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This study, adopting the Foucauldian lenses of citizenship, investigates how a group of students understand the prevailing social discourses and how such understanding and perceptions influence students' sense of citizenship and coping strategies. Drawing on in-depth individual interviews with 28 participants from six universities in Hong Kong, the findings suggest that multiple factors have impacts on the university students' sense of citizenship, including the media as technologies to shape citizenship, the essentialized ideological differences as an apparatus of intervention to shape and act upon individuals, and the legitimacy and discordance of opinions among individuals within both physical and virtual communities. The participants were found to gradually develop an awareness of the discursive construction of the social. They were found to search for their sense of citizenship through (a) opting for one ideological stance and/or keeping silent to avoid being othered within the social discourses existing at the social, community, and family levels; (b) adopting different coping strategies when dealing with their confusion towards conflicting comments; or (c) developing news reading literacy and coming to the realization of the role media plays in discursively constructing new citizens and exercising influence over existing and potential members of communities. The implications of the findings for curriculum design and policy making to develop support measures to facilitate students' positive learning and whole-person development are discussed.

This qualitative study investigates the process of family language policy and planning among a group of immigrant mothers with south Asian backgrounds in Hong Kong, and explores the underlying cultural, socio-political and ideological reasons. Moving beyond a discrete analysis of family language policy within the home context to incorporate elements of historical time and space, the data analysis shows that family language policy is shaped by individuals' cultural affiliations, future imaginations and their experiences across the contexts of school, community, workplace, host society and home country. Furthermore, broader social and ideological realities also impact individuals, and thereby influence family language policy. The findings suggest that South Asian families may face difficulty in maintaining their children's heritage language literacy, and that the immigrant mothers' lack of local educational experiences and limited knowledge of the Chinese language may disadvantage their children in terms of educational opportunities. Providing an in-depth understanding of bottom-up language practices, language planning and implementation in immigrant home contexts, this study has implications for policy makers in terms of language education and provision.

This qualitative study investigates the interplay between the ethnic and academic identity construction of a group of university students with South Asian backgrounds in Hong Kong. The findings indicate that ethnic identity and ethnic socialization have protective and facilitative effects on learning motivation and academic achievement. It is found that these ethnic minority students receiving tertiary education, holding congruent views of ethnic and academic identity, display a sense of agency and critical reflectivity of both the host society and their heritage communities and see facilitating community uplift and developing a more positive social image of ethnic minorities as their generation's responsibility. Reconstructing an ethnic identity and developing new social images therefore motivate them to pursue academic success. The findings indicate that the South Asian students figured out ways in which to interact with the outer world and set up new roles and spaces (i.e., a heritage community with more positive social image). The findings shed light on how to provide better opportunities for and assistance to ethnic minority students when they pursue higher education.

This article explores how ethnic minority students in Hong Kong secondary schools discursively construct their identities in relation to culture, heritage, and social discourse. It finds that the ethnic minority students negotiate their identities within multiple positioning from parents, school, and the broader social discourse on minority languages and cultures. It also finds that they construct contradictory language ideologies when attempting to legitimate their heritage languages and to illegitimate the status of Chinese in the social context. The findings indicate that the participants tend to establish an essentialized cultural difference between their heritage culture and host culture. It argues that fixed and stereotyped views towards language practices and culture may lead to antagonistic relations between the ethnic minority students and locals, and become obstacles to their socialization and integration into the mainstream community. The implications for establishing a flexible and relational view on cultural differences and language use are explored.

This article explores the ideological complex in a Hong Kong primary school where a large number of immigrant mainland Chinese students study by examining the interview data from teachers and immigrant students. Drawing on the notions of monoglot ideology and misrecognition, this study indicates that disqualifications of some linguistic resources in the emergent repertoire of their students exist in the primary school as a political and social context dominated by particular language ideologies. This study also explores how the language ideologies of the students are constructed and how the students censor their use of the native language through internalisation of the language attitudes held by the teachers. The findings suggest that a flexible language ideology would help the students value their own language resources and construct a new identity in the new hibitus. It is also suggested that the immigrant students can employ the multilingual practices as a symbolic resource rather than as a disadvantage constructed by the institutional ideologies.

