This paper explores how Paiwan youth and children were negotiating multilingual identities while preserving their family language in Paiwan communities after migrating to reconstruction communities in Taiwan. Paiwan is one of the 16 Austronesian languages recognized by the government and spoken in Southern Taiwan. Local epistemic ecology revealed the dominance of Mandarin, and the indigenous residents observed the abandonment of their ancestral languages among youngsters and children. Against the indigenous migration contexts, this paper utilizes multimodal space to investigate the interplay of linguistic practices and multilingual identity negotiation of the Paiwan family members in the migration context.

Semi-structured interviews, face-to-face conversation, and online text communication of the Paiwan informants were collected, compiling 150 minutes of voice recordings and 256 pieces of family exchange texts. Drawing on microanalysis informed by discourse and conversation among Paiwan family members in the communities, the paper illustrates that the multilingual identities of knowledgeable stances could be discursively constructed. Findings suggest that Paiwan-Mandarin translation activities secure the well-being and indigenous identity of the children, and the Indigenous language is transmitted are passed on from generation to generation. On the other hand, the spaces of the family activities were important in interpreting the language practices and socialization of the Paiwan family members. Multilingual Paiwan children were negotiating their multiple identities as language learners in schools and moderators at home in their repertoires. Findings also suggest that Paiwan children’s identity negotiation was also in line with their pride and future self-image. The paper brought insights into the language socialization of multilingual Indigenous children and the situated nature of different values and resources regarding the multilingual identities of the social actors in the migration context.