Migration and the mobility of citizens around the globe pose important challenges to the linguistic and cultural homogeneity that nation-states rely on for defining their physical boundaries and identity, as well as the rights and obligations of their citizens. A new social order resulting from neoliberal economic practices, globalisation and outsourcing also challenges traditional ways the nation-state has organized its control over the people who have typically travelled to a new country looking for work or better life chances. This collection provides an account of the ways language addresses core questions concerning power and the place of migrants in various institutional and workplace settings. It brings together contributions from a range of geographical settings to understand better how linguistic inequality is (re)produced in this new economic order.

Migration and the mobility of citizens around the globe pose important challenges to the linguistic and cultural homogeneity that nation-states rely on for defining their physical boundaries and identity, as well as the rights and obligations of their citizens. A new social order resulting from neoliberal economic practices, globalisation and outsourcing also challenges traditional ways the nation-state has organized its control over the people who have typically travelled to a new country looking for work or better life chances. This collection provides an account of the ways language addresses core questions concerning power and the place of migrants in various institutional and workplace settings. It brings together contributions from a range of geographical settings to understand better how linguistic inequality is (re)produced in this new economic order.

An examination of how an individual's native language can affect their lifestyle. Topics covered range from maintenance of the mother-tongue and second language learning, to the ideology of language planning theory, to education and language rights.

The social question is back. Yet today's social question is not primarily between labour and capital, as it was in the nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth. The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the global South and the global North. It finds its expression in movements of people, seeking a better life or fleeing unsustainable social, political, economic, and ecological conditions. It is transnationalized not only because migrants and their significant others entertain ties across the borders of national states, staying in touch with family and friends, receiving or sending financial remittances in transnational social spaces. Also of importance are cross--border recruitment schemes for workers and the cross-border diffusion of norms appealed to in the case of migration--for example, the social right to decent work as a human right. Moreover, migration can become an issue of inclusion or exclusion in fields important to life chances in the emigration, transit, or immigration states--a transnationalization of national states. And, as in the nineteenth century, political conflicts arise, constituting the social question as a public concern. In earlier periods class differences dominated conflicts. While class has always been criss-crossed by manifold heterogeneities, not least of all cultural ones around ethnicity, religion, and language, it is these latter heterogeneities that have sharpened in situations of immigration and emigration over the past decades. Casting a wide net in terms of conceptual and empirical scope, this book tackles both the social structure and the politics of social inequalities. It sets a comprehensive agenda for research which also includes the public role of social scientists in dealing with the transnationalized social question.

This book is the result of a research on migrant integration, language and social mobility in Catalonia. Drawing on the fate of three communities: Argentineans, Colombians and Moroccans, it examines the opportunities and constraints for social mobility. El libro es el resultado de una investigación sobre integración de inmigrantes, lengua y movilidad social en Cataluña. Basandonos en el destino de tres comunidades: Argentinos, Colombianos y Marroquies, examina las oportunidades y limitaciones para la movilidad social.

This book examines how language is a central resource in transforming migrant women into transnational domestic workers. Focusing on the migration of women from the Philippines to Singapore, the book unpacks why and how language is embedded in the infrastructure of transnational labor migration that links migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries. It sheds light on the everyday lives of transnational domestic workers and how they draw on their linguistic repertoires, and in particular on English, as they cross geographical and social spaces. By showing how the transnational mobility of labor is dependent on the selection and performance of particular assemblages of linguistic resources that index migrants as labor and not as people, the book provides a powerful lens with which to examine how migration contributes to relationships of inequality and how such inequalities are produced and challenged on the terrain of language.

The impact of globalisation is increasingly evident through both mass migration and the social, political, and economic changes that have produced new and growing social divides. The increased mobility and the opening of national borders that have arisen as part of these changes has also meant a rise in the diversification of migration (superdiversity) in all its forms. The multi-sited flows of people have also led to the flow of knowledge, culture, and languages. English – as a global language – has taken on a prominent role in the neoliberal discourses of commodification, value and distinction, and the role of language in the reproduction of social inequalities. This edited volume explores a range of issues related to the role of language. In particular, it addresses competency in English and multilingualism, both of which facilitate success for skilled migrants in the workplace and enable them to contribute to development efforts in their home communities. In more general terms, the book looks at the communicative competencies and language resources which skilled migrants require in order to engage productively in professional and development endeavours. It examines the notion that English is the linguistic capital for skilled migration, given its global status in higher education, development, and professional communication. This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education.