No family Is an Island: Exploring Two Chinese-American Families’ Heritage Language Maintenance

The Model of Investment and HL Maintenance

While originally developed for L2 contexts, the model of investment offers powerful insights for understanding the complexities of heritage language maintenance. Unlike L2 learners who normally begin language learning in institutional settings, heritage language learners start in early childhood within the family and may navigate identities and capital that are recognized or denied as they move across home, school, and community spaces. This model can well capture “the complex, contradictory, and in a state of flux” nature of heritage learners’ relationships with their ancestral language, because a learner’ linguistic capital is continually measured against shifting “orders of indexicality” (Darvin & Norton, 2015).

Empirical research applying the investment model has illuminated the tensions between internal family valuations of heritage languages and external societal pressures. Studies show that even highly motivated learners may experience divestment if their HL is marginalized in broader social contexts. For instance, Wu et al. (2014) found that middle school students’ investment in Mandarin learning was significantly undermined when their actual heritage languages (e.g., Cantonese, Fujianese) were devalued in favor of institutionalized Mandarin, revealing how language ideologies and power relations shape investment. Furthermore, scholars have utilized the model to examine how ideology, identity, and capital shape family language planning during transnational migration (Cui & Zheng, 2021; da Costa Cabral, 2018; Kwok, 2024), and impact long-term retention in higher education (Bai & Mu, 2025).

Micro-Level Factors: Parental Agency and the “Labor of Persistence.”

Heritage language maintenance during early childhood was characterized by what we term the “labor of persistence,” namely parents’ sustained effort to establish Chinese as the home language and create supportive literacy environments. Both families demonstrated high parental investment driven by ideologies viewing Chinese as essential for family communication, cultural heritage and future economic capital.

Lan’s family faced a structural void without any access to HL schools in their small northeastern town. In response, parents exercised a high degree of collective agency by initiating a co-teaching program with five to six families, meeting weekly for 1–2 years:

This collective effort was a direct response to a structural void. Parents also invested in material capital, purchasing Chinese textbooks (Grades 1–12), picture books, and bilingual resources from the Chinese Consulate (see Appendix 2). Lan taught her children at home for approximately three grades, though she acknowledged that “persistence is no easy job.” Her decision to stop at Grade 5 suggests a point of forced divestment where the increasing difficulty and lack of external recognition made the labor unsustainable. Parents positioned Chinese as a multifaceted asset. As Lan explained:

(Note: In all extracts, Wu refers to the researcher/interviewer.)

This pragmatic perspective in addition to affective family connections drove sustained parental investment despite emotional challenges including frustration and exhaustion.

Bin’s family in California had greater access to formal HL schools. However, parents still supplemented institutional learning with home teaching, including Tang poetry recitation and character practice. Bin’s investment shared similar ideologies like regarding Chinese as family heritage, communication tool, and economic capital.

Meso-Level Factors: HL School Access and Pedagogical Conflict

The two families’ access to institutional support diverged significantly during early childhood. Lan’s family had no access to formal HL schools at that time. The local public schools offered French (not Chinese) as a foreign language, and the small-town context offered no Chinese-language programs. The parent-organized co-teaching program represented an endeavor to create meso-level support, but lacked professional pedagogical training. As Lan later reflected:

This pedagogical conflict between the traditional textbook-centric teaching and the activity-based, student-centered pedagogy that children experienced in U.S. mainstream schools led to early divestment from HL learning.

Bin’s family enrolled their children in Saturday Chinese schools from early childhood. Yue and Yi attended for 4–5 years (aged 5–10), with sessions lasting from 9 am to 2–3 pm weekly. However, children considered this a burden rather than enrichment:

The traditional pedagogy, characterized by reading, writing, and grammar tests created a meso-level constraint. While parents viewed Tang poetry and character writing as cultural capital, children perceived it as a “not normal” burden competing with their socialization in the U.S. context. Thus, access to HL schools did not necessarily guarantee engagement in HL learning, and pedagogical misalignment undermined children’s investment despite high parental investment.

Macro-Level Factors: English Dominance and Market Value

During early childhood, macro-level factors shaped both families’ investment trajectories. The dominant English-only ideology of the U.S. context positioned Chinese as a “foreign” language with limited immediate utility in children’s daily lives.

For Lan’s family in a small northeastern town, the absence of a Chinese-speaking community meant Chinese had no exchange value outside the home. The local “field” did not accord symbolic value to Chinese; parents had to build their own “field” where linguistic capital could be exchanged. The broader societal English-dominant context made the return on investment invisible in the short term.

