Transforming Experience through English Use and Service-oriented Cultural Capital

The Participants and their Background

The two participants in this study, Albertino and Facundo, are brothers, Lenca and Honduran, and come from a small, rural indigenous community called Las Montañitas near the city of Valle de Monte. They identify themselves as indigenous and participate in the local chapter of a national organization for protecting the rights of their indigenous group. They are Spanish-speaking, the indigenous language being extinct (Campbell, 1976). Both in their thirties, they have high-school diplomas that they obtained through considerable financial sacrifice, time away from their families, and costly travel to the city. They are responsible to provide their extended family economic support and perform their communal obligations. They immigrated to the United States around 2000, and both were deported within a few years.

Albertino is a 35-year-old single father of four boys. He graduated from a technical public high school in Valle de Monte and migrated from his village to the capital to enroll in classes that would provide him with a high-school diploma that would allow him to become an electrician. He is a friendly, extraverted, and outspoken man who is seen as a leader in his community. He is the eldest son in his family, and because of this he also plays a strong leadership role there. His family is descended from an indigenous group that has inhabited his community for the past several hundred years. Family members use traditional farming techniques to plant and harvest corn, beans, and squash. This lifestyle has come into conflict with capitalist society, and many members of his family and community have been forced to sell their land and, in some cases, move to the city. Albertino migrated to the United States for a period of two years and then returned to Honduras to build his home and help to support his family. He is currently a full-time student in the United States and provides leadership on community-based projects to improve his hometown.

Facundo is 32, married, and the father of two. He lives with his wife’s family in a small town near Valle de Monte. After being deported from the United States, he decided to try his luck at migration to Europe, where many of the female members of his community were working. After making the lengthy and expensive trip, he found that there was no work for him there. After working part-time for a small business for many months and not being paid for it, he decided to return to Honduras. He is thinking about going back to school to become an English teacher, in which case he would attend a teacher preparation program at a university in Honduras.

Albertino described growing up in Las Montañitas as a simple, carefree time filled with family, love, joy, and the beauty of nature. There were difficult times and good times; above all, there were united times. Facundo also describes a sense of unity that has been consistent over time despite the separation of family members. The culture of Las Montañitas emphasizes community. There is an elected alcalde or alcaldeza (mayor), and there are traditional rituals that help to create better relationships between neighboring villages. Collectivism is the basis of all community relationships, and it is a value that is being encroached upon by capitalism and individualism. The roles of men and women in the community are strongly defined, although changing. Men tend to animals, plant and harvest crops, and deal with business matters. Women tend to the home, cooking food and washing clothes on a stone washboard, milk the cows, and deal with business matters as well. While there are traditionally divided chores, both men and women hold leadership positions in the community. Children are expected to perform chores around the home depending on their age and their ability—housecleaning, laundry, milking, grinding corn, and running errands. They also play and sometimes go about freely (although with permission) in the community. They go to school for about three hours a day in the community, but most of that time is spent in recess or at lunch (food provided by the school and prepared by their mothers), and it is common for school to be canceled by the teachers on one or two days every week.

The community is strongly religious, with both Catholic and evangelical Protestant Christian churches. Home religious meetings (cultos) in which hymns are sung and prayers are offered for three to four hours at a time are common. Different households host these meetings throughout the community. For those who are evangelical Protestants, secular music, dancing, drinking, and smoking are strictly forbidden. This cultural difference lends to interesting exchanges in families that have members from both religious traditions and is producing changes in some of the most basic cultural practices. These practices include consejos (providing advice to family members), velas (overnight parties at the time of death of a loved one), and novenarios (held three times: on the death of a loved one, six months later, and again at a year after the death). Novenarios are intended to enable the deceased to pass on to the afterlife in peace. Another age-old ritual, the mujiganga, in which anonymous masked dancers tease, taunt, scare, and joke with members of the community, is practiced once a year to reunite neighboring villages that are in conflict. Many evangelical Protestant Christians see a conflict between their own practices and indigenous practices such as the mujigangas and the velas because of the drinking, dancing, and singing that they involve.

