African migration in Finland: multilingual repertoire through language practices, learning and ideologies

Application summary

The aim of this sociolinguistic and ethnographic project provides an emic perspectives on multilingual socialisation processes, practices, learning and ideologies among African migrants in Helsinki, Finland. It investigates the roles of standard languages strategies, as it is very common to expect migrants to acquire the language of their new country of residence. As multilingualism is the norm and not monolingualism: how do African migrants’ encounters with the Finnish linguistic context illustrates the complexity of multilingualism in Finland’s society? Since African migrants are already multilingual, what languages are activated or downgraded in the migration process? In this project, I investigate these questions through African migrants from so-called "francophone" countries. This focus is of great societal relevance to understand how multilingual migrants position themselves vis-à-vis monolingually oriented institutions, and how their repertoires undergo dynamic changes. The role of French is of particular interest given that it is viewed as the language with the greatest linguistic capital their and enters direct competition with English in Finland, expected to be mastered by immigrants because it has become the dominant lingua franca. This project foregrounds the central question of how linguistic repertoires are reconfigured in migration, raising issues not only of communicative adaptation but also of identity, power, and loyalty. Against this backdrop, several key questions emerge: How do African migrants’ encounters with the Finnish linguistic context illustrate the complexity of multilingualism in Finland’s society? How do migrants value their linguistic repertoires strategies through mobility and employability over the affective value of identity? To what extent does French continue to operate as a language of symbolic prestige?