With Sydney in lock-down again, my team mates farewelled me over Zoom

Writing en route to Manila

I am onboard Singapore Airlines as I am writing this, flying back to Manila after being farewelled via Zoom by my Language on the Move team mates after my four-year stay in Sydney. I moved to Sydney as Ms Tenedero and return as Dr Tenedero. I also moved at a time when air travel seemed not so difficult and I return during a global pandemic, which has considerably complicated travel.

At this time, NSW is in a strict lockdown limiting outdoor activities only for a few ‘essential’ reasons like exercise, buying food, and medical purposes, including getting a vaccine. This is in response to the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. The lock-down comes after Australia had enjoyed greater freedom for most of the pandemic than the rest of the world. Not so long ago, it was cited as a “world leader in containment and management of emerging variants.” And if things in Australia seem bad, they pale in comparison to the 5,000+ new cases reported in the Philippines as of 15 July 2021.

In order to check-in in Sydney, my Philippine tracing app had to be up-to-date

The days of easy travel are gone

In this situation, travelling from Sydney to Manila is no longer as simple as book and go. It now involves complying with more, and frequently changing, travel conditions that vary from port to port. Travelling to the Philippines required me to download the national contact tracing app Traze and filling out an electronic case investigation form (e-CIF) to get a QR code to be presented upon disembarkation in Manila.

I read these requirements about a month before but completely forgot to do them before coming to airport! I had focused on completing my vaccinations, booking a hotel for my seven-day quarantine (down from ten days for those who are not vaccinated), packing four blessed years in Australia into two big boxes, and bringing required documents for leaving Australia (just the passport for non-permanent residents like me). So, it took me 10 minutes of anxious digital compliance work on my smartphone at the check-in counter to get the correct apps and codes. Thankfully, I had arranged to be at the airport two hours before my flight even so I knew there would be no long queues. Still, travelling these days requires more patience and higher literacy, especially digital literacy, to navigate the way out of one country and into another.

“Relax” was the main message on the Departures screen

The linguistic landscape has changed

After successfully checking in, I made my way to the boarding gate and was met by signs that I had not seen when I last traveled in December 2019.

These images show a more heightened control of movement. Signs explicitly restrict where people can sit and stand. QR codes constantly monitor ingress and egress. These surveillance and controls are supported by the discourse of mutual care for everyone’s protection and safety. This discourse, in turn, powerfully mobilizes people into compliance because, naturally, no one wants to be the reason for the number of cases going any higher – or have their journey end before it begins.

Yet alongside this heightened sense of accountability is a sign telling travelers to “relax.” Flight status codes (at least pre-Covid19) typically indicate that a flight is scheduled, active, redirected, landed, diverted, or cancelled. “Relax” is markedly novel because it is a directive, albeit a soft one. On the one hand, this sign could be seen as part of the language of care, a soothing word in a tense environment. On the other hand, it is also a form of policing that seeks to manage even the affect, implying some control of the individual’s inner space.

The in-flight hygiene kit

The double discourse of strict policing and mutual care is also evident onboard

Before entering the aircraft, the 20 passengers manifested on flight SQ212 were asked to take one of the hygiene kits stationed by the door. My guess is all of us had these items in our carry-ons, anyway. But the kit is also an opportunity to spell out new standards of hygiene, explicitly described at the bottom of the bag with instructions for the thoughtful use and disposal of used items.

All in all, these public signs collectively demonstrate at least two things. First, there is increased use of directives, which derive social legitimacy through a discourse of solidarity (Svennevig, 2021). This is done through the explicit linking of the necessity for control and mutual care during the pandemic. Second, international travel requires higher digital literacy and patience, a new condition that further restricts who gets to successfully cross borders these days.

My linguistic observations on the move emphasize the mutual shaping of language and social situation during the constantly evolving Covid-19 pandemic. It makes my return journey seem a bigger step than I had expected it to be.

Reference

Svennevig, J. (2021). How to do things with signs. The formulation of directives on signs in public spaces. Journal of Pragmatics, 175, 165–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.01.016

In the case of the Philippines, the government announced “enhanced community quarantine” in March 2020. As the strictest lockdown category, enhanced community quarantine prohibited intercity travel, the use of public transport, and non-essential activities for several months. In addition to curfews, local law enforcement and the military were deployed to establish checkpoints and enforce quarantine through disciplinary measures.

