Abstract
This article analyses labour market experiences of migrants of non-Nordic origin who have settled in the Faroe Islands, a small North Atlantic archipelago with a population of about 51,000 people. By examining the experiences of educated migrant workers who are employed in three different blue-collar workplaces: a cleaning company and two fish-processing plants, evidence is drawn from a cross-disciplinary study on language and migration in the Faroe Islands. This study explores the experiences of migrants in acquiring, using and becoming “new speakers” of Faroese and the challenges they face regarding labour market access and participation. In this article, framed within an ethnography of language policy, we highlight the institutional language policies which may be shaping migrants’ experiences, and how migrants enact their own language policy decisions and practices on the ground. We focus in particular on internal communication and language management in the three blue-collar worksites, comprising views and voices of both employers and employees, on the language policies and practices observed in these workplaces, and on workers’ views on language learning opportunities in blue-collar workplaces. Added to this, attention is drawn to implications of limited language learning opportunities in blue-collar jobs (which become the main barrier to accessing skilled jobs), to underutilisation of professional skills, and to long term implications of present macro- and micro-level language policies and practices affecting lived realities of workers of migrant origin.
Highlights
“Employers could use us, but they don’t”
In this article we examine the experience of international migrants in acquiring, using and becoming new speakers of Faroese and the specific challenges this brings with respect to labour market access and participation
Our paper aims to contribute to the investigation of how language policies shape the lives of these new speakers and, in turn, the role that new speakers play as language policy actors on the ground
Summary
“Employers could use us, but they don’t”. These were the words of Joanna, a young, well-educated woman of migrant origin who works as a cleaner in a company in the Faroe Islands. A lot of the research on new speakers of minority languages has focused on the local population and the dynamics involved in acquiring and adopting a minority language as part of their linguistic repertoires Such processes entail another layer of complexity in the context of international migration where newcomers from outside the community can find themselves doubly-challenged by their outsider status, when it comes to gaining legitimacy and accessing resources. In this article we examine the experience of international migrants in acquiring, using and becoming new speakers of Faroese and the specific challenges this brings with respect to labour market access and participation These new speakers as transnational workers provide a lens through which the processes involved in accessing work can be explored, building on existing research around multilingual competence(s) in transnationally operating workplaces (see Duchêne et al 2013; Heller 2011). Our paper aims to contribute to the investigation of how language policies shape the lives of these new speakers and, in turn, the role that new speakers play as language policy actors on the ground (see Darquennes and Soler 2019)
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