Culture, Discursive Practices and Literacy Work in Families: Why is Mathematics Important to Indian Immigrants in UK?

Indian immigrants bring from their country of origin a habitus that, in part, places them in a specific way in their own family as well as in the society. Being ‘middle class Indian’ both ‘disposes’ and also ‘positions’ a parent differently in relation to ‘mathematics education’ and its perceived value for their offspring. This serves to motivate the parents to ensure that the children are ‘good at maths’ as it may further enhance the value of the parents as immigrants in a host country that might in other ways (e.g., linguistically and racially) tend to disenfranchise and marginalise them. The discursive embedding of the history of migration, struggle and sacrifice and the pre-migration cultural capital of Indian immigrants explain how specific trajectories of families and home-based literacy-numeracy practices emerge and how these practices lay down the cognitive and motivational structures that may help Indian children internalise high educational ambitions and the desirable behaviour to achieve these goals. The logic of these literacy practices could be a logic of developing social psychological tools to overcome ethnic, racial and economic disadvantages.