Pluriliterale Identitäten und Selbstkonzepte von Grundschulkindern im Spannungsfeld zwischen Schule, Familie und Communities

This paper examines children's self-concepts and attitudes towards their family languages/heritage languages and towards language and literacy learning in regular classes, in heritage language classes (offered by the Austrian public school system or complementary schools) and in informal contexts of everyday life. Drawing on two case studies from a larger research program – My Literacies (University of Vienna, Literacies and Multilingualism Research Group) – that set out to investigate children's everyday literacy experiences in school and out-of-school contexts, we will discuss how children position themselves towards their own and their family's language and literacy resources. The examples enhance our understanding of how discourses about migration, education and the relative status of languages in global and local language hierarchies have direct impact on children's imagined futures and their decisions for investment in the acquisition of language and literacy skills in first, foreign or heritage languages.