Exploring Language Learner Identity: Perspectives From Immigrant Women in an ESL Community College Program

Abstract

Nearly one-third of students come from immigrant backgrounds (Feldblum et al., 2024), with community colleges enrolling 41% of all U.S. undergraduate students and serving as critical access points for immigrant learners (American Association of Community Colleges, 2025). Women constitute 58% of community college students (Association of Community College Trustees, 2024). While extensive research has examined gender and language learner identity, there is a notable lack of studies focusing on immigrant women in community college ESL programs. This qualitative case study aimed to explore how immigrant women in a community college ESL program negotiate their language learner identities through classroom interactions and experiences (Norton, 2000, 2013; Norton Peirce, 1995). Norton’s concept of language learner identity is understood as a dynamic and socially constructed process, shaped by learners’ interactions, institutional contexts, and their investment in and access to imagined communities. Data were collected from five immigrant women through interviews, memos, and questionnaires, and analyzed inductively to generate themes grounded in participants’ lived experiences. Findings indicated that participants’ imagined selves (Norton & McKinney, 2010; Pavlenko & Norton, 2007) and language learner identities (Norton, 2000, 2013; Norton Peirce, 1995) were shaped through supportive faculty interactions that fostered investment and peer interactions that both created opportunities for identity negotiation and, in some cases, challenged participants’ sense of belonging. Drawing on Honneth’s (1995) framework, these interactions can be understood through the lens of recognition and misrecognition: faculty interactions functioned as acts of recognition that validated participants’ capacities as language learners, while negative peer interactions constituted acts of misrecognition that threatened participants’ perceived legitimacy in the learning community. These findings underscore the need for culturally responsive curricula that validate immigrant women’s linguistic and cultural identities, professional development to help faculty recognize and support complex identity negotiations, and longitudinal research investigating how these identity formations influence immigrant women’s academic and professional trajectories.