For Bin’s family in California’s high-density Chinese community, the macro-context was slightly more supportive, with greater visibility of Chinese language and culture. However, children still experienced pressure to assimilate. The broader U.S. societal ideology positioned multilingualism as “not normal” rather than as an asset, creating tension between parental expectations and children’s desire for homogeneity with English-speaking peers.

Both families’ parental investment during this stage was driven by anticipation of future market value—China’s economic growth and the potential competitive edge of bilingualism—rather than immediate societal recognition. This mismatch between parental long-term vision and children’s immediate social context created early resistance.

Investment Patterns in Early Childhood

Parents’ investment during early childhood remained consistently high across both families, driven by ideologies positioning Chinese as family heritage, communication tool, and economic capital. Parents mobilized diverse resources, namely home teaching, textbook purchases, co-teaching programs, and HL school enrollment in our case, demonstrating sustained “labor of persistence” despite emotional and physical costs.

Children’s investment during this stage was characterized by passive compliance rather than agentic engagement. As Yue reflected, “It was just expected then I did it. . . (just) because of parental expectations.” Children experienced HL learning as an extra burden competing with mainstream schooling and peer socialization. The “ought-to self” (meeting parental expectations) dominated this stage, with little alignment between HL learning and children’s “ideal self” or immediate social needs (Dörnyei, 2019).

The interaction of micro- (family pressure), meso- (pedagogical mismatch), and macro-factors (English-speaking dominance) created early divestment despite high parental investment. Lan’s family faced a structural void without access to institutional support, while Bin’s family faced pedagogical conflict between rote learning and engaging pedagogy. In both cases, the absence of synergy across ecological levels restrained children’s investment during early childhood.

Micro-Level Factors: Negotiation and Resistance

During adolescence, micro (family)-level dynamics shifted from parental control to parent-child negotiation. Parents in both families continued to value Chinese and encouraged HL school attendance, home practice, and summer visits to China. However, adolescents gained increasing agency to resist or renegotiate family language policies.

Ran (Lan’s elder son) reflected on this period: “I never worked that hard when I was learning Chinese as a child, as I didn’t understand its importance at the time.” The family’s co-teaching program had ended, and without institutional support, the burden fell entirely on sporadic home teaching. As Ran noted, “My parents have tried to teach me Chinese at home occasionally, though the effort dies as we are both too busy.” This “dying effort” signifies forced divestment during adolescence, where competing academic and social demands undervalued the HL learning.

Yue and Yi (Bin’s children) discontinued Saturday HL school around ages 10–12, though they continued annual summer visits to China. During adolescence, their investment remained low, characterized by passive resistance. As Yi later reflected, the forced literacy training during childhood made his reading and writing skills “awful” despite oral proficiency maintained through family communication.

Family-level investment during adolescence was undermined by adolescents’ growing awareness of the mismatch between parental expectations and their immediate social realities in English-dominant peer networks and schools.

Meso-Level Factors: Discontinuation and Emerging Opportunities

Institutional engagement with Chinese during adolescence diverged across families and individuals. Ran had no access to Chinese courses in his public high school (which offered French instead) and discontinued all formal HL learning after the parent-led co-teaching program ended in late childhood. The absence of meso-level support during critical adolescent years contributed to his declining investment and proficiency. Yi discontinued Saturday HL school but received no formal Chinese instruction during middle and high school. His investment during this period was minimal, sustained only by family communication and annual China visits. Yue, however, experienced a critical turning point when her public high school offered Chinese-language courses with project-based pedagogy:

This meso-level support in the form of creative, student-centered projects contrasted sharply with the rote learning of childhood HL schools. It provided a “practical sense (sens practique)” (Bourdieu, 1986) of the language’s utility. By engaging in scriptwriting and filmmaking, Yue became an active producer of cultural artifacts instead of a passive recipient of family language policy. It was this pedagogical shift that nurtured her growing investment during late adolescence.

