Latino families becoming-literate in Australia: Deleuze, literacy and the politics of immigration

Abstract

This article examines qualitative data from a two family case study in New South Wales. Both families are from South America and have recently moved to Australia. This study demonstrates that an understanding of the ways that the families are becoming literate in Australia necessitates moving beyond linguistic analyses of the changes that are occurring. The changes that are addressed constitute a politics of immigration, whereby the internal hopes and desires of the family make up an affective plane that transforms language learning. Such writing exemplifies the use of Deleuzian theory in the analysis of the literacy learning of the families, and shows how this rests on notions of the will to power, affect and the multiple nature of the self. The paper will use Masny's (2006) multiple literacies theory (MLT) to reconcile the politics of becoming involved with the immigration of the families and variant modes of expression.

Keywords:

• literacy
• becoming
• Deleuze
• family literacies
• Latinos
• Multiple Literacies Theory

Acknowledgement

This paper has come about due to an internal UTS research development grant.

Notes

1. All names that appear in this article are self-selected pseudonyms.

2. The famous exception to this was when Deleuze commented about the injustices that have been committed against the Palestinian people in Le Monde.