Introduction

Meanwhile, dramatic global imbalances persist around the world in trading capacity, trained workers and knowledge production. So, while the so-called West worries about what forms of university education are likely to improve the employability of their young people, many developing countries struggle to provide primary education and increase literacy to provide the literate workforce that global industries demand. But such binaries – developed/developing – prove misleading when considering issues like literacy, where sites of low literacy fl ourish in wealthy regions,

and demands increase for new literacy practices particularly in tandem with new technologies. In this volume, Glynda Hull and Jessica Zacher offer case studies showing the struggles of low literate workers in the US, and the ways that new literacies recruit powerful new worker identities.