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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 1144

Part of Session 153: Working in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

Working and learning in a new niche: Ecological interpretations on work-related immigration

Authors: Suni, Minna
Submitted by: Suni, Minna (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

Finland is a Western welfare state receiving more and more immigrants. Situated up in the North and having two national languages (Finnish and Swedish) not so widely spoken on the globe, it has no edge over its competitors in the globalising work market. What attracts international job-seekers to urban areas of Finland, however, is the good reputation of Finnish innovation industry, education system, and living conditions.

This paper discusses the linguistic issues involved in work-related immigration from an ecological perspective. “Ecology” refers to the deep interrelatedness between each individual and the surrounding social and physical environment (van Lier 2000). Each language user or learner is seen as a part of a larger social system, which continuously reacts to various changes in the environment and affects the options and opportunities available for the individual. The globalising work market is an obvious environmental factor influencing the general dynamics of immigration, but local work communities are those restricted niches in which individual immigrants primarily operate in their daily lives.

 

Case studies from the Finnish information technology, health care, and education sectors will be presented to discuss the specific properties of the linguistic breeding grounds available for newcomers in each setting. How do workplace language policies nourish or restrict the use of different languages at work? How can a spiral of peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger 1991) be avoided when one lacks sufficient or socially relevant language skills? How to maintain one’s professional identity (e.g. Kramsch 2009) as a not yet competent speaker of the language commonly used at work?

 

The data come from the project Finnish as a work language: A sociocognitive perspective to work-related language skills of immigrants (Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä, Finland).

 

References:

 

Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lave, J. & E. Wenger (1991). Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Lier, L. (2000). From input to affordance: Social-interactive learning from an ecological  perspective. In Lantolf, J. P. Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 245-259.