Transnational Mexican Youth

Negotiating Languages, Identities, and

Cultures Online: A Chronotopic Lens

WAN SHUN EVA LAM

Northwestern University
United States
MARTHA SIDURY CHRISTIANSEN
University of Texas at San Antonio
United States

Abstract
This article presents a case study with two transnational Mexican
youth that came from a larger study of the digital media practices of
young people in an urban high school. Our study takes a chrono-
topic (Bakhtin, 1981) lens to understand the youths’ accounts of
their digital communication. Analysis of interviews and observations
with the youth when they described their online activities show that
the youth employed digital literacies to vicariously “live” experiences
and keep up with life away from their families in Mexico. The youth
situated their activities in three distinct but dialogical chronotopes
(family, hometown, and transborder) to create transnational connec-
tions and make sense of who they are. They drew on digital artifacts
to narrate themselves, developed familial, cultural, and political
knowledge, and expanded their linguistic repertoires in the process.
The findings have implications for TESOL classrooms that seek to
build on the border-crossing experiences and linguistic and multi-
modal resources of young people in their learning. We discuss how
youths’ digital practices and embedded artifacts serve to construct
multiple contexts and vantage points for developing their transna-
tional identities and knowledge, and how these practices could be
recognized as agentic forms of narrative production and learning in
the classroom.
doi: 10.1002/tesq.3145

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 56, No. 3, September 2022 907

Ó 2022 The Authors. TESOL Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of TESOL International Association.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which
permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
INTRODUCTION

R esearch in TESOL and other fields have paid increasing attention

to the border-crossing literacy practices of transnational migrants,
and how these practices are supported by new media and forms of
communication (Kim, 2018; Lam & Smirnov, 2017). For transnational
populations, digital tools are associated with the creation of multiple
affiliations across spaces, and the construction of social, ethnic, and
linguistic identities, as they often have to negotiate membership
among social networks in different locales. Attention to the digital lit-
eracy practices of transnational, multilingual populations is important
in language education in order to recognize them as both prominent
and generative forms of literacy and learning that can manifest in dif-
ferent ways.
This paper presents a case study with two transnational Mexican
youth that came from a larger study of the digital media practices of
young people in an urban high school in the United States. We
address the narrative accounts that the two young people gave of their
digital communication within different chronotopic or time-space
frames that uniquely enabled their character development in an imag-
ined lifeworld beyond what the youth were experiencing here and
now. The youth engaged in identity formation, cultural and relation-
ship maintenance, and language learning work by drawing on three
distinct chronotopic frames: family chronotope, the hometown chronotope,
and the transborder chronotope. The youth constructed their social net-
works and drew on digital artifacts to narrate themselves in relation to
others, developed familial, cultural, and political knowledge, and
expanded their linguistic repertoires in the process.
By analyzing the linguistic and multimodal practices in which the
youth engaged across spatiotemporal contexts, we draw implications for
TESOL and language arts classrooms that seek to build on the dynamic
and varied transnational identities, knowledge, and experiences of
young people in their learning. We discuss how the youths’ digital prac-
tices and embedded artifacts construct transnational experiences at mul-
tiple scales, and how they could offer resources for narrative and
knowledge-making, and for enacting forms of identity and agency.

TRANSNATIONALISM AND DIGITAL LITERACIES

Research on transnationalism and transnational communication has
been central to research on migration in the United States. Transna-
tional communities are those that have established “social fields that
cross geographic, cultural, and political borders” where migrants

908 TESOL QUARTERLY

“develop and maintain multiple relations—familial, economic, social,
organizational, religious, and political—that span borders” (Schiller
et al., 1992, p. ix). With the widespread use of mobile, digital, and
social media communication, transnational communication between
local and distant societies is increasingly relevant (Madianou &
Miller, 2012). A rich and growing body of literature has explored the
literacy practices of transnational youth and their families and social
networks (S
anchez, 2007; Skerrett, 2018). As a result of new develop-
ments in information and communication technologies, an emergent
body of literature has explored these practices in digital spaces, espe-
cially among young people who seek to maintain relations with family,
friends, and their or their parents’ hometowns and cultures. Through
these practices and other engagements with transnational media,
young people are constructing identities and continuing language and
literacy learning and practices (Christiansen, 2018; Yi, 2009).
Studies of digital literacies in transnational migration contexts have
focused on how youth utilize their available linguistic and semiotic
resources to represent themselves and negotiate participation and cul-
tivate relationships with different communities in both their countries
of residence and origin (e.g., Kim, 2018; Lam, 2009; McGinnis
et al., 2007; Stewart, 2014). By showing how young people express
their social relationships and interests in events across national bor-
ders in their social media posts and online communication, these stud-
ies have contributed to our understanding of the simultaneous and
multi-sited forms of belonging that youth maintain and develop. How-
ever, it is important to note that, for immigrants and children of immi-
grants, connections to one’s natal country can happen at various
spatial and temporal scales. As Compton-Lilly and her colleagues
(2019, p. 5) point out, “transnational suggests movement and negotia-
tion across spaces and over time.” Yet, few studies have explored clo-
sely the multiple dimensions of transnational time–spaces—the social,
geographical, and temporal scales of connection to which youth relate
through their digital literacy practices.
In the United States, studies with Latinx families have shown the
central role of transnational family communication as a motivating fac-
tor for introducing digital technologies into the household (de la
Piedra, 2011; Gonzalez & Katz, 2016; S
anchez & Salazar, 2012). The
use of computer devices and online media involves collaborative expe-
riences among family members for the purpose of renewing and main-
taining social relationships across borders. Beyond family and kinship
as a focal point of interaction, Noguer
on-Liu and Hogan (2017) found
an emphasis on specific locations of one’s hometown in the Mexican
state of Michoac
an in how some adolescents and adults told stories
and produced digital texts in the educational programs that the

