Emerging literacy in multilingual digital practices of young adult African learners

Abstract

Limited literacy is a significant factor in the recent migration from Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean, which clusters with other variables in acquiring additional languages. These variables include multilingualism, which is a prominent feature of African linguistic space and increases during the migratory journey. Multilingualism also includes the dimension of writing, especially when practiced in spontaneous forms, as is usual in young adult migrants’ digital communication. Crucially, not only experienced writers are involved in the intense digital networking that accompanies and supports migration, but also those with emergent writing. Places such as Facebook become impromptu spaces of writing where individuals with limited skills learn to identify and reuse multilingual writing chunks in increasingly complex ways. We analysed digital practices on Facebook by 20 African young adults (aged 18–30), half of whom had limited literacy, who landed on the Sicilian coast in the last few years. Observing the interaction of these subjects with a group of friends, we investigated whether and how interaction during migration and, in particular, contact with multilingual writing in informal contexts such as social media enrich the language resources of young migrants and contribute to the development of reading-writing skills of those with limited literacy.