A Bourdieusian perspective on child agency in family language policy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper investigates child agency in Ethiopian and Colombian refugee families in New Zealand. Emerging scholarship has highlighted ways in which children’s actions may influence family language policies. However, the existing descriptions are typically not embedded in a wider social theory, and have generally not included refugees. This study draws on 3 years of ethnographic observations, interviews with 29 mothers and 17 children and recordings of naturally occurring home interactions from three families. The families were part of a governmental programme for the resettlement of refugees. Data from both ethnic communities indicate that children influence their parents’ socialisation practices through (1) metalinguistic comments, (2) medium requests, (3) language brokering, (4) sociocultural socialisation and (5) majority language teaching. As a theoretical contribution, I argue that child agency is most fruitfully interpreted theoretically within a Bourdieusian framework of structure and agency. At a more micro-level, the notion of ‘cleft-habitus’ supplies a useful tool to discuss the effects of the children’s divergent cultural socialisation. From a practical perspective, targeting children along with parents may be beneficial for promoting language maintenance efforts.