The Diary of a Mother: the construction of a multilingual identity

With the raise of possibilities for mobility in the globalized world we live, it is not uncommon to find families migrating from their original country across geographical boarders due to diverse reason. When these families arrive in this new context, they usually have to deal with difficulties related to cultural and linguistic differences. Not just the children must quickly learn the local language to follow up their studies, but also the parents, when they do not master the language yet, have to learn it in order to interact in the new society. In the process of reconstruction and redefinition of themselves, they also question their identity in relation to social roles, such as parents, for example. The lack of language domain can also prevent these adults from acting socially in their children’s life, for instance when it comes to dealing with social institutions, such as schools, or helping their children with their learning process. In order to broad this discussion, we attempt to analyze how a mother, living in Austria, in a position of migrant reconstructs her multilingual identity, considering her experiences and feelings as L2 learner and her subject positions in front of her children’s school. As a research method, we chose the diary studies, as this is considered as an important means to foster participant’s reflection about their own “selves” as a language learner, and to analyze how these participants build their identities in the context of a L2. We still are in the process of collecting data, but with this study we aim to contribute for the general society by calling the attention of the academic community to the importance of developing projects to involve these migrant parents in their children’s school life, even if they are still not very familiarized with the local culture and language.