Advancing the funds of identity theory: a critical and unfinished dialogue

ABSTRACT

Since the notion of funds of identity was first proposed, a large number of related works have followed, most of which have been reviewed recently by Hogg and Volman (2020). This special issue is a step forward both in the conceptualization of the construct, and in its educational applications. Three developments in particular are considered. The first deals with the directive and prospective nature of funds of identity, linked to the higher psychological processes, such as imagination, agency or creativity. Second, there is the idea of establishing identity work as a curricular subject in itself, and as a vehicle for the critical understanding/transformation of oneself and of one’s surrounding reality. Third, the range of methodological resources and educational practices that are used to identify, generate and exploit funds of identity is increasingly. The notion of funds of identity is furthermore re-conceptualized in two ways: first as an ongoing, subjective, social and cultural, generative-directive process, grounded in our embodied experience of the world and in social interactions, and second, as symbolic resources that are used to give meaning to oneself and help to project, plan and organize life projects, and a critical understanding of reality.

The funds of identity theory emerged within the framework of the funds of knowledge approach (González et al., 2005), and had a three-fold objective. The first was to complement the original unit of analysis (i.e., the learners’ households’ practices and resources) by taking into account the learners’ own voices, as well as the contexts of their lives and activities, and their own particular skills, hobbies and knowledge – independently of whether they are derived from their families’ funds of knowledge or from elsewhere.

In this sense, it was recognized that funds of knowledge literature, since its beginnings in the 1980s, had perhaps placed too much emphasis on the voices, perspectives and practices of adults (Rios-Aguilar et al., 2011). That is, the funds of knowledge in question derived from the sociocultural practices of the members of a household, such as the professional, religious or community experiences of parents, guardians, grandparents, aunts or uncles, and included knowledge and skills relating to, for example, gardening, construction, domestic economy, and languages used, among other things (see the reviews by Hogg, 2011; Llopart & Esteban-Guitart, 2018). Therefore, it was suggested that the funds of knowledge approach – whose beneficial impacts have been documented in a number of studies (Llopart et al., 2018; Volman & Gilde, 2021; Whyte & Karabon, 2016) – tends to adopt an adult-centric perspective (for a critical analysis, see Oughton, 2010 and Zhang-Yu et al. in this special issue). This was the justification for incorporating the learners’ own practices and experiences, regardless of whether or not they coincide with the funds of knowledge that their families accumulate and have at their disposal. This is an especially critical aspect given that identity appears in a child’s development as an important psychosocial task when they develop – during adolescence – their own narratives and biographical life stories, as well as outlooks in relation to certain life projects (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) which are, at times, in conflict with the practices and feelings of the adult members of the family unit. Thus the identity processes and personal projection among children becomes valued in the literature on funds of identity (see, in this regard, the case of Zoe described by Hedges in this special issue).

The second objective sought to enrich the traditional “funds of knowledge methodology” (González, 1995, p. 238), which involved visits made by teachers to their students’ homes. This was to be achieved by incorporating “identity artifacts”, for example, identity drawings. In this context, identity artifacts are defined as: “documents created by the learners about themselves, in which they try to capture all the things that make sense and are meaningful to them and which, subsequently, can be used by teachers to work on curricular and pedagogical content” (Subero et al., 2018, p. 156). Such artifacts become mediating resources that allow schools to link learning experiences from within and outside the school context, and thereby facilitate connections between practices and experiences that occur in different contexts of life and activity, thus legitimizing the experiences of learners (Esteban-Guitart, 2016; Subero et al., 2017).

The third and final objective was to address two further problems. Implementing the funds of knowledge approach, through participation in study groups made up of teachers and researchers (Esteban-Guitart et al., 2018), and visiting the homes of some of their learners, takes considerable time (Esteban-Guitart et al., 2019). In addition, it was not possible to identify all the funds of knowledge of the members of a typical classroom through such visits. Procedures were needed that could take into account and incorporate the funds of knowledge and identity of all the learners. Marsh and Zhulamanova (2017), for example, were able to document the interests and knowledge of all the boys and girls aged 3 to 5, in a pre-school, by means of observations, digital photographs, and photo-elicitation interviews with the children themselves and their families. Another study, this time in a university setting, managed to document the ways in which various academic subjects, content and competencies were linked to the funds of identity of a large number of students aged 20 to 32 by means of identity artifacts such as collages, drawings, objects, photographs or identity texts (Esteban-Guitart et al., 2020).

