Language, Immigration and Labor: Negotiating Work in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

ISBN-13: 9781137301017 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 184 str.

Elise M. Dubord

Opis

Language, Immigration, and Labor explores dominant ideologies about citizenship, nation, and language that frame the everyday lives of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Focussing its ethnographic research on Arizona, a state that intensely regulates transnational migrants and Spanish speakers through its immigration and language policies, this book examines the realities of intercultural communication in fast-paced job negotiations between undocumented workers and their employers. The research reveals the ways that dominant discourses reverberate down to localized social and language practices and how day laborers respond by legitimating their participation in society-a kind of cultural citizenship-and constructing identities as language learners and productive workers.

Recenzje

“This book effectively illustrates the daily life of a social group that needs to navigate language in order to successfully gain admission into the setting they seek to enter, and provides important insights into how day labourers think and act in order to work effectively in a society … . All in all, this work gives the day labourers a voice in American society, demonstrating the power of using critical approaches to research, particularly critical ethnography and critical discourse analysis.” (Michael R. Scott, Discourse & Society, Vol. 28 (2), 2017)

Spis treści

1. The Social Context of Language Contact in the Informal Economy 2. Globalization, Immigrant Labor, and Language 3. 'If I knew the language, don't think I would be here': Shifting Understandings of the Linguistic Capital of English 4. Solidarity, Rapport, and Co-membership: Employers' Hiring Practices 5. Performing the Good Worker 6. Conceptualizing Intercultural Contact in the Borderlands

O autorze

Elise DuBord is Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Northern Iowa, USA. Her research interests include intercultural language contact, critical race theory, language policy, and community-based learning.