Catalan in “ethnic” call shops: migrants’ linguistic practices and ideologies in Spanish-speaking urban spaces

Authors

  • Maria Sabaté Dalmau Universitat de Lleida

Keywords:

multilingual practices, linguistic ideologies, Catalan, migration, “ethnic” call shops.

Abstract

From a critical sociolinguistic ethnographic perspective, this study investigates the linguistic practices and ideologies in connection with Catalan which are mobilised by a group of 20 undocumented multilingual migrants who, born in South Asia, North and Central Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America, organise their mobility trajectories in an “ethnic” call shop located in a Spanish-speaking neighbourhood in the Barcelona metropolitan area. By analysing interviews, naturally-occurring interactions, and oral and written communicative practices gathered by means of participant observation over two years of fieldwork, I focus on the discourses in connection with this language which circulate in these transnational discursive spaces. I argue that migrant social networks perceive Catalan as devoid of immediate socioeconomic benefits in their local labour marketplace, and as an outsider language for private use which, ideologically, does not belong to their linguistic repertoires. However, in practice, Catalan does indeed get inscribed within the eminently translinguistic Spanish which migrants use to cope with their socioeconomic precariousness. I conclude that, in urban spaces where global Spanish (in its highly flexible peninsular and Latin-American forms) prevails as the dominant lingua franca, migrant populations tend to legitimise the monolingual regimes established by their host societies. Concerning actual language use, though, the social networks that target re-localisation in Catalonia integrate themselves in the linguistic market of the Catalan neighbourhoods by daily bringing Catalan and Spanish bilingualism into play. However, they do not actually become new fully-fledged speakers of Catalan in these unexplored alternative institutions of migration in which the presence of this language is scarce.

Keywords: multilingual practices; linguistic ideologies; Catalan; migration; “ethnic” call shops.

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Author Biography

Maria Sabaté Dalmau, Universitat de Lleida

Maria Sabaté i Dalmau és professora lectora al Departament d’Anglès i Lingüística de la Universitat de Lleida i membre del Cercle de Lingüística Aplicada (CLA) en aquesta mateixa Facultat. Té un màster oficial en Estudis Anglesos (UAB) i un en Lingüística Antropològica (The University of Toronto). És doctora en Filologia Anglesa pel Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, on va ser personal docent i investigador del 2005 al 2013. És col.laboradora externa del grup CIEN, i la seva recerca s’emmarca en el camp de la sociolingüística crítica de base etnogràfica i se centra en la comunicació intercultural, en les ideologies i pràctiques lingüístiques en contextos bilingües i multilingües relacionats amb la migració i amb les llengües minoritàries, en particular en el cas català.

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Published

2016-07-21