Language Learning as a site for power and control: Lived Experiences of Agency and Structure in the Case of Adult Migrant Language Learners in Sweden.

Title:

Language Learning as a site for power and control: Lived Experiences of Agency and Structure in the Case of Adult Migrant Language Learners in Sweden.

Abstract: 

The present thesis aims to critically examine opportunities and limitations for language learning in migration times. This is achieved by exploring language learning “lived experiences” (Busch, 2017) of a group of adult migrants taking language classes in the so-called Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) in Sweden. Such an investigation is informed theoretically by Duchêne et. al's (2013) notion of ideological sites and Darvin and Norton’s (2015, 2021, 2023) notion of investment, which seeks to capture “the tensions between agency and structure, the freedom of learners to choose, and the limitations of choices made available to them” (Norton & Darvin, 2021:3). Through investment, the thesis illustrates the dynamic interplay between the migrant learners’ social conditions and their positioning in society, on the one hand, and the multiple limitations induced by ‘structure’, on the other hand. Methodologically, an ethnographic approach with a “sociable research dialogue” (Les Back & Sinha, 2019) has been used. Ethnography entailed the use of field notes and semi-structured interviews. Ethnographic insights into the micro-level of learners’ lived experiences were complemented with a corpus-assisted approach that sheds light on the macro ideologies about SFI in Swedish media discourse. Primary findings show how different ideological sites, particularly the school’s neoliberal practices and raciolinguistic ideologies, seem to impede the learners’ investment in the language. Furthermore, the social and linguistic mobility of learners is influenced by their temporal and spatial language lived experiences, thereby shaping the linguistic repertoires that are produced. Opportunities for language practice are limited due to decreased access to language use context, while social mobility is depicted by the participants as a delayed project due to experiences of ‘long’ and ‘dead’ time in the language school.