Alexandre Duchêne

Ideologies across nations : the construction of linguistic minorities at the United Nations

The book is an invitation to a genealogical understanding of the ideological and discursive processes that have emerged out of the regulation of linguistic minorities issues within an international context and, more precisely, at the United Nations. It highlights the contradictions, limits and possibilities in the elaboration of international measures within the universalist framework of human rights. The book also emphasizes the paradoxes between national interests and the elaboration of an international community- paradoxes in which minority issues fundamentally question the homogeneity of the state. It shows that despite the shift from national spaces to international ones, the fears of nation-states for linguistic minorities remain. Finally, the book reveals the importance of the reproduction of the interests of nation-states within an international organization and the reproduction of power through the legal management and regulation of minority rights in general, and those of linguistic minorities in particular. Through its presentation of the history of the United Nations, its vision of the protection of linguistic minorities, the underlying ideologies that have emerged, as well as the limits and possibilities of action, the book contributes to a better understanding of the complexity of the protection of linguistic minorities and the role of language ideologies within an international context.

Treating language as an economic resource: Discourse, data and debate

Can language be a commodity? In recent years, along with other colleagues, we have developed arguments that language is increasingly treated as a commodity in late capitalism (Tan and Rubdy 2008; Heller 2010; Duchene and Heller 2012; Park and Wee 2012). This argument has been the subject of three major types of critique: The first comes from linguistic minority theorists, the second from the field of “language economics,” and the third from Marxist approaches to language and commodification. We begin by briefly summarizing our argument and by making explicit the assumptions behind it, specifically those that orient us to the material we discuss in ways which differ from those of our critics (rendering straightforward ‘debate’ actually quite difficult). We conclude with a discussion of how the consideration of whether language (or, as we prefer to say, communicative resources) can be commodified opens questions for further research. We should begin by saying that one thing that frequently arises as an issue in these debates is what idea of language underlies them. We draw on Bourdieu (1982) to argue that language can be understood as a social practice that consists of circulating communicative resources. Those resources are modes of meaning-making that include social organization and therefore lie at the heart of the ways in which the social, cultural, political, and economic are inherently intertwined. Having said that, we need to recognize that the processes of commodification we claim to observe usually are based on a quite different idea of what language is; namely, they draw on the idea of language as an autonomous system that can be constructed both as an emblem of authentic identity and as a technical skill – an idea that crystallized around industrial capitalism and its connection to the nation-state (Heller 2007). Our critics, as we shall see, themselves grapple with the question of the ontological status of language, albeit not necessarily from the same position as each other or from the position that we authors adopt. The next section details how our ideas about linguistic commodification emerged in an attempt to account for phenomena we saw emerging as we were looking at something else.

Beyond the Nation-State: International Agencies as New Sites of Discourses on Bilingualism

Since the rise of the nation-state in the nineteenth century, issues of bi/multilingualism have generally been debated within the context of nation-states and their institutions. This explains historical emphases on constitutional rights for linguistic minorities within specific nations, and on implementation of structures of regulation of bi/multilingualism in state-run institutions. In the last several decades, however, the nation-state has been displaced as the major site of discursive production on bi/multilingualism. In its place supranational organizations such as the United Nations (UN), and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Linguapax, Terralingua and the Foundation for Endangered Languages are emerging as the primary sites at which debates on multilingualism are taking place.

Language, integration, and investment: The regulation of diversity in the context of unemployment

Abstract Drawing on an ethnography in regional employment offices in a French-German canton in Switzerland, it is the aim of this article to articulate the complexities involved in the practices revolving around and geared towards the role of language competences in the process of professional reintegration, particularly so with regards to migrants who speak a different language. When comparing two cases of unemployed migrant job seekers and the variable treatment by their respective consultants, we will discuss the logics, ideologies, and discourses underlying the institutional regulation of the diverse body of unemployed migrants. We argue that in particular two discourses emerged in our fieldwork that seem to frame the variable approaches: the discourse of integration and the discourse of investment. It is in the interplay, tension, and confluence of the two discourses where “language” appears as a specific point of contestation. In other words: the consideration of language competences as productive for someone’s employability finally appears as highly variable and contingent on individual factors.

