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The work of bilingual parent-education liaisons: Assembling information patchworks for immigrant parents

Abstract:

In this paper, we examine the information work that bilingual parent-education liaisons perform to create connections towards assisting immigrant parents in the United States. As part of formal and informal educational institutions, liaisons operate between different social worlds—within and beyond the domain of education—to maximize immigrant parents’ engagement in their children’s academic lives. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork with low-income Latino immigrants and their liaisons, we explore how liaisons leverage technology, content, and people to align these worlds; bringing them closer to mutual understanding. We borrow inspiration from the analytical lens of seams suggested by Vertesi to explore how liaisons manage the “seams” between worlds. This analysis provides a rich and unique perspective of the work that successfully engages immigrant parents with their children’s education, as well as the tensions that challenge that engagement. This understanding of the work that liaisons do with and across seams provides insights to inform design directions for technology that could facilitate and amplify their efforts. Finally, we highlight how exploring the seams that liaisons work with can inform the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) on the role of technology in mediation.