Engineering Commodifiable Workers: Language, Migration and the Governmentality of the Self

Autor/in	Del Percio, Alfonso
Titel	Engineering Commodifiable Workers: Language, Migration and the Governmentality of the Self
Quelle	In: Language Policy, 17 (2018) 2, S.239-259 (21 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1568-4555
DOI	10.1007/s10993-017-9436-4
Schlagwörter	Migrant Workers; Language Planning; Second Language Learning; Labor Market; Foreign Countries; Ethnography; Career Counseling; Socialization; Professional Identity; Immigrants; Public Policy; Guidance Centers; Futures (of Society); Expertise; Commercialization; Second Languages; Communication Skills; Italy + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Wanderarbeiter; Sprachwechsel; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Labour market; Arbeitsmarkt; Ausland; Ethnografie; Socialisation; Sozialisation; Immigrant; Immigrantin; Immigranten; Öffentliche Ordnung; Guidance center; Counseling center; Counseling centers; Beratungsstelle; Future; Society; Zukunft; Expert appraisal; Second language; Zweitsprache; Kommunikationsstil; Italien
Abstract	This article examines the strategies and forms of expertise on language and communication mobilized to engineer commodifiable migrant workers. Drawing on an ethnographic account of counselling practices in a state-run Italian job guidance centre for newly arrived migrants, I examine the calculations, tactics, and forms of expertise on language and communication mobilised by job counsellors. Here, I illustrate how these tactics regulate, or "police", migrants' communicational conduct and promote their socialisation into a desirable professional self that can be commodified on the Italian job market. In doing so, I demonstrate that the state's investment in the policing of migrants and the commodifiability of their labour is an investment in a larger project of societal consent for both the arriving migrants and for the forms of precarity they are believed to embody in Italy. At the same time, I argue this state agenda should not make us blind to the fact that the individuals and actors, including professional counsellors, working in these job guidance centres seem ready to invest a great deal into these spaces in the interest of pursuing another, more emancipated agenda. Indeed, in my paper I aim to demonstrate that job guidance centres are also spaces of hope where people work to support migrants who are preparing themselves for a viable future and attempting to create the practical framework for their life projects. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01