Everyday Borders of Transnational Students: Composing Place and Space with Mobile Technology, Social Media, and Multimodality

Students living and attending institutions of higher education near the border of Mexico and the United States use mobile devices, multimodality, and social media to challenge institutional spaces in a number of ways. The study presents the results of mixed-method research designed to examine how students living in this context employ mobile devices and social media to negotiate this idea of space when doing writing work. The article also examines how the uses of mobile technologies affect writing practices including student awareness of popular modes of writing, academic genres, and rhetorical concepts affecting writing practices. Through examining such issues, the author argues for the development of multimodal pedagogies that can supplement and validate the lived experiences of the writing student who regularly move between different national, cultural, and educational contexts.