, like like me when we arrive in into America they, they gave me immunization.’’ This revelation is telling, because Vue Lang appears to have made the valuable connection between this new word and his own prior experience of having been inoculated One can surmise that he is deploying his habitus to lend a frame of relevance to this newly introduced word Equally important is how he manages to articulate the word immunization in his speech There are two possible reasons why Vue Lang may have been able to this First, it could be because he had experienced being inoculated in Thailand, that is, even before coming to the United States According to Duffy (2007), age-appropriate immunizations were administered to refugees before they departed for the United States This notion is reinforced by John’s comment in Turn 41: ‘‘Ok, in in Thailand, vaccines.’’ If that is the case, what one is witnessing is a transformation of Vue Lang’s habitus as he probably sees being immunized as part of being socialized into life in America Crucially, one can argue that there is an alignment of habitus and field as Vue Lang’s habitus is now in sync with the objective of acculturation At the same time, one is privy to Vue Lang’s language development while observing how he mobilizes his past life experience to aid his understanding of immunization In this respect, one is led to see how Vue Lang’s own life trajectory is 534 TESOL QUARTERLY inextricably linked with his language trajectory, as both pathways work to mutually reinforce each other Another possible reason for Vue Lang’s uptake and appropriation of the term immunization lies in John’s effort (Turns 36, 39, and 41) to promote understanding By tapping on Vue Lang’s experience of being immunized, he shows that knowledge is not the exclusive domain of the teacher Such a practice of honoring his learners’ past experiences—in this case Vue Lang’s habitus—is described by Baynham (2005) as bringing the outside into the classroom Baynham adds that this practice is often characterized by student agency and teacher contingency In this example, student agency is illustrated by Vue Lang’s eagerness to contribute to the classroom conversation, whereas teacher contingency is demonstrated by John’s willingness to share the conversational floor with Vue Lang and his classmates PEDAGOGICAL AND THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that the number of refugee people worldwide approximates 20 million, with an additional 12 million people categorized as ‘‘stateless’’ (UNHCR, 2008) Given a corresponding explosion in refugee learners, this study has implications for practice, policy, and research For classroom practice, it suggests the need for teachers to realize the need to open up spaces in classrooms and facilitate their students’ habitus transformation The habitus, as discussed earlier and demonstrated thus far, can be used as a theoretical lens to trace the language development of learners who engage structural forces while enacting their agentive will In this study, the interface between structure and agency was foregrounded in the dialogic activity involving John, Barry, and Vue Lang In particular, despite what Erickson (1982) calls an academic task structure that constrained the subject matter of the lesson (i.e., the lesson theme of ‘‘Hurting and Healing’’), Vue Lang, John, and Barry were able to, through adaptive variation and by entering into an interactional partnership, negotiate the meaning of immunization Hence, on a practice level, one tangible way for teachers to open up spaces for student habitus transformation is to devote more attention to examining how participation in their classrooms is organized An understanding of participation organization, coupled with deliberate attempts by the teacher to foster genuine dialogue in the classroom, can contribute to the reimagination of the classroom community as a productive space for learning (Norton, 2006) A second implication for classroom practice is the need for teachers to consider habitus transformation in relation to the field in which their FROM REFUGEE TO TRANSFORMER 535 practice is located This requires a recognition of the ideological orientation of the curriculum Colleagues who this often find themselves in two general situations afterward In the first situation, the common argument raised by practitioners working with a standardsbased curriculum is that they have little say when it comes to materials selection Under such circumstances, an interrogation of the field with a view to teach students how to question the hidden curriculum found in texts should accompany the use of the supplied materials In this study, Vue Lang was given a set of worksheets where immigrants were stereotyped If confronted with a similar situation, such representations should be discussed in class, while also covering the language skills that the assigned materials were designed to address For example, teachers who find themselves having to use materials involving immigrant characters such as the hospital worker, Maria Garcia, in Vue Lang’s worksheet should cover the core language exercises in an assigned unit However, in addition to completing these stipulated exercises, they should also have their students think about how characters like Maria Garcia and her classmates are depicted in the worksheets, as well as discuss the other factors such as gender, race, and religious orientation that may impede their students’ own social advancement Next, in the second and preferred pedagogical situation, teachers may find themselves in the enviable position of having the autonomy to shape their curriculum If such an option is available, a culturally relevant pedagogy (e.g., Burns, 2005; Holliday, 1994; Kumaravadivelu, 2008) ought to be embraced One way to this is to bring the outside in (Baynham, 2005) This can take the form of performing activities that simulate reality (for example, having students navigate the Internet as Vue Lang did to find driving directions), or by tapping their students’ personal experience as John did when introducing the word immunization to the class and through John’s informal conversation about the parking ramp problem with Vue Lang Teaching students how to use language in real life contexts is particularly important, because the goal of L2 pedagogy should be to help L2 learners such as Vue Lang successfully function in a range of sociocultural contexts (cf Johnson, 2009) and not just become adept at completing worksheets in the language classroom For policy and research, this study begins a conversation about methodological challenges often encountered by researchers working within a case study research paradigm Indeed, the mixed method approach adopted by Roberts and colleagues (cf Roberts & Baynham, 2006) probably heralds a new phase in adult ESL research, because it enables researchers to address the demands of funders and policymakers while maintaining an ethnographic perspective Although this line of research also needs to account for the socioeconomic oscillations 536 TESOL QUARTERLY of power and capital affecting the lives of immigrant learners (Stevens, 2009), it should also not be too hasty in discounting the ways in which learning English can enrich their lives After all, not trying to teach immigrant learners English, like Vue Lang, would only condemn them to a future riddled with their easy exploitation by big capital Besides, denying them access to English would be a brazen disregard of their own personal desire to learn the language and would overlook the agency they possess Hence only by skillfully balancing a ‘‘politics of redistribution’’ of the different forms of capital available to refugee learners with a ‘‘politics of recognition’’ of the different forms of capital that they already possess (Fraser, 1995, p 69), and supplementing findings from the analyses of large pools of adult learners with insights from case studies, can teachers ultimately equalize the effects of the life histories of displaced and disadvantaged learners ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank David Block, Allan Luke, and Jane Zuengler for their invaluable feedback My gratitude extends to the guest editors of this special issue and the anonymous reviewers THE AUTHOR Peter I De Costa is 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