The lack of public transport in particular has greatly affected the ability of workers, including medical frontliners and other essential service providers to get to work.

It has widely been observed that the pandemic has exposed preexisting structural inequalities, including in many posts about the language challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic here on Language on the Move. In the Philippines, the pandemic highlighted not only linguistic inequalities but also the lack of an appropriate public transport infrastructure and equal access to safe technologies of mobility.

Since 2014, my advocacy outside of academia has been pursuing initiatives related to inclusive mobility. As a bike commuter, I found myself taking part in communities of practice related to cycling. When the pandemic hit, cycling was my main means to undertake essential activities. The lockdown thus opened opportunities for me to document different locales and objects related to the cycling boom in the country.

In this piece, I look at several insights from my work gathered as a cycling advocate. Specifically, I argue that while the pandemic has accelerated the need for initiatives in inclusive mobility, cycling as an alternative in the Philippines opens opportunities for examining contested spaces and collective action which are mediated through language. I further argue in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for inclusive mobility is not only a struggle in the physical sense but also a communicative struggle, particularly in the hotly contested online space.

Language, Social Media, and Collective Action

The streets of Metro Manila have long been congested due to the large volume of vehicles that traverse its thoroughfares. Upon the declaration of enhanced community quarantine in early 2020, the use of bicycles became one viable option to remain mobile due to its affordability and ease of use.

However, the lack of infrastructure has led to accidents and even 19 cycling-related fatalities in the past year. As a response, social media have been used by advocacy groups and individuals to debate concerns over inclusive mobility.

An example provided comes from Twitter where the hashtag #bikelanesNOW trended at various times.

Nakaligtaan po yata ninyong bigyan ng puwang ang mga tinuturing nating #heroes na #frontliners: #healthworkers at essential workers, na mga #bikecommuters na din po ngayon. @MMDA #cycling #bikecommuting #bikelanes #bikelanesnow #protectedbikelanesnow #bikerslivesmatter #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/0v3BrmYBkA

— Mister E (@_mis_ter_e_) June 5, 2020

Translation: You seem to have forgotten to provide space for those whom he considers #heroes, our #frontliners: #healthworkers and essential workers, who are #bikecommuters now.

While the struggle for inclusive mobility stems from the need for safe spaces for cyclists, it is not without problems. For instance, incidents of gender related harassment have been reported among female cyclists during the quarantine period. In the tweet below shared by one political group, the Gabriela Women’s party invited bikers for a solidarity bicycle ride against misogyny and sexism. In the infographic embedded in the tweet, which uses a combination of Filipino and English, wordplay is deployed by combining kababaihan (womanhood) and the word bike to form the term “kabibike-ihan” referring to female cyclists.

On March 28 (Sunday), we will conquer the road and call for #SafeSpacesForAll & #ShareTheRoadWithHer by drawing the women sign on the map!

Join us as we raise our voices against misogyny and sexism! pic.twitter.com/wuTw2Wqk6r

— Gabriela Women's Party (@GabrielaWomenPL) March 20, 2021

Late in 2020, the government declared bike shops essential services. Since then, advocacy groups and bike shops have collaborated to create a primer for bike commuters. In this primer, which is written in Tagalog, information on safety measures before, during, and after bike rides are provided. Similar to grassroots movements in other countries that have promoted measures in addressing health concerns related to COVID-19, a combination of different languages and multimodal resources enhance the communication of meaning for the public. However, as of writing, the guide is limited to Tagalog and English language versions, while Cebuano and Hiligaynon are still in production. The limited number of languages where the guide appears reflects the current material challenge brought about by multilingualism.

Moving forward

Studying language in the era of globalization is primarily a study of inequality (Blommaert, 2010). As seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the struggle for inclusive mobility is a material consequence that the public has engaged in a physical and virtual sense. That is, cyclists and advocacy groups do not only compete for asserting safe spaces for their daily travel needs but have engaged other stakeholders to consider the notion of sustainable cities as a major concern.

As the Philippines continues to struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic, cycling as a viable and safe alternative has come to the forefront of continuous conversations among different sectors of society where the public can genuinely participate and act in the hope of achieving authentic transformation.