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 909

authors designed and studied. The participants utilized photos and
other visual media accessed through the Internet to represent the tra-
ditions, landmarks, practices, and their own memories of their towns.
Such portraits of hometowns and their landmarks are also found in
community-based storytelling projects among youth who live in the
U.S. and Mexico border of El Paso/Ciudad Ju
arez (Gonzales &
Ybarra, 2020).
In highlighting family and hometown relations, respectively, the
above studies suggest that there are multiple ways in which spaces,
locales, and historical times and memories can be invoked in transna-
tional relations, and these different spatiotemporal framings may affect
how young people develop knowledge and position themselves. In our
previous work on video storytelling on migration in a high school
(Lam et al., 2021), we proposed that the construction of spatial–tem-
poral contexts in a narrative affords different vantage points for under-
standing and representing experiences and issues of migration. In this
study, we are interested in how youth create different positions and
vantage points for themselves as they engage with digital media to con-
nect across borders. We asked the question: How do two Mexican
transnational youth create spatial and temporal configurations in their
digital media practices to maintain cultural ties, foster relationships
and identities, and continue their language learning?
Our inquiry contributes to the research of digital literacies as situ-
ated social practices mediated by digital technologies that are both
shaped by existing social contexts and generative of new contexts and
relationships (Jones & Hafner, 2021; Kim, 2016; Stornaiuolo &
LeBlanc, 2016). Jones & Hafner (2021, p. 17–18) described digital lit-
eracies as “practices of communicating, relating, thinking, and ‘being’
associated with digital media” that are realized “in particular social,
cultural, and economic contexts.” For multilingual and transnational
individuals, practices of being and relating associated with digital
media often involve movements and connections across territorial
boundaries, as we discussed above. Hence, an important aspect of digi-
tal literacies is how people use digital media to move across spatial–
temporal contexts and create new contexts for enacting or expanding
their identities and developing linguistic, semiotic, and imaginative
resources for learning (Lam, 2013).
This study has implications for TESOL as the field experiences
increasing calls for dismantling its monolingual bias, including the
idea of languages as discrete and separate categories. Instead, momen-
tum is building for the study of practices where students integrate and
fluidly mobilize their linguistic and semiotic repertoires, and that
reveals what students do with language and what their languaging does
to their identities (Seltzer, 2019; Tian & Shepard-Carey, 2020). By

910 TESOL QUARTERLY

studying digital literacy practices in heritage languages, such as Span-
ish in this case, it is possible to understand the complex and creative
ways that students engage in language and literacy learning, and how
such practices could inform learning in the classroom. Importantly, it
would support the assertion of students’ transnational identities and
ways of knowing, as represented in diverse languages and their vari-
eties, which are often silenced in the English language classroom. We
join other educators in TESOL who work toward decolonizing lan-
guage education by centering students’ multiplicity of identities, lan-
guages, and literacies in their English language development
(Darvin, 2015; Smith et al., 2017).
Below we turn to the concept of chronotope (Bakhtin, 1981) to
explore how spatiotemporal contexts are constructed through lan-
guage and other semiotic resources. We discuss the ideas and uses of
chronotope for understanding transnational youths’ accounts of their
digital communication to address our research question.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Bakhtin (1981, p. 84) used the term chronotope to describe the “in-
trinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships” depicted
in literature and, in doing so, “captured the idea that humans tend to
experience and understand reality within specific time-space contexts”
(De Fina et al., 2020, p. 72). A chronotope is the configuration of
time–space wherein events occur and by which events are contextual-
ized. Matusov (2015, p. A67) noted that “Chronotope does not deter-
mine the activity but rather provides affordances and limitations for
the participants’ actions.” Of interest to us is how chronotopes afford
particular historical and geographical references for contextualizing
people’s actions and ideas of themselves.
Scholars have adapted the concept of chronotope to explore more
specific uses in spoken language (Agha, 2007; Dick, 2010; Perrino &
Kohler, 2020). For example, in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthro-
pology, the notion is adapted to examine the complexity of discursive
practices (Blommaert & De Fina, 2017; Rosa, 2016) and, in particular,
the ways in which participants orient themselves to the here-and-now
and there-and-then when discussing their different relationships
(Dick, 2010; Woolard, 2013). The concept has also been extended to
the empirical analysis of time–space framing found in real-time oral
narratives (De Fina et al., 2020; Woolard, 2013). For example,
Woolard (2013) studied how participants’ language ideologies and
beliefs about their language development are chronotopic; that is, they
see themselves developing in different time–space trajectories.

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 911

 What Bakhtin originally explained and these applications highlight
is that chronotopes are not separate from each other; they are interre-
lated and co-exist, perhaps interwoven or even in opposition. In other
words, they are dialogical (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 252). The concept
describes how different scales of time (chrono) and space (tope) are
linked to and enable the development of specific forms of personhood
(Agha, 2007) and character development (Woolard, 2013).
The concept of chronotope has helped researchers understand
transnational identity construction in relation to acts of positioning
regarding their different relationships between here-and-now and there-
and-then (Dick, 2010; Karimzad, 2016). For example, in an analysis of
non-resident, Iranian student narratives, Karimzad (2016) argued that,
in discussing their aspirations to remain in the United States, partici-
pants constructed various migration chronotopes including the chrono-
topes of success here and lack of success there. The study highlights the
dialogical characteristics of a multiplicity of chronotopes in how peo-
ple imagine their histories and desired futures and locations. The
work of Karimzad and others suggest that transnationals construct
identities through multiple chronotopes as a means to explain their
migration experience. Likewise, Christiansen (2017) explored how a
transnational social network of bilingual Mexicans who live in Chicago
and Michoac
an manipulate different forms of language on social
media (Facebook) to craft transnational chronotopes. They co-
constructed (a)synchronously shared experiences that blended multi-
ple times and spaces to signal a sense of proximity and co-
participation in familiar activities.
In this paper, we extend the work of these studies to explore the
notion that people create a multiplicity of chronotopes to explain their
identities and transnational experiences. However, unlike other studies,
the chronotopes are not necessarily nation-bound or different from
one another. They can be deterritorialized (Christiansen, 2017), multi-
ple, and multidimensional and contribute to language development
and a multifaceted identity. We investigate the role language plays in
constructing chronotopes when the data are not derived primarily from
social media dialogues but from participants’ internal imaginings and
memories of these transnational spaces prompted by social media.

