This paper examines the relationship between language, (in)visibility, and (im)mobility in racialized spaces, focusing on Finnish, Somali, and Arabic speakers in Sweden. Using a theoretical framework based on hegemonic whiteness and intersectionality, the study explores how multilingual practices and subjectivities intersect with race, religion,…

New citizens are typically characterized as people who occupy an estuarial position between the global and the local: to simultaneously become authentic to their global provenience and rooted in their new local societies, they are expected to cautiously partake in processes of differentiation as they construct their identities. This article…

This article explores the management of multilingual mobile communicators at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) according to institutional requirements and the consequences on Arabic-speaking communicators' careers. Based on interviews complemented by institutional documents, I analyse the impact of "multiple languages",…

This paper focuses on how different historical stages of socio-economic development in Brussels are played out on the ground over time in one particular inner-city neighbourhood, the Quartier Dansaert. In particular, I document the history of this neighbourhood and how urban change and gentrification have impacted the outlook of multilingualism…

International mobility has caused a need for language education where adults can learn the language(s) used in their new country. In Sweden, the language programme SFI (Swedish for immigrants) provides basic second language education for adult immigrants. For those learners who are not yet functionally literate, basic literacy education is…

This paper investigates the conditions under which stakeholders in the higher education system in multilingual Switzerland link expectations of students' future economic to the development of human capital. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in a project focusing on mobile students crossing linguistic borders within Switzerland, I examine how…

Faced with a pressing demand for eldercare workers, Japan signed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) to recruit workers from Southeast Asian countries. The EPA limits the employment period for migrant workers, unless they successfully pass the healthcare licensure examination in Japanese. Therefore, they receive on-the-job training and prepare…

This study examines how the transnational lives of two Sinhalese-speaking Sri Lankan families in the rural U.S. influenced family language policy (FLP) and how they (re)positioned themselves in response to their transnational lives. Employing an ethnographic design, including interviews and observations, this study explores the families' language…

This paper aims to demonstrate the implications of health mobility on language practices in the medical tourism industry in India and on the ways, language workers become entrepreneurs. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork that traces the trajectories of three former students of Russian, we highlight their future aspirations as language learners…

Transnational mobility results in a diversification of languages and cultures in the workplace. A common means of managing this diversity is to introduce language policies that often privilege English or the locally dominant language(s). In contrast, managing their everyday working lives may require employees to draw on a range of multilingual and…

In this article the notion of "community" is examined through a lens which focuses on the way people interact and communicate in and around a Panjabi complementary school. Analysis of linguistic ethnographic data contributes to understandings of how identities are produced and reproduced, and how belonging becomes naturalised. The…

This article explores the impact of superdiversity on linguistic practices in Southampton, UK. Our focus seeks to identify what these practices are in an environment that we describe as superdiverse, and what is influencing, determining, shaping and contributing to these practices. Southampton is characterised by twenty-first century social…

This article investigates the educational trajectories of young multilingual learners in Germany. Drawing on previous ethnographic research in a primary bilingual German-Italian Two-Way-Immersion classroom, this study examines the continuity and fragmentation of multilingual learning as they occur in the transition from primary to secondary…

The process of internationalisation of higher education can be seen as fluctuating between two main discourses: economic competition and academic internationalisation (Bolsman & Miller 2008). Within the former type of discourse, internationalisation is constructed as a means to generate income, in competition with other institutions, through…