Multilingualisms vary. Given such variation, how can those from essentially mono-chromatic, monolingual backgrounds begin to appreciate the colorful multilingual realities of the majority world? This question led to the symposium Language and Identity in a Multilingual, Migrating World, May 10–15, 2018, in Penang, Malaysia. This resulting four-part collection of papers. -- J. Stephen Quakenbush

This volume presents a collection of the latest scholarly research on language, migration and identity. It includes research conducted within both established and emerging methodological frameworks and explores a wide range of contexts and geographical locations, from the language classroom to the migrant experience, and from Ireland to Eritrea.

Language not only expresses identities but also constructs them. Starting from that point, Language and Identity examines the interrelationships between language and identities. It finds that they are so closely interwoven, that words themselves are inscribed with ideological meanings. Words and language constitute meanings within discourses and discourses vary in power. The powerful ones reproduce more powerful meanings, colonize other discourses and marginalize or silence the least powerful languages and cultures. Language and culture death occur in extreme cases of marginalization. This book also demonstrates the socio-economic opportunities offered by language choice and the cultural allegiances of language, where groups have been able to create new lives for themselves by embracing new languages in new countries. Language can be a 'double-edged sword' of opportunity and marginalization. Language and Identity argues that bilingualism and in some cases multilingualism can both promote socio-economic opportunity and combat culture death and marginalization. With sound theoretical perspectives drawing upon the work of Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Gumperz, Foucault and others, this book provides readers with a rationale to redress social injustice in the world by supporting minority linguistic and cultural identities and an acknowledgement that access to language can provide opportunity.

The analysis and understanding of multilingualism, and its relationship to identity in the face of globalization, migration and the increasing dominance of English as a lingua franca, makes it a complex and challenging problem that requires insights from a range of disciplines. With reference to a variety of languages and contexts, this book offers fascinating insights into multilingual identity from a team of world-renowned scholars, working from a range of different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Three overarching themes are explored – situatedness, identity practices, and investment – and detailed case studies from different linguistic and cultural contexts are included throughout. The chapter authors' consideration of 'multilingualism-as-resource' challenges the conception of 'multilingualism-as-problem', which has dogged so much political thinking in late modernity. The studies offer a critical lens on the types of linguistic repertoire that are celebrated and valued, and introduce the policy implications of their findings for education and wider social issues.

** Winner of AAAL Book Award 2020 ** **Shortlisted for the BAAL Book Prize 2018** The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language is the first comprehensive survey of this area, exploring language and human mobility in today’s globalised world. This key reference brings together a range of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives, drawing on subjects such as migration studies, geography, philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Featuring over 30 chapters written by leading experts from around the world, this book: Examines how basic constructs such as community, place, language, diversity, identity, nation-state, and social stratification are being retheorized in the context of human mobility; Analyses the impact of the ‘mobility turn’ on language use, including the parallel ‘multilingual turn’ and translanguaging; Discusses the migration of skilled and unskilled workers, different forms of displacement, and new superdiverse and diaspora communities; Explores new research orientations and methodologies, such as mobile and participatory research, multi-sited ethnography, and the mixing of research methods; Investigates the place of language in citizenship, educational policies, employment and social services. The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language is essential reading for those with an interest in migration studies, language policy, sociolinguistic research and development studies.

New Approaches to Language and Identity in Contexts of Migration and Diaspora draws together expertise and contemporary research findings in respect of language and identity in migrant and diasporic contexts throughout the world. Over thirteen chapters, contributors examine the intersection between migration, language, and identity through analyses of migration discourses, language practices, and legal policy, as well as the ideologies embedded and revealed within them. A wide range of subject areas and interdisciplinary approaches are represented, with fifteen authors drawn from the fields of education, intercultural communication, linguistics, geography, migration studies, psychology, and sociology. This volume will primarily appeal to scholars and researchers in fields such as migration, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, multilingualism, and heritage language learning.

"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"--

Opening with a discussion of the key issues of globalization, migration, multiculturalism, multilingualism and global cities, David Block then turns to four detailed case studies: East Asian students living and working in London; foreign language teachers from France; London's growing Latino community; and second generation South Asian university students. Via these case studies the book explores the ambivalent and multi-layered identities of individuals who have crossed geographical and psychological borders during the course of their lifetimes and settled in London, the quintessential global city.

This lively and engaging book, set in the historical context of centuries of migration and multilingualism in Berlin, explores the relationship between language and migration. Berlin is a multicultural city in the heart of Europe, but what do we know about the number of languages spoken by its inhabitants and how they are used in everyday life? How do encounters with different languages impact on the experience of migration? And how do people use their experiences with language to shape their life stories?To investigate these questions, the author invites the reader to accompany him on a research expedition that leads to an apartment building in the highly diverse district of Neukölln. Its inhabitants come from different parts of the world and relate their experiences – their Berlin lives – in ways that reveal the complex and intricate relationships between language and migration.

In this volume, Li Wei brings together contributions from well-known and emerging scholars in socio- and anthropological linguistics working on different linguistic and communicative aspects of the Chinese diaspora. The project examines the Chinese diasporic experience from a global, comparative perspective, with a particular focus on transnational links, and local social and multilingual realities. Contributors address the emergence of new forms of Chinese in multilingual contexts, family language policy and practice, language socialization and identity development, multilingual creativity, linguistic attitudes and ideologies, and heritage language maintenance, loss, learning and re-learning. The studies are based on empirical observations and investigations in Chinese communities across the globe, including well-researched (from a sociolinguistic perspective) areas such as North America, Western Europe and Australia, as well as under-explored and under-represented areas such as Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, and the Middle East; the volume also includes detailed ethnographic accounts representing regions with a high concentration of Chinese migration such as Southeast Asia. This volume not only will allow sociolinguists to investigate the link between linguistic phenomena in specific communities and wider socio-cultural processes, but also invites an open dialogue with researchers from other disciplines who are working on migration, diaspora and identity, and those studying other language-based diasporic communities such as the Russian diaspora, the Spanish diaspora, the Portuguese diaspora, and the Arabic diaspora.