METHODOLOGY
Research Context

This case study is drawn from a larger research project that incorpo-
rated observational and survey methods to learn about how youth of

912 TESOL QUARTERLY

Mexican and Chinese heritage engaged with digital media in their
experiences of migration and movement across countries. We con-
ducted a media use survey with 292 youth of Chinese and Mexican
descent who were immigrants or children of immigrants attending an
urban high school in the Midwest of the United States. Our survey
analysis showed that the frequency of communication with friends and
family living outside the United States was positively related to the
youths’ sense of social connectedness (Cingel et al., 2019). From a ser-
ies of focus groups with survey participants, we recruited nineteen
youth to participate in the observational part of our study which took
place in the youths’ homes. Wan Shun Eva Lam (author), who was the
principal investigator of the study, and Dr. P. Zitlali (Lali) Morales,
who was a co-investigator, together with graduate students on our
research team conducted the home visits when there were other adults
(a parent or guardian) present. We visited the youth on multiple
occasions over a 10-month period and completed a total of 52
observations.
In this paper, we focus on two youth of Mexican descent, Alexan-
dra, and Victoria, which are pseudonyms chosen by the participants.
The ways that Alexandra and Victoria engaged with digital media
represent a range of practices that we had identified among partici-
pants of Mexican heritage, which included communication with fam-
ily, following news and events from Mexico, and seeking out
YouTube videos and content creators who reflect their interests and
identities. The range of data and extensive narrative reflections
offered by Alexandra and Victoria allowed us to conduct an in-depth
analysis to understand how multiple time–space dimensions are
invoked in their transnational digital practices. Both youths were
17 years old when we first met them and turned 18 over the course
of the study.

Participants
Alexandra. Alexandra’s parents came from the state of Guanajuato
in Mexico and raised Alexandra and her older brother in the United
States where she was born. As a child, Alexandra regularly visited Mex-
ico every summer and sometimes in December; she celebrated her
quincea~nera (15th birthday) in her family’s hometown when she was
16 as a promise to her late grandmother. At the time of our study,
Alexandra had not visited Mexico for 2 years, partly for financial rea-
sons. Her dad was disabled from an injury and was not working then.
Her mother was employed at a place that made industrial lamps.
Alexandra spent a lot of time with her cousins during visits to Mexico
and had rich memories of their time together. Even though she was

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 913

not communicating as much with them currently, she stayed up-to-
date on how they were doing and events in their lives via Facebook
posts and photos. Alexandra followed YouTubers based on her inter-
ests in their lifestyles, as well as DIY videos based on her interests in
making things and learning new skills. She was more interested in
Spanish-language videos, which gave her access to videos made in Mex-
ico, other parts of Latin America, Spain, and the United States by
Spanish-speaking Latinxs.

Victoria. Victoria came to the United States at age 10 from

Ac
ambaro, Guanajuato, and was the oldest of four siblings. Her
mother was a homemaker and her father worked as a cashier and
in valet parking. Victoria’s father had been working in the United
States for many years when she was a child; now her immediate
family all lived in Chicago, while both sets of grandparents and
many of their relatives were in Mexico. Victoria and her family
returned to visit Mexico every summer for the first 5 years after
moving to the United States. She continued to communicate regu-
larly with some of her extended family members and friends in
Mexico via Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Victoria paid atten-
tion to the goings-on in Ac
ambaro through Facebook pages and
photos, and would sometimes observe memes about political issues
in Mexico. While in high school, Victoria became engaged in poli-
tics and participated as a volunteer in electoral campaigns for the
city mayor, local alderman, and state representative. At the time of
our study, she was interning in the office of a Latina state represen-
tative and planning to major in political science in college.

Researchers’ Positions

The two authors are first-generation immigrants and lead transna-

tional lives through active connection with families and attention to
societal events in Hong Kong and Mexico, respectively. Sidury, who
has worked with transnational Mexican communities, joined our
research team to conduct analysis and writing for this case study. Eva
has been involved in the project from conceptualization to analysis
and writing and used Chinese languages to interact with participants
in the larger study. Lali conducted all the home visits with Alexandra
and Victoria and participated in the early stage of the analysis of the
research project. As researchers and educators, we are committed to
deeply understanding and advocating for multilingual, immigrant, and
transnational students.

914 TESOL QUARTERLY

Data Generation and Analysis

The data were generated through qualitative methods of observa-

tion, interviewing, and video recording (Dyson & Genishi, 2005), par-
ticularly as they are adapted to the research of digital literacy practices
(Darvin, 2018; Lam, 2009). We conducted four home visits with
Alexandra and three visits with Victoria that lasted 1.5 to 2 hours long
each. During the initial visits, we asked the youth to tell us about their
routine activities with digital media and show the apps and websites
they used on their devices. The youth would look through their social
media apps, checking new posts or videos, while they gave comments
or explanations on their activities. We used a video camera to record
the observations by pointing the camera at the screens of the com-
puter or digital devices that the youth were using. In this way, we were
able to record the youths’ screen activities while also recording audi-
ally our conversations and informal interviews with the youth during
the observations.
Our research team met regularly to review fieldnotes and videos
of home visits to progressively focus the questions that guided
our visits with the youth. We conducted semi-structured interviews
(Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008) to learn more about the youths’
interests and communication with family and friends in Mexico. For
example, we asked the youth to talk about the social media
posts they had seen from family members to further understand
how they made meaning of these messages and artifacts. Both
Alexandra and Victoria chose to speak primarily in Spanish during
our home visits.
The corpus of data we analyzed included fieldnotes and verbatim
transcripts of recordings that were synced to the videos on Nvivo (a
qualitative analysis software). We identified data that involved the
youths’ connection with or description of people, places, and activities
across national borders. This process allowed us to reduce data to
those pertaining to transnational relations and attend to how the
youth described the time–space configurations of people, places, and
activities. We engaged in open coding (Charmaz, 2014) of these con-
figurations in the youths’ interview narratives and recordings which
led to emerging ideas about chronotopic frames, e.g., the act of per-
forming family roles. We also analyzed the linguistic features that
made events chronotopic (e.g., deictic words such as “here” and
“there” to signal space; use of personal pronouns such as “we” and
“they” that mark inclusiveness and membership, and language
employed to refer to the activity, such as the use of reported speech
and use of language varieties). Through these processes, we identified

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 915

three salient chronotopic frames related to family, hometown, and
transborder experiences that involve movement and imagination
across territorial boundaries. More focused coding of these chrono-
topic categories allowed us to identify how the youth described their
actions and positioned themselves in relation to others in these spa-
tiotemporal domains.
For example, under family chronotope, focused codes included per-
forming family roles, constructing a historical and ongoing family
story, and positioning oneself (central/marginal), which led us to the
theme of how the youth write themselves into family history. The
appendix (accessible at https://tinyurl.com/3a7hnmac) presents the
main codes under each chronotopic frame of this analysis. We wrote
analytic memos to synthesize analysis within each chronotopic frame,
engage in cross-case comparison of the youth participants, and further
conceptual development of the codes and themes.

