Call for papers

We invite the participation of researchers who are committed to exploring the contribution that language and literacy studies, interacting with social theory and ethnographic perspectives, can make to emergent understandings of mobility and migrancy. The conference will feature key contributions from core participants in the three AILA Research Networks who are collectively hosting the conference as well as other invited scholars. We also aim to establish connections and conversations with a broader range of researchers and scholars. We plan that it will be an agenda-setting conference, in that we will aim to identify future directions for research and co-operation in mobility, language and literacy studies. Presentations will include a mix of theoretical and field-based contributions as well as panel discussions. There will be a blend of invited keynote addresses, themed sessions where a range of papers around a common topic will be presented, as well as working panels centred on core concerns and discussion of work in progress and planning.  

The conference will be organised around themes and issue-centred concerns, and there will be a core of invited contributions on these topics. We invite papers on topics such as:

• language and migration as transnational and translocal processes rather than one-way experiences of leaving one country or domain and entering another;

• the language or textual practices that help sustain transnational networks and make possible enduring translocal ties;

• language/ literacy and the relationship between geographic space and social identification

• multilingualism and the production of locality in the globalized era;

• linguistic innovation, cultural ‘mixing’, and transnational/translocal identities;

• the politics and practices of globalisation as they impact on language and literacy in social practice (including work and educational practices);

• language, literacy and social selection processes in education and in the workplace in multilingual settings (e.g., the role of language and literacy skills in recruitment processes or job performance, with attendant issues of measurement and evaluation);

• language and literacy teaching for migrants and acquisition of language proficiencies on the workfloor and in education;

• the language experiences and learning opportunities of children as the resources of family intersect with institutions such as schools;

• social networks as channels through which social class and ethnic group membership devolve into experiences of language;

• trust, solidarity and language practices in transnational and translocal social networks

• the capitalization by employers of migrant language skills in the management of multilingualism (through commodification of language and identity and/or the (non)-recognition of crucial multilingual practices);

• the role of language in the regulation of labour market related migration trajectories;

• standardised education, training and assessment practices in relation to the multilingual resources of border-crossing and otherwise mobile persons and groups;

• intertwinings of class and ethnicity and their influence on learning and learning identities; ethnicity and class as processual, linguistic and interactional concepts;

• situated cognition, social identification, and academic learning in multilingual, multinational, and multiethnic classroom contexts;

• gendered migration, work opportunities and educational outcomes;

• ‘field sites’ and ‘home sites’ in transnational and translocal ethnographic research;

• relationships between reading, writing, work, and class amongst migrant and mobile groups of people and individuals 

Secretariat: Christine Anthonissen, Rajendra Chetty, Ana Deumert, Charlyn Dyers, Tommaso Milani, Mastin Prinsloo, Christopher Stroud 

Conference organisers: Mastin Prinsloo, Christopher Stroud, Mike Baynham, Tommaso Milani and Stef Slembrouk 

Consultative committee: David Barton (Lancaster), Mike Baynham (Leeds), Raj Mesthrie (UCT), Sinfree Makoni (Penn. State), Bonny Norton (British Columbia), Stef Slembrouk (Ghent) 

 Conference Fees: Early registration (before 31 August 2010) - ZAR1300; Late registration ZAR 1500. Currency converter website  - www.xe.com
(Note that the conference fee has increased slightly since our First Call for Papers, to meet an increase to the budget as a result of moving the conference from the Waterfront to the Vineyard hotel. There will be no further changes to the fee amount.)