Workplace multilingualism in shifting contexts: A historical case

Abstract

Abstract:This article investigates linguistic diversity, migration, and labour in the case of a nineteenthcentury copper mine in the multilingual northern periphery of Norway. Taking a historical perspective on workplace multilingualism, it reveals the dynamic relationships between the economic interests and policy-making of an industrial enterprise and the political and sociolinguistic development in a multilingual region, at a time when national authorities introduced assimilation policies. Owned and managed by British industrialists, the mine recruited almost exclusively migrant workers to a remote fjord in the Norwegian periphery, many of them Kven from northern Finland and Sweden. In a multi-layered approach, the study sketches multilingual work practices, policy-making, and the discursive positioning of diversity, and explores the company's management of the relationships between capital, community, and nation-state. It reveals the company's flexible approach towards diversity governed by economic interest.

In the name of security: Governmentality apparatus in a multilingual mine in Arctic Finland

“…The previous research on language and mining has illustrated the long history of language contact and multilingual practices in mining communities (Aikman, 2017; Cornips & de Rooij, 2019; Hiss, 2017; Marzo, 2019; Muysken, 2019). The present study contributes to this research strand in the context of the current globalized mining industry.…”

“…Because mines are mostly located in peripheral areas, mining regions have for centuries been characterized by labor mobility and multilingual mining communities (see Cornips & Muysken, 2019; Pietikäinen, 2019; Hiss, 2017). Most of the research on language issues in mining has addressed historical cases (e.g.…”

“…Most of the research on language issues in mining has addressed historical cases (e.g. Cornips & de Rooij, 2019; Hiss, 2017; Marzo, 2019; Muysken, 2019). Ethnographic studies are rare, probably because gaining access to mining projects is challenging due to strict security procedures (see, however, Aikman, 2017; Bell, 2017; Kraft, 2020).…”

Discussion: Language in nature resource economies

“…These often overlap, compete and oppose each other, making both the governance and development of nature resource economies a volatile business. While exploitation and protection of air, water, and land are of continuing interest in the fields of ecology, law and geography, for instance, there are only a few studies that have examined language in nature resource economics (related to mining see, for example, Bell [2017], Brown [2008], Hiss [2017]). This is why the current special issue "Language in the mines" is a welcome and timely opening for research on the multiple ways that language matters in the extraction, circulation and protection of nature resources.…”

Managing people with language: language policy, planning and practice in multilingual blue-collar workplaces

“…Indeed, different ways of thinking about and tackling research on language and work are approached through distinct epistemological lenses acquired through researchers’ own disciplinary training, beliefs systems and ideological biases together with the sociohistorical structures and context that shape each study’s setting. While the pairing of language and work as a phenomenon to be studied isn’t really all that new (Boutet 2012 ; Hiss 2017 ), theories of economic and labor-market developments continue to transform. For example, the hegemonic discourses regarding the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism has been somewhat abandoned over the last decades and exchanged for a different narrative, which underscores creative industries, the ‘new’ knowledge economy, and ‘new’ capitalism along with it, within different schools of thought (i.e.…”