The New Immigrant Europe: Languages and Borderlands Conference
March 11 - 12 at 1080 Foreign Languages Building, Lucy Ellis Lounge, 707 S Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Presented by the European Union Center, The School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, and The Centre Pluridisciplinaire of the Department of French.
Webcasts of the opening address and keynote from the conference are now online.
Europe has been at the center of a considerable regional and transnational labor migration since the beginning of industrialization. After World War Two transnational movements of workers and their families accelerated, especially within and into the countries of the European Union. As the borders of the EU expanded, countries included in the immigration wave have grown in number and the origins of the immigrant populations have also become more diverse. Even though EU membership states have devoted considerable resources to regulating and analyzing migration within their borders and within the EU at large, the political, legal and social ramifications of migration are often unanticipated. Especially the social and cultural changes that the new migration brings have been difficult to absorb in many regions of Europe.
The conference focuses on language, literary voice and the social and cultural life around the new EU borderlands associated with immigrants and migration. The talks cast light on language and culture, themes that connect broader social policies with cultural life and national identity of countries within the European Union. Highlighting research by U of I faculty and guests speakers, we explore especially the developments in the somewhat neglected borderlands of Europe in the East, Southwest and West.
The conference will begin Thursday evening with an introductory speaker, Professor Anthony Messina, a political scientist from Trinity College in Connecticut. Prof. Messina has widely published on recent immigration into the European Union and he will set a frame of history and policies for this topic. On the conference day itself, we will open with a talk by Professor Guus Extra, a specialist in Multilingualism in Europe. Prof. Extra (University of Tilburg, Netherlands) has widely written on languages, minorities and immigrants in the European Union.
Before the conference begins, Professor Extra will speak Thursday afternoon at a weekly Linguistics Seminar.
Schedule of Events
Opening Address: "Is Europe Too Diverse? The Implications of 'Super' Diversity for European Citizenship, Identity, and Political Community", Thursday March 11
6:00 pm.
Location: 1080 Foreign Languages Building (FLB), Lucy Ellis Lounge, 707 S Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
[webcast]
Anthony M. Messina, Political Science, Trinity College (CT) , with introduction by EUC Director Robert Pahre.
A key question raised by conditions of 'super diversity' within contemporary Europe is whether or not they are eroding the intra- and inter-societal solidarity and cohesion required for a meaningful European citizenship, identity, and political community to emerge. As defined here, super diversity is the extreme proliferation of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and/or racial subcultures and identities within and beyond national borders. This address observes that it is not so much the objective conditions of super diversity which imperil solidarity and cohesion, but rather the field of opportunity that it ploughs for the political ascension of exclusionary nationalisms and nationalist groups.
Keynote: "Dealing with Increasing Linguistic Diversity in Multicultural Europe", Friday, March 12
9:00 - 10:00 am
Location: 1080 Foreign Languages Building (FLB), Lucy Ellis Lounge, 707 S Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
[webcast]
Guus Extra, Language & Culture Studies, University of Tilburg, Netherlands, with introduction by Doug Kibbee, Director, School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics
Linguistic diversity is generally conceived of as a constituent characteristic of Europe's identity. However, some languages play a more important role in the European public and political discourse on "celebrating linguistic diversity" than other languages. The constellation of languages in Europe actually functions as a descending hierarchy of English as lingua franca for transnational communication, the national or "official state" languages of European countries, regional minority languages and immigrant minority languages across Europe. Whereas the national languages of Europe are celebrated most at the EU level, with English increasingly on top, regional minority languages are celebrated less and immigrant minority languages least.
Against the background of ongoing processes of globalisation and international migration, inclusive perspectives will be offered on the constellation of all of these languages as part of Europe's identity. The focus of the talk will be on phenomenological, demolinguistic and educational perspectives in dealing with both regional minority and immigrant minority languages across European nation-states.
