Writing Through Bureaucracy

Abstract

Contemporary international migration produces a great deal of bureaucratic writing activity. This article reports on a study of one bureaucratic literacy practice-correspondence-of 25 international migrants in the United States. Contextual and practice-based analysis of data collected through literacy history interviews shows that (a) by virtue of living transnational lives, migrant writers develop correspondence practices that seem vernacular, but in fact take on the hegemonic qualities of modern bureaucracy, and (b) when composing everyday correspondence, migrant writers, rather than being subject to bureaucracy's whims, take up bureaucratic roles that allow them to manage their own and others' economic and geographic mobility. These findings complicate claims that migrant correspondence simply maintains relationships or fosters cultural cohesion. Migrant writers, while often corresponding to keep in touch with family and friends elsewhere, also adopt the practices of bureaucracy, becoming participants in the management of people on the move.International migration has increased in the last two decades, with numbers rising from 154 million in 1990 to 232 million in 2013. A total of 46 million

What Is a Workplace? Principles for Bounding Case Studies of Genres, Processes, Objects, and Organizations

“…It often involves underestimating the invisible labor (e.g., Nardi & Engeström, 1999) performed by “unskilled” or “semi-skilled” workers (e.g., Karlsson, 2009; Marotta, 2021; Winsor, 2000). And it can be spread across not just organizational and professional but also national and cultural boundaries (Leonard, 2015; Oakey & Russell, 2014).…”