The relationship between language and work has been studied extensively by sociolinguists focusing on language in relation to neoliberalism (Allan & McElhinny, 2017), inequality (Duchêne, Moyer & Roberts 2013) and commodification (Urciuoli & LaDousa, 2013). Urciuoli (2008) shows how language is considered a measurable soft skill that supports the idea of a corporate-friendly, self-monitoring worker. This is especially relevant in the case of workers with a migrant background, for whom language is seen as key to professional integration, while it can also legitimize their exclusion from symbolic or material resources (Yeung & Flubacher, 2016).
Drawing on this body of work, this panel ethnographically explores the role of language in the institutional and informal practices through which people with a migrant background are shaped or shape themselves into workers. Detailed case studies will be presented on the tertiary and secondary sectors in different European contexts (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland).
In particular, the individual contributions focus on the communicative and linguistic requirements in the different lines of work investigated, the strategies that workers mobilize to internalize them, the logics and rationalizations that sustain these processes, and the factors determining the eventual (in)convertibility of linguistic resources into material and symbolic resources. In doing so, this panel explores how both citizens with a migrant background and their ‘gatekeepers’, such as job counselors, teachers, colleagues, and informal networks, negotiate communicative requirements and other needs and concerns, how these processes are influenced by gender and race, and how they amount to forms of subjectivation, flexibilization, stratification, and precarity.
References
Allan, K., & McElhinny, B. (2017). Neoliberalism, Language and Migration. In A. S. Canagarajah (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of migration and language (pp. 79–101). Abingdon New York, NY: Routledge.
Duchêne, A., Moyer, M. & Roberts, C. (Eds.) (2013). Language, Migration and Social Inequalities. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Urciuoli, B. (2008). Skills and selves in the new workplace. American Ethnologist, 35, 211–228.
Urciuoli, B., & LaDousa, C. (2013). Language Management/Labor. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1), 175–190.
Yeung, S., & Flubacher, M. (2016). Discourses of Integration: Language, Skills and the Politics of Difference. Multilingua 33(6).