The fundamental objective, in line with the aims of the funds of knowledge approach, is to dismantle the deficit thinking that exists in education by (re)conceptualizing all learners as capable and valued individuals, regardless of their social, economic and cultural background. What is being proposed, in the terminology of Espinoza et al. (2020), is the need to generate practices and contexts that enable and legitimize “meaningful participation (i.e., substantive involvement in socially vital activities) and educational dignity (i.e., the multifaceted sense of a person’s value generated via substantive intra- and inter-personal learning experiences that recognize and cultivate one’s mind, humanity, and potential)” (Espinoza et al., 2020, p. 325). In a previous work, we described this as a “design for deep learning. […] Helping people to matter and find meaning in ways that make them and others healthy in mind and body, while improving the state of the world for all living things, with due respect for truth, sensation, happiness, imagination, individuality, diversity, and the future” (Gee & Esteban-Guitart, 2019, p. 5).

The notion of funds of identity. Origin, scope and some limitations

The notion of funds of identity was first suggested in Saubich and Esteban-Guitart (2011): “We suggest the term funds of identity to refer to the culture-bound stories, technologies, documents and discourses that people internalize and construct in order to make sense of the events in their lives; funds of identity which allow them to reach a self-understanding and to communicate that understanding to others” (p. 84). It was considered that funds of knowledge, as material and symbolic resources, can contribute to the narrative-discursive processes of identity construction, where identity is understood as a situated and distributed product.

In our view, funds of knowledge involve the material and resources that people internalize and use to construct meaning. Identity is embedded in tangible, historical cultural factors such as social institutions, artefacts and cultural beliefs. In this sense, identity embodies funds of knowledge; it objectifies experience in cultural terms and is stimulated and socialized by funds of knowledge. Funds of knowledge and the identities of individuals are mutually constitutive and interdependent: two forms of the same distinctive human order. Identity – any lived experience – energizes funds of knowledge and dialectically acquires their cultural features […]. However, identity is not a passive element of society. It is active. People assimilate specific funds of knowledge but they also reject others. Further research is needed to develop this idea and come to a more precise idea of what funds of identity are, how to identify them and how to use them to connect school curricula to students’ lives. At present, we merely suggest the term as a useful concept. (Saubich & Esteban-Guitart, 2011, p. 99)

In fact, as Black et al., Hedges, and Verhoeven et al. argue in this special issue, the boundaries between processes of knowledge and identity – as we participate in contexts of life and activity – are fuzzy. Learning is an identity-forming experience; it is the result of participation in sociocultural practices during which modifications are made, simultaneously, to what we are able to do (knowledge and competences), and to who we can consider ourselves to be (Holland et al., 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Ligorio, 2010). In this sense, the funds of knowledge that we accumulate when we appropriate/develop new knowledge and skills are intertwined with the funds of identity that we make as we come to understand ourselves accordingly (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014a).

The concept of funds of identity, which can also be considered as a theory of human identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2016, 2019), is the result of a convergence between, on the one hand, the funds of knowledge approach (Moll et al., 1992), with which I became familiar in 2010 during a stay at the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona and, on the other hand, the study of identity using autobiographical multimethodology, which is a combination of visual and textual resources aimed at documenting and analyzing the narrative process of identity construction (Bagnoli, 2004; Esteban-Guitart, 2012). In 2012, funds of identity were re-defined as “A set of resources or box of tools. These tools have been historically accumulated and culturally developed; they are socially distributed and transmitted; and they are essential for constructing one’s identity and for defining and presenting oneself” (Esteban-Guitart, 2012, p. 177). However, the theory was later conceptualized by Esteban-Guitart and Moll (2014b) in relation to notions such as empirical self (James), perezhivanie (Vygotsky), and technologies of the self (Foucault). In this sense, the notion funds of identity is used to refer to:

The historically accumulated, culturally developed, and socially distributed resources that are essential for a person’s self-definition, self-expression, and self-understanding. Funds of knowledge – bodies of knowledge and skills that are essential for the well-being of an entire household – become funds of identity when people actively use them to define themselves. From our point of view, identity is made up of cultural factors such as sociodemographic conditions, social institutions, artifacts, significant others, practices, and activities. (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014b, p. 31)

