Child and Adolescent Migration, Mental Health, and Language: Effects of Trauma and Foreign Language Immersions

With a focus on the foundational years of childhood and adolescence, this book examines the short and long-term effects of migrants' sudden foreign language immersions and host language learning. Centred on psychoanalytic, semiotic, philosophical, language socialization and literary approaches to the study of auto-narratives. This book looks at the developmental importance of language through theory, the analysis of memoirs and the author's depiction and understanding of her own experiences between languages. It highlights the link between language and mental health. Specifically, this book examines the similarities between descriptions of migration and trauma. Theories of the restorative significance of language are also discussed in relation to migrants' ongoing need to grieve and find meaning within the hybridity that integrates their past and present sense of self.