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Abstract
This unique critical sociolinguistic ethnography explores alternative migrant-regulated institutions of resistance and subversive communication technology: the locutorios or ethnic call shops. These migrant-owned businesses act as a window into their multimodal and hybrid linguistic and communicative practices, and into their own linguistic hierarchies and non-mainstream sociolinguistic orders. Here, socially displaced but technologically empowered transnational migrant populations actively find subversive ways to access information and communication technologies. As such they mobilise their own resources to successfully inhabit Catalonia, at the margins of powerful institutions. The book also focuses on the (internal) social organisation dynamics, as well as on the simultaneous fight against, and re-production of, practices and processes of social difference and social inequality among migrants themselves.
The strength of this book is that it addresses a hot topic in a way that is exemplary and will last.
Florian Coulmas, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
The extreme richness and deepness of the ethnographic analysis provided by the author provides a compelling contribution for a complex understanding of the multilingual practices and the everyday challenges faced by migrants in their everyday lives in current Catalonia. With her rich discussion of the mundane activities that she was able to track during her in-depth ethnography, Maria Sabaté i Dalmau grasps the mechanisms and sometimes contradictory logics that make and regulate social life and that contribute to the distribution of resources in society.
Alfonso Del Percio, University of Oslo, Norway
Maria Sabaté I Dalmau's work is a most welcome contribution to the sociolinguistics of globalization, particularly at the intersection of migration, multilingualism and communication technologies. This book makes a compelling account of how states and the telecommunication industries attempt to control and contain migrants in how they use languages or how they access mobile communications, even as migrants develop their own forms of sociability to cope with these restrictions or circumvent them.
Joan Pujolar Cos, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
In her in-depth and, at times, moving ethnography of a Barcelona locutorio, Maria Sabaté i Dalmau affords us a unique and fascinating glimpse of migrants' multilingual practices, connections and mediations normally hidden from view. This book is an important contribution to the growing literature on languages, mobilities and globalization.
Adam Jaworski, University of Hong Kong
Maria Sabaté i Dalmau is a lecturer in the English and Linguistics Department at the Universitat de Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. Her research interests include the study of communication and language practices in bilingual and multilingual, migration and language minority contexts, particularly in Catalonia.
This book is of interest to scholars and students in Discourse Studies, Linguistic Anthropology or Intercultural Communication. It presents a very comprehensive approach and opens up avenues of inquiry into the intersectionality between language, mobility, identity and new technologies.
Adriana Patiño-Santos, University of Southampton, UK
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contents | vii | ||
| Figures | ix | ||
| Tables | xi | ||
| Acronyms | xii | ||
| Transcription Conventions | xiv | ||
| Acknowledgements | xvii | ||
| 1\tNew Steps in the Sociolinguistics of Globalisation: The Critical Exploration of Migrant Institutions of Resistance in Late Capitalism | 1 | ||
| The Context: Technology-Empowered Migrant Populations in Urban Catalonia | 8 | ||
| Method and Data: The Network Ethnographic Window | 16 | ||
| Overview of the Chapters | 25 | ||
| 2\tThe Rise of Anti-Migrant Governmentality: Prelude to the Emergence of Locutorios | 29 | ||
| The Post-Social State: Exclusionary Dataveillance Systems and Covert Linguistic Regimes | 30 | ||
| The Telecommunications Sector: Global Capitalistic Dynamics and Ineffective Commercial Multilingualism | 34 | ||
| 3\tLocutorios as Challengers to Established Political-Economic Orders and Sociolinguistic Regimes | 59 | ||
| From Autochthonous Local Businesses to Alternative Institutions of Transnational Survival | 60 | ||
| Locutorios as Successful Transnational Points of ‘Meetingness’ and Mundane Resistance Practices | 70 | ||
| 4 \tThe Self-Provision of Technological Capital in Locutorios: A Diversity of ICT-Mediated Networking Practices | 84 | ||
| Individual Mobility Projects and Subversive Communication Technology Tactics | 85 | ||
| Transnational Family Units and the Collectivisation of ICT | 93 | ||
| Maintaining Emotional Ties: Doing Family from a Distance | 98 | ||
| 5\tLocutorio Voices: Language and Literacy in Migrant-Regulated Discursive Spaces | 107 | ||
| The Organisation of Silenced Multilingualisms in a Spanish-Unified Floor | 110 | ||
| The ‘Everyone’s Spanish’ Paradox: Subversion and Self-Discipline in Prevailing Linguistic Regimes | 138 | ||
