In this paper, I explore the effects of European labour market integration and non-European labour immigration on workplace communication. Specifically, I discuss what circumstances influence the use of certain linguistic... [ view full abstract ]
In this paper, I explore the effects of European labour market integration and non-European labour immigration on workplace communication. Specifically, I discuss what circumstances influence the use of certain linguistic resources in a linguistically diverse workplace.
My focus is on two workplaces in the industrial sector. The first one is a metal foundry in the Netherlands, where I have spent a 3.5 month period of ethnographic fieldwork in 2017. The second one is a chocolate factory in Germany, where I have spent a 1.5 month period of ethnographic fieldwork in 2018. Both workplaces are located in the Dutch-German border area. This area is covered by two EU-subsidised cross-border regions nowadays (the so-called “Euroregions”), which aim at creating a cross-border labour market.
The reason for selecting industrial workplaces stems from the finding that many cross-border and immigrant workers are employed here. The employers –often temporary-employment agencies– have loosened the language requirements in the labour recruitment process in recent years, since they have a hard time finding enough labour with a high amount of Dutch or German linguistic resources. This results in a linguistically diverse workplace, in which, apart from Dutch, German and local dialects, one finds Arabic, English, Polish, Russian and Turkish, among others.
The employment agencies do not necessarily consider the language barriers that arise from this situation problematic, as they believe that communication does not play a crucial role for what they consider to be mainly routine jobs. In my paper, I discuss to what degree this hypothesis matches my findings. Furthermore, I analyse how different employees deal with possible language barriers at work. This analysis is based on audio and video recordings which I have made during my ethnographic fieldwork.
Lastly, I explore how the findings from my linguistic analysis can be explained from a sociolinguistic point of view. The framework of Late Capitalism turns out to be fruitful in this context, as it helps to highlight possible tensions between globalisation and the nation-state. Moreover, the framework of New Speaker Identities can be used to challenge native speaker ideals at work.
