Migrant NGO practitioners in Finland: Discourses on language, integration and employment
Main funder
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 28 800,00
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/01/2018
Project end date: 31/12/2018
Summary
In recent years, language has become a policy priority in Finland and has been established as a key factor in migrants’ labour market integration in academic studies. So far, however, relatively few ethnographic studies have been conducted on the migrants working in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the linguistic resources that are important for their working life integration or their language practices in the workplace. The proposed linguistic ethnographic study focuses on migrant NGO practitioners, that is, employees, apprentices, trainees, interns, volunteers and their supervisors. The study analyses working life trajectories and linguistic resources of migrant NGO practitioners by cross-examining their practices and narratives at the micro level and situating them within the macro level of Finnish state policies on language, integration and employment. The study also explores multi-sited language policies and practices in the offline and online settings of the NGO as a workplace. The research includes different types of multilingual data collected through participant observations and interviews. The analytical framework of the study draws on the traditions of narrative and discourse analysis.
