Literacy mediation in marriage migration from Pakistan to the United Kingdom: Appropriating bureaucratic discourses to get a visa

Abstract

This article explores the literacy practices of a Mirpuri family and the ways family members challenge the bureaucratic discourses of migration as part of the literacy mediation they seek when applying for a visa. The central issue is to identify the institutional literacy practices in the visa application process by combining aspects of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) with New Literacy Studies (NLS). The article traces how visa texts are reused and recontextualised as they move between physical and social spaces in Pakistan and the United Kingdom. The aim is to identify how far the analysis of intertextual and interdiscursive relationships between discourses of migration can enhance the analysis of the literacy mediation that marginalised groups seek at a time of increasing curbs on family migration from non-European Economic Authority countries to the UK. Tracing recontextualisation in this way provides a combined framework for exploring the operations of power when analysing the extent to which bureaucratic discourses are challenged when text producers and consumers seek help filling in forms.

Migration and Belonging in the Home Literacies of Mirpuri Families

“…These are not related to the bureaucratic literacies of institutions, and they convincingly illustrate migrants' translanguaging as well as their transnationalism (Capstick 2016b).…”

“…However, Punjabi is not written by the vast majority of its speakers as it is Urdu which is the symbol of Muslim identity and which confers the prestige in Pakistan that Punjabi lacks (Rahman 1997;2009;Rassool 2007). Given that Brandt (2001) has argued that literacy is part of larger material systems which help develop reading and writing while at the same time conferring their value, it is useful to understand how the de-valuing of Punjabi in institutional spheres has led to Punjabis use of other literacies at home, that is, until users of social media began using Romanized scripts in their transliterations of Punjabi online (see Capstick 2016b). Until these new self-sponsored vernacular literacies emerged, only a small number of Punjabis who learned how to read and write Punjabi at university were able to access literacy in their first language.…”

Mediating Discourses of Displacement in the Literacy Practices of Refugees and Humanitarian Actors in Jordan, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey

“…moving between online and offline) when reading, writing and speaking on behalf of others. Elsewhere (Capstick, 2016a(Capstick, , 2016b) I have discussed the link between encounters where migrants turn to literacy mediators for help with unfamiliar codes and modes and the sponsorship of literacy in everyday life. In the current study, the focus is on the forms of literacy mediation which take place in humanitarian settings with a view to establishing how the mismatch between institutional discourses and the lived experiences of displaced people are negotiated when discourses are invoked in written texts.…”

Multilingualism in Migrant Contexts in Pakistan and the UK: Transcending Physical, Social and Symbolic Borders in Transnational Social Spaces

“…Mirpur, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Lancashire, in the north west of England, are bound together by these intergenerational trajectories of migration, the third phase of which, known as marriage migration, is at the core of the study presented here as we explore the literacy practices of transnational family members in Pakistan and the UK. Seeing literacy in this way means seeing reading and writing as a shared resource, put to use by members of multilingual communities to fulfil a range of social purposes (Blommaert 2008;Capstick 2016aCapstick , 2016b. The current paper seeks to extend this approach by focusing on literacy practices that circulate in countries of origin as well as countries of settlement.…”