“My grain of sand for society”: neoliberal freedom, language learning, and the circulation of ideologies of national belonging

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which neoliberal discourses of individual freedom and choice come to typify Mexican migrants’ talk about what it means to be living in the USA and about themselves as learners of English. Interviews with migrants about the English language program Inglés Sin Barreras [English without Barriers] provide the context for these discursive displays. Inglés Sin Barreras is advertized repeatedly throughout the day on Spanish language TV, and it is an English language program that comprises 12 books, workbooks, CDs, and DVDs. Inglés Sin Barreras acts as a storehouse for ideas about personal freedom, citizenship, and the importance of English in belonging to the USA as a nation.

Keywords:

• Mexican transmigration
• commodification
• globalization
• neoliberalism
• language learning

Acknowledgements

The Spencer Foundation generously funded the larger ethnographic project, Consuming English: How Latin American transmigrants produce/reproduce themselves as new Americans through ideologies of language and the nation, from which the data analyzed for this article are derived.

Notes

1. I self-consciously use the term migrant, as per De Genova (2002), because it is a term migrants use for themselves, rather than immigrant, which represents them from an outsider’s point of view.

2. I thank an anonymous reviewer for helping me to think about this idea.

3. All names of study participants are pseudonyms.