How to ask questions on language?: Ideological struggles in the making of a state survey

Abstract The purpose of this article is to analyze the conducting of a state survey on language and to highlight the ideological tensions that are embedded in the search for an appropriate formulation of a question, as well as in the conduct of the survey interviews. Relying on historiographic data, as well as on interactional data, and focusing on the opening question of the survey that deals with the main language(s) of the respondent, defined as the language(s) they know the best, we first explore the origin and the history of this question in the Swiss census. Second, we examine how, by whom, and with what rationales the main language question has been formulated and selected within in the most recent survey. Finally, we analyze how this question is enacted in the interactions between interviewers and respondents. By engaging in a genealogical examination of language questions in Swiss censuses, we provide insight into the ideological formation in which these questions are embedded, revealing conflicting and ambiguous interests, thus implying complications and uncertainties with regard to interpretations of available census data.

The Uneven Recognition of Language Investment for Employability

This chapter presents two case studies that attest to an uneven recognition of language competences on the labour market. They are telling cases for the valorisation and devalorisation of existing linguistic capital depending on factors independent of the job seekers’ efforts. As such, these particular cases challenge the widespread opinion of rewarding language investment and competences and their conversion potential on the labour market. In both cases, the job seekers have invested a lot of time and money in their multilingual competences. The two cases thus show that language investment can gain or lose value for employability depending on circumstances, life situations, or life span.

The Logic of Return on Language Investment in the Allocation of Resources for Employability

This chapter presents three case studies of job seekers—all with migratory background, but with different qualifications and professional experiences—as telling cases for the logic of return on language investment for the allocation of resources for employability. While the qualified job seeker is granted courses in the local language to improve his employability, no investment is realised in the language competences of the two other job seekers that have no officially recognized qualifications for the Swiss labour market. The analysis of their consultations in the employment office thus manifests a differential treatment of job seekers depending on their ‘value’, related to the expectations of consultants concerning the return on investment in a specific labour market measure.

The Politics of Investment and Employability in the Public Employment Service

This chapter introduces the historical and legal development of public employment service and its institutions in Switzerland, most importantly the Regional Employment Offices (REO), the official institution in charge of job seekers. In this context, it discusses labour market measures (LMM), which are the main instrument of the REO’s activation policy to improve the employability of job seekers. It focuses on the internal guidelines of the Canton of Fribourg for the allocation of LMM, namely language courses, which are based on the logic of return on investment. This chapter allows for a better understanding of the various logics of how and why investment and employability operate within bureaucratic institutions.

Language Investment and Employability: An Introduction

The introduction outlines the theoretical and empirical background of a critical sociolinguistic ethnography on the role of language competences in the process of the public employment service. The two key concepts ‘language investment’ and ‘employability’ are discussed and their implied correlation is challenged by pointing to the complex social, political, and economic processes through which languages become valued, recognised, or ignored when looking for a job. The introduction further entails the description of the methodological and analytical framework of this ethnographic research project on the site of the Regional Employment Offices in the Swiss Canton of Fribourg. Finally, it presents the publication’s aim to unpack the discursive construction of language competences as an element of employability and relating it to the uneven distribution of resources.

Concluding Considerations About Language Investment and Employability from a Political Economic Perspective

The concluding chapter offers a short summary of the individual case studies and the conclusions drawn from them. Against the backdrop of these ethnographic insights, the authors argue for the adoption of a political economic perspective in discussing the following three points: First, the functional vagueness of ‘language’ as a factor for employability; second, the value language investments allocates to certain job seekers, and, connected to this point, third, the effects of the decapitalisation of the resources of yet other job seekers. Language investment and employability thus cannot be thought independently of the political economy surrounding its discursive interlinkages and social practices. The differential treatment is not only institutional, but reinforces societal structures, positioning non-qualified migrants at the substratum and marginalising them further.