Language, Migration and Social Inequalities: A Critical Sociolinguistic Perspective on Institutions and Work

Published by Multilingual Matters 2013

Language, Migration and Social Inequalities

A Critical Sociolinguistic Perspective on Institutions and Work

Edited by: Alexandre Duchêne , Melissa Moyer and Celia Roberts

In the series Language, Mobility and Institutions

https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783091010

Overview
Contents

About this book

This collection provides an account of the ways language addresses core questions concerning power and the place of migrants in various institutional and workplace settings. It brings together contributions from a range of geographical settings to understand better how linguistic inequality is (re)produced in this new economic order.

Author / Editor information

DuchêneAlexandre:

Alexandre Duchêne is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Fribourg and Director of the Institute of Multilingualism of the University and HEP Fribourg (Switzerland). Recent publications include Ideologies across Nations (2008), Discourses of Endangerment (with Monica Heller, 2007) and Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit (with Monica Heller, 2011).MoyerMelissa:

Melissa Moyer is Professor of English Linguistics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, where she leads the C.I.E.N. Research Team. Her current research is concerned with multilingualism and mobility in connection to linguistic practices and the construction of identity. She was editor of The Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism (2008, with Li Wei).RobertsCelia:

Celia Roberts is Professor of Applied Linguistics at King's College London, UK in the Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication. Her publications include Talk, Work and Institutional Order (1999, with Srikant Sarangi). Her main interest is in the practical relevance and application of sociolinguistics to real world problems.

Alexandre Duchêne is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Fribourg and Director of the Institute of Multilingualism of the University and HEP Fribourg (Switzerland). Recent publications include Ideologies across Nations (2008), Discourses of Endangerment (with Monica Heller, 2007) and Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit (with Monica Heller, 2011).

Melissa Moyer is Professor of English Linguistics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, where she leads the C.I.E.N. Research Team. Her current research is concerned with multilingualism and mobility in connection to linguistic practices and the construction of identity. She was editor of The Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism (2008, with Li Wei).

Celia Roberts is Professor of Applied Linguistics at King's College London, UK in the Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication. Her publications include Talk, Work and Institutional Order (1999, with Srikant Sarangi). Her main interest is in the practical relevance and application of sociolinguistics to real world problems.

Reviews

Jennifer F. Reynolds, University of South Carolina, USA:

Language, Migration and Social Inequalities is a welcome addition to the growing literature on language and globalization. This volume can be easily incorporated in an upper-level undergraduate or graduate course in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Chapters can be regrouped to reveal different issues...All in all, this volume offers a productive way into examining the intersections of language, migration, and social inequality especially in late-capitalist social democratic states.

Joan Pujolar, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain:

This book contains a wealth of good scholarship and revealing critical analyses of the local ways in which social inequality is produced or contested. Each of the contributions has been very well written and the authors show a sincere commitment to learning how language issues affect people’s life chances.

Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia:

This book does a wonderful job of focusing critically on the sociolinguistics of migrant workers - the protagonists of the book - in various institutions and workplaces (or their exclusion from them). From the informal locutorios of Barcelona and Congolese la débrouille in Cape Town, to the decapitalisation of migrant students in Madrid schools and the mismatched aspirations and actual work of Japanese flight attendants, these studies focus both on local migrant sociolinguistics as well as wider social and economic orders. Making questions of the (re)production of linguistic, social and economic disparities central, this book thus provides vital insights into language, mobility and inequality.

Bonnie Urciuoli, Hamilton College, USA:

This major sociolinguistic contribution, with its wide-ranging and detailed ethnographic attention to the structures shaping migrant experiences of language, sheds innovative analytic light on the neoliberal regimentation of language at work, in school, and in bureaucratic processes, the commodification of language skills, and the contradictions of contemporary capitalism that shape linguistic practices and ideologies.

Alexandra Jaffe, California State University, Long Beach, USA:

This stimulating volume brings together classic strands of critical sociolinguistic work on how immigrants are disadvantaged in social gatekeeping institutions and the contemporary sociolinguistics of globalization. Taking a broad view of 'migrants' as sociolinguistically mobile citizens, the authors mobilize an impressive array of ideological, political and economic frameworks to explore the continuing power of institutions to confer and withhold status and opportunity as well as forms of resistance to these processes.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
1. Introduction: Recasting Institutions and Work in Multilingual and Transnational Spaces Alexandre Duchêne, Melissa Moyer and Celia Roberts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part 1: Sites of Control
2. Trade Unions and NGOs Under Neoliberalism: Between Regimenting Migrants and Subverting the State Eva Codó Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
3. Skilling the Self: The Communicability of Immigrants as Flexible Labour Kori Allan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
Part 2: Sites of Selection
4. The Gatekeeping of Babel: Job Interviews and the Linguistic Penalty Celia Roberts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
5. Language Work Aboard the Low-cost Airline Ingrid Piller and Kimie Takahashi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
6. (De)capitalising Students Through Linguistic Practices. A Comparative Analysis of New Educational Programmes in a Global Era Luisa Martín Rojo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
7. From kebapçi to Professional: The Commodification of Language and Social Mobility in Turkish Complementary Schools in the UK Vally Lytra Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Part 3: Sites of Resistance
8. ‘Integration hatten wir letztes Jahr’. Official Discourses of Integration and Their Uptake by Migrants in Germany Werner Holly and Ulrike Hanna Meinhof Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
9. Language as a Resource. Migrant Agency, Positioning and Resistance in a Health Care Clinic Melissa G. Moyer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	196
10. Informal Economy and Language Practice in the Context of Migrations Cécile B. Vigouroux Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
11. Fighting Exclusion from the Margins: Locutorios as Sites of Social Agency and Resistance for Migrants Maria Sabaté i Dalmau Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248
Postscript Mike Baynham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	272
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277

Language: English
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Pages
- Main content: 280

eBook

Published: November 12, 2013
ISBN: 9781783091010