Panel: "The Languages and Literary Voices of the New Europe", Friday, March 12
10:15-12:15 pm
Location: 1080 Foreign Languages Building (FLB), Lucy Ellis Lounge, 707 S Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
- Chair: Jean-Philippe Mathy, Department of French and Comparative & World Literature, University of Illinois
- Waïl Hassan, Comparative & World Literature, University of Illinois:
"Arab Immigrant Autobiography in the United States." Abraham Mitrie Rihbany's two autobiographies, *A Far Journey* (1914) and *The Hidden Treasure of Rasmola* (1920), share with the writings of other early Arab-American writers like Ameen Rihani and Kahlil Gibran an intense preoccupation with the representation of the Arab world in the Euro-American knowledge system known as Orientalism: those writers were by and large influenced by it but at the same time they attempted to contest or to refine some of its representations. Rihbany works also share with that of immigrants from other ethnic groups certain ideological and discursive features that have come to define U.S. immigrant autobiography. This paper traces the sometimes conflicting investments of an early Arab-American autobiographer, which reveal the complex patterns of identification and contestation that defined the nascent tradition of Arab-American literature. - Yasemin Yildiz, Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois:
"Literary Multilingualism and Migrant Creativity in Contemporary Germany" In this talk I explore the relationship between multilingual everyday practices emerging as a result of migration and forms of literary multilingualism in migration literature that draw on these practices. Considering specifically German literature of Turkish migration, I aim to identify the contribution of literature to debates about language and migration in contemporary Europe. Ultimately, I trace how claims to migrant linguistic creativity, whether of actual speakers or of literary authors, have been a politically charged and contested site in these debates. - Leïla Ennaili, Department of French, University of Illinois:
20th Century Immigration narratives and France's Southern Border. The southern border of France has been the point of entry for many different immigration waves throughout France's history, from economic migrants to refugees. Considered as France's "door to the Orient," this southern border is also the result of complex relationships with the bordering European countries. Examining 20th century immigration narratives, this paper focuses on the various meanings of the border crossing episode in the immigrant's journey. Very often described as a defining moment, the crossing of the border reveals as much on the immigrant's new status as on the "host" country's national grand narrative. - Commentator: Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Department of French, University of Illinois
Panel: "New Immigrants and Borderlands", Friday, March 12
1:45-3:45 pm
Location: 1080 Foreign Languages Building (FLB), Lucy Ellis Lounge, 707 S Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
- Chair: Dorothee Schneider, History, University of Illinois
- Andrew Asher, Anthropology, University of Illinois:
"Non-Citizens of a Non-State? Third Country Nationals, EU Citizenship, and the Exclusions of "Schengenland"
Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2003 and 2009 in the border cities of Frankfurt(Oder), Germany, and Słubice, Poland, this paper examines how exclusionary citizenship practices codified in the laws and regulations of the European Union organize the daily experiences of "third country" nationals (citizens of countries that are not EU-members) living in the cities' transnational urban space. With an emphasis on the implementation of the Schengen acquis-the EU's common policies on cooperation in law enforcement, visas, and the management of its borders--this paper examines the ways in which third country nationals are categorized as a group separate from EU citizens and excluded from the exercise of EU citizenship by governing practices that place limits on their freedom of movement. - Angèle Smith, Anthropology, University of Northern British Columbia:
Mapping Migration in the Transnational Landscapes of Ireland: Social and Spatial Exclusion/Inclusion
Ireland, once a place of emigration, is now a destination place for asylum seekers and economic immigrants. In this paper, I map the engineered spatiality of this transnational migration landscape. For asylum seekers in particular, Irish State policy governs where and how they can live while awaiting the decision on their refugee status. Housed in state operated accommodation centers around the country, the spatial governance of asylum seekers in Ireland creates a structured, exclusionary and liminal transnational landscape of difference. Thus the State controls the movement, social borders, place, and identity of asylum seekers in Ireland. - Michele Koven, Department of Communications, University of Illinois:
Performing and Critiquing "French" and "Portuguese" Identities: How Daughters of Portuguese Migrants in France Link Categories of Language, Space, Time, and Person in Everyday Talk.
Recent scholarship has addressed the impact of ideologies of normative monolingualism and monoculturalism on the linguistic practices and identities of sociolinguistic minorities in the European Union (Blommaert et al 2005; Gal 2006; Jaffe 1999; Koven 2004, 2007). This paper addresses how daughters of Portuguese migrants in France experience "France" and "Portugal" as monoliths, relative to which they position their hybrid existence. Specifically, I address how these women contrast France and Portugal, by talking about Portuguese and French identity categories in terms of types of spaces, times, and people. In particular, they contrast French and Portuguese spaces, times, and persons as relatively more "old"/oldfashioned vs youthful/modern. They equate and conflate chronological notions of "old" with rural, prerevolutionary, Portuguese "old-fashionedness" and chronological notions of "young" with urban, post-1968, French modernity/"youthfulness," linking notions of "age" with Portuguese and French patterns of speech, dress, consumption, and courtship. In this way, this paper shows how participants experience their families' countries of emigration/immigration in terms of spatio-temporally situated identity categories.
Concluding remarks by Professors Messina and Extra, Friday, March 12
4:00-5:00 pm
Location: 1080 Foreign Languages Building (FLB), Lucy Ellis Lounge, 707 S Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
(Pre-Conference) Linguistics Seminar Featuring Professor Extra: "Mapping urban multilingualism in European multicultural cities", Thursday March 11
4:00pm
Location: 1080 Foreign Languages Building (FLB), Lucy Ellis Lounge, 707 S Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Across Europe, research on documenting the distribution and vitality of home language repertoires of multicultural (school) populations has been carried out in a number of urban/metropolitan areas. International migration and multilingualism concentrate in such settings. The same holds for intergenerational processes of acculturation ad language shift. Moreover, cities are the primary spaces where urban planners create local policies on multiculturalism and multilingualism, and in this way reinforce translocaland (trans)national dynamics in dealing with language and diversity.
The status of immigrant languages at home and at school in six continental European cities has recently been documented in the crossnational and crosslinguistic Multilingual Cities Project, carried out under the auspices of the European Cultural Foundation in Göteborg, Hamburg, The Hague, Brussels, Lyon and Madrid. Against this background, the following topics will be discussed:
- Prototypical examples of urban studies on multilingualism
- Rationale and goals of the Multilingual Cities Project
- Data collection, data processing and data analysis
- Distribution of languages across cities
- Specification of language profiles and language vitality
- Crosslinguistic perspectives on language vitality
- Impact of the MCP and follow-up studies
