Mi-Cha Flubacher Libros

This book provides a unique insight into negotiations around language investment for employability in the context of public employment services. Drawing on extensive ethnographical research carried out in Regional Employment Offices in Switzerland, the authors follow the stories of various job seekers. In doing so, they challenge the currently dominant assumption that investment in language competences leads to better employability. Arguing for a political economic perspective on these issues, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the connections between language and social inequality, as well as students and scholars of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.

The discourse that language is the key to integration has gained momentum all over Europe, including in Switzerland, where language regulations have been introduced to integration policies, thus tightening conditions for migrants. This becomes evident in the legal materialization of the discourse in the form of “language articles” in the national law on the foreign population and in the cantonal law of integration in Basel-Stadt. This discourse, referred to as “integration through language”, is critically analyzed in this publication with the aim to understand its emerging conditions, its broader societal role and political function. The analysis is based on a critical sociolinguistic perspective and on a Foucauldian understanding of discourse. It draws 1) on documents and recordings related to the law drafting processes on the national level and on the cantonal level of Basel-Stadt, and 2) on interviews with experts and actors mainly from Basel-Stadt. It is shown how the discourse is based on ideologies of language and society, on the basis of which a discussion on the function of this very discourse is launched.