“Can learning a language change your life?” Exploring the dynamics between mobilities and the development of plurilingual repertoires

Abstract

There are various and different social practices of mobility in the contemporary world, such as tourist travel, travel and migration of refugees, students’ travel, visits to friends and family and travel related to work, in its most varied and complex shapes (Urry, 2011). These new social practices became part of individuals’ life path. Since mobility involves space, time, other individuals, objects, technologies and differentiated relationships (Kaufmann et al., 2004; Urry, 2011) it has a great impact on individuals’ biographical journey. What is also intrinsically linked to the biographical journey of the subject is the development of his/her plurilingual repertoire, which is truncated and is influenced by the plurality and unpredictability of the subject trajectories (Blommaert, 2010). In this sense, the plurilingual repertoire is not stable and it is reconfigured in social interaction, adding new elements acquired in very different contexts (idem). Within this framework, we conducted a study with Higher Education students focusing on the reciprocal relationship between mobility trajectories and the development of plurilingual repertoires. We intend to comprehend how the dynamic of plurilingual repertoires’ development is influenced by the mobility experience and inherent social interactions. Similarly, the study also permits to understand to what extent the plurilingual repertoire has implications on the choice of mobility trajectories. To achieve these goals we used a biographical approach, namely biographical interviews (Demazière & Dubar, 2009), bearing in mind that this method is closely linked to individuals’ biographical trajectories. In this sense, we carried out biographical interviews with 12 Non-Traditional Adult Students (NTAS) attending the University of Aveiro in the academic year of 2010/2011. In this communication, we intend to present three individuals’ trajectories of mobility, relating them with the development of plurilingual repertoires. The results present mobility and linguistic practices as parts of a dynamic system, which have reciprocal influence. Thus, the analysis of the life course of these three individuals highlights the interactions between different types of mobility in the life trajectory of the migrant subject and his/her language biography (Simon & Thamin, 2010).