Language and Identity in Migration Contexts

Patricia Ronan holds a chair of English Linguistics at TU Dortmund University. She received her PhD at Maynooth University (Ireland) and she has held further positions in Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany. Her main research interests are in language variation and language contact. At the time of writing, she is co-authoring an Introduction to Multilingualism for Palgrave Macmillan (with Sarah Buschfeld), and is working, amongst other projects, on the linguistic inclusion of migrants, on media language and on variationist pragmatics.

Evelyn Ziegler is Professor of German Linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She earned her PhD in sociolinguistics at the University of Heidelberg. Her research focus is on language variation, multilingualism, computer mediated communication, linguistic landscapes and attitude studies. Currently, she is particularly interested in the construction of language attitude expressions in the context of migration and integration (Ziegler et al. 2020).

The volume «Language and Identity in Migration Contexts», which contains studies from different languages and migration contexts across the world, provides an excellent overview of the topic while highlighting some key elements like multilingualism, societal and educational contexts, as well as forced migration. The volume will therefore be of much interest to researchers working on these topics. (Prof. Dr. Anita Auer, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland)

The contributions to this volume shed a new light on various central topics in the discourses on language, migration and identity. The continued centrality of language on identity formation processes is underlined but it is shown that language is not a defining criterion for identity formation processes of migrants, in the context of migration or for heritage speakers in all cases. However, societal contexts play an important role in identity formation and these societal contexts themselves are strongly influenced by the ideologies that are prevalent in societies and that may be perpetuated in educational contexts. In the discussion of language, identity and migration in this volume, perspectives from the Global North are enriched by perspectives of the Global South, and the impact of media influence in migration discourse is analysed.

The contributions to this volume shed a new light on various central topics in the discourses on language, migration and identity.

Contents: Patricia Ronan and Evelyn Ziegler: Language and Identity in Migration Contexts: An Introduction - Multilingualism and Identity Building - Katharina von Elbwart: A View from the Sunshine State: Mapping Perceptions and Language Ideologies in Florida - Katrin Bente Karl: Russian and Polish in the Ruhr Valley: In Search of Similarities and Differences - Shota Tanaka: Identity of Individuals with Turkish Heritage in Germany - Warsa Melles: Codeswitching as an Identity Marker in Eritrean Communities in the United States - Salomé Molina Torres: Noising the Space for Reuniting: The Production of a Colombian Groupness in a Migratory Context - Social and Societal Contexts of Language, Migration and Identity - Márton A. Baló: The Role of the Romani Language in the Preservation of Romani Identity in Hungary - Jocelyne Kenne Kenne: Migration and Communicative Practices in Multilingual African Communities: The Case of Chinese Traders in Cameroon - Manel Herat: Europe through Indian Eyes: Constructions of Foreignness in Indian Soldiers' Letters - Gerold Schneider and Maud Reveilhac: Measuring Attitudes to Migration in the Media Automatically with Complementary Data Sources and Methods - Susanne Fengler, Monika Lengauer and Anna- Carina Zappe: What Is Best Practice in Media Reporting on Migration? -Educational Contexts - Marion Kwiatkowski: Transgressing Linguistic and Sociocultural Boundaries: Language Affiliation and Linguistic Practices among Second- Generation Immigrants in Swedish- Language Finland - Patricia Ronan and Warsa Melles: Linguistic Inclusion of School Age Immigrants in Ruhr Valley Schools: A Translanguaging Perspective - Andrea Bogner and Jacqueline Gutjahr: Linguistic Repertoires Beyond the Limiting Power of Ideologies: Fostering Reflexivity in Teacher Research on Multilingualism - Forced Migration - Simona Leonardi: Displacement and Disorientation in a Narrative of Former Migrants from Germany to Palestine - Rita Luppi: Recounting Central Biographical Experiences: An Analysis of Retellings in Interviews with Second- Generation German Speakers in Israel - Carolina Flinz: Emotions and Their Relation to Places of the Migration Trajectory: Experiential Declarative Formulas in the Corpus Emigrantendeutsch in Israel: Wiener in Jerusalem (ISW) - Evelyn Ziegler and Patricia Ronan: Conclusion: Research Issues and Methodological Challenges.