This study reports on a longitudinal inquiry into professional identity construction among six novice cross-border English language teachers from mainland China, who completed their pre-service teacher education in Hong Kong (HK) and began their teaching practice in local HK schools. The findings indicate that the participants navigated obstacles in teaching by deploying their own multiple languages as a cultural and linguistic repertoire. The findings also show that the teachers experienced difficulty legitimising their professional identity in the teaching community, where contextual issues and power interplays mediated the process. Furthermore, it is found that the participants' commitment to teaching was negatively influenced by their non-legitimate position in the teaching community and the discordance between their teaching beliefs and the norms and values of their workplace. This study suggests that complex inter-relationships between marginal status in and legitimate membership of the community, between historical and cultural background, present practice, and future expectations, between social discourse and personal location, are involved in the process of identity construction. Measures to legitimate these teachers' position and to transform the linguistic and cultural repertories of these teachers into valuable resources of the local schools are suggested. Implications for future research are outlined.

This study explores transformations in the cultural identities of a group of pre-service teachers from mainland China during their educational experiences in Hong Kong, and how these transformations subsequently impact their professional identity. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 16 cross-border pre-service teachers from a teacher education institution. Findings demonstrate that 1) the participants recast their extant ideologies and cultural beliefs in response to multiple influences in their new context, enabling them to move beyond pre-established teaching values to re-construct their teaching identity; and 2) some participants constructed a bicultural and multilingual identity to gain legitimacy in the host context. The findings indicate that a more supportive context that provides more room for cultural awareness should be co-constructed by local and non-local pre-service teachers, institutions and policy makers. The study extends understanding of the interconnected relations between teacher identity and historical and social discourses.

Drawing on the notions of scale and space, this paper investigates identity construction among a group of mainland Chinese cross-boundary students by analysing their language choices and linguistic practices in a multilingual university in Hong Kong. The research illustrates how movement across spaces by these students produces varying index values for languages and influences their language usage, which becomes emblematic of individual and group identities. The research demonstrates that the values developed in their place of origin may have influences on their identity construction and peer communication in the host context. Finally, it shows that these students use their multiple linguistic repertoires to project multilayered identities and gain legitimacy in peer interactions. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper investigates the identity construction and language practice of a group of mainland Chinese immigrant students studying at a secondary school in Hong Kong, and explores the underlying reasons for, as well as the individual and group identities derived from, those language choices and practices. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the immigrant students and through observations in the school context, which focused on their views and attitudes concerning Putonghua maintenance, Cantonese and English learning and their perceptions of language ideologies in the school context. The marginalised position of Putonghua and its non-use in and out of classrooms reflects the social distinctions or language hierarchies found in the local school context. To resist the marginalised practice in the school context, the immigrant students employ their cultural and linguistic resources to establish and maintain Putonghua-speaking social networks and to imagine a proficient multilingual identity within the broader social context. The findings suggest that immigrant students should raise their awareness of language ideologies in the school context and recognise existing contradictions and discontinuities. It is also suggested that language ideologies could be incorporated into teachers' professional development. (Contains 1 note and 1 table.)

