Regimes of language, whiteness and social class: The negotiation of sociolinguistic privileges by British migrants in rural France

Abstract

This ethnographic study of British migration in rural Brittany (France) reveals that the British benefit from positive attitudes towards their language, opening opportunities for them to access resources in English – a rare exception to the local monolingual ideology. The paper argues that the English language owes its specific place not only to its supranational status, but also to the consubstantial articulation of whiteness and class categorizations by migrants and the local population. Here, white privilege is built on the sharing of ideologies concerning language, ‘integration’ and otherness, enabling rearrangements of the language regime.