Lifestyle residents in Barcelona: a biographical perspective on linguistic repertoires, identity narrative and transnational mobility

Abstract

The popularization of lifestyle migration epitomizes the individualization of contemporary lives, and the centrality of travel and spatial relocation in people’s aspirational or real life projects. This article examines the processes of sociolinguistic relocation of “lifestylers” in the polylingual city of Barcelona through the lens of their embracing or rejection of Catalan, the non-state, local co-official language. It aims to decipher to what extent these individuals see Catalan as relevant to their transnational life experiences, and how this relevance is embedded in their relational-emotional experiences and evolving sense of self. This article, which examines two life stories gathered through ethnographic interviewing, is framed within biographical-experiential approaches to the multilingual repertoire. The analysis shows that by assembling different narrative bits and by examining in detail the small stories informants tell to ground their accounts, a complex picture of language (dis)appropriation emerges. It argues that national identity rhetoric is a discursive strategy deployed by narrators to partly make sense and partly rationalize what is a complex bundle of identity (re)constitution reasons, emotional stances and interpersonal power dynamics. The article concludes by arguing that presences or absences in people’s repertoire are embodied struggles for personal coherence.

Edulingualism: linguistic repertoires, academic tasks and student agency in an English-dominant university

“…Unlike participants with conflicting views on being multilingual in previous research (e.g. Codó, 2018;Curdt-Christiansen, 2016), most students in this study feel fortunate to be plurilingual (e.g. Ar: "I am lucky to speak several languages").…”

“…do; I can't divide myself." The identity performance in his narrative also resonates with views of repertoires as linguistic representations of a person's life stories, their struggles and successes across space and time (Busch, 2012;Codó, 2018;Wei, 2011).…”

“…Research in this area has highlighted the importance of recognising linguistic repertoires as resources, rather than barriers, for a number of purposes such as identity performance and learning and socialising in educational contexts (e.g. Canagarajah, 2013;Codó, 2018;Cooke, Bryers & Winstanley, 2018;Lin, 2013;Preece et al, 2018). In a recent study of English-as-anadditional-language university learners in Canada, Marshall and Marr (2018, p. 34) concluded that repertoires are socially and discursively constructed, hybrid, in flux and "negotiated between languages and identities".…”

Marketing university students as mobile multilingual workers: the emergence of neoliberal lifestylers

“…Following a political economic approach to language in social life (Flubacher, Duchêne, & Coray, 2018), attitudes and identities are conceived of as being ingrained into the 'macro' socioeconomic and political structures (of the EHEA, in this case) and into the situated 'micro' local context in which individuals socialize. In these lines, university policy and planning are envisioned as historicised forms of sociopolitical action (Codó, 2018a) which dictate what tertiary-education models are legitimate for each social segment of the university community.…”

“…Excerpt 1 illustrates, too, that narratives of study/stay-abroad mobility contain a high degree of self-reflexivity revealing strategically planned projects aimed at carving a distinctive, exceptional identity for oneself (Codó, 2018a;Oliver & O'Reilly, 2009). Examples of these included projected mobilities to 'global' places allowing for exposure to minimum two dominant foreign languages for 'multilingual competence' maximization, because mobility to English-speaking regions was seen as 'too mainstream'.…”