The community is undergoing difficult times. The average per capita income in Honduras is US $894 per year, and only 31 percent of children go on to middle school (U.S. Department of State, 2007). This community represents that average. While income is low, the cost of living is high; the cost of gasoline is almost twice as much as in the United States, the cost of groceries is comparable, and higher education is almost out of reach for many. Whereas in the past the community was self-sustaining and had housing and enough crops to live on, this is no longer the case. The needs are many, and choices are few.

Many of the men in Las Montañitas have temporary work in the community, either in construction or in preparing fields, planting, and harvesting, or commute to the city to work in construction, mechanic shops, or in other service-industry jobs. Women for the most part stay at home or commute to the city either to sell food in the market or to work as maids for middle-class or upper-class families. Young teens commute to other villages or to the cities to attend middle and high school. Very few children graduate from high school, and even fewer go on to attend or graduate from universities. Many of the young people from the village choose to migrate and find work instead of continuing with their education. Many women from the village migrate to Europe to be live-in caregivers for the sick and the elderly, nannies, or housekeepers, working all day long six to seven days a week. There are extended networks of women from this village working in Europe. Many of the young men migrate to the city to work in the service industry, in construction, in mechanics, or in public transportation. Some of the men migrate to the United States. Facundo identified some of the reasons people migrate:

In our town there is a large migration. A lot of people are emigrating from our town, and it is complicated, because there is a problem. For example, in our town there are more blue-collar workers, and there is no economy or business or support from the government so that small towns can sustain themselves. . . . Because they want to have a house, but the people from small towns don’t have access to loans—there is not one bank that will give them a loan without a fixed income, and they don’t have stable work—so they look for the most practical [solution], which is to emigrate. Some of the people in my town have pretty homes, but they are purchased with foreign money, through emigrating and exposing their lives to risk.

While people are struggling, there is a history of out-migration as a solution that allows them to have housing, education, and nutrition in their community. As Albertino showed us, this is a difficult option and in his case was a last resort:

I was going to start my journey, and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to my life. In fact, I knew that at any moment I could die on the journey, but I was already, as they said over there—I threw in my last card. I said, “I’m going to play my last card,” and this means that I had already thrown many cards. I tried to get ahead in my country through working in many ways. . . . It was my last card. Either I stayed in Honduras or I came here [to the United States] illegally. So I threw my last card and said, “I have to get out of here.” And that is what I did.

Along with many other immigrants before him, he migrated without documentation in an attempt to overcome his circumstances.

Social Groups, Immigration, and Transformation: an Overview

Arriving in the United States, Albertino and Facundo found themselves suddenly part of a new social dynamic, one that stressed their legal status. As undocumented immigrants they were frequently referred to as “illegals” or “aliens.” Albertino reflected on the permanence of the label: “It is a direct rejection on behalf of the law . . . a permanent rejection . . . because of one’s illegal status. . . . We are rejected by decree. Yes, we are illegal.” This labeling had particular consequences that they worked to overcome. The status of “illegal” is a barrier to immigrants’ social integration, and the lack of integration promotes their treatment as an underclass (Heer, 1990), a group with limited rights. Undocumented immigrants are denied membership in a community by being labeled as aliens (Chavez, 1998). Facundo pinpointed the nature of the label: “There [in the U.S.] they only call you illegal, and wetback, too. Yes, it’s an insult.” Through labeling, people undergo a change of self-perception. The lack of legitimacy that undocumented immigrants experience hinders their integration into society (Bustamante, 1972). Facundo described that experience as follows: “I had better possibilities to triumph . . . but one of the reasons that stopped me was the documents. I was illegal. In one way or another I could work, but to improve—the people who I thought could help me closed doors to me that they could have opened.”

The vulnerability that is fundamental to undocumented status (Chavez, 1998) has psychological effects on the immigrants’ lives (Hagan and Rodriguez, 2002). These effects include fear of deportation, fear of financial hardship to family in the United States and in their home community, and fear of separation from loved ones. Facundo and Albertino expressed how the fear of being caught by immigration officials impacted their decisions about how and when to interact in public:

After I was in Los Angeles, they told me to buy some of these English programs on tape to learn English, but they were really expensive. I had seen the school because the bus passed by there, so I was better able to attend, but other people didn’t because of their fear of what could happen there. They couldn’t trust that nothing bad would happen there.

