Abstract
This chapter considers the language biographies narrated by two female forced migrants from the area of the former Yugoslavia that is now Bosnia. We analyse these to access defining traumatic and agentic moments towards high-level language and literacy skills in Swedish. They arrived, along with many other forced migrants fleeing the Balkan wars, during a deep economic recession. The immigrant group has outperformed other forced migrant groups in Sweden and these language biographies provide pertinent insights into adaption, and the route to the achievement of high-level literacy and language competencies. These insights should be viewed broadly and not as prototypical for forced migrants. Our findings suggest agentic acts of proactive language- and literacy-learning need to be interwoven across an individual’s social, academic, and working life.
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Bušić, V., Sullivan, K.P.H., Waldmann, C. (2022). Lessons for Today from Successful Women. Forced Migrants’ Language Biographies. In: Norlund Shaswar, A., Rosén, J. (eds) Literacies in the Age of Mobility. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83317-6_3
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