On the ferry from Spain to Morocco

My recent book Becoming Diasporically Moroccan explores how next-generations after migration use communicative resources to feel ‘at home’ in their ancestral homeland. By following some Belgian, Dutch and French Moroccan-origin families, I learned the embodied and linguistic strategies next-generation young adults employed for ‘becoming-Moroccan’ through where they were hanging out and spending time in public space,  from marketplaces to nightclubs. By investigating how these interactions actually took place, as opposed to how they are reported when back at ‘home’ in Europe, I illustrate some of the social tensions about ‘Moroccanness’ as it is performed diasporically – in Morocco during the summer, when the diaspora ‘comes home’ and around the world.

As people migrate from place to place around the globe, more and more ‘next generations’ are born into a place where they both belong, and do not belong – they are ‘from’ there, but also ‘from’ somewhere else. Increased access to modes of travel mean that we can be ‘from’ somewhere and regularly visit another place where we are ‘from’. But sometimes those visits mean passing through borders where we are categorized: we become ‘strangers,’ even if the passport says we are not.

I first encountered this phenomenon on a ferry boat between Algeciras, Spain and Tangier, Morocco, in July 1999. I was a person who precisely fit a well-known category: an American college student, spending a summer backpacking through Europe. I was by myself for this leg of the trip, but found that I quickly met people on this boat: other European travelers, looking for adventure in Morocco, as well as Moroccan families living in Europe who were going ‘home’ for their summer holidays.

I was bowled over by the cacophony of voices I heard on that boat, speaking all varieties of European and Moroccan languages. I was surprised that there were so many people making this journey, since I had not known about the massive flow of Moroccan guestworker migration into Europe during the 1960s and 70s. The ferry was overflowingly full with Moroccans who seemed to be ‘going home,’ yet who were definitely coming from homes in Europe. Even today, that ferry is a microcosm of Moroccan migration in Europe, where original migrants, now grandparents and great-grandparents, travel with their children and grandchildren between homes. It is a place where Moroccans from all different parts of Europe might meet each other, since many still travel by car overland from their European homes in order to spend their summer holidays in Morocco. It is also a place where they encounter the border: when travelling by ferry to and from Morocco, passport control often takes place during the three-hour ride. Moroccans from all over must present their passports and national identity cards

***

The route to the port cities of Algeciras and Almeria in southern Spain is signposted in Latin and Arabic scripts

On the ferry crossing from Algeciras to Tangier, I have observed many times how a negotiation of belonging happens as each passenger steps up to the customs officers processing entries. Moroccan citizens are recorded by their national identity card number; the system assumes that if you are ‘Moroccan,’ then you have a Moroccan national identity card. I have watched over and over how individuals step up to the desk to have their passport stamped for entry, and must negotiate being ‘Moroccan’ or not, based on having an ID card, or knowing their national identity card number. One of the diasporic visitors (DVs) who participated in this research, in fact, entered as ‘Belgian’ because she had lost her ID card. Even while she spoke Moroccan Arabic with the officer, who acknowledged that she is a citizen, he stamped her as a visitor, with the same type of visitor ID number in her Belgian passport as I have in my American passport.

These small instances of classification, or categorization, all contribute to an experience of what it means to be ‘Moroccan’ or to be ‘diasporically Moroccan’ for migrant-origin European-Moroccans who took part in this research. During their annual summer visits, ‘being-Moroccan’ a categorial ideal-type, shaped through dimensions and practices of embodiment that emerge in the encounters DVs have with resident Moroccans. I argue that this category exerts considerable force because of the tension of ‘betweenness’ in their materially ‘Moroccan’ bodies – visually categorizable as ‘Moroccan’ – and their materially and expressively ‘non-Moroccan’ corporeality. They belong because of their ‘Moroccan’ bodies, lineages, families, and attachments, yet do not belong because of their ‘non-Moroccan,’ ‘European’ habits, preferences, sensibilities, speech, and ways of being in and through their skins.

I do not, however, want to accept this problematic ‘betweenness’ as the final definition for ‘being diasporic’. Instead, this book is concerned with how DVs reconcile this duality in interaction by negotiating the ways they are categorized through embodied and linguistic practices of belonging. It is also about how these categories of ‘Moroccan’ and ‘non-Moroccan’ are themselves malleable, and are changing in response to the way DVs and others engage with them. So, the subject of this book is not ‘being diasporic’, but ‘becoming diasporic’: exploring how the practices, interactions, experiences, and encounters of people who participated in this research emerge into new, vibrant categorizations of ‘diasporicness’ that change what it means to be ‘Moroccan’ both in Europe and in Morocco, and are becoming more recognizable and more solidified with every return visit.

