African International Students’ Identity Negotiations: New Images of the World and Self

Following the ‘social turn’ in the field of second language (L2) acquisition research (Blair in The social turn in second language acquisition. Edinburgh University Press, 2019), scholars have theorised L2 learning as a social process in which learners engage in culturally valued activities, instead of simply a cognitive process of acquiring skills and knowledge (Kanno and Norton in J Lang Identity Educ 2:241–249, 2003). As such, a growing body of researchers have turned the spotlight on the way in which L2 learners are situated in specific historical, political, and sociocultural environments and how they ‘resist or accept the positions those contexts offer them’ (Norton and Toohey in Tesol Q 35:310, 2001).