YOUTHS’ SPATIAL–TEMPORAL POSITIONINGS IN

TRANSNATIONAL DIGITAL PRACTICES

Alexandra and Victoria utilized different digital literacies and activi-

ties to enact transnational connections, and digital literacy practices
played an important role in the fulfillment of their personhood in
three chronotopic frames that we explain below.

Family Roles and Engagement (Family Chronotope)

Through the interrelated use of communication technologies,

Alexandra and Victoria performed family roles and constructed family
history. For example, Victoria engaged in role-play on Facebook with
her uncle, who was closer in age to her than her other uncles (only a
few years older). In Mexican society, uncles/aunts and other family
elders must be shown respect, but because Victoria’s uncle was closer
in age to her, they had a playful relationship. The next two interview
excerpts demonstrate this playful uncle-niece dynamic on Facebook
between Victoria and her uncle, Claudio.
Con mi t
ıo Claudio es m
as como, "¿Ya comiste?" O "¿Qu
e est
as
haciendo hoy?" O "Ya me subieron de puesto." O "Necesito dinero."
Luego me manda
el. [My uncle asks me if I’ve eaten, what I’m doing,
or he tells me that he got a promotion or that I need money. Then he
sends me some.]

916 TESOL QUARTERLY

 Luego est
a que, "¿Cu
ando me vas a mandar dinero?” Siempre pregunta
c

omo has estado o qu
e has estado haciendo. O "¿C
omo te va?" O
"

echale ganas al estudio." O "Ya te vi en la foto que sabes que estabas
haciendo. Y qu
e bueno que sigas super
andote." Me motiva pues a
seguir siendo o estando bien.

[He’ll say, "When are you [Victoria] going to send me [Claudio]

money?" He always asks how I have been doing or what I have been
doing. Or “how are you?” Or “try hard in school.” Or he’ll say, "I saw
you in that picture that you were doing something. And it’s great that
you’re bettering yourself." It motivates me to keep doing well.]
We can see that the dynamic between them followed the traditional
dynamic of an elder uncle being responsible for his niece. Questions
such as “¿Ya comiste?” [Have you eaten yet?] in the first excerpt, or
“¿C
omo te va?” [How are you doing?], and “
echale ganas al estudio”
[try hard in school] in the second excerpt show that Claudio was per-
forming the role of an uncle looking out for his niece. However, he
also adopted a playful tone. For example, because he is in Mexico,
Claudio could adopt the role of a family member dependent on remit-
tances sent by relatives living in the United States. At the beginning of
the second transcript, Claudio asked jokingly, “when are you going to
send me money?” imitating the stereotypical U.S. sender/Mexico recei-
ver money obligations. However, in the first excerpt we see that Clau-
dio, after asking more typical avuncular questions, shared that he had
got a promotion and asked Victoria if she needed money, engaging in
backward remittances from Mexico to the United States.
The role-playing of Victoria was possible because of the immediacy
of Facebook communication within the cultural context of societal
roles and expectations. In the social media context, information is
consumed almost instantly; thus, when Victoria and Claudio uploaded
photos to Facebook, for instance, it served as a springboard for ques-
tions or topics of immediate conversation. Note in the example that
Claudio told Victoria that he had seen her in a picture improving her-
self. Such multimodality and the fact that photos are readily available
make a conversation about a past event immediately relevant. Role-
playing in the family chronotope gave Victoria the opportunity to cen-
ter herself in transnational family dynamics and strengthen ties with
friends and family in Mexico by blurring the line between territories
to create a unique spatiotemporal locale where both sides can partici-
pate.
In the case of Alexandra, the following example demonstrates how
she showed affinity and participation and made herself relevant to the
Mexican context by including herself in imagined constructed talk.
Here, Alexandra was showing Lali (researcher) some old photos on

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 917

Facebook from when she was a child (bien chiquitos [so young]). She
paused over one to point out members of her family at her uncle’s
wedding, which she also attended but was not in the picture.
Luego Micaela, Daniel, Omar, as
ı como lo ve de chiquito, ya est
a bien
alto. Y mi primo Marcos, Agapito, este tambi
en estaba bien chiquito y
no. Y

ya est
a bien grande. Ahorita se lo ense~ esta es Rosa. Es Fernanda.
Es la que se nos va a casar.

[And then there’s Micaela, Daniel, Omar, he’s very small here, but he’s
very tall now. And my cousin Marcos, Agapito, he was also small but
now he’s very tall. I’ll show you right now. And this is Rosa. This is Fer-
nanda. She’s the one who is going to get married on us]
Alexandra seemed familiar with the use of multimodal affordances
of Facebook, as she volunteered to immediately (ahorita) show the
interviewer a picture of some of them. When Alexandra pointed at
Fernanda’s face in the photo, she used the expression “es la que se
nos va a casar” (she’s the one who is going to get married on us),
including herself in the immediate family by using a reflexive third-
person pronoun. Not using the reflexive pronoun would remove her
from any direct involvement with the soon-to-be bride. This move
served two functions: one was affiliation with her cousins and the
other was making herself relevant to a wedding that she would likely
not attend.
The family chronotope creates space for participants to engage in
the immediacy of family dynamics in ways relevant to their daily lives.
They co-construct ongoing family histories by writing themselves into
the experiences of their family in Mexico. This co-construction is pos-
sible through manipulating language and engaging in role-playing,
which creates spatial–temporal narrative resources that they can use to
blur time and space dynamics (e.g., backward remittances and age
expectations). Language, role-play, and storytelling in this chronotopic
frame can be fostered in social media environments as a result of
youth’s communication with others in their family network.

Imaginary Presence in Town (Hometown Chronotope)

In this chronotopic frame, Alexandra and Victoria used photos and

videos to keep up with what was going on in their hometowns: places,
landmarks, people, and objects in the town. This digital literacy prac-
tice helped them maintain an imaginary presence (based on their
background and past experiences) despite not being physically pre-
sent.