Macro-Level Factors: Socialization Pressure and Emerging Diversity Awareness

During adolescence, macro-level factors continued to exert pressure toward English monolingualism, but adolescents also began developing awareness of linguistic diversity and Chinese’s potential value. Yue reflected on the socialization pressure of her childhood and early adolescence:

This macro-level ideology positioned Chinese proficiency as a “marker of foreignness” (Wang & Hamid, 2025) rather than an asset, because the pressure to assimilate created a desire for homogeneity. However, by late high school, Yue began to perceive a shift: “Probably in university, or the end of high school, you start to be appreciative. . . As you got older, you realize it’s actually unique, that makes me unique, that makes me kind of proud.” Yi and Ran experienced similar assimilation pressures during adolescence but lacked the institutional or peer support that might have regarded Chinese as valuable capital. For them, the social context was characterized by English-speaking dominance with little immediate recognition of Chinese’s utility.

Investment Shifts in Adolescence

Parents’ investment remained high but became increasingly difficult to sustain as adolescents gained autonomy and resisted HL learning. Parents’ “labor of persistence” faced growing challenges from adolescents’ competing priorities such as mainstream schooling, peer socialization, extracurricular activities, and limited institutional support. Meanwhile, adolescents’ investment during this stage experienced resistance, negotiation, or, in Yue’s case, growing appreciation. Most adolescents experienced a “dying effort” (in Ran’s words) where HL learning was overshadowed by more immediate priorities. However, Yue’s access to engaging, project-based Chinese courses in high school reflected a critical turning point where investment began to shift from passive compliance toward personal interest.

The interplay of parent-child negotiation in family context (micro), discontinuation versus engaging pedagogy (meso), and socialization pressure versus emerging diversity awareness (macro) caused divergent trajectories. Ran experienced forced divestment due to structural voids at all levels. Yi maintained minimal investment through family communication alone. Yue began transitioning toward increased investment due to supportive meso-level pedagogy and late-adolescent identity shifts recognizing Chinese as “unique” rather than burdensome. Adolescence emerged as a pivotal period where investment could either collapse (Ran), stagnate (Yi), or begin to revitalize (Yue), depending on the presence or absence of synergy across ecological levels.

Micro-Level Factors: Retrospective Reflections and Intergenerational Communication

By young adulthood, participants had gained autonomy over their language choices and could reflect retrospectively on their childhood HL experiences. Family-level factors shifted from parental control to adult children’s independent decisions about maintaining Chinese for family communication. Yi (age 23) maintained oral Chinese proficiency primarily for affective reasons—connecting with grandparents and extended family in China:

Yi’s emphasis on “ME choosing” represents a shift from childhood’s “ought-to self” (i.e., parental expectations) to young adulthood’s “ideal self” (i.e., personal identity goals). Yi’s annual visits to China several years ago afforded him ample opportunities for exposure to the Chinese language. His investment in oral communication while neglecting written literacy was well-aligned with his emotional attachment to family connection. Yue similarly valued Chinese for family communication but also began leveraging it for career advancement. Her retrospective view acknowledged her parents’ role: “you start to have more appreciation that you have some knowledge and understanding of this language.” Ran, however, expressed regret about his limited proficiency:

His remorse that “it’s a shame I didn’t learn it better as a child” reflects his recognition of lost opportunity, yet he lacked any institutional support to reinvest as a young adult.

Meso-Level Factors: University, Workplace, and Transnational Contexts

Institutional contexts during young adulthood provided new opportunities for some learners to reinvest in Chinese learning. Yue continued formal Chinese study in college and later moved to London for graduate school and work. Her university and workplace contexts, characterized by linguistic diversity and global mobility, positioned Chinese as valuable capital. She described how her multilingualism was admired by peers and recognized as professionally advantageous:

Yi completed an internship in Shanghai, which represented a critical meso-level context where his Chinese oral proficiency gained immediate utility. He described this experience as creating “spikes” in his HL learning:

The Chinese context makes learning occur naturally because the language becomes a tool for communicating and building relationships. The “spike” metaphor Yi used shows that learner agency is most powerful when the social context provides immediate and tangible returns. In the United States, the lack of recognition by the society, coupled with the traditional rote learning pedagogy, may lead to linguistic regress and learner’s demotivation. However, the transnational field reactivates the learners’ agency in heritage language learning. Ran, however, pitifully lacked institutional affordances or professional incentive to reinvest, contributing to continued divestment.

