Chapter 10: Attuning Plurilingual Learning Through the Youth’s Migratory Experience

Twenty years ago, Generalitat of Catalonia (Catalonia’s Government) created the so-called reception classroom, a specific class that aimed to improve language learning and communication skills of youth migrants who did not speak either Catalan or Spanish, the co-official languages. Over these years, some researchers have pointed out how this segregationist practice could reproduce educational inequalities (Arroyo-González & Berzosa-Ramos, 2021). In this chapter, we will share our work through two academic years (2020–2021 and 2021–2022) with Chinese youth migrants (ages 12–16) who attend the reception classroom in Estrada, a public compulsory secondary school in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Catalonia. Addressing their specific needs, we designed a pedagogical program based on the funds of identity approach (Esteban-Guitart, 2021), enhancing culturally sustaining pedagogies (Alim & Paris, 2017). Through our work, we noticed that students’ funds of identity (their meaningful activities and knowledge) were sustained by engaging with their mother tongue, their cultural knowledge, and migratory experiences. Trust between teachers and students increased and students’ motivations to learn was enhanced, facilitating the construction of meanings on school, scholarization, and language learning.