918 TESOL QUARTERLY

 In the following example, Victoria mentioned that she intentionally
followed the Ac
ambaro Facebook page of her hometown and a partic-
ular uncle’s Facebook page because he usually posted events that went
on around their hometown. Victoria was recounting a recent storm
experienced in Mexico and in showing pictures and posts on her
uncle’s Facebook wall, she came across other pictures of the local
damage caused by the storm.
Hay muchas fotos que no s
e de qu
e sean, pero de todos modos las veo
para saber qu
e est
a pasando. Tambi
en hace poquito fue una tormenta.
Y se inund
o ah
ı en frente de la casa de mis abuelitos, y aqu
ı est
a, mire
. . . Y s
ı, se inund
o feo todo. S
ı, llovi

o bien fuerte. Esa es la camioneta
de un t
ıo m
ıo. Tambi
en ten
ıa mucho que no ve
ıa esa camioneta. Y ya
la vine a ver aqu
ı. (Laughters)

[There are a lot of pictures that I don’t know what they are of, but I
still look at them to know what’s happening. There was a storm not
too long ago. It was flooded in front of my grandparents’ house, and
here it is, look . . . And everything was horribly flooded. Yes, it rained
a lot. This is one of my uncle’s trucks. It had been a while since I
had seen that truck. And I came to see it here. (Laughters)]
In this last example, Victoria used her uncle’s Facebook as a news
source to learn what was going on in her hometown. She admitted
that she did not know what many of the pictures were but that she
looked anyway to learn what had happened. In playing a video, Victo-
ria pointed out a photo where there was an old truck. She claimed to
not have seen that particular truck in a long time but expressed the
feeling as if the truck were an animated subject and part of her own
Mexican story. Seeing what had happened to the truck was as impor-
tant as keeping up with family pictures. The previous example showed
how Victoria kept up not only with what was going on with her family
in Mexico but also with natural events in town, thus writing herself
into the town’s history using the knowledge she had of locations from
her time in Mexico.
Another example of how Victoria wrote herself into her town’s his-
tory was by being up to date with events in the town, sometimes even
more so than family who lived there. For example, she recounted an
annual festivity for which her sister searched for details on Facebook.
She was telling her grandmother that La Banda El Lim
on (a nationally
recognized Mexican group) would be among the performers there,
which was something her grandmother was unaware of. Victoria
expressed disbelief for what she could know from far away that her
local family might not know (“Ella ni enterada y nosotros tan lejos por
ac
a y ya sabemos qui
en va a estar y cu
ando y a qu
e horas.” [She had

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 919

no clue and we are so far away and already know who is going to be
there and at what time.]) Thus, Victoria included herself in the story
of her town and her family by virtually witnessing and participating
vicariously in those events through social media.
In the case of Alexandra, she searched for videos to learn about her
family’s hometown. During an observation, she showed a video on
YouTube of her mother’s hometown:
Ac
a est
a la iglesia y aqu
ı es la tienda de una se~
nora que se llama Marta
y aqu
ı ven
ıamos a jugar y a gastar el dinero . . . Eso aqu
ı. Todo esto es
nuevo . . . No estaba tan bonito. Yo creo que ahora que est
an arreg-
lando, como lo est
an haciendo tur
ıstico . . . va creciendo. La est
an
haciendo que crezca.

[Over here is where the church is and here is the store of a lady whose
name is Marta and we would go there and play and spend money . . .
This here. All this is new . . . It wasn’t that nice. I think right now
they’re fixing it because they’re making it a tourist attraction . . . it’s
growing. They’re making it grow.]
This example demonstrates how photos and videos evoked memo-
ries for Alexandra. She utilized her background knowledge to inter-
pret the changes she saw, which also evoked emotions. She stated the
reason for the changes was the tourist attractions that were “making”
the town grow as if it was a forced process. She paid attention to multi-
ple aspects of the town like the people, the objects, her childhood
experiences, and any changes. By evaluating what happened in the
town, Alexandra related herself to the town’s history, mixing past
experiences with present events and emotions.
Both Alexandra and Victoria connected to their hometowns
through watching videos of important festivities and promotional
videos of other towns near their hometowns. They actively sought to
watch these videos, which became a form of witnessing the events
they remembered from their time in Mexico. Through these videos,
they connected their hometowns to larger issues happening in Mex-
ico. For example, Victoria talked about a Bread Festival being one of
the few events in Mexico for which she felt safe leaving her house
to attend.
Como este video del desfile del pan . . . Aunque no se ve tanto el sen-
timiento de comunidad, pero s
ı hacen algo por traer a toda la gente
con los desfiles as
ı. Que por lo menos aunque sea as
ı, se sienta uno
seguro en tu mismo pueblo. Y no nomas est
es encerrado o de la casa
al mandado, y del mandado a la casa otra vez.

920 TESOL QUARTERLY

 [Like in this video about the bread parade . . . Although the sense of
community is not as visible, they do have something to bring everyone
together with parades like this. Even if it’s like this, you can feel safe in
your same town. And that way you are not always inside or going from
the house to run errands and from running errands to the house
again.]
In the example, Victoria hinted at a de facto curfew of the entire
community that was indoors, and only going outside when running
errands (note her remark that the parade brought people together).
Victoria virtually witnessed these celebrations but also described the
nationwide issues of insecurity that had permeated her small town.
In the hometown chronotope, Alexandra and Victoria engaged in
reconstructing their idea of Mexico at the local level, but that opened
a window to national-level issues (e.g., the concern for safety caused by
drug violence). They used their cultural and experiential backgrounds
to inform how they interpreted their experiences at the time of the
interviews. They used digital media and artifacts to keep reconstruct-
ing their idea of Mexico, in a way writing themselves into that history.
Through their narrative in response to posts and videos, they were sit-
uating themselves as witnesses to their hometown history and renewing
their sense of affinity and participation.