Macro-Level Factors: Transnational Mobility and Professional Capital

By young adulthood, macro-level factors had shifted significantly for participants. China’s economic growth and increasing global presence repositioned Chinese as valuable transnational capital. Yue experienced this shift most dramatically in London’s diverse, multilingual context:

This sens practique responds to the complexities of global era. Yue successfully converted her linguistic repertoire into economic capital, envisioning career opportunities at global corporations. She underwent “mental shift” from childhood’s “it’s not cool to be different” to young adulthood’s “it makes me unique, that makes me kind of proud.” The shifting ideologies, by valuing multilingualism and China’s economic significance, enabled her to reclaim her “right to speak” and transform Chinese learning from burden to symbolic capital. Yi’s transnational experiences in China similarly repositioned his Chinese proficiency as high-value capital in that specific field, though his U.S.-based career did not provide equivalent recognition. Ran, remaining in a U.S. context without transnational mobility opportunities, experienced no such revaluation like Yi and Yue. The macro-level ideology in his immediate environment continued to position English as dominant, with limited recognition of Chinese’s value.

Investment Outcomes in Young Adulthood

Parents’ investment by this stage had largely stopped, though parents continued to value Chinese and express hope that their adult children would maintain proficiency. Parents reflected on their “labor of persistence” with mixed emotions—pride in their efforts but also regret about limited outcomes, especially Lan (Ran’s mother) regarding Ran’s proficiency. Lan went to extraordinary lengths to maintain the HL but expressed deep regret over the lack of institutional resources:

Young adults’ investment diverged dramatically based on their developmental trajectories and access to contexts where Chinese held exchange value. Yue successfully converted childhood HL learning into professional and social capital through transnational mobility, diverse institutional contexts, and alignment of “ideal self” with multilingual professional identity. Yi maintained oral proficiency for affective family connections and experienced “spikes” during transnational contexts, but limited written literacy and U.S.-based career reduced sustained investment. Ran uttered regret about limited proficiency but lacked institutional support or transnational opportunities to reinvest, and Chinese remained a “dying interest” in English-dominant contexts.

All participants recognized the value of their parents’ efforts in hindsight, but their current investment levels reflected whether they had access to transnational, professional, diverse peer network contexts where Chinese was deemed as symbolic and economic capital. As Yue reflected, the shift from childhood resistance to young adult appreciation required both personal maturation and environmental contexts that accorded Chinese as valuable. Long-term investment in young adulthood was sustained only when learners’ “ideal self” aligned with contexts where Chinese provided tangible returns—family connection (Yi), professional mobility (Yue), or cultural identity (Yue). Without such alignment (Ran), childhood HL learning did not translate into sustained young adult investment.

Parental Investment: Stable Ideology but Declining Capacity

Parental investment remained ideologically stable but practically unsustainable across developmental stages. Both families demonstrated what we term the “labor of persistence” to maintain Chinese despite emotional exhaustion, pedagogical limitations, and structural barriers. This finding extends the previous research on Chinese immigrant parents’ strong ideological commitment (Wang, 2020) by revealing a critical temporal dimension. While parents’ ideologies remained stable, their capacity to translate ideology into practice declined as children gained autonomy.

The family’s language policy decisions of Lan’s family appeared to “be born from a lack of local institutional and communal support for HLM efforts” (Gorter & Berardi-Wiltshire, 2026, p. 219). However, it regrettably failed to yield the intended results due to a lack of professional teaching resources. Parents’ insufficient knowledge of pedagogy killed the young learners’ interest. Lan’s “pinning them there” vividly illustrates that parents had to rely on traditional, textbook-centric teaching methods. However, this deviates from the activity-based, student-centered pedagogy the children experienced in the U.S. mainstream school system. Therefore, successful HL development requires a strong relationship between home environments and school practices (Gregory, 2017). Despite Lan’s strong “impact beliefs” (De Houwer, 2009) that she was responsible for her children’s maintaining heritage language, the challenges caused by structural constraints proved insurmountable.

Lan’s reflection that “Persistence is no easy job” and her decision to stop home teaching by fifth grade represent a form of forced divestment. The growing challenges she faced, coupled with a lack of institutional support, made the labor unsustainable (Little, 2020). It echoes Wang’s (2020) observation that this informal alliance (grouping children together) is vulnerable to various difficulties and obstacles occurring in migration contexts, and is difficult to sustain on a long-term basis” (p. 148). This perspective revealed that structural constraints rather than weakening commitment are what undermine long-term parental investment. Admittedly, parents’ emotional struggles (Park & Sarkar, 2007; Wang, 2020) are not merely psychological. They result from complex realities, including limited pedagogical training, the absence of institutional partnerships, and a commitment to preserving a language that broader society tends to devalue.

