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As immigration reform is on the table for the first time in two decades, proposals are being made involving a path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the country. This article suggests that, in addition to helping these immigrants meet the English-language requirement for citizenship, comprehensive immigration reform provides the field of TESOL with another opportunity to contribute to equality for the undocumented community by helping these new citizens obtain the language skills necessary for social and economic mobility. This article argues that vocational ESL, or VESL, is well suited for working with this population. A brief review of the history and underpinnings of VESL is followed by a more extended discussion of how VESL fits the specific characteristics and needs of these new citizens as language learners. The final section offers suggestions for expansion, advocating for close partnerships between VESL courses and students during all phases of the educational program. Learner-centered VESL for new immigrants constitutes adult education as a tool for social change, emphasizing the importance of social justice to the field of TESOL.

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Copyright of Gender & Language is the property of Equinox Publishing Group and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Shohet continuously weaves together family interaction and life-history narratives with Vietnam's often conflictive past. Taking a life history approach, the chapter traces the extended narrative of Tan, a former North Vietnamese soldier. For those looking to assign one chapter of the book to students, Chapter 2 is ideal. [Extracted from the article]

Recent scholarship on care urges close ethnographic attention to specific care practices rather than to the reflexive, meaning‐making accounts that dominated previous work, setting up a distinction between enacting and signifying care. However, as transnational Salvadoran families care through cross‐border communication, they produce and enact imaginaries of relational obligation that constitute asymmetrical care roles for migrants and nonmigrants. Communicative care practices thus simultaneously produce care and make care meaningful. As a multifunctional form of social action, care through communication works to sustain transnational kin ties even as it mirrors and incrementally reproduces global inequalities between North and South. The communicative mobilization of care across space and time thus regenerates kinship in ways that enact political belonging and exclusion. [care, communication, transnational families, migration, political economy] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As immigration reform is on the table for the first time in two decades, proposals are being made involving a path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants now in the country. This article suggests that, in addition to helping these immigrants meet the English-language requirement for citizenship, comprehensive immigration reform provides the field of TESOL with another opportunity to contribute to equality for the undocumented community by helping these new citizens obtain the language skills necessary for social and economic mobility. This article argues that vocational ESL, or VESL, is well suited for working with this population. A brief review of the history and underpinnings of VESL is followed by a more extended discussion of how VESL fits the specific characteristics and needs of these new citizens as language learners. The final section offers suggestions for expansion, advocating for close partnerships between VESL courses and students during all phases of the educational program. Learner- centered VESL for new immigrants constitutes adult education as a tool for social change, emphasizing the importance of social justice to the field of TESOL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]