Thank you, An, for sharing this interesting case and also for the reference, which sounds fascinating!

One of the challenges of being a migrant is to hold onto cultural identity. Rich in culture but poor in identity. I have read an article about the development of the Vietnamese diaspora identity in Australia. The study also delves into the challenges faced by migrants and is influenced by several factors like class, gender, generation, and regional background. It mentions the influence of intra-group tensions and transnational ties on diaspora identity. I can personally attest to the importance of these dynamics, even though the article doesn’t go into great detail about them. Older generations prioritize maintaining Vietnamese customs, like my uncle, who wants to celebrate Full Moon Day and have family dinners together. It is evident that there are generational tensions between older immigrants and younger people who were born and raised in Australia. My niece, on the other hand, rarely makes it to family gatherings or family dinners because she occasionally goes out to parties with friends. Conflicts and tensions within the family or community may result from this. Many overseas Vietnamese maintain strong transnational ties through language. My uncle’s family continues to speak Vietnamese at home to ensure their children are bilingual and can communicate with family in Vietnam. This language connection can lead to cultural identity. Some members of the Vietnamese diaspora in Australia also provide financial support to family members living in Vietnam. It is a significant transnational tie and contributes to keeping strong family connections across borders.

Baldassar, L., Pyke, J., & Ben-Moshe, D. (2017). The Vietnamese in Australia: diaspora identity, intra-group tensions, transnational ties and ‘victim’ status. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(6), 937-955. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2016.1274565

I think being an immigrant has so many positive aspects as well, what I have learned from this unit is that Language and culture are closely connected to one’s identity. Immigrants have the opportunity to learn and adapt to new cultures and languages. They also learn new social customs and behaviors. I have also noticed that immigrants have the tendency to try to preserve their native language for their future generation and they learn different strategies to that. So I think this unit helps to better understand the complexities of language and culture in a multicultural setting.

Thank you, Chloe, for your kind words, and so glad you got this appreciation of multiple perspectives out of the unit 🙂

I used to think that people’ appreciation or rejection towards their heritage languages and cultures are their own subjective choices. I thought that as long as people want to maintain their heritage language and identities, they will never fade. However, after reading this blog and listening to others’ stories, I realised that there are various factors affecting the existence of heritage language and identities in a new culture. Some people might be scared of being isolated from the new culture, others want a better integration into their new lives so that they can gain better access to success. However, some youngsters might not have the chances to choose whether they can learn their heritage language or not because their former generations lost it.

Living in a multicultural country like Australia, I know the challenges people have to confront due to language barriers. Even when migrants don’t want it to happen, in some cases, they have to accept to leave their heritage language and identities behind and start a new life. My empathy goes with them when I have a chance to know and think about this issue from the lens of different perspectives. I want to say thank you, Ingrid, for giving me this experience.

Thanks, Yulan! And hats off to all international students, who show the same kind of courage!

After I finished this course, I had new ideas. Although immigration can be accompanied by loneliness, choosing to immigrate to a new environment is undoubtedly brave as well. As we talked about in the previous class, immigration can also be related to romance, where one party comes to live in the other party’s city out of love. For couples from the same country, it is inevitable that there will be quarrels and disagreements in their daily lives, let alone couples from two cultures. And even if it wasn’t for love, I would still admire those who chose to immigrate – after all, immigration crosses cultures, languages and geography.

Thanks, Thuybebong! I’m glad the unit expanded your thinking (and your interaction opportunities with classmates!) in this way.

I am now at the end of the semester, and when looking back, I can see how my previous comment can be expanded on grounds of what I learned in seminar week 6.
In week 6, I learned about the linguistic diversity in Australia and the history underlying this. According to the lesson, languages can be a considerable barrier for immigrants, and languages can also be deliberately used as an obstacle to prevent people from migrating to a new country, which is evident in the case of Egon Erwin Kisch and his Australian landfall. The lesson offers an intriguing perspective on how people at the host country (Australia) thought about immigrants and their languages. With the benefit of this knowledge, my previous comment reflects another barrier that migrants might have: although sharing the same language(s), migrants from the same homeland can still have opposing viewpoints and cultural identity. A person that is forced to run away from their fatherland may have a different identity from the one that voluntarily goes overseas to open their horizons.
With the benefit of the lesson, I can see that as people come to another country under distinct circumstances and for different reasons, there may possibly be such identity contradictions among other immigrant communities. Therefore, I believe that beside reflecting on my own experience, I can expand on my previous comment by searching for materials about the same topic in the uni library and other local libraries, and asking for opinion from my classmates (I am lucky enough to have a lot of classmates from various backgrounds).

Thank you for your thought-provoking comment. The paper-based copy of the book is available at Macquarie Uni library, and I will definitely read this to have an insight into the experiences of migrants at different times.

Thanks, China! You are right but providing language learning scaffolding in everyday real life is almost impossible because you can’t have the equivalent of a graded reader at work, in the shops, or in hospital … but, as a society, we can put supports in places, such as English language classes, translation and interpreting services etc.; and as individuals we can be kind so as not to add extra burdens on language learners.

Thanks for sharing your grandparents’ story! Stories such as these are a constant reminder of the importance of the fight against racism, discrimination and, ultimately, borders. I hope they found some peace in their lives and that this “bedtime story” inspired your intercultural communication journey in a positive way.

Thank you for sharing your background and the story of your family. In particular, I am so sorry to hear about how your great grandfather saved his son and how your grandfather was survived from the harsh wartime that ruthless Japanese imperialism had brought about.
In fact, my grandparents were survivors of that time too. Korea was colonized for about 35 years by Japan from 1910 until 1945. During that time, Japan deprived not only of the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, the press but also, food, natural resources, and minerals particularly iron for making ammunition used for the war. Korea back then was so poor that my grandparents believed moving to Japan would give them and their children good opportunities. They moved to Osaka in 1943 and they worked as a construction site worker and a housekeeper. Their Japanese was too poor to understand. One day, my grandmother was cleaning the house of her employer. The owner of the house had a son aged 9 or 10. He asked her to bring him something, but she didn’t understand. Instead, she just smiled. And the son immediately hit her face as hard as he could… (I am not talking about this to show how bad the boy was. But, I would like to bring this up how hard it was to live in another country as an immigrant.)
As a kid, I was told about this story hundreds of times instead of bedtime stories. I guess it must have been deeply engraved on her how humiliating it was and how many tears she held in as an immigrant.
And I love your optimistic point of the future. We do have the borders but, think about it. This world we are living in is connected and culturally intertwined. We should all try to acknowledge that we are one of the world citizens. I believe it makes the world a better place.

Thanks, Larissa, for the important work you are doing, and great to hear that you’re taking away greater empathy for adult language learners.

The learning in this unit has made me think not only of my dad’s experience as a migrant but my students too. I teach adult migrants at TAFE and often forget that they each have individual stories and struggles of making a life in a new country. My older students especially would be finding it hard as they navigate language learning in a country where their children are participating in working life and their grandchildren have often been born. While they struggle to learn English for the first time, their grandchildren are picking it up easily at school and may be forgetting their heritage language if they ever learnt it at all. I know of one grandfather who teaches his grandson Mandarin on the weekends, and I can only hope the experience is positive for him. From what I’ve read and heard, there can be some resistance from children to learn the heritage language which could in turn affect the relationship with their older family members. The learning in this course has definitely made me stop and think more, and I will continue to value and integrate heritage languages in my lessons.