10. Informal Economy and Language Practice in the Context of Migrations

Bridging Linguistics and Economics

“…Although this may well be the case for some migrants, there is no straightforward correlation between the length of residence and fluency in the host country's language. Depending on their social networks and types of economic activities, the migrants may have not only little exposure to the local language, even when they live in a non-ethnic enclave, but also no pressure to acquire it (Vigouroux 2013(Vigouroux , 2016. In addition, even when they are exposed actively or passively to the host country's language, the migrants may be in contact only with a variety that is devalued professionally or socially, which may be hard to convert into an important economic capital.…”

Language, communication, and the politics of hope: Solidarity and work in the Italian migration infrastructure

“…Second, in addition to their capacity to imbue commodities with social values, communicative practices also allow social workers to do work (such as engaging with stakeholders, coordinating work activities, marketing products, advising workers, and so on) (Boutet 2001b) and to manage valuable social relations and networks of reciprocity and obligation (Vigouroux 2013). Carlo and Fiona's ability to communicate and engage with a network of interlocutors who are able to distribute and give access to valued social resources is due, among other things, to their capacity to enact forms of communicative expertise that point to relations of sharedness, reciprocity, and loyalty (Narotzky and Besnier 2014).…”

Undocumented migration, informal economic work and peripheral multilingualism: challenges to neoliberal regimes?

“…I approach mobilities as mutually constitutive of spatial, socioeconomic and linguistic demobilisations, dislocations and moorings of a multi-factorial nature (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, 2006). I understand 'formal' and 'informal' economy as a continuum in the range of economic practices conducted to sustain a living and to access material resources in the neoliberal marketplace, which challenges perspectives that conceive of informal economy as including 'illegal' work tasks based on underground economic activities (Vigouroux, 2013). This view posits that informal work, like formal work, is socially and linguistically regimented and requires particular social capitals and experiences, including particular language resources.…”

“…Alfred recalls this work experience as a turning point in life; as a moment of relocalisation. He states that this work-motivated trajectory allowed him to get away from a burdensome life in Barcelona (line 21), and to gain networking capital to establish contacts with other Ghanaian acquaintances, who, in turn, provided him with more job prospects (line 23)bearing witness to the importance of the informal networks of support to access employment (Ajenjo et al, 2008 Data on transnational informal work and on its impact on migrant populations tend to be controversial and difficult to access (Vigouroux, 2013). There seems to be agreement, though, that local populations also engage in it, and that migrants organise unregistered economic activities in socialisation spaces where the 'grey market' already existed (Sànchez, 2008), contravening discourses presenting migrants as the promoters of 'illegality' enclaves.…”