***

While the categorial distinction they face in Europe is something about descent – not coming from the right parents – in Morocco it is something about place – not being from the right environment, where place-based knowledge, practices, and forms of embodiment are immediately recognizable and categorizable in interaction. For individuals in such diasporically-oriented communities, place and descent are not mapped directly on to each other; they are inevitably askew. For the participants here, the circumstances of their parents’ mobilities led to their residence outside of Morocco, just as circumstances of others of their generation led to residence in Morocco. Each circumstance, through many interacting parts, leaves traces on their bodies and in their practices that are made relevant when coming face-to-face. In encounters where the rupture of migration is relevant, descent and place become pivots for categorial belonging.

***

The way I present this discussion also gives categories, and modes of belonging to them, a certain amount of agency or force: they are working on people, evoking certain behaviors, being made relevant as specific practices. Following methods in membership categorization analysis and ethnomethodology, I used micro-analysis of interactions – to the extent that I was able to record and document these interactions for sequential analysis – to demonstrate how participants responded moment by moment in relation to categories that were made interactionally relevant by their practices. Over repeated iterations of similar activities, patterns emerge of a certain range of practices that are accepted by interlocutors, juxtaposed against unacceptable ones, creating the fuzzy and shifting boundary of categorial belonging. Through micro-analyses, we can see how, as people do things with categories, categories are also shaping the scope of what people can do – up to and including how new categories might emerge as a social collective of individuals are continuously pushing at the edges of current ones.

Reference

Wagner, L. (2017). Becoming Diasporically Moroccan: Linguistic and Embodied Practices for Negotiating Belonging. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Book page on publisher’s site.

The 16th International Conference on Minority Languages (ICML XVI) will be held at University of Jyväskylä Language Campus

The 16^th International Conference on Minority Languages (ICML XVI) and the 34th Summer School and Conference of Applied Language Studies will be held in Jyväskylä and Närpes, Finland, August 28-30, 2017.

Conference theme: Revaluing minority languages

Minority languages have long been used by different groups of social actors for identity and community building purposes, such as the symbolic, material, and political mobilisation of linguistic and cultural rights. Currently, under changing political, economic and cultural conditions around the world, minority languages are subject to multiple, overlapping and even contradictory discourses and practices of valuation and revaluation.

The peripheral position of minority languages, as structured by nation-state logics, and the central role endowed to them in the political projects of various minority groups are now complexified by both the increasing economic value of minority languages as a resource of distinction and authenticity, and by the intensified mobility of languages and their speakers. Some of the consequences of this complexification result in re-evaluating the relationship between minority and migrant languages and the trajectories of so-called “new speakers” of minority languages.

ICML XVI will address critical questions such as how minority languages are valued, by whom and under what conditions.

The conference is open to researchers, students and stakeholders from across the multidisciplinary field of minority languages.

Academic Programme

In addition to the talks delivered by plenary speakers, the programme will consist of panel discussions, paper and poster sessions, colloquia and workshops.

Plenary speakers:

• Professor Helen Kelly Holmes (University of Limerick, Ireland)
• Professor Ingrid Piller (Macquarie University, Australia)
• Director Robert Adam (University College London, UK)
• Professor Sari Pöyhönen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

Pre- or post-conference workshops will be organized by plenary speakers.

Invited panels

• Historical language minorities in Finland and neighboring countries
• Immigration and integration in the Swedish speaking regions of Finland

Further information

The submission of proposals for papers, posters, colloquia and workshops within the research theme Revaluing Minority Languages will open in January 2017 and closes on February 28, 2017. Visit the conference website for regular updates on ICML XIV. The conference organizers can be contacted at icml2017@jyu.fi or on Twitter @ApplingJYU #ICMLXVI

Does this delicious Libyan Herb Bread taste even yummier in English?

Is it the case that bilinguals have dual identities or divided loyalties where they associate each aspect of their identity with a specific language or a national group? In this post, I will explain why things are a bit more fluid when it comes to language and identity in bilinguals. To do so, I am going to share some findings from my current research project about how a group of Arabic-English bilingual sojourners in the UK manage their use of two languages in their everyday interactions.

