Living between languages: poetic representations of migration experiences

The goal of my sabbatical year is to write a monograph that summarizes the extensive research I have conducted on language use from a migration perspective.

The book will be based on a linguistic ethnography; during a period of 20-years (2001–2021), I have followed six people who came to Sweden as adults.

This project has generated a large amount of data in the form of surveys, observations, language diaries, and portraits, but primarily it consists of recorded conversations.

The project is multidisciplinary and includes sociolinguistics, language philosophy, applied linguistics, and research on multilingualism.

To represent the participants’ lived experiences of language and show the changes that have taken place over time in their linguistic repertoires, I use a reflexive method based on the performative ability of poetry to convey experiences of living between languages. The method also highlights linguistic creativity.

My intention is to spend the sabbatical year at the Autonomous University of Madrid collaborating with MIRCo, an international research center that studies how language can create and maintain injustices, working to find solutions that can contribute to more inclusive and sustainable societies. My objective is to establish a long-term collaboration between my host and home institution.

I will also spend a month at Oxford University.

The aim of the project is to meet the challenges that society faces with increased migration and complex linguistic diversity.