Literacy and literacy practices: Plurilingual connected migrants and emerging literacy

Abstract Recent migration towards Europe is characterized by the massive presence of adults whose educational paths have been interrupted and who are thus developing literacy for the first time in a new language. A literacy test elaborated at the University of Palermo, Italy, showed that, on a sample of 774 migrants, about 30 percent could not read and/or write short words. This test assessed the learners’ abilities to read and write, whether in the Roman alphabet or in other writing systems, and whether in Italian or in other languages of learners’ repertoires. These learners with emergent literacy mostly came from sub-Saharan Africa, an area characterized by diverse forms of multilinguali…