Exploring (Im)mobilities

Language Practices, Discourses and Imaginaries

Edited by Anna De Fina, Gerardo Mazzaferro

Publication date:

23 November 2021

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781788925297

The impact of mobility and superdiversity in recent sociolinguistic research is well-established, yet very few studies deal with issues related to immobility. The chapters in this book focus on the sociolinguistic investigation of the dynamics between mobility and immobility as experienced by migrants, asylum seekers and members of minority or exploited groups. Central to the book is an exploration of how mobilities are affected by and in turn affect power relations and of the kinds of resources used by people to deal with (im)mobility processes. The book brings to light a new critical sociolinguistic imagination that is responsive to 21st century processes of (im)mobilities as socially, discursively and emotionally constructed and negotiated.

Contributors
Acknowledgements

Anna De Fina and Gerardo Mazzaferro: Introduction

Part 1: The (Im)mobilization of Language Resources, Repertoires and Practices

Chapter 1. Mari D’Agostino: Multilingual Young African Migrants: Between Mobility and Immobility

Chapter 2. Necia Stanford Billinghurst: Sociolinguistic (Im)mobilities in Spaces of Migration

Chapter 3. Katrijn Maryns and Stef Slembrouck: Categorization and the Use of English as an (Im)mobile Resource in Service Encounters with Migrants in Flanders

Part 2: (Im)mobilities, Technologies and Control

Chapter 4. Maria Sabaté-Dalmau: Controlling Migrants’ (Im)mobilities through Telecommunications: Technopolitical Governance in Telephony Advertising Discourse

Chapter 5. Massimiliano Spotti: On Being Enregistered into the Matrix of Online Knowledge: An Ethnographic Exploration of an Internet-based Dismissal in an Asylum-seeking Procedure

Chapter 6. Marco Jacquemet: From Language to Politics: Communication, Power, and Migration in the Central Mediterranean

Part 3: Spaces of (Im)mobility and Resistance

Chapter 7. Anna De Fina and Gerardo Mazzaferro: Everyday Communicative Practices and Repertoires in Contexts of Involuntary and Enforced Immobility

Chapter 8. Ana Deumert: Beachspaces: Racism and Settler-Colonial (Im)mobilities at the Shoreline

Chapter 9. Birgul Yilmaz: Language and Humanitarian Governmentality in a Refugee Camp on Lesvos Island

Part 4: (Im)mobilities, Subjectivity, Identity and Agency

Chapter 10. Mike Baynham, Bahiru Shewaye and Gomes O. Kayode: Estrangement and Home in Queer Asylum Stories

Chapter 11. Roberta Piazza: The Power of (Im)mobility: Irish Travellers’ Agentive Identities in Transit and Permanency

Chapter 12. Jan Blommaert: Postscript: Immobilities Normalized

Index

This is an extremely timely book that reminds us of some of the neglected aspects of the new mobility paradigm in sociolinguistic research. It covers research contexts that have not been previously explored. Its conceptual and methodological innovations ensure the book’s lasting impact on theory, research design, policy and practice.