Creating Mobile Spaces (Transborder Chronotope)

The transborder chronotope is tied to an idea of self that departs

from both their local identities to create a different version of them-
selves not tied to a particular location nor bound by time. The partici-
pants utilized social media resources to create imagined experiences
which also played a role in their language learning.
For example, during an interview Alexandra was explaining that she
followed two vloggers on YouTube: Yuya, a Mexican young woman
who had a beauty and lifestyle vlog, and Priguel (Priscilla and Miguel),
a couple from California who made videos in Spanish about their life-
style and travel adventures. On that occasion, Alexandra was watching
a video where Priguel were reporting their visit to Canc
un, Mexico. In
that segment of the video, they were making chocolate from scratch
and visiting natural areas. Lali asked Alexandra what she thought
when she watched the video. Her response:
Me acuerda de cuando mis abuelitas hac
ıan las tortillas. Ve
ıa que
amasaban la masa en uno de esos y luego agarraban la olla. La hac
ıan
la bolita, pon
ıan la masa en m
aquina de tortilla. La apachurraban, la
sacaban de la bolsa y luego la pon
ıan en el comal de los fogones.

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 921

 [It reminds me of when my grandmothers made tortillas. I would watch
them smoosh the masa (corn dough) in one of those things and then
they would grab the pot. They would make it into a ball, put it in the
tortilla machine. They would squish it, take it out of the bag and then
put it on the grill of the stone fire.]
This video evoked memories of Alexandra’s past in Mexico and was
used to build new knowledge (such as how to make chocolate) to con-
struct her own relationship with Mexico that was larger than her
hometown in Guanajuato.
Another way to construct her relationship with Mexico was through
language. When asked specifically what Alexandra thought about Pri-
guel’s way of speaking Spanish, Alexandra replied:
Lo hablan casi como nosotros. Como mi familia. Cuando nos reuni-
mos. No tienen ese acento tanto como los de Tijuana. Igual que noso-
tros. Yo soy nacida aqu
ı, pero padres de Guanajuato. Tienes un
poquito pues la ra
ız de ellos. No es profundamente.

[They speak it like us. Like my family when we’re reunited. They don’t
have the accent that people from Tijuana have. Just like us. I was born
here, but my parents are from Guanajuato. You have a little bit of their
roots. It’s not a heavy [accent]].
This example shows that Alexandra identified linguistically with Pri-
guel because they also had family from Mexico but they were born in
the United States and spoke with a Spanish influenced by their par-
ents’ Spanish varieties. Alexandra highlighted this difference when she
told Lali her experience with language in Mexico:
Te dicen, "Ah, ustedes son de afuera." Que no s
e qu
e. "No, somos de
aqu
ı." Nom
as que no s

e porqu

e dicen que tengo un acento raro. Y ya
en la semana estamos hablando como ellos. Y se nos pega.

[They tell you, "Ah, you guys must be foreigners." Or I don’t know
what. We’ll say, "No, we’re from here." I just don’t know why they say
I have a strange accent. And in a week we’re talking like them. And
it sticks.]
Even though Alexandra said she did not understand why locals
heard her as a foreigner, she recognized that they had their own vari-
ety of Spanish, which usually took her a week to pick up, challenging
the otherizing she received. These examples demonstrate that Alexan-
dra perceived accent as a marker of her fluid movement across locales
and she could adopt multiple varieties in her linguistic repertoire.
“Picking up” ways of speaking was not limited to her trips to Mex-
ico. When watching Yuya videos, Lali noted Yuya’s way of speaking

922 TESOL QUARTERLY

(unusual prosodics and with slang) and asked Alexandra what she
thought of it.
Pues, yo tambi

en hablo a veces as
ı. Se me sale. As
ı, cuando estoy con
mi hermano, "Ah, est
a chido." O "Ah, no seas as
ı!" O, pues, tambi
en le
pongo las palabras como "est
a ch
evere." Y s
ı. "M
ırala, ya se le sali

o lo
mexicano."

[Well, I talk like that sometimes, too. They come out. When I’m with
my brother I’ll say, "That’s cool." Or, "don’t be that way!" Or I use up
words like "it’s ch

evere." And yeah. He’ll say, "Look at her, the Mexican
in her came out."]
One can observe that Alexandra learned colloquial expressions
from these videos (e.g., chido, ch
evere) to the point that Alexandra’s
brother chided her by saying that the Mexican in her came out. Addi-
tionally, Alexandra reported she and her family learned and used
other expressions from programs, soap operas, and movies from
Spain, Colombia, and other countries (e.g., “no jodas” [do not
bother], “me est
an buliando” [they are bullying me]). By interacting
with videos from other Spanish-speaking countries, Alexandra was
expanding her linguistic repertoire and using it as a transborder mar-
ker to affiliate with more diverse ways of speaking not tied to specific
locales.
Alexandra’s transborder experience was also multimodal. She cre-
ated her own imagined experiences in Chicago that mirror her time
living in Mexico. For instance, she captured a photo of raw beef meat
that she took at a meatpacking factory and posted it on Snapchat and
said:
Puse que siento que ando en el mercado cause fui a la empacadora, [I
put that I feel like I’m in the market because I went to the packaging
factory], and that’s how Mexico has . . . la carne [the meat].
In the Snap that Alexandra made, there are no letters, signs, or any
persons visible. Although it is unclear whether this omission was on
purpose, not having them creates the ambiguity necessary to merge
locales.
Not only did these photos and videos give Alexandra a renewed
sense of affinity and identity as a transnational Mexican (someone
who can relate to Mexico without being physically there), but she also
picked up the language from them, which is not necessarily unique to
her grandparent’s hometown. Alexandra’s imagination could be used
as a metaphor for her life of fluidity between two countries, cultures,
and languages, and she utilized imagination to create her own fluid
space. This is only possible by imagining herself as part of a larger

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 923

world not situated within her family’s town in Mexico, Chicago, or any-
where in particular. In a way, Alexandra engaged in transborder move-
ment digitally by creating geographically ambiguous content.
Victoria also used social media to keep up with Mexican culture
and language practices. In the following example, Victoria was messag-
ing with a family member while discussing Mexican national politics
with Lali, and claimed she sometimes got distracted by Facebook, such
as at that very moment:
Y ya otra vez ya voy a Facebook porque ya me contest
o. Como tambi
en
mantenerme con el slang de aqu
ı y de M
exico, como ahorita que me
dice, "Ah y yo ¿d
onde quedo?" Y le digo, "Pues qui
en sabe. A ver qu
e
pasa despu
es." Y le mando, "hahaha", y eso de "NTC", "no te creas".
Entonces es lo que significa . . . S
ı. Como "just kidding." Hay muchas
cosas de slang que me tengo que mantener actualizada tanto lo de
aqu
ı, como con lo de all
a.

