Silvia Pessoa

A Portrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar

Though transnational labor migration in the Gulf States has increasingly been of scholarly interest, that scholarship has to date relied largely on qualitative ethnographic methodologies or small non-representative sampling strategies. This paper presents the findings of a large representative sample of low-income migrant laborers in Qatar. The data describe the basic characteristics of the low-income migrant population in Qatar, the process by which migrants obtain employment, the frequency with which this population of migrants encounters the problems and challenges described by previous ethnographic work, and the role played by nationality, ethnicity, and religion in patterning that experience. While the findings generally affirm many of the claims made in earlier ethnographic studies, they provide a means by which the extent of these problems and challenges can be ascertained more directly.

The language of sustainability: From the basic writing classroom to professional discourse

Understanding and describing professional practice, especially in Engineering and the Sciences, has always been at the heart of research in Professional Communication. Several significant field research projects have showed us that content knowledge alone is not sufficient to claim disciplinary expertise; a rhetorical understanding of the discipline and its ways of thinking is essential in achieving full participation in the field. Most professionals would expect that such a sophisticated approach can only be learned through on-the-job training or opportunities to interact with practitioners within authentic disciplinary contexts. Although this can certainly be the case in many instances, we argue that a rhetorical understanding can be enacted even within a freshman writing classroom. The results of our content and rhetorical analyses of student work from the beginning and the end of a course on academic writing with the theme of sustainability show that students were able in one semester to write in discipline-appropriate ways and understand the rhetorical strategies necessary to become part of a disciplinary conversation. The implications of our findings can extend into the way we design courses in basic writing or professional communication and the ways we can use pre-assessment data to drive our course design decisions.