Let me begin by explaining ‘code-switching’. Code-switching is the practice of going back and forth between two or more languages or dialects, and using them in the same sentence or conversation. This is something my bilingual friends and I do a lot amongst ourselves, and anyone who is bilingual will know what I mean. Mostly we couldn’t explain exactly why we switch languages: it’s like making subtle social moves and certainly not a way of ‘showing off’ around monolinguals.

My research participants are a group of six adult female Arabic speakers in their 20s and 30s. Five of them came to the UK from Libya as international students about seven years ago and are currently living in the city of Manchester. In addition to these five ‘late’ bilinguals, who learnt English later in life, the sixth participant is an ‘early’ bilingual and grew up speaking Arabic and English in the UK. The participants form a small social circle and have known each other for a considerable amount of time.

In my research I record natural conversations of this group of bilingual friends in order to explore the link between the different ways speakers code-switch and the ways they ‘do’ identity work, i.e. perform inter-personal aspects of their identities and achieve interactional/communicative effects through code-switching. A lot of code-switching is for practical reasons to fill a linguistic gap for a word or concept but I am particularly interested in instances of code-switching where speakers are expressing emotions, making evaluations or achieving in-group bonding. To demonstrate this, I am going to discuss three examples.

In the first example, Fadia, a late bilingual is switching from Arabic to English, then back to Arabic again. She first switches to English to make a positive judgement about the Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef, then switching back to Arabic to express an almost diametrically opposed view about (some of) his performances.

The first code-switching instance from Arabic into English marks the transition the speaker makes from stating a fact (’I watch Bassem Youssef’) to making an evaluative judgement (‘I think he’s funny.’). The next instance of code-switching from English back into Arabic provides a second judgement restricting the scope of the first one (‘but I don’t find all things he says funny’).

In the example, the speaker is using both languages to convey her message but she is clearly not assigning a particular function to one language or another. In this example, as in much of my data, there is not much of a difference between the functional role of Arabic and English.

Having said that, there seems to be a general pattern that is emerging in the data that English – or rather switches from Arabic into English – is used to take up ‘expressive’ stances, particularly positive ones. This pattern is particularly marked when it comes to compliments, positive evaluations, shows of appreciation and the expression of excitement. Although Arabic can, of course, be used for all of these, utilising English repeatedly for achieving the same purpose stands out, especially when considering that English is the L2 for these speakers. The next example aims to illustrate this.

Here, Fadia repeatedly shows her appreciation of the bread that Narjis made – all of them in English in a conversation that is otherwise conducted in Arabic.  However, switching into English is not only used for positive emotions but also to express negative emotions, as in the next example.

Notice at how many points Kamila and Fadia switch to English to express their emotions? When comparing the communicative function of Arabic and English here, one cannot fail to notice that Arabic is mostly used for recounting the factual aspects of the story while English is used to express evaluative stance towards that story.

A possible explanation for the code-switching patterns observed here might be that it is driven by certain attitudes and social meanings that these speakers share and assign to the English language. In one-to-one semi-structured interviews with my participants, each of them talked about her positive experience in the UK and the positive light in which they perceive British people, whom they generally describe as ‘nice’ and ‘polite’. Given these positive attitudes it is maybe not surprising that they adopt the expressive language of the target community. Adopting English styles of emotional expression must also be understood against the cultural norms of the Arab world in general and Libya in particular, where a preference exists for expressing emotions in a more subtle way. In (Libyan) Arabic, things tend to be left unsaid, emotions are mostly implied and expressed non-verbally.

In sum, the code-switching utilised by this group of friends is not as arbitrary as it may seem at first blush: it can best be understood in relation to the evaluative positions speakers take. Through their use of Arabic and English these bilinguals move between different zones and carve out their own “third” space as an expression of the new and complex reality they are experiencing as bilingual immigrants.

Schneider, Britta. 2014. Salsa, Language and Transnationalism. Multilingual Matters.

