Migrants’ alternative multi-lingua franca spaces as emergent re-producers of exclusionary monolingual nation-state regimes

Maria Sabaté Dalmau

doi:10.1515/multi-2014-0097

Article

Migrants’ alternative multi-lingua franca spaces as emergent re-producers of exclusionary monolingual nation-state regimes

Maria Sabaté Dalmau

Published/Copyright: July 2, 2015

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From the journal Multilingua Volume 35 Issue 6

Abstract

From a critical sociolinguistic perspective, this article investigates the written linguistic practices of 20 labor migrants from heterogeneous backgrounds who organized their life trajectories in an ‘ethnic’ call shop in a marginal neighborhood near Barcelona. This was a late capitalist institution informally providing the undocumented with survival resources off the radar from governmental authorities. By drawing on interviews and visual materials gathered over a two-year fieldwork project, I report on the amalgamations of allochthonous and autochthonous codes which function as the multi-lingua franca of these alternative shelters, which have now colonized the globalized urban landscape. I argue that these translinguistic practices speak of the ethnolinguistic identities with which migrants try to secure subsistence. I show, though, that transnational populations simultaneously map their in-group codes upon a unified floor where the use of only global Spanish is fostered. Users sanction their linguistic hybridity and self-correct into hegemonic standard norms which index ‘integration’ and fully-fledged citizenship statuses, delegitimizing their linguistic capitals. I conclude that the migrants’ grassroots mobilization of both linguistic resistance and regimentation within a single discursive space where exclusionary sociolinguistic orders could be contested uniquely unveils the ways in which they challenge, but paradoxically re-produce, the monolingual nation-state regimes of their host society.

Keywords: Multi-lingua francas; linguistic regimes; migration; ‘ethnic’ call shops; Catalonia

Funding statement: Funding: This research was funded by the following research grants: FFI2011-26964 (MINECO; Spanish Government), conferred to the UAB-based research group CIEN (Intercultural Communication and Negotiation Strategies), and 2014 SGR 1061 (AGAUR; Catalan Government), granted to the UdL-based group CLA (Circle of Applied Linguistics).

Acknowledgment

I am very grateful to the informants who agreed to participate in this study, and I also want to thank Safae Jabri for her help with some clarifications concerning Modern Standard Arabic. Any shortcomings are, of course, mine.

Appendix: Transcription system

Dependent tiers:

@Location:: provides the date and the geographical location of interviews
@Bck:: provides background information concerning the topic and the participants
%tra:: provides a free translation of turns in languages other than English

Transcription conventions:

+^: quick uptake or latching
+...: trailing off
#: pause
[...]: omitted exchange
< >: scope
[!]: stressing
:: lengthened vowel
[/]: repetition
[//]: retracing, reformulation
?: end-of-turn rising contour
!: end-of-turn exclamation contour
-,: intra-turn fall-rise contour

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Published Online: 2015-7-2

Published in Print: 2016-11-1

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https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2014-0097

Keywords for this article

Multi-lingua francas; linguistic regimes; migration; ‘ethnic’ call shops; Catalonia