| 6\tLocutorios as Migrant Spaces of ‘Mismeeting’ and Conflictive Togetherness | 148 | ||
| Migrant Identities and Power Dynamics in Non-Mainstream Worlds | 150 | ||
| Fighting Linguistic Exploitation: The Language and Identity Resources of the Abused | 160 | ||
| By Way of Conclusion: Informal Migrant Shelters in Which to Critically Explore the Mundane Alphabets of the Future | 171 | ||
| Notes | 176 | ||
| References | 181 | ||
| Index | 203 | ||
| Figure 1.1 Percentage of community (Spanish nationals and foreign residents) using ICT (mobile phones, computers and internet) in Catalonia, 2010. Source: FOBSIC & Idescat (2010). Data assembled by author | 9 | ||
| Figure 1.2 Administrative regions in Catalonia. The county of Vallès Occidental where fieldwork was conducted is indicated (darker shading). Source: Generalitat de Catalunya (2011b) | 17 | ||
| Figure 2.1 The state’s citizenship regimes and legal barriers. ‘Compulsory registration plan for users of prepaid phone cards. Identify yourself!’ (Ministerio del Interior, 2007) | 32 | ||
| Figure 2.2 Image from the campaign against the ‘digital exclusion’ of migrants, Plan Avanza (20 Minutos, 2008: 23) | 33 | ||
| Figure 2.3 The telecommunications sector’s unrealistic management of linguistic diversity. The MundiMóvil packaging presents the phrase ‘The world in your hands’ in 10 different languages. Source: http://www.mundimovil.es | 54 | ||
| Figure 3.1 Numbers of locutorios registered in Vallès Occidental, January 2001 and March 2009. Shading indicates percentage of foreign residents over total population. Source: Idescat (2001, 2010a), and official records of the 23 town halls in Vallès Occi | 64 | ||
| Figure 3.2 Multinationals’ competition techniques against ‘ethnic’ locutorio businesses. The ‘Locutori mòbil’ (Orange) (left) and the ‘mini-locutorio’ (Movistar) (right). \nPictures taken by author. Vallès Occidental. 28 November 2007 | 68 | ||
| Figure 3.3 The migrants’ self-distribution of key resources (information). Leaflet offering legal services with free consultation in the locutorio of El Paso. Picture taken by author (with selected details removed). Vallès Occidental. 30 September 2008 | 78 | ||
| Figure 3.4 Services provision in non-recognised migrant languages. Leaflet with a Movistar discount plan in Urdu, translated from Spanish on a migrant’s initiative. Locutorio in El Paso. Picture taken by author (with selected details removed). 4 Septembe | 79 | ||
| Figure 3.5 The intercultural mediation practices of locutorio workers. Scan of a receipt of a successful money transfer written in Spanish (with selected details removed). Locutorio in El Paso. 11 September 2008. (Highlighted details discussed in text) | 81 | ||
| Figure 4.1 The market’s discursive and visual representations of ICT-mediated ‘transnational communication’ (Metro, 2008b: 17) | 86 | ||
| Figure 4.2 The market’s construction of economically based transnational family relationships. Telefónica’s campaign. Picture taken by author. Barcelonès, 22 June 2013 | 98 | ||
| Figure 5.1 Tokenistic commercial multilingualism in locutorios. Pictures of the front and the back of a Habibi call card, taken by author (with selected details removed). Locutorio in Vallès Occidental. 15 October 2008 | 111 | ||
| Figure 5.2 Non-elite written multilingual practices in locutorios. Shabbir’s notebook. Picture taken by author. Locutorio in Vallès Occidental. 28 July 2008 | 111 | ||
| Figure 5.3 Bilingual written practices in Catalan and Spanish. Shabbir’s notebook. Locutorio in El Paso. Picture taken by author. 27 July 2008 | 134 | ||
| Figure 5.4 The symbolic place of non-elite allochthonous codes in locutorios. Unconventional ‘no smoking’ sign handwritten in Arabic and Spanish. Locutorio in El Paso. Picture taken by author. 15 October 2008 | 136 | ||
| Figure 5.5 Hidden-in-public allochthonous codes in locutorios. Locutorio of El Paso. Picture taken by author (with selected details removed). 1 July 2008 | 138 | ||
| Figure 5.6 The social uses and meanings of ‘everyone’s Spanish’. Room-for-rent advertisements posted by the same user, (a) on 9 September and (b) on 16 September 2008. Locutorio in El Paso. Pictures taken by author (with selected details removed) | 143 | ||
| Figure 5.7 ‘Everyone’s Spanish’ in migrant-tailored corporate information. Discount plans by Siempre Latina. Locutorio in El Paso. Picture taken by author (with selected details removed). 31 August 2008. (Highlighted details discussed in text) | 145 | ||
| Figure 5.8 Self-disciplining practices in written Standard Spanish. Two room-for-rent advertisements for the same flat, posted (a) 17 July and (b) 20 August 2008. Locutorio in El Paso. Pictures taken by author. | 146 | ||
| Figure 6.1 The migrants’ social forms of differentiation in language and in identity display. Room-for-rent advertisements posted on the walls of the locutorio in El Paso (a) 19 September and (b) 1 July 2008. Pictures taken by author (with selected detail | 151 | ||
| Figure 6.2 Technological support for locutorio employees. (a) Cabin telephone counter and (b) locutorio computer programs. Locutorio in El Paso. Pictures taken by author. 30 June and 29 July 2008 | 169 |