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Previous research has documented the potential of digital projects for immigrant students to capitalize on their transnational knowledge. Yet, there are only limited insights on the practices and perspectives of immigrantadults in digital/multimodal composition. In this article, we explore how visual media are used by adults and adolescents as resources in the production of digital texts, and as artifacts to elicit accounts and memories. We draw from transnational approaches to theorize the role of technology in facilitating connections with students' home countries. We use social semiotics and testimonio lenses to examine media they selected to represent their hometowns in (or nearby) the Mexican state of Michoacán. Lastly, we adopt methods of practitioner inquiry and artifactual literacy to elicit information about participants' understandings and choices in the composition process.
Our findings show that while transnational ties were relevant for all participants, their understandings about their hometowns differed across generations. Adults represented the homeland as a source of healing and miracles, while youth focused on concerns about crime and corruption. We also document the complexities of access to visual media through search engines. We show the ways family networks, travel, and media consumption shaped the composition choices students made, as well as how their current circumstances, roles, and concerns led them to share testimonios of struggle and faith. We discuss contributions to digital writing research across generations, and implications for pedagogical practices that leverage students' transnational ties and migration histories.
In several of Jackie's1 drafts, references to Rosario, Michoacán were frequent. This place mattered "because that is where I lived and because that's where my family [is] at. I remember the moments" (free writing, 3/21/14). This connection to her homeland was featured in a digital storytelling project in her middle school classroom, where she diligently searched for images that matched her memories. At a workshop for adults in the same district, Diana, a 37-year-old woman, searched for videos of religious processions in the town of Hernández-also located in Michoacán. Yet, an image search for "Michoacán" is likely to juxtapose maps, colonial churches, and men holding guns. As researchers/practitioners in a relatively new immigrant community in the South, we examine the ways students visually represent this region of Mexico, which is often portrayed as dangerous in...