ABSTRACT
There are a growing number of young children around the globe whose lives now move across the boundaries between nations, languages and cultures. This new phenomenon – childhood on the move – is shaped by the interaction of two types of mobility, population and technologies (mobile phones and social media apps). The literacy practices of these typically multilingual children often transgress the traditional boundaries of time and space and take place in multiple transnational sites. This chapter is based primarily on a study of young children from Chinese immigrant backgrounds, and their heritage language and literacy learning on WeChat, a popular Chinese-language social media app. While some findings of the study will be reported, the main purpose of the chapter is to map out different aspects a researcher who wishes to research transnational literacy practices of young children or migrant children more generally may consider. The chapter examines critically the detour the researcher took during the fieldwork, and in doing so invites reflection on the nature of video-based research as well as debates about video methods in research with young children in the ‘video society’.