Children’s Investment: From “Ought-to Self” to “Ideal Self” or Divestment

Children’s investment in HL learning followed nonlinear paths marked by critical turning points rather than steady progress, aligning with Darvin and Norton’s (2015) view of investment as “complex, contradictory, and in a state of flux.” Our findings build on this model by identifying a developmental shift: from an externally driven “ought-to self” (Dörnyei, 2019) in childhood to either the integration of autonomous “ideal self” or permanent disengagement in young adulthood. In early childhood, investment was commonly characterized by passive compliance. As Yue shared, “It was just expected then I did it. . . because of parental expectations.” This echoes research showing children often experience HL learning as a forced obligation (Curdt-Christiansen, 2009; Zhang & Slaughter-Defoe, 2009); however, our retrospective perspective reveals that the strong influence of “ought-to self” during childhood makes individuals more vulnerable to later divestment when parental control declines.

Our study revealed that adolescence emerged as a pivotal period where life trajectories began to diverge. Ran experienced forced divestment as institutional support faded and competing priorities intensified. His divestment reflected how the absence of meso-level support during critical developmental transitions may lead to irreversible disengagement. Ran’s admission that his “effort dies” suggests that familial effort cannot withstand the pressure of a dominant-language society if the macro-environment does not accord symbolic value to heritage language. When the HL is not integrated into the learner’s academic or professional life (as it was later for Yue), it is shifted to a “hobby” that can be easily crowded out in the dominant-language society. As Curdt-Christiansen et al. (2023) found, the ongoing linguistic competition between minority and dominant languages has involuntarily forced many parents to make a pragmatic decision to discontinue home language learning. Ran was caught between the strong societal “pull” (Song & Wu, 2024, p. 209) toward English and the family’s efforts to maintain the heritage language (HL), complicated by a child’s limited pragmatic motivation at a young age. He experienced “dying interest” and rational divestment because the absence of a systemic support (specifically at the meso- and macro-levels) made the cost of HL maintenance higher than the perceived return.

Young adulthood outcomes reflected whether learners’ “ideal self” aligned with societal contexts providing tangible returns. Yue’s success in converting linguistic capital into professional opportunities (Bourdieu, 1986) contrasts sharply with Ran’s demotivation, regret and continued divestment. Critically, Yi’s “spike” metaphor of Chinese gains during China visits but regressing in the U.S. demonstrates nonlinear trajectories of language maintenance. His trajectory reveals that investment is context-activated, fluctuating alongside the perceived exchange value of Chinese in his immediate environment. This finding extends Norton’s (2013) highlighting investment’s situatedness by revealing its temporal instability even within individual learners. In Yi’s case, his sustained interest in Chinese learning and the priority placed on speaking was family- and relationship-driven, because of his “emotional attachment” (Little, 2020) to communication with his grandparents. This aligns with findings on the interconnectedness of HL learning and family well-being (Song & Wu, 2024; Wang, 2023b). Meanwhile, Yue’s growing love of learning Chinese was driven by both family relationships and career development, affording her a better position and more opportunities for the future. Following Mandela’s (2011) sentiment that speaking a language “goes to the heart,” Yue recognizes that her Chinese proficiency is an asset for building professional relationships.

The Limits of Family-Level Investment

Both families demonstrated high parental investment through consistent home language use, material resources (textbooks, picture books), and creative institutional partnerships (e.g., Lan’s co-teaching program). Yet outcomes diverged dramatically. Ran’s limited proficiency despite Lan’s sustained “labor of persistence” illustrates that family investment cannot compensate for structural voids at meso- and macro-levels. This finding extends Canagarajah’s (2008) view of families as “porous” spaces shaped by social forces, showing that porosity acts as a constraint, not merely an influence—external pressures can overwhelm family efforts despite parental commitment. Following Curdt-Christiansen’s (2014) findings in Singapore, we see that family language policies are never “self-contained”; instead, they are constantly interacting with and shaped by national language policy.

Institutional Access and Pedagogical Reform

A striking finding was that institutional access at the meso-level did not guarantee positive outcomes when pedagogy conflicted with learners’ broader educational experiences (see Table 2 for an overview of affecting factors across micro-, meso- and macro-levels).

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Table 2.

An Overview of Multi-Level Factors Affecting Chinese Heritage Language Maintenance.