Distinctions have since been made between various kinds of funds of identity: some are geographical (physical-symbolic spaces with identity connotations, such as a certain river, town, or region), and others are described as cultural (with artifacts such as music or art), social (significant people), institutional (the Catholic religion, marriage) or practice-based (hobbies and activities to do with sports or work) (Esteban-Guitart, 2012, 2016). What underpins all of these resources – or identity tools – is their subjective-experiential interdependence as elements of meaning for the learner; that is, as aspects that are valued for their emotional and intellectual impact, because they are especially significant, relevant, and connected with the interests, motivations and worlds the learner lives in.

In fact, it is worth recognizing in Vygotsky the primacy of sense over meaning (González Rey, 2011; Kravtsova, 2017; Van der Veer & Zavershneva, 2018). In sense, which is the fruit of subjective and experiential production, the meaning of a word is connected with personal experience. “A word’s sense is the aggregate of all the psychological facts that arise in our consciousness as a result of the word. Sense is a dynamic, fluid, and complex formation which has several zones that vary in their stability. Meaning is only one of these zones of the sense that the word acquires in the context of speech” (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 276). This has led us to suggest a theory of consciousness or psychology of experience, that was unfinished by Vygotsky. He certainly worked toward it, especially, in the last years of his life (Subero & Esteban-Guitart, 2020a; Zavershneva & Van der Veer, 2018); but it can also be detected in his early works, such as in his doctoral thesis, Psikhologiya Iskustva (“The Psychology of Art”) or in Pedagoguícheskaia psijologuia: Kratki kurs – published in English as Educational Psychology (Esteban-Guitart, 2018; González Rey, 2016; Vygotsky, 1971, 1997; Zavershneva, 2014).

In any case, this conceptualization has important implications when it comes to understanding learning processes, as well as educational practice. The theory underpinning the funds of identity approach assumes that learning requires processes involving the generation of meaning and the construction of identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2019; Subero & Esteban-Guitart, 2020b). After all, learning involves the recognition and participation of learners, in their whole lived experience, and in conjunction with their trajectories, contexts and experiences throughout their lives (Esteban-Guitart, 2018; Esteban-Guitart et al., 2018). In this special issue, this is an aspect which, in my view, is brought together under the notions of agency and imagination (see the contributions by Hedges; Verhoeven et al.; Walker et al.).

Ultimately, the child teaches himself […] … it is necessary to make the study of [a particular] object the student’s personal affair, and only then can we be certain of succeeding. From one interest of the child’s to a new interest – that is the rule […] Our only concern is that there exist within the very nature of the educational process, within its psychological essence, the demand that there be as intimate a contact, and as close an interaction, with life itself as might be wished for. Ultimately, only life educates, and the deeper that life, the real world, burrows into the school, the more dynamic and the more robust will be the educational process. (Vygotsky, 1997, pp. 47, 86, 345)

However, it should be noted at this point that sense, like identity, and like any other higher and directive psychological production or process, is transactional and can only occur in the context of particular social, historical, political, and cultural situations. “Sense is potentially endless, but it can be updated only in contact with other (foreign) senses” (Bakhtin, 1997, p. 350). This perspective converges in, and underpins the different articles brought together here, as well as the theory of funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2016).

In the work of Black et al., funds of identity are re-conceptualized as a cultural commodity, of “knowing in practice”, and they highlight the dialectical unity of funds of identity as processes of use and production for public good and exchange value (private capital). Their analysis sheds light on the collective processes, contingent on relations and exchanges of power, which are produced and reproduced in the school, and which impact on the processes of recognition and legitimization of knowledge and identities. Hedges’ study illustrates how processes of agency, in situations of play and exchange and social participation, can turn into resistance to adult instructions, norms and structures. In the theoretical framework proposed by Verhoeven et al., this can be considered as the school’s affordances and constraints in relation to the learners’ funds of identity. In the same way, it is considered that the school is afforded and constrained by larger discourses, practices and contexts, as in the case they describe of Amanda’s agency in her school’s (re/dis)engagement processes in Danish society. In the text by Walker et al., specifically in their analysis of the case of Ibrahim, they illustrate the persistence and impact of negative social representations of Muslims, the lack of social recognition, the lack of emotional security and protection of the self, and highly charged, negative emotional responses to statements that can lead to the rejection of the other and a foreclosure of dialogue. Zhang-Yu et al., meanwhile, illustrate how the symbolic violence of the school institution reproduces weaknesses in the intercultural paradigm sustained by the public policies in Catalonia, Spain, as well as in the processes involved in the underlying racialization and racism in both micro and macro sociocultural discourses and practices. Similarly, Zipin et al. describe the tension between the life-worlds and school-worlds of learners from a poor region located in the suburbs west and northwest of Melbourne, Australia.

