Trajectory of a language broker: between privilege and precarity

ABSTRACT

This paper offers an ethnographic case study of Tomasz, a Polish construction worker, and his professional trajectory as well as daily work life on Norwegian construction sites. The study is based on observations, interviews, and recordings of Tomasz’s daily workplace activities and interactions. The Norwegian construction industry is characterized by socioeconomic stratification between permanently employed ‘local’ and temporarily leased ‘migrant’ workers. Moreover, due to a high degree of migrant workers in the industry, Norwegian construction sites are often de facto multilingual workplaces. This condition entails that multilingual communication and workers with the ‘right’ language repertoires become valuable. Their value, however, can be volatile and easily appropriated and redefined, as the case of Tomasz will demonstrate. On the one hand, Tomasz, as a worker with the ‘right’ language repertoire, gains agency and social recognition as being indispensable. Yet, on the other hand, this linguistic valuation also enables continued differentiation and distinction between ‘migrant’ and ‘local’ workers. This study contributes to understanding workers’ investments in language learning, the conditions of these investments, and how their trajectories make these investments feasible to the workers but also to the companies that hire and lease them.

KEYWORDS:

• Multilingualism
• labour migration trajectories
• language brokers
• construction industry

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the special issue editors, Maria Sabaté Dalmau and Maria Rosa Garrido Sardà, the anonymous reviewers, as well as Beatriz Lorente and Eva Codó for their feedback and comments on previous versions of the article. I would also like to thank Spencer Hazel, Katherine Kappa, Dorte Lønsman and Janus Mortensen for their input to this work during discussions within the TMC project team (www.tmc.ku.dk). All remaining shortcomings of course remain my responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Kamilla Kraft http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4721-6207

Notes

1 Names of individual participants and companies have been changed for purposes of anonymisation. All research procedures conformed to the ethics of academic work and informed consent was granted by all participants to generate and use all data for scientific dissemination purposes.

2 Original: ‘Ale chciałem spróbować czegoś innego. Przyjeżdżając tu, no:::, coś się zostawiło w domu, pracę się z dnia na dzień rzuciło, i nie mogłem sobie pozwolić na to, żeby wrócić po półtora czy po dwóch miesiącach yyyyy z niczym. Więc taka nawet jakaś złość czy samozaparcie w sobie iii ten norweski no musiałem się uczyć, żeby, żeby tą pracę jakoś tam’.

3 Original: ’Det er et föredöme … for hur dem polske arbeidskraften skal og bør oppföre sig. Så han er top of the line. Hvis tomasz er på toppen, så er der mange som når opp til åtti procent. Merparten ligger på femti, femtifem’.

4 Original: ‘Og de polakkene som Tomasz jobber med her, de føler de får respekt av Tomasz. Han styrer det ikke sånn steinhart som hans (han som var her før). De får respekt, med andre ord’.

5 Original: ‘Zgadza się, mhm yyy Im jest wygodniej załatwić y klienta takiego jak Great Buildings gdzie wpuszcza 15 ludzi a jeden umie dwa słowa po norwesku. No przykładowo tak jak ja, no ja tam może jakoś się dogadam, cho, aczkolwiek ja wiem, że mój norweski, to jest bardzo słaby. Ale on już wychodzi z takiego założenia, że ja już załatwię wszystko I ja tu muszę latać jak pies po budowie’.

6 Original: ‘Zgadza się, mhm yyy Im jest wygodniej załatwić y klienta takiego jak Great Buildings gdzie wpuszcza 15 ludzi a jeden umie dwa słowa po norwesku. No przykładowo tak jak ja, no ja tam może jakoś się dogadam, cho, aczkolwiek ja wiem, że mój norweski, to jest bardzo słaby. Ale on już wychodzi z takiego założenia, że ja już załatwię wszystko I ja tu muszę latać jak pies po budowie’.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by MultiLing: Centre for Multilingualism in Society across the Life-Span under the Norwegian Research Council’s scheme of Centres of Excellence (grant no. 223265), as well as the project Transient multilingual communities and the formation of social and linguistic norms, (grant no: 6107-00351) The Danish Council for Independent Research, Humanities.