In my post on English in Berlin, I wondered what is required for a language to become ‘local’, and about the perhaps problematic tradition of defining languages on the basis of territory. Although it has been quite some time since English was primarily the language of the English people in England, the language is still called ‘English’. (Interestingly, the etymology of the term is also from ‘somewhere else’, deriving from northern Germany, and thus already has a history of being on the move.) When do Englishes become ‘native’? And if we continue to tacitly invoke concepts based on confined spaces (‘England’), whose interests remain veiled under national frameworks and are therefore invisible?

My own interest in what happens to moving languages in a world where rootedness in territory and local community cannot be taken for granted not only made me wonder about the status of English in Berlin, but brought me to places where movement literally takes centre stage. Concerned that essentialist conceptions of language and identity may represent a form of symbolic violence – telling people what they are supposed to speak and identify with on the grounds of their ethnic heritage – I became interested in communities where people identify with a language that is not ‘theirs’. The example I chose was communities of practice constituted by salsa dance in countries outside of Latin America. Depending on the particular salsa style, many salsa dancers in these multi-ethnic communities, irrespective of their ethnic origin, learn and/or use Spanish. The number of Spanish speakers, non-native and native, and the competence of language learners can be quite astonishing. Wondering about the reasons for this, I conducted ethnographic field-work in salsa communities in Frankfurt, Germany, and Sydney, Australia, studying the role of the Spanish language and ethnicity as boundary markers, and the symbolic functions of language and bilingualism in these transnational contexts (you can read more about the study in my new book Salsa, Language and Transnationalism).

What I wanted to know was why people engage in such a time-consuming activity as learning a language, and what this has to do with a passion for Latin dance. It is certainly not because they are striving to become ethnically Latin that German, Australian and other Salsa dancers speak Spanish. Instead of applying a national framework of thought that takes nations, ethnic groups and ‘their’ languages as a starting point, I wanted to find out which other concepts and discourses have the potential to inform language choice and linguistic identification. This generated the idea that language may be constituted differently in non-national, non-ethnic contexts.

To summarise my research conclusions in a nutshell, the existing discourses on language (or language ideologies) are often characterised by what I would call ‘cosmopolitan’ forms of identity. Being able to speak several languages – in this case English or German and Spanish – can index membership to an economically and socially advantaged, mobile and educated group that is oriented towards transnational spheres. At the same time, stereotypical discourses on what it means to be ‘Latin’ – being ‘open-minded’, being ‘passionate’, ‘preferring friendship to money’ – are also important in understanding what makes people use their Salsa classes to practise Spanish at the same time. Interestingly, therefore, while a transnational discourse does exist in an orientation beyond local/national confines, national concepts of ethnicity and language are reproduced and are somehow also necessary for constructing the ‘transnational’ (Hannerz (1996) makes similar observations). I concluded that, at the end of the day, languages still signify ethnic or national groups, but this relationship can be appropriated differently and symbolically exploited in multiple fashions in transnational contexts.

Many of the questions I had remain unanswered. For example, I am still not sure on what grounds we are entitled to make languages our own, or at what point we begin to consider someone to be an acceptable – ‘real’ – member of a speech community. It seems that ethnic heritage still plays a crucial role here. Also, what happens to the systemic notion of ‘a language’ if verbal practices do not index a particular group? Is the idea of language as a system brought into question if groups that are fluid and not tied to particular territories are established? In other words, being aware of the sociolinguistic commonplace that ‘a language’ is ‘a dialect with an army and a navy’ (Weinreich 1945), and cannot be established on linguistic grounds alone, what happens if we are not so sure whose ‘army’ and whose ‘navy’ we are talking about as people start to develop social relationships and patterns of identification that go beyond their territorial confines?

National armies and navies continue to be important. At the same time, cultural and discursive norms are increasingly shaped by non-national structures (see also Sennet 2006), which, however, make use of, are co-constructed by and are dialectically interwoven with national languages, discourses, bureaucracies, armies and navies. It is certainly not easy to grasp these intricacies, but it is a worthwhile assumption that moving languages, identities and bodies do not simply carry with them their national symbolic load but are part of a global world order that will require new linguistic theories and methodologies.

References

Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. “Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture.” In: Hannerz, Ulf, Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. 102-111.

Schneider, Britta (2014). Salsa, Language and Transnationalism Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Sennett, Richard. 2006. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Weinreich, Max 1945. “Yivo and the Problems of Our Time.” YIVO Bletter 25: 3-18.

