Learning Languages

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Abstract

Based on fieldwork in Latvia, a former Soviet and new European Union state, this chapter details the results for experiences of literacy learning not only when people move across borders but also when borders themselves shift and change. Building from critiques of place-based literacy ethnographies, it documents three kinds of informal literacy learning—print literacy learning, digital literacy learning, and anticipatory literacy learning—resulting from the movement of people across shifting spatial and temporal fields. It draws from participants’ memories of living in Latvia during Soviet times, during independence, and under the EU to tell the story of how generations of family members have used literacy to sustain family ties across borders—borders that have crumbled and have been redrawn.