Multi-level factors	Supporting factors	Hindering factors
Micro (Family)	• Consistent home language use and parental modeling • Annual visits to China; authentic communication opportunities • Parental persistence despite emotional costs	• Parents’ limited pedagogical knowledge (“pinning them there”) • Emotional exhaustion from “labor of persistence”
Meso (Institutional)	• Engaging, project-based pedagogy (Yue’s film projects) • University and workplace contexts valuing multilingualism • Transnational professional networks	• Absence of HL schools (Ran’s context) • Rote learning pedagogy in Saturday schools (Yi/Yue’s childhood) • Lack of HL courses in public school systems
Macro (Societal)	• Diverse peer networks admiring multilingualism (Yue: “Everyone thinks it’s very cool that you can speak another language.”) • Recognition of China’s economic significance • Transnational mobility opportunities • Shifting ideologies from socialization to diversity appreciation	• English-speaking dominance; Chinese positioned as limited value • Socialization pressure and lack of immediate societal recognition • Lack of Chinese-speaking communities
Synthesis of outcomes	Sustained investment: alignment across levels; success in converting HL into social /economic capital (Yue).	Forced divestment: Barriers across all levels resulted in “dying effort” despite parental commitment (Ran).

Bin’s children (Yue and Yi) attended Saturday HL schools for 4–5 years. However, this experience was perceived as burden because the traditional rote learning pedagogy centered on “reading, writing, testing”—what Yue described as “not a particularly normal situation in the US.” New immigrant families often faced challenges in accessing supporting resources (Gorter & Berardi-Wiltshire, 2026). HL schools can foster motivation and a sense of belonging by offering structured learning environments (Alshihry, 2024; Kim et al., 2025; Liang & Shin, 2021). But inconsistent program quality means that simply enrolling in an HL school does not guarantee effective language development or maintenance, or even undermine learner identity (Kisselev et al., 2025; Pastushenkov et al., 2025; Wu et al., 2014). Yue’s transformation through high school project-based pedagogy—where students created films and scripts—shows that positioning learners as active cultural producers rather than passive recipients can catalyze investment shifts, even after years of resistance. This suggests that pedagogical reform may be more critical than simply expanding HL school access.

Macro-Level Ideological Shifts and Geographic Inequality

Yue’s “mental shift” from “It’s not cool to be different” during childhood to “It makes me unique, that makes me kind of proud” during young adulthood reflects broader societal changes toward valuing multilingualism (García & Wei, 2014; Leeman, 2015; Song & Wu, 2024). However, our findings reveal that these macro-level shifts are geographically and socioeconomically uneven (see Table 2, Macro-level). Yue found herself in cosmopolitan London, where people often thought it was really cool to speak another language, whereas Ran stayed in environments where English was the main language and there wasn’t much recognition of the value of Chinese.

This geographic inequality challenges research treating “U.S. context” as monolithic. Our study finds the unequal access to the means and tools that parents need to support and be involved in their children’s development (Riches & Curdt-Christiansen, 2010). The stark contrast between Lan’s northeastern small-town “structural void” and Bin’s California access to Chinese-speaking communities and institutional resources demonstrates that HL maintenance challenges vary dramatically within the same national context. Policymakers need to recognize these internal inequalities instead of attributing outcomes solely to individual or family factors.

Ran’s trajectory highlights how barriers at different ecological levels compound in complex ways rather than simply adding up (see Table 2, Synthesis of outcomes). The combination of a structural void at the meso-level (no high-level schools), small-town English dominance at the macro-level, and parents’ pedagogical limitations at the micro-level created a context where heritage language maintenance became nearly impossible, even with high parental commitment.

On the other hand, Yue’s success showcases an example of positive synergy (see Table 2, Synthesis of outcomes). Her success was not merely a result of individual effort, but a convergence of family support, engaging pedagogy, and institutional access, ranging from high school projects, university experiences in London to career development opportunities. These “transnational” (Wang & Hatoss, 2024) contexts collectively transformed linguistic capital into social and economic capital. This finding extends Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model by showing that converting capital requires aligned opportunities across different levels of one’s environment. Linguistic capital alone is invisible and insufficient without “fields” (Bourdieu, 1986) that recognize its exchange value. In addition, her imagined identity as a multilingual professional at global corporations like Google or Tencent illustrates how HLM provides a competitive edge in the global market. This “awareness of the symbolic benefits” (Li, 2022, p. 131) accords with the arguments of Wang and Hamid (2022) that viewing heritage languages as transnational linguistic capital facilitates social and economic mobility across diverse global fields.