In short, these studies enable us to reinforce the productive, contingent, procedural and transactional nature of funds of identity – emphasized in more recent works – which go on to problematize, on the other hand, the attempt to “uncover”, “reveal” or “discover” (Jovés et al., 2015).

Indeed, it is suggested that the methodological task or activity itself in a given sociocultural practice, for example, by producing an identity artifact in the context of a study or research, is an epistemic activity through which identity narratives are produced that generate symbolic (affective and intellectual) processes that are linked to the recognition of oneself, and of the spaces, activities, and people that one experiences as the most meaningful or relevant (Subero, 2020; Subero & Esteban-Guitart, 2020b).

In this sense – and with reference to Fernando González Rey’s theory of subjectivity, as well as to other developments of the concept of funds of identity, such as “dark funds of identity” (Charteris et al., 2018) and “existential funds of identity” (Poole & Huang, 2018) – Poole (2019) states: “Rather than conceptualizing identity in terms of a fragmented taxonomy of categories embodied in individuals or embedded in the social fabric of life, identity is here theorized in relation to the notion of subjective sense as an irreducible totality of dichotomies (micro/macro, light/dark, negative/positive), in terms of the production of internal subjective sense, that are also mediated and distributed by artifacts, people, spaces and activities” (Poole, 2019, p. 414).

I concur with Poole’s proposals, by situating funds of identity theory in a more processual ontology associated with the Vygotskian notion of perezhivanie – characterized as “experience-as-struggle” (Clarà, 2016; Poole & Huang, 2018) and one which incorporates positive and negative aspects of human experience, as well as intellectual and affective processes. In this way, rather than being understood as an objective and essential reification, reality is conceptualized as semiotic, subjective and embodied transactions in contexts and practices of life and activity, that go beyond any internal-external, mind-world, intellectual-emotional dualisms (Subero & Esteban-Guitart, 2020a). In my opinion, the articles comprising this special issue offer excellent illustrations of this idea.

Applying the theory of funds of identity pedagogically involves identifying/generating the learners’ resources and experiences, in addition to their own particular funds of knowledge, in order to link them to pedagogical and curricular practice (Jovés et al., 2015). For example, in the aforementioned study by Marsh and Zhulamanova (2017) which dealt with early childhood education, princesses and beauty were identified as areas of interest, and as funds of identity, among the children. The teachers soon began to problematize certain classist and sexist discourses by questioning the Western notion of princesses through different games and dramatizations. For example, one teacher, Mr. H., introduced the book My princess boy by Cheryl Kilodavis, the aim being that the boys and girls would not show any prejudice toward a boy dressed as a princess, and would accept him as perfectly normal.

Since the early conceptualizations and applications (Esteban-Guitart, 2012; Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014b; Saubich & Esteban-Guitart, 2011), various studies and analyses have followed and these have recently been reviewed by Hogg and Volman (2020). Their review concludes with a number of considerations that are worth bearing in mind here. To begin with, they identify two methodological procedures for identifying/generating funds of identity: (a) via narratives and artifacts created by the learners, such as a personal diary, videos, poems, photographs, collages, etc., and (b) via the observation and use of objects that are meaningful to the learners. Next, they identify four types of pedagogical approaches used: 1) designing teaching that is related to specific (target) students’ funds of identity; 2) co-constructed artifacts; 3) integrating students’ popular culture funds of identity; and 4) student production of identity artifacts.