Losing their heritage language decreases the earning potential of 2nd-generation migrants

In most countries of immigration, linguistic diversity is by and large ignored by policy makers. If there are language-related policies, they take a deficit view of migrants and their children and focus on improving their English (or whatever the national language may be). Many people resent even the meagre efforts that states are making to help migrants and their children learn the dominant language, and ESL provision in schools is a ready target for funding cuts, as is currently the case in NSW. Going beyond ESL provision and investing into meaningful bilingual education that would enable migrant children to reach high levels of bilingual proficiency in both their heritage language and the dominant language are, by and large, unheard of. Usually, ensuring bilingual proficiency is the exclusive responsibility of parents and thus the usual vagaries of luck and privilege apply.

Bilingual provision in schools that would allow children to reach high levels of proficiency in two or more languages is widely seen as located in the “nice to have but expensive”-basket. In an environment where ESL provision is often considered expendable, bilingual provision may seem like utopian bells and whistles that we simply cannot afford. Linguists and educators have long pointed out the educational, cognitive and psycho-social benefits of bilingualism and have argued that achieving high-level proficiency in both the heritage language and the dominant language is good for the social fabric of a diverse society. However, such non-quantifiables without an immediate dollar-value usually cut no ice with hard-nosed budget planners and the proponents of bilingual education are mostly simply ignored as idealistic dreamers.

Well, it turns out the proponents of bilingual education have much more good economic sense than your average monolingual policy wonk.

A recent study by Orhan Agirdag published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism investigates the earnings of second generation migrants relative to their level of bilingual proficiency. Re-examining data from two large-scale longitudinal studies conducted between 1988 and 2003 in the USA, the author analysed the linguistic proficiency and earnings of 3,553 individuals. These individuals were either born to at least one migrant parent or came to the USA at a young age. In the early 2000s, they were in their mid-20s.

On the basis of participants’ self-reported proficiency data, the author identified three groups:

• High-level bilinguals, who had high levels of proficiency, crucially including the ability to read and write, in both English and their heritage language
• Low-level bilinguals, who had low levels of proficiency in both English and their heritage language
• English-dominant, who had high levels of proficiency in English but low levels of proficiency in their heritage language (or no proficiency at all)

No one will be surprised to learn that the English-dominant accounted for more than half of the participants, as that is what the US school system (as most others) is designed to achieve. With a bit over 20%, the numbers of low-level bilinguals are also unsurprising: these are the young adults who would have needed special ESL provision in school but presumably didn’t get it; while unsurprising, it is disturbing to see that more than 20% of migrant kids can go through their entire schooling career in the US without achieving adequate proficiency in English. The percentage of high-level bilinguals in the sample is very similar to that of low-level bilinguals (ca. 22%). These are the lucky kids who either lived within the catchment area of a bilingual immersion program or whose parents put in the effort of teach them how to read and write the heritage language after school and on the weekends.

Now which of these three groups do you think earned the most? According to the logic of the education system, it should be the English-dominant kids who fare best in the labour market. Well, they don’t!

High-level bilingualism was robustly associated with higher earnings of around $3,000 per year and the effect held even if other variables that are known to influence earnings were controlled for (e.g., gender, parental socio-economic status, educational achievement). The effect also held across language groups, even if some languages were more valuable than others (e.g., Chinese-Americans were found to earn more than other migrant groups but within the group of Chinese-Americans those with high-level bilingual proficiency earned more than those who were English-dominant or those who had low-level bilingual proficiency). Interestingly, when other variables were controlled, there was no earnings difference between those who were English-dominant and those who were low-level bilinguals.

Higher earnings of $3,000 per year when everything else is kept constant are a sizable effect. Additionally, the actual financial advantage of high-level bilingualism is likely to be higher due to indirect effects which are obscured by keeping other variables constant such as the link between high-level bilingualism and educational achievement (i.e. high-level bilinguals are more likely to achieve high levels of education and thus they have a compounded earnings advantage).

We all know that imposing English monolingualism on migrant children is bad for them educationally, cognitively and socio-psychologically. Thanks to Agirdag’s research, we now also know that it is bad for them economically. Beyond the economic disadvantage suffered by individuals who have been forced into linguistic assimilation, their linguistic assimilation through the education system is bad for the economy and thus for everyone: decreasing the earning potential of second-generation migrants through linguistic assimilation will, inter alia, lower the tax base and increase the demand for social services. Conversely, those who earn more, spend more.

