In this talk I explore three thrusts which warrant attention and serve to inform the emerging field of migration linguistics.
First, I suggest that we move beyond migration to thinking about mobilities, in particular, the new mobilities paradigm in the social sciences (Sheller and Urry 2006; Urry 2012) which views human mobility as entailing a complex assemblage of movement, social imaginaries, and experience (Cresswell 2006). Expanding our notion of mobility beyond the geographic to also encompass social and symbolic mobility in turn enhances our appreciation of how languages are positioned in their communities.
Second, I reflect on how the current decade has its focus on the United Nations' International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022-2032), which aims "draw attention to the critical loss of indigenous languages and the urgent need to preserve, revitalize and promote indigenous languages" (UNESCO 2022). This important and welcome initiative notwithstanding, the IDIL has been noted to not be addressing the interactions between language and migration, even though this is critical to the endeavour. The subject of migration is conspicuously absent from official documentation about the IDIL and its goals, with its Global Action Plan (UNESCO 2021) mentioning migration only once. I interrogate how such initiatives can and should encompass not only those languages considered as "traditionally used within a given territory" but also indigenous/ heritage languages in a migrant, transnational context.
Finally, I tease out the tensions involved in the different waves of migration in a particular society, which result in the layering of, on the one hand, the 'old', and thus established, migrants, versus the newer migrants, comprising in particular transient populations of foreign workers and foreign domestic helpers, and, crucially, the differential statuses that these communities – and their languages – hold in society. I relation to this, I examine official language policies which, at superficial level, may present a picture of multilingualism, but which, in essence, serve to uphold a national ideology, and suppress and make invisible the authentic multilingualisms of the various migrant communities (Lim 2022).
Such contemplation of dimensions of mobility, indigeneity, and invisibility will, I believe, afford us insights as we continue explorations in migration linguistics.
Cresswell, T. 2006. On the move: Mobility in the modern Western world. London: Routledge.
Lim, L. 2022. Defining migrants: Positioning the periphery in pioneering and pandemic times. Invited plenary panel on Mobility, Multilingualism, and Multimodality: Studies in Migration Linguistics in Southeast Asia. 21st English in Southeast Asia conference. Linguistic Society of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University. 10-12 March 2022.
Sheller, M. & Urry, J. 2006. The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning 38(2): 207–226.
UNESCO. 2021. Global Action Plan of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379851
UNESCO. 2022. International Decade of Indigenous Languages. https://idil2022-2032.org/
Urry, J. 2012. Sociology beyond societies: Mobilities for the twenty-first century. London: Routledge.
