Transcending Borderlands with Transnational and Plurilingual Practices : Mestiza Consciousness for Kosovar-Albanian Immigrants

This book builds on Anzaldúa?s concept of the Mestiza Consciousness and describes the experience of physical and cultural displacement of Kosovar-Albanians from Kosovo to the U.S., the borders they encounter every day in the destination country, and the struggle to reconcile the two worlds - the place of the origin and the United States. The author explores the concepts of border, translanguaging and transnational practices, and plurilingualism using the lens of mestiza consciousness, through an autoethnographic analysis of himself and other community members in the new ?homeland?, which the author maintains will never replace its true meaning. The aim is to show how important the country of origin is to immigrants, and how difficult it is to maintain the ties in a ?hostile? environment. This study employs autoethnography as a method of research in order to give voice to a particular community of peopleabsent from the corpus of research and mainstream scholarly discussions.