Bilingualism has these earnings benefits because high-level bilinguals can access two labour markets: the mainstream labour market and the ethnic labour market. My guess is that the labour market advantages of high-level bilingualism are likely to further increase in the future: as the global economy becomes ever more connected, multilingual proficiencies will become ever more central to labour mobility.

In sum, bilingual education is good for the economy. It’s high time our leaders did their sums and showed some good business sense!

Orhan Agirdag (2013). The long-term effects of bilingualism on children of immigration: student bilingualism and future earnings International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2013.816264

Montana: the picture postcard state is not conducive to the empowerment of migrant women

It is international women’s day today and the world’s women are on the move like never before: according to figures from the International Institute for Migration, women constitute 49% of the world’s 214 million transnational migrants. It is often assumed that transnational migration is empowering to women, particularly if their destination country is one where women enjoy greater levels of gender equality than they do in their country of origin.

Donna Butorac’s PhD study of the experiences of women moving to Australia shows that the story is not that simple. Migration resulted in the re-establishment of more traditional gender roles for her participants. In her cohort of highly-educated skilled and business migrants, women who had established themselves as successful professionals or businesswomen pre-migration were turned into stay-at-home housewives and mothers in Australia. This was due to the way that visa procedures defined them as secondary to a man, their husband, and also due to barriers to re-entry into the workforce.

Research published in the latest issue of Sociological Forum adds a further piece to the puzzle of migrant women’s experiences of autonomy (or lack thereof). Focussing on Mexican migrant women in the USA with low socioeconomic post-migration status, “The relational context of migration” explores their experiences of autonomy inside and outside the home in three distinct locations.

The first research site, an urban neighbourhood in New Jersey, is characterized by a high density of Mexican immigrants and the availability of bilingual social services within walking distance or distances accessible by public transport. The second research site is a suburban context in Ohio, where Mexican migrants live in relative isolation from each other, the availability of social services in Spanish is more limited and the ability to drive and access to a private vehicle are a prerequisite for mobility. Finally, the third research site is in rural Montana, characterized by the inaccessibility of social services, by rugged terrain and great distances.

The experiences of the women and, the relationship between autonomy inside and outside the home, differed across the three sites.

In New Jersey, women were mobile outside the home, even if they had unsupportive or even abusive husbands. Many of them worked outside the home and they were actively involved in their children’s schooling because communication was always in English and Spanish. Access to a large network of co-ethnics meant that emotional and practical support was available in case of difficult family situations.

In Ohio, the situation was quite different. There the women were dependent on good relationships with their husband in order to be autonomous in the public sphere. In the absence of social networks, public transport and bilingual services, autonomy outside the home was dependent on autonomy inside the home. Women with unsupportive husbands were largely stuck, such as one woman who was keen to attend ESL classes in order to become more mobile. However, the roundtrip from her trailer home to the ESL class took four hours on public transport. Additionally, that transport ordeal was difficult to fit into the children’s school schedule.

In Montana, finally, Mexican women found themselves in a difficult situation no matter how supportive or otherwise their husbands were. Living in relative isolation, even grocery shopping was difficult for some. Not only was driving in the rugged terrain more difficult than in urban and suburban environments but Mexicans driving in Montana also attracted police attention. Being pulled over for a traffic check was more than a hassle: it was associated with the omnipresent fear of deportation for those without any legal status. In these precarious conditions, many participants were afraid even to leave the house and anything requiring any kind of external support, such as illness, could quickly degenerate into a major disaster.

The unique comparative study by Joana Dreby and Leah Schmalzbauer described here contributes to our understanding of the role of human geography in the settlement experiences of migrant women. Additionally, it provides a novel perspective on ethnic enclaves. Much maligned in immigration debates as encouraging segregation, they may actually provide the very environment for migrant women’s empowerment!

Butorac, D. (2011). Imagined Identity, Remembered Self: Settlement Language Learning and the Negotiation of Gendered Subjectivity. Phd thesis, Macquarie University.

Dreby, J., & Schmalzbauer, L. (2013). The Relational Contexts of Migration: Mexican Women in New Destination Sites Sociological Forum, 28 (1), 1-26 DOI: 10.1111/socf.12000