Navigating and Reconfiguring the " Multi " In Languages And Identities – Six Chaoxianzu [Ethnic Korean Chinese] Teenagers in Beijing

International audienceThis contribution reports on a qualitative study conducted with six multilingual ChaoXianZu [ethnic Korean Chinese] teenagers in Beijing China, to explore how adolescents engage and invest in multiple representations of languages and identities (Byrd Clark, 2009; 2012), in a context of ever-changing and increased transnational and intraterritorial mobility. In this article, the researchers employ the framework of plurilingualism and plurilingual competence to analyse how the participants conceptualise and talk about their linguistic practices, social networks, language learning, and bilingual minority education in China. The data presented suggest that while participants do adopt, and adapt to, their parents' expectations to maintain strong ties with their own language and community and with Chinese ideals, the six youth interviewed also resist essentialized and normative representations of Chinese Koreanness to invest in more complex, fluid and overlapping multiple (learners') identities