Participation in research projects & networks

The ENIFALPO project seeks to identify and map out the ways in which ideas about student achievement in English are evolving among Spanish families, with a particular focus on their language policy strategies. The project departs from the on-the-ground observation that families are taking into their hands, as it were, their children’s acquisition of English more than ever before.Until recently, families’ intervention outside the school context was generally limited to deciding whether or not to enroll their children in extra-curricular language classes, and choosing what they viewed as the most apt provider. In the last decade, by contrast, the insecurity generated by the 2008 crisis has led to intense forms of individual self-capitalization. Spanish families have become careful ‘nurturers’ of their children’s English capitals (Park, 2016) in hitherto unseen ways. They thoroughly plan and organize their children’s language learning in order to maximize opportunity. They search for and strategically choose the best ‘investment’. Most of these efforts are shaped by the ideology of linguistic immersion as the most authentic and effective way of learning a foreign language, which means that in many cases children are sent abroad at very early ages. English language immersion is no longer viewed as happening exclusively in the school context, but rather, is an ideal that can be constructed elsewhere provided that a number of steps are taken: the selection of appropriate speakers, policies for regulating and engineering language use, regular mobilities, etc.

Project objectives

• To study Spain’s intensified desire for English with a focus on the family as the unit of analysis.
• To discover what kinds of immersion practices, strategies and investments are sought for and engaged in by Spanish families in Catalonia, Castilla-La Mancha and the UK.
• To analyse families’ language and language learning ideologies sustaining English immersion.
• To understand the linguistic, socio-economic and affective impact of immersive practices.
• To unpack families’ motivations, rationalizations and evaluations of their investments.
• To understand and compare the perspectives and rationalities of family members belonging to different generations.
• To compare and contrast family strategies across cities and family types.
• To advance an ethnographic and family-based agenda in the field of language policy and planning.
• To consolidate a network of researchers working on linguistic immersion from a social perspective across sociopolitical and sociolinguistic contexts.

At the turn of the century, the globalized economy, the weight of international agencies and transnational migrations have increased the demand for multilingual skills in the workplace. In particular, humanitarian agencies must recruit and train mobile and multilingual skilled workers for their missions. This research project explores the recruitment, training and mentoring of skilled workers who cross linguistic and national borders for humanitarian work at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Research questions

The research questions formulated are the following:

• How important is communication and language for the ICRC mission and activities? Which communicative and linguistic skills are valued as resources to work for the ICRC?
• What is the role of language competence in the ICRC recruitment and training processes? In what ways it it deployed, treated and evaluated?
• Which linguistic repertoires are required for different work positions within the ICRC?
• Which tensions emerge out of the intersection between workers’ repertoires and institutional language requirements in a global, multilingual workplaces

The aim of the project is to investigate the increasing Englishisation of the Catalan educational system by studying the implementation of various forms of English-medium instruction in three different types of secondary schools: a public, concertada (semi-private) and a private international school.

It belongs to the coordinated R D project entitled Multilingual education in the global era: Markets, desire, practices and identities among Spanish adolescents in two autonomous communities (MUEDGE) which aims to compare the processes and practices of appropriation of English as a global language in Catalonia and Castilla-La Mancha. The Castilla-La Mancha team is grouped under the APINGLO-UCLM project led by Dr Ana Maria Relaño Pastor.

Scientific goals

Broadly speaking, the scientific goals of APINGLO-CAT are:

1. To ethnographically study the implementation of different forms of multilingual education in the current Catalan context
2. Comprehend the meanings and values currently associated to English in the Catalan educational context from a multilingual perspective,
3. Describe communicative practices inside and outside the multilingual classroom, and understand the role and function of the different languages at play.
4. Compare the results of the above-mentioned aims in Catalonia with the findings in Castilla-La Mancha.

This project focuses on the study of multilingualism from the perspective of the recent mobilities and globalisation paradigm (Heller 2010, Pennycook 2007, Blommaert 2010, Urry 2007, Sassen 1998). This paradigm takes up the analysis of linguistic practices by mobile people with transnational trajectories such as the immigrants or tourists who come to Spain and need to interact and communicate with civic institutions, on the one hand, and with autochthonous people whose life trajectories are more stable, on the other. This research departs from the point of view of these transnational people, and it takes into account the ways in which they construct their identities through and within their social networks and how they get involved with the local communities through their multilingual linguistic practices. Our hypothesis is that the way in which information relevant to mobile citizens is organised and the everyday multilingual practices of immigrants and tourists does not coincide with the predictions of the institutions belonging to the public, private and NGO-like sectors who welcome people from increasingly diverse backgrounds (Moyer 2010a, 2010b, Sabaté i Dalmau 2010, Codó and Garrido 2010). For this reason, it is relevant to study and to generate knowledge on intercultural communication among transnational citizens. The present project also seeks to examine the categories immigrant and tourist and to characterize their linguistic practices and to understand the intersections of language and multilingual practices with social class, ethnicity, gender and age.

Aims

The main aim of this project is to conduct a multisited ethnography in four physical spaces which will provide access to transnational communities who moved to Spain for leisure purposes or to find better life and work chances. These settings are: a tourist enclave, an ethnic business, a multinational company with non-Spanish employees, and a non-profit transnational association or organization. The specific objectives are: (a) to establish the different ways in which transnational groups manage and practice multilingualism in each context (b) to understand their linguistic practices and how different (or similar) these are according to social class, gender, ethnicity and age of the participants in the interactions, (c) to investigate the role of English as a lingua franca employed among transnational people as an inter-group and intra-group communication strategies, (d) to contribute to the knowledge of a new sociolinguistic situation in our society from the point of view of the mobilities paradigm, (e) to advance and provide new practical and linguistic knowledge which can be useful for the management of multilingualism in public, private and non-governmental institutions.

Methodology

A qualitative methodology which requires undertaking extensive ethnographic fieldwork is adopted in each of the sites studied. The data obtained through participant observation and fieldnotes are complemented with fine-grained transcriptions of audio and video recordings conducted in the four different contexts, in-depth interviews (spontaneous and structured) audio and video recordings and, finally, supporting secondary data such as legalisation, official documents, and media-collected statements from the key representatives of the social networks we aim to investigate. The use of a wide range of data allows for the triangulation of findings and provides further evidence supporting our interpretations of the linguistic practices of the social groups under study.

Catalan society is going through a period of significant socioeconomic changes. The range of globalizing phenomena which we are experiencing at present is characterized by a service based economy, the new consumerist society, the internationalization of communication systems, the movement of economic capitals and above all, migration movements and global interconnection. From the mid-1990s, and especially with the arrival of the 21st century, Catalonia has become the recipient of people originating from developing countries, economic (im)migrants. New migrations have challenged key aspects in relation to equality policies in addition to cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, especially in the field of education and in language planning for integrative policies. The public bodies from the Catalan administration which manage migration are also facing the challenge to integrate newcomers through the present Catalan model of social integration and inclusion. A new Catalonia is emerging so it is necessary to prepare institutions and citizens for the changes in order to prevent these new migrations from creating new social divisions.

The objective of this research group is to investigate the role of languages, including immigrant languages and international linguae francae (English in particular) in addition to the two local languages, in the reception and incorporation process of foreign citizens in Catalonia. We propose a study of two sites, public health provision and non formal adult reception education, which are in control of the management of linguistic diversity, the key to prevent social exclusion.