The bad experience was that there was always the fear that someday they [the immigration authorities] would stop you—that migration would get you and deport you—and it seemed that the people were bad, that they wouldn’t treat you well. And it made us go around hidden, going around in the United States hidden as if we had done something really wrong.

In addition to these difficulties, there is an enduring emotional state that affects many immigrants, documented and undocumented, that has been described as an ambiguous loss that “is unclear, incomplete, or partial” (Falicov, 2002: 275). This loss is a kind of grief for lost family, familiar places, and customs—a loss that is incomplete because the people have not died and places have not disappeared but the immigrant no longer has immediate access to them. Several strategies for coping with this loss have been documented, among them efforts to recreate cultural activities in the new community. Falicov’s research has shown that immigrants’ lives are made manageable through the maintenance of cultural rituals and worldviews.

Murphy (1984) points out that many forms of social markers (such as age and ethnicity) and formal credentials govern the inclusion or exclusion of people from groups. Among these markers, English proficiency is a credentialed skill that, along with other forms of social/cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1985), contributes to social mobility. Yosso (2005) argues that traditional interpretations of cultural capital are derived from the values of white middle-class culture and suggests that many more forms of capital are used in communities of color.

Facundo and Albertino had many forms of cultural capital. They used their language skills to meet the needs of others in the community, especially those in their extended network. They had highly developed social networks, including the migrant network in which they worked and lived and the new groups with which they interacted at work and in school. These networks helped them to identify new work possibilities and ESL programs and assisted them with legal issues. Finally, they had skills in navigating the institutions of society (Yosso, 2005) and coping mechanisms such as maintaining cultural values and recreating cultural spaces (Falicov, 2002). Through the combination of these different forms of capital and their application of them in culturally appropriate ways, they were able to transform their social status.

Findings

Whereas traditional discussions of social/cultural capital focus on the adoption of the values of the target culture to gain access to institutions, economy, and education, they overlook the fact that the cultural values that immigrants bring with them can have a similar effect. We found that Facundo and Albertino’s cultural values, when combined with English use, functioned for them as transformational, liberatory capital (Reierson, 2007).

English and Being of Service

Albertino and Facundo’s experiences in learning and using English also impacted the way they made sense of their experiences as immigrants. While it was important for them to learn and use English, it was crucial for them to use English in culturally meaningful ways to serve others. While U.S. culture pays special attention to the individual and to social mobility, indigenous Honduran culture pays more attention to the individual’s responsibility to whole community. Facundo described how he used English to serve others as follows:

There were Hondurans who didn’t know any English, so they would tell me when they wanted to go buy things and told me to go with them to help them buy. So I always went to be able to speak for them. I couldn’t understand English well at that time, but I could ask, more or less, for what they wanted. So they and almost everyone around me always considered me as a help to them.

Facundo and Albertino’s community values collectivism and service to others. Similarly, Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (1995) documented that Latinos’ motivation for achievement in school was based on helping the whole family. They described Central Americans as having a pattern of “compensatory achievement” and “orienting self to others,” making choices that would support their parents and families. Facundo and Albertino displayed this interpersonal responsibility, and Facundo explained why being able to be of service was so important to him: “I didn’t feel like I was better than other people, but rather I felt good helping other people. I felt like I had changed, and I felt good because I was reliable and more independent.” Similarly, Albertino said that being of service was what was expected in a community, and he used English to meet that expectation in his social network:

One time I had a friend whose car broke down, and he said that my English was better and asked me to help him. So I went with him, and we went to the mechanic. He had already gone to the mechanic, but they didn’t understand what he wanted. So he came to get me so that I could interpret for him, and I told them what he had wanted. It was like that. I helped him and a lot of other people.

Albertino described the impact of his ability to give to others as a personal payment for his hard work:

I felt a personal payment that my time spent in school and in study was worthwhile, because I felt like it wasn’t only English for me but also for helping other people. I felt that I was doing a favor. . . . It made me feel good, because I knew that people had helped me and it was my time to help others.