This qualitative study explores how migrant mothers strategised to construct new class identities and mobilise between different classed communities, and how the children aligned their linguistic practices with language policy, both at home and at the societal level. Drawing on the individual interviews and focus group, this study finds that, while the mothers actively drew on resources (e.g. social-networking, knowledge of governmental policy and languages) from their emigrational experiences to achieve class mobilisation, a bounded view towards cultures may have influenced the family language policy (FLP), in turn constraining their socialisation into mainstream society and leading to class stabilisation. The mothers were found to draw heavily upon their own migrant and social experiences to set up a restrictive FLP that functionalised the contexts of household, school, community, and society. It is therefore argued that the migrant mothers' linguistic and cultural resources should be valued and suppoort is needed to help them develop a more fluid family language policy that better prepare their children for educational success. The findings suggest the agentive role children play in FLP and this points to more school-parent collaboration, and the necessity of providing more space for children to enact their agency and contribute their ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting the Bourdieusian concept of capital, this study explores capital transformation and habitus recalibration among professional migrant women in Hong Kong. This study shows the fluidity and plurality of capital conversion within the interplay between gender, power relations, and broader social and neoliberal discourse. The findings indicate that the smooth conversion of different forms of capital requires the resources and capital acquired and accumulated in other places to be locally validated, and that the extent to which linguistic and cultural resources can be validated depends on migrants' social-economic ability, and how they define the boundaries of migration-specific capital. It is also found that classed power relations play a part in constituting networks, which in turn influence habitus recalibration. This study shows the process of capital conversion and new habitus establishment cannot be simply reduced to individual agency, and that wider historical, institutional, social, and political factors play a shaping role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study investigates the language ideology of a groups of Chinese language teachers working in Hong Kong's secondary schools when they teach ethnic minority students. Drawing on interview data, this study reports on how these teachers' language ideologies are in accordance/discordance with dominant discourse, and in what ways their ideologies impact their teaching approach and attitudes towards the students' heritage language and culture. Key findings indicate that instead of promoting homogeneity as a prerequisite for success, the teachers hold a pluralistic language ideology and outline the potential for ethnic minority students to become linguistic and cultural brokers between the heritage communities and mainstream society. An inconsistence was found between the teachers' positive language attitude towards heritage language and their self-distancing from the heritage language learning and use in school contexts. The findings implied that teacher education courses could enable teachers, as active agents, to re-negotiate the separate language ideology of the language policy at the macro level, deconstruct it in classroom settings and develop knowledge and beliefs to challenge and resist the ideologies that sustain the marginalisation of heritage language and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the complex interplay between religion, gender and marginalization among a group of Pakistani schoolgirls in Hong Kong. It is found that the participants experience multiple marginalization and develop various strategies against disadvantageous positions. It is also found that, while the Pakistani girls attempt to extricate themselves from the gendered practices in their heritage culture and its customs that marginalize and confine women, they simultaneously seek to establish an Islamic or Muslim identity that differentiates them from local girls. It argues that, while mainstream culture has, to a certain extent, released Pakistani girls from the oppression and pressure of religion and customs, they have not been provided sufficient guidance to realize their dreams, making the release temporary and uncertain. The implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on insights from Communities of Practice and critical discourse theory, this study investigates how teacher identities are discursively constructed in course of teacher education and under the influence of social structure. The participants were seven Hong Kong and nine mainland Chinese pre-service teachers. Two focus group interviews and in-depth individual interviews with each of the participants were employed. The study revealed that the identity formation of these participants is enacted individually, mediated by the immediate contextual factors, shaped by their socio-economic backgrounds and constructed with reference to social discourses on teachers and teaching profession. This article discusses the sociocultural factors behind the differences and generates implications for present teacher education practice and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This article investigates the language attitudes, language practices and identity construction of a group of ethnic minority students in a secondary school in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from focus group and individual interviews, this research shows that the ethnic minority students negotiate and contest their heritage identity by utilizing their heritage and the experiences and knowledge they have gained in the host context. In addition, the students construct a counter-discourse to resist the lower social status of their heritage languages and minority identity by maintaining their heritage language, by promoting the dominant status of English and by devaluing the local language; however, these steps may limit their linguistic choices and lead to discrimination against other languages. This paper implies that school administrators and policy makers had better seek to establish a more supportive environment for language learning by immigrant students, and that the students themselves can utilize their multicultural and multilingual backgrounds to empower themselves in the host context and enjoy more equal opportunities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]