Expanding Ecological Approaches to Language, Culture, and Identity

Book excerpt: This book explores the process of identity (re)construction among mixed-heritage children within the context of globalization through the lens of its intersection with Korean society. The volume illustrates how these multicultural children mediate hybrid social spaces and examines their personal approaches toward translating, resisting, and transforming the entanglements engendered in those spaces. By tracing the trajectories of their identity (re)formations over several years, the book details the paths these youths have taken to navigate diverse contact zones and cope with institutional regulatory mechanisms. It highlights that, in the face of prevailing social stigma, they actively involve themselves in political action in their day-to-day lives: they redefine what it means to be Korean and/but multicultural, challenge simplistic membership boundaries, and develop unique strategies to resist and subsist. These efforts to question the essentialist logic of authenticity demonstrate that these youths, situated at the convergence of globalization, migration, inequality, and political power, represent a challenge to both national and global orders. Arguing that ecological perspectives need to direct greater attention toward the political as well as the posthumanist dimensions of language, culture, and identity, this book is key reading for scholars in applied linguistics, intercultural communication, and Asian studies.