Being of service is highly valued in the social networks in which Facundo and Albertino participate. It can be seen as a coping strategy similar to those described by Falicov (2002) for confronting the pressures of being labeled undocumented. It also serves another purpose, which is entry to other social groups. According to Bourdieu (1985), social (or cultural) capital includes a social relationship that allows one to make a claim to a resource (i.e., English proficiency) and the amount and quality of that resource (i.e., level of English fluency). The emphasis is on the social capital of U.S. economic institutions and relationships. What made the difference for Facundo and Albertino was not just the ability to use English but the relationships that allowed them to claim that resource. The social/cultural capital that played the formative role in these men’s experiences was the values of their indigenous Honduran community—being self-sufficient and being of service to others. Their ability to use this capital allowed them to move from mere adaptation to the transformation of their situation. As Albertino put it, “Our goals are not just achieved in personal satisfaction but also include a social projection—to be able to make change and be a light and to let society know that we are useful to society, to the country, to our family.” Maintaining the value of serving others helped them to intervene in their own experience as undocumented immigrants and transform their social status in the process. Using English just for work purposes was not enough; they felt the need to use their skills for the betterment of the group.

Transformative Liberatory Capital

While English proficiency and acculturation are traditionally considered key forms of instrumental knowledge that immigrants need to be functioning members of a society, upon closer examination they can be seen to be expressions of domination and an ideology of assimilation. English is a credentialed skill with institutional power, and it certainly intervened in Albertino and Facundo’s experiences as undocumented workers and community members. By learning English they were able to achieve what Murphy (1984) calls “usurpationary closure” in groups that had originally excluded them. At the same time, they used cultural values, resiliency, and hope to transform the barriers created by their underclass, undocumented status. Their expression of the cultural value of being of service through the use of English functioned as transformative liberatory capital. They often spoke of being reliable, useful, and self-sufficient in relation to their indigenous community. It was not English proficiency alone that changed their lives but the use of English in relation to the community. Norms of shared lives, communication, and service to others formed the resources that proved critical to their well-being.

Facundo and Albertino’s narratives provide a different interpretation of what counts as social/cultural capital. Being of service allowed them to resist the master narrative about who they were as undocumented immigrants and to construct a new narrative. It is on this transformation that educators should focus. Transformational liberatory capital emerges from a hopeful worldview and a vision of the future. Trinidad-Galvan (2006) writes of rural Mexican women’s pursuit of their hopes and dreams, and liberation theologists envision social and political liberation (Gutiérrez, 1991). This kind of capital involves skills fostered by hope in humanity, including the ability to apply democratic values without succumbing to individualism and, above all, the pursuit of healthy communities. This is a skill already possessed by communities and does not have to be revealed to them by teachers.

Facundo and Albertino found that language proficiency allowed them entry into American life and into other status groups, But it was only the intersection with other diverse forms of social/cultural capital that allowed them to change their situation. Maintaining a core cultural value and being able to use it in their social and work circles was a transformational experience.

Implications

Facundo and Albertino’s experiences suggest a need to rethink the kind of education that undocumented immigrants to the United States are receiving. Focusing on the communities that are losing their members to the pull of emigration and restructuring adult ESL programs to “globalize from below” (Appadurai, 2000; Ganesh, Zoller, and Cheney, 2005; Trinidad-Galvan, 2005) might provide new solutions. Maintaining memories of students’ objectives in immigration, recognizing and supporting cultural values, and determining how English learning can help students fulfill their goals will be key. The curriculum should be centered on the experience of communities in sending countries. Teachers should shift from knower to learner to create a space for authentic exchange of knowledge and ideas. It will be critical for them to understand the forms of social/cultural capital their students possess and use them to help them achieve their objectives. While the hardships that immigrants face should not be underestimated, the cultural knowledge that they bring with them is a source of strength. Teachers can create spaces in which the emphasis is on what students can do to make sense of their experiences, transform them, and reach back to their communities to produce change.