However, Hogg and Volman (2020) also identify four problem areas in the research carried out so far. First, there are, as yet, few follow-up studies into the effects of the pedagogical/educational applications of the funds of identity approach, although some evidence does suggest it is beneficial (see, for example, the recent work by Volman & Gilde, 2021). Second, it has become necessary to develop specific cultural adaptations to other cultural contexts not covered by the existing literature. One such example emerged in the case of indigenous communities in which family and place are particularly relevant elements of their identity, and in which very specific epistemologies are identified (Barajas-López & Bang, 2018). Third, the methods used in the approach, such as identity drawing, result in teachers obtaining only “snapshots” (Hviid & Villadsen, 2014, p. 61) which are, potentially, incapable of documenting, in any depth, those aspects of identity that are not fixed, but moving. Finally, the fourth problem is that the existing literature is based, fundamentally, on the description of positive aspects of the learners’ lives, thus obscuring the negative experiences and problematic situations that oppressed communities experience and that can resource their identities as oppressed (Zipin, 2009).

Furthermore, certain uses of the funds of knowledge and funds of identity approaches can obscure its transformative character by legitimizing the imposition of certain “cultural arbitraries” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) in the form of funds of knowledge aligned with the traditional curriculum and legitimized and privileged by majority policy, researcher ideas, teacher ideologies or other dominant discourses (Oughton, 2011). See, in this regard, the critical analyses by Black et al., Zhang et al. and Zipin et al., included in this special issue.

Three major contributions from this special issue

Although these complex matters certainly need to be addressed more fully in future research, this special issue constitutes a step forward in funds of identity theory by exploring in greater depth and contributing to, among other things, three fundamental aspects. The first of these, which I have already referred to above, involves linking the notion of funds of identity with other constructs related to higher psychological functions or processes that are directive; such as interests, agency and imagination.

Taken as a whole, the articles here sustain and extend the Vygotskian perspective on imagination – in the way it articulates functions of thought, perception, and affect (the “functional psychological system”) – as a generator/producer of specific realities. In the imagination, the individual appears as the subject of his or her activity, symbolically anticipating future realities. It provides a zone of proximal development that allows the child, for example, to adopt the role of an adult and carry out activities pertaining to the adult world, thus being able to approach them in a different way. In these processes, there is a connotation of identity, since one can experience and recognize oneself as a person of a particular kind, “x”. In fact, it could be argued, in line with Vygotsky (1994), that imagination contributes to the formation and development of identity, by virtue of being able to oppose the views, behaviors and roles of another, e.g., an adult, or by means of joint action with others, as told in most of the papers in this issue. This allows them, at the same time, to socialize with, and differentiate themselves from, other people or figures (Holland et al., 1998).

In short, and in connection with the educational connotations that I mentioned previously, the directive/executive processes, such as meaning, identity, imagination, and agency, suggest that learning is not accomplished in memory processes linked to a special class or lesson, but rather in crucial connections with processes of lived-experience and future projects.

In this context, the notion of “identity work”, or “identity labors” as described by Zipin et al, is especially relevant. Identity labors are active, ongoing and unfinished processes of identity-under-construction, involving significant labors of thought, feeling, ethics and imagination rooted in the present and projected into the future; that is to say, they are linked to the labor of anticipating futures in the tension of their challenging life-worlds. This is an aspect related to “aspirational funds” considered as “alternative future possibilities” (Zipin et al., 2015, p. 239).

The second fundamental aspect involves moving forward in a way that differs from the initial educational application of the theory of funds of identity. In the beginning, the focus was on curricular contextualization, in order to link mathematics, science, language, etc., with the learners’ lived experiences (Llopart & Esteban-Guitart, 2017). Now what is being suggested is to consider the processes of identity construction and of critical exploration of reality as curricular aspects in themselves. To do this, proposals have been made to incorporate – among learners, researchers, teachers, and in the educational institution itself – highly reflective and (self-)critical spaces, and certain commitments and practices that will facilitate decisions on, for example, which funds of knowledge to draw on in the classroom, and how to manage dark funds of identity (Charteris et al., 2018).

We must not forget that the school institution, like any social and cultural institution (Packer & Cole, 2019), operates with deontic logic as it defines duties, obligations, future-binding rights, and, indeed, what counts as valid (Bernstein, 1996). In my opinion, what underlies the various proposals in this special issue is, more or less explicitly, the demand for educational practices that are participatory, critical, dialogue-driven, and transformative. These are practices that, by recovering the legacy of Freire (1996, p. 62), turn learners into “critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher” in order to contribute to a critical understanding of reality (dismantling symbolic violence, social exclusion, discrimination processes, and de-centering the ethnocentric white middle-class gaze), while at the same time developing and constructing identity, legitimizing the learners’ own interests, their lived experiences, their agency, their projects and their voices. In this sense, the school should provide spaces and reflective and dialogical practices for “identity work”, connecting what happens inside schools with what happens outside them, contributing to projects for their learners’ futures, as well as in the construction of funds of leaner identity (Verhoeven et al., in this special issue), or competent learner identities (Coll & Falsafi, 2010).