[And then I go back to Facebook because he replied. I have to keep

up with the slang from here and from Mexico. Like right now he said,
"Where does that leave me?" And I tell him, "Who knows? We’ll see
what happens." And I’ll send him a "hahaha" and "NTC", "don’t
believe it". That’s what that means . . . Yes, like just kidding. There are
a lot of slang terms I have to keep up with, from there and from here
as well.]
Victoria was trying to keep up with slang and other linguistic expres-
sions from both Chicago and Mexico. She also utilized media sources
based in Chicago with content in Spanish to discuss Mexican news,
culture, and politics. For example, Victoria followed a Chicago newspa-
per called La Raza to keep up with arts and culture in Mexico:
Yo sigo a un peri

odico de aqu
ı, "La Raza." Y entonces como aqu
ı "Arte
y cultura en un pedacito de M
exico en Chicago." Y yo me informo de
que puedo estar aqu
ı en Chicago pero mantenerme con mi cultura de
M
exico. Como por ejemplo, hoy se celebra el D
ıa del Ni~ no. Entonces
yo puedo ver aqu
ı d
onde est
an y si quiero ir. Tambi
en de noticias
como desaparici
on de personas y todo eso. O la pol
ıtica de aqu
ı de
Chicago.

I follow a newspaper called "La Raza." Here they have an article called
"A little piece of Mexican Art and Culture in Chicago." It lets me know
that I can keep up with my Mexican culture even when I live in Chi-
cago. For example, today we celebrate Kid’s Day. Here I can see any-
where it is and if I want to go. It also lets me know about news like
missing people [in Mexico] and things like that. I can also learn about
politics in Chicago.

924 TESOL QUARTERLY

 This example is chronotopically relevant as Victoria used a Chicago
newspaper, which can be seen as a transborder portal, to follow news
in Mexico and cultural events typical in Mexico and celebrated in Chi-
cago among transnationals. When Lali asked Victoria if it was impor-
tant to her to stay informed about what was happening politically in
Mexico, in addition to what was taking place in the United States, Vic-
toria said:
Pues tambi
en es importante pero no al mismo nivel o al mismo grado
porque estando aqu
ı, no pienso que podamos hacer mucho para all
a.
Pero de todos modos, porque es nuestro pa
ıs, debemos de estar infor-
mados. Pienso que es m
as como de las ra
ıces de que si es tu pa
ıs,
inf

ormate y porque siento que es un deber que debemos de tener de
estar informados.

[It’s also important but not at the same level because being here, I
don’t think we can do much to help over there. But we should still be
informed because it is our country. I think it’s more about your roots,
and if it is your country, you should be informed because I feel it is a
responsibility we have.]
The online news sites and posts are transborder spaces that Victoria
used to fulfill her sense of duty, even if she did not think an individual
could do much. Her sense of responsibility was maintained in Chicago
by experiencing her Mexican identity and civic duty.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Participants draw from three distinct chronotopic frames (family

chronotope, hometown chronotope, and transborder chronotope) to
build identities, maintain cultural ties and relationships, and continue
their language learning. They employ digital literacy practices to con-
struct their personal history of “living” in transnational spaces where they
are not physically present, but which can nevertheless be transforming
for their personal and linguistic growth. The family, hometown, and
transborder chronotopes create spatiotemporal contexts into which par-
ticipants situate themselves and others and form the support for the con-
struction of multidimensional identities. These chronotopes are
deterritorialized which aid the movement and negotiation of participa-
tion across national borders and over time (Christiansen, 2019). The
participants’ digital literacy practices facilitate the transnational connec-
tions they form with relatives who are in a different locale.
Previous studies have shown that Latinx families introduce digital
technologies into the household to foster transnational family

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 925

communication, maintain social relationships, and have collaborative
experiences (e.g., Gonzalez & Katz, 2016). Our study extends this work
by showing the linguistic, multimodal, and narrative aspects of commu-
nication that serve to bolster social and emotional ties with family and
construct ongoing family histories. The participants’ experiences also
show us various ways in which familial relations and knowledge can be
developed. Whereas Victoria communicated frequently with family
members in Mexico and followed events in her hometown quite clo-
sely, Alexandra communicated less frequently and yet created storyli-
nes of her cousins and other family members through observing their
posts and photos online. These artifacts could be used to support com-
munication when it arises and to develop her own familial knowledge.
In addition, participants used digital artifacts from their hometowns
to relive memories and construct ongoing understandings and rela-
tionships with these places. Noguer
on-Liu and Hogan (2017) noted
the significance of hometown in how youth and adults represent their
transnational relations, and how such knowledge was introduced in
the classroom through visual media accessed from Internet search
engines. Our study shows how this orientation to specific locations,
landmarks, and practices was manifested in a personal way as the
youth observed events in their hometown through their everyday prac-
tice with digital media. The youth attended to multiple aspects of tra-
ditions, cultural and natural events, and the political contexts of their
town. The digital artifacts they used to construct emotional ties and
historical knowledge came from first-person posts and witnessing from
their families besides official or Internet sources. These linguistic and
visual artifacts are potentially rich resources for learning that draw on
youths’ transnational experiences in the English classroom.
Beyond the chronotopes of family and hometown, the youths’ narra-
tive accounts show that they were positioning themselves in transborder
spaces where they embodied and navigated multiple varieties of Spanish,
and imagined new identities for themselves beyond what they experi-
enced within Mexico or the United States. In the case of Alexandra, her
interest in DIY and travel videos created by Latinx YouTubers offered
resources for creating transnational imaginaries and a multidimensional
identity that traverse geographical locales and past and present experi-
ences. While we observed Victoria following news and politics in Mexico,
her sense of political efficacy was oriented to the local and national levels
in the United States. For a civically-engaged and active youth like Victo-
ria who was also transnationally connected, we wonder to what extent
her sense of efficacy is tied to the domestic and nation-bound processes
of political socialization in the United States.
Across the three chronotopes, the youth leveraged various digital
artifacts to create narratives of their transnational belonging. These

