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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 391

Part of Session 131: Latino Social networks and the city (Other abstracts in this session)

Linguistic and migrant trajectories in the London Latino diaspora*

Authors: Marquez, Rosina
Submitted by: Marquez, Rosina (University of Surrey, United Kingdom)

Latin Americans are a relatively small and recent migrant group in the UK. They are largely concentrated in London (ONS 2005). As part of their social networks they have created distinctive commercial and media spaces in the city, particularly in the areas of Elephant and Castle and Seven Sisters. These spaces specialise in the selling of homeland products and the provision of related services. Many migrants rely on these spaces to connect with their homeland and, more importantly, to facilitate social interaction in the city given their sometimes illegal status and their general inability to speak English or access  ‘good value for money’ English lessons in order to obtain better jobs and gain social mobility.

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between the participants’ migration and linguistic trajectories. To explore the extent to which they are intertwined, the social circumstances behind them, the cultural and linguistic ideologies that help to explain them and the degree to which they impact on social mobility.

The paper is based on non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Latino migrants from different national origins, recruited at the above sites: political refugees, economic migrants and their descendants. It investigates how linguistic capitals (Bourdieu 1986) influence social achievements, professional trajectories and social networks  at the different stages of the migration process . It also seeks to elucidate what factors (e.g. socio-economic background, legal status, etc.) facilitate and/or constrain access to these linguistic capitals (e.g. Martin Rojo 2010).

The paper also addresses the following questions:

What type of monolingualism and bilingualism do different generations of Latinos and Latinos carrying out different jobs within the diaspora exhibit?

 How do they position (De Fina 2003) themselves with respect to the prestigious language of the city, to their own language, to different varieties of the same basic language (e.g. Marquez Reiter 2011) and to the different communities?

 And, finally, what do these participants consider to be ‘Latino’ .

References

Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital. In: John G. Richardson (ed.): Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press 1986, s. 241-258.

De Fina, A.(2003) Identity in Narrative: A study of immigrant discourse. Amsterdam: John Benajmins.

Lamarre, P. and Lamarre, S. (2009). Montréal « on the move » : Pour une approche ethnographique non-statique des pratiques langagières des jeunes multilingues. In T. Bulot, Formes & normes sociolinguistiques. Ségrégations et discriminations urbaines (pp. 105–134). Paris : L’Harmattan.

Marquez Reiter, R.(2011) Mediated business interactions.Intercultural communication between speakers of Spanish. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Martin Rojo,L. (2010) Constructing inequality in multilingual and multicultural schools in Madrid. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Office of National Statistics (ONS) (2005) Focus on People and Migration stats.gov.uk.

* This paper is partly funded by a Spanish Government research grant to examine new speakers,new identities in a post-national era. Principal investigator: Dr Joan Pujolar