Finally, with respect to the third fundamental aspect, this special issue illustrates a broad variety of contexts and practices, relating both to methodologies and educational actions, that enrich the applications of the funds of identity theory documented so far (Hogg & Volman, 2020; Llopart & Esteban-Guitart, 2017). Examples of this include the following:

• The critical analysis of the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program set up by the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) in Arizona (Black et al.);

• The illustration – through narrative and visual analyses, in the context of early childhood education in New Zealand – of how funds of knowledge-based interests in relation to children’s everyday lives (Hedges & Cooper, 2016) can contribute to children’s funds of identity, and vice versa, (Hedges);

• The analysis of the role of adolescent agency in their own school (dis)engagement through a narrative analysis in the case of Amanda in Denmark (Verhoeven et al.);

• The Translocal Youth Radio Project to foster and share minoritized youth research on issues of concern to them locally in K-8 schools in Colorado and Catalonia (Walker et al.); the Who am I? program to facilitate critical self-exploration of minoritized students in the first and second years of secondary school (aged 12–14 years) in the context of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain), by offering a space of artistic creation to narrate, and express;

• The work carried out jointly by researchers, teachers and Year 9 and 10 students in Australia in relation to their family, school and wider community worlds to “convert their funds of knowledge, via curriculum activity, into resources and funds of identity for future-oriented labors” (Zipin et al.).

Such diversity, including theoretical-conceptual, methodological-analytical, and geographical diversity (involving a wide range of contexts of research and intervention), enables the enrichment of the analysis of the processes of international (re)contextualization and (re)appropriation of the funds of knowledge approach (Moll, 2019).

A reconsideration of the funds of identity theory

In line with the initial perspective of identity as being situated and distributed (Esteban-Guitart, 2012, 2016; Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014a, 2014b; Saubich & Esteban-Guitart, 2011), funds of identity can be considered to be created, shared and materialized in institutions, cultural practices and artifacts such as books, national anthems, music, radio, sports, flags, and so on. Based on such symbolic collective experiences, people actively generate/produce sense about themselves and their surroundings. However, this is not to assume a passive and direct internalization of social and community resources, discourses and practices. On the contrary, funds of identity can be conceived as subjective productions that include a wide range of psychological processes and as a dynamic system of sense (thinking, imagination, agency, affectivity, perception) to understand ourselves and generate alternatives and possible futures. And, as illustrated in this special issue, they can involve spaces for the critical analysis of oneself and reality, while also working in opposition to normalized, majority-focused discourses and practices.

In short, the articles included here have enabled a reconsideration of the theory of funds of identity. Firstly, funds of identity involve dynamic processes that are subjective, social and cultural; they are grounded in our embodied experience of the world (i.e., geographical, institutional and practical funds of identity), in social interactions-intersubjectivity (i.e., meaningful people as a social funds of identity), and in the use of symbolic resources (i.e., cultural funds of identity). But, on the other hand, this process is also an experience; one that is both individual and collective, and highly contextual, that develops over time and across contexts, that mediates action and is, at the same time, mediated by action, and so by culture and its various social, material and symbolic resources.

Finally, and in contrast to the view that identity is a “private” or wholly/essentially intra-psychological cognitive process, funds of identity grow out of social interactions, use cultural resources, build on our experiences of the world, while constantly transforming and expanding them from imaginative and agentive processes. The essential feature of funds of identity is they begin from lived realities and can grow into possible present and future realities. It is a co-constructive process, simultaneously perceptual, emotional, recollective and generative, and nourished by a rich diversity of geographical, social, cultural, institutional and practical resources.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This manuscript is in part stimulated by ongoing discussions and collaborative activities among a diverse group of scholars communicating as part of the Re-generating CHAT research network, www.re-generatingchat.com, funded by SPENCER Foundation, and by the support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO), the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Funds (European Union), grant number EDU2017-83363-R.