926 TESOL QUARTERLY

narratives are developed from interactive experiences with family
members as well as multimodal artifacts such as photos and videos that
form chronotopic frames to affect identity development. In previous
research, Compton-Lilly et al. (2019) have noted the difference
between interactive and receptive types of transnational digital prac-
tices. In this study, the receptive transnational practices, which include
the viewing of text, image, video, and music created in a different part
of the world, emerged as a narrative resource that people use to con-
struct spatiotemporal frameworks to position themselves and others.
This study has implications for TESOL and language arts classrooms
that seek to draw from the richly diverse and dynamic transnational
identities, knowledge, and experiences of young people in their learn-
ing. In our study of multimodal storytelling in a high-school classroom
(Lam et al., 2021), we point out how linguistic registers (and varieties)
and multimodal artifacts are used to introduce multiple spatial–tempo-
ral, and ideological contexts to deepen understandings of migration.
The digital literacy practices of the youth in this study show the range
of digital artifacts that serve to construct particular contexts and van-
tage points for developing their transnational identities and knowl-
edge. These digital artifacts introduce transnational experiences at
multiple scales that are inter-related to each other and could be used
as resources of narrative production and knowledge-making in the
classroom. When English teachers open up space for transnationalism
in writing and multimodal compositions (e.g., Machado & Hart-
man, 2021; Noguer
on-Liu & Hogan, 2017), the process of storytelling
could unfold through discussing the transnational artifacts that stu-
dents share to promote understanding of the fullness of their lives
and engage with their varied ways of knowing and being as transna-
tional individuals.
Based on analysis of the experiences of Alexandra and Victoria in
navigating transborder spaces of media making (e.g., YouTube videos)
and politics, respectively, we think the different resources they encoun-
tered have implications for their sense of agency and identity. The
transborder figures of YouTube personalities that Alexandra identified
with and learned from included the U.S.-born and multilingual Latinx
individuals who foreground their Spanish-speaking personas and
transnational lives. In our interviews, Alexandra created a narrative of
herself that was in dialogue with these Latinx YouTubers. By contrast,
Victoria’s accounts of her engagement in politics as a major commit-
ment and passion did not involve any transborder activists, politicians,
or other figures. This difference might be because of the nature of the
social fields and what resources are available and visible for enacting
transborder identities. Our study shows the role of transborder,
chronotopic figures in digital media practices, and how they may serve

TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS 927

as textual mentors for young people to develop ideas and imagination
for what is possible. Machado and Hartman (2021) point out that edu-
cators could consider expanding what counts as a mentor text in the
classroom to center the transnational digital media that young people
engage with. In light of this study, we think that the inclusion of trans-
border figures in different social fields may expand the terrain of
imagination for students to explore new forms of agency and identity.

NOTES

The authors share equal authorship of this article. The material of

the study is based on work supported by the National Science Founda-
tion under Grant No. SES-1331060.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to the youth and their families in this study who opened their
homes to us and allowed us to learn from their experiences. We are also thankful
to the educators who assisted us in conducting the media use survey in the larger
study. We deeply appreciate the supportive feedback from the editors and review-
ers of this special issue, and the insights and generous collegiality of Lali Morales,
Jue Wu, Amy Chang, Joanna Maravilla, and others who have worked with us on
this project.

THE AUTHORS

Wan Shun Eva Lam is an associate professor at the School of Education and Social
Policy at Northwestern University. Her research explores young people’s digital
and multilingual literacies in transnational cultural and political contexts, as well
as educational designs that draw from youths’ migration experiences for learning
in schools.

Martha Sidury Christiansen is an associate professor at the Bicultural Bilingual

Department at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She researches and teaches
topics related to sociolinguistics and digital literacies among multilingual and
transnational populations. Her research explores the intersection between digital
literacy, language ideologies, identities, and culture.

FUNDING STATEMENT

This paper is based on work supported by the National Science

Foundation under Grant No. SES-1331060.

928 TESOL QUARTERLY

CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE

No conflict of interests to disclose.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Our data are stored in a secure server at Northwestern University.

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 APPENDIX Codes, definitions, and themes
1. Family Chronotope
Performing family roles
Constructing a historical and ongoing
family story
Positioning oneself (central/marginal)
Larger theme: Writing oneself into family
history
2. Hometown Chronotope
Keeping up with the events/news on the
other side
Attending to people, places, and objects
in hometown
Linking hometown to larger Mexican
society
Larger theme: Constructing personal
historical knowledge
3. Transborder Chronotope
Traveling and movement
Metaphorical merging of locales
Transborder figure/personality
932
When participants engage in roles expected of
them as family members living away.
Examples include asking how relatives are,
keeping them motivated, and passing
messages.
This is when participants recount stories/events
where they participated directly at the time
the event happened, or they offered
comments and discursively positioned
themselves to others at the time they were
telling the story to the interviewer. They use
what they know about the family history to
interpret the event.
This is when participants choose to put
themselves as central or important figures/
roles in a particular story/event that they are
telling, or they downplay their involvement
or write it off.
When participants utilize social media to learn
about social events (e.g., floods, soccer
games) or cultural events (e.g., patron saint
parade, bread-throwing).
When participants reminisce, tell a story, or
allude to people (e.g., neighbors), places
(e.g., a church), or objects (e.g., a truck) that
are not necessarily linked to their family but
are part of the hometown landscape.
When participants talk about bureaucracy,
politics, safety, or other societal issues in
Mexico as a result of discussing an event/
news from their hometown.
When participants recount an experience when
traveling to Mexico or other places, or
express the desire to be in or see new locales.
When participants talk about or design posts of
a locale in the US with references to Mexico,
making it appear as if they were in Mexico.
This is when participants describe ways in which
certain figures/personalities from social
media (e.g., a person they follow on
YouTube) shape their views, thinking,
language practices, or attitudes.
TESOL QUARTERLY
Transborder news and politics
Appealing to cultural knowledge
Language variation and use
Larger theme: Imagining a different
world (not anchored to particular
locales)
TRANSNATIONAL MEXICAN YOUTH: A CHRONOTOPIC LENS
When participants discuss or refer to news and
politics from Mexico as a result of consuming
news from a US media outlet or social media
posts and memes shared by people in the
participants’ networks.
When participants utilize their background
cultural knowledge to interpret photos,
events, and behaviors on social media.
This is when participants discuss different ways
of speaking explicitly.
933