ABSTRACT
Chinese community language schools have largely resulted from the efforts of post-war migrants to provide formal Chinese language education in collective settings to children who were previously educated by parents at home. This chapter offers insights from an ethnographic study on Mandarin-Chinese community education in the UK. The study drew on a “bricolage” approach that brings together a range of theoretical perspectives from applied linguistics, social-psychology and sociolinguistics to investigate how adults (parents and educators) and pupils construct Chinese language, culture and identity in two schools. The chapter argues that the identities that pupils-including recent migrants and “British-born Chinese”-construct through community education can be multiple, overlapping and contextual and that they can be at play in different contexts with different social groups. Although the adults in the schools often contested the pupils’ status as “real” Chinese people, an analysis of the pupils’ accounts shows that they saw a multiplicity of languages and cultural affiliations as contributing to somebody’s (Chinese) identity. The chapter challenges homogenous and stereotypical constructions of “Chineseness” that have often been supported by academic and media attention. It also provides an understanding of the importance of the schools not only for the communities that are involved in them but also for the wider host society. The topics that the chapter explores are relevant to current debates around migration, and migrant education and inclusion.
