Translenguaje en la villa inmigrante: Creating our path to existence

Abstract In this essay, I reflect on how translanguaging in the immigrant community emerges as a form of social resistance that results in the creation of counter-spaces and counter-narratives. Likewise, I draw on the concepts of dialogical education of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and the perspective of Critical Race Theory and on how the social and cultural capital of immigrant communities plays an important role in overcoming environments that are averse to their presence. I contend that it is from “not existing” in a social system that the immigrant community is capable of opening spaces to exist and to lead new generations to project new forms of social identity, which are reflected in new linguistic, poetic, artistic expressions and new ways of social organization. In developing this concept, I address the case of the people of the town of Marshall in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the RevArte collaborative of which I am founder and director.