Literacy as a Translocal Practice

Situated in critical sociocultural theory of literacy with a particular focus on literacy in relation to space and displacement, this qualitative study considers how nine teenage girls who were resettled as refugees from Thailand engage in productions of translocality through multimodal literacy practices in digital spaces. The girls are ethnically Karen, Burmese Muslim, Poe Karen, and Burmese, and they bridge histories of displacement, resettlement, and belonging in their translocal productions in digital spaces. Data was gathered over eight months through semi‐structured in‐depth interviews, multimodal interviews, document collection, and participant observation, and was analyzed thematically. This research adds to the growing understanding of language and literacy practices as global, as well as local, by offering a perspective on how newly resettled youth learn, use, and develop their multimodal literacy practices in digital social spaces.