Language and Muslim Immigrant Childhoods The Politics of Belonging [Hardcover]

This revealing analysis of everyday language use among Moroccan immigrant children in Spain explores their cultural and linguistic life-worlds as they develop a hybrid, yet coherent, sense of identity in their multilingual communities. The author shows how they adapt to the local ambivalence toward Muslim culture and increased surveillance by Spanish authorities. 

• Offers ground-breaking research from linguistic anthropology charting the politics of childhood in Muslim immigrant communities in Spain
• Illuminates the contemporary debates concerning assimilation and alienation in Europe’s immigrant Muslim and North African populations
• Provides an integrated blend of theory and empirical ethnographic data
• Enriches recent research on immigrant children with analyses of their sense of belonging, communicative practices, and emerging processes of identification

Acknowledgments viii

1 Introduction 1

2 Moros en la Costa: The Moroccan Immigrant Diaspora in Spain 28

3 Learning About Children’s Lives: A Note On Methodology 61

4 Moroccan Immigrant Childhoods in Vallenuevo 88

5 The Public School: Ground Zero for the Politics of Inclusion 125

6 Learning How to Be Moroccans in Vallenuevo: Arabic and the Politics of Identity 183

7 Becoming Translators of Culture: Moroccan Immigrant Children’s Experiences as Language Brokers 221

8 Heteroglossic Games: Imagining Selves and Voicing Possible Futures 257

9 Conclusion 289

Appendix 1: Working with Video-Recorded Discourse Data 307

Appendix 2: Arabic Transliteration Symbols 310

References 311

Index 349

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