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Donna Butorac uses longitudinal ethnography to study how language, race, and gender affect women migrants to Australia’s settlement trajectories and social inclusion.

Image courtesy of interviewee. February 8, 2024

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The speaker conducted research on language learning and identity among women participating in the Australian Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP), where they were teachers for nearly nine years. The AMEP, a federally funded program, offers English classes to new migrants with beginner to intermediate English proficiency. The study explored how learning English affected these women's sense of self, aspirations, and family relationships, also considering how societal constructs impact their identities.

The speaker noted a shift in the program's focus, as there was increased pressure from the government to align language education with economic goals, making English proficiency a commodity essential for employment rather than a tool for personal growth or cultural integration. This video video framing resulted in migrants being perceived as deficient in language skills, which led to self-blame when they faced barriers to employment, despite possessing functional levels of English. The research utilized qualitative methods, including interviews and focus groups, to understand the women's experiences over a 22-month period.

Findings highlighted the differences in experiences and feelings of inclusion among migrant women based on race, with European women expressing optimism about their future in Australia, while Asian women reported experiences of everyday racism and exclusion. The study emphasized that societal attitudes towards race and language proficiency significantly impact migrant success and highlighted the need for a more nuanced approach to language learning in settlement programs. It suggests recognizing migrants as emerging bilinguals rather than deficient English speakers and advocating for recognition of their full language capabilities in the labor market.

The speaker's findings will be included in a forthcoming book that combines data from multiple ethnographic studies, aiming to provide broader insights into language learning and social inclusion among migrants.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I did research on language learning

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and identity, among people

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who were studying in the Australian Adult Migrant English

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program, which we call A MEP for short.

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And I was working there as a teacher for about nine years.

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So this is a federally funded

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and administered settlement English program that provides

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subsidized language classes for new migrants,

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and the people who, who might have like beginner

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to intermediate levels

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of English proficiency on arrival in the country.

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So the program is delivered by organizations

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that successfully bid for fixed term contracts through,

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what's actually a competitive tendering process.

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Um, and historically this program has most often been

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delivered by state-based post-secondary

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colleges of further education.

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However, during the time that I was,

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working at the A MEP, we saw a successful move into

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that space by profit seeking private sector organizations

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that had built their brand really on providing fee

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for service, English language education

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for international students.

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And so at the A MEP, I often taught classes

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that were mostly made up of women,

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and I kind of, over a period

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of time developed a real curiosity about

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what it was like to be them.

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So I'm standing in front of them

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and they're sitting in front of me

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and I kept thinking, what's it like to be them sitting in

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that class learning English?

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In that context, I kind of wondered

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how it made them feel about themselves,

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and how it might be impacting their relationships

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and also their sense of the future of the kind of

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ideas about who they were,

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but also who they felt they could be in the world.

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Uh, and so this led me to design a study

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that was about language learning identity

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and gendered subjectivity, in the context of migration.

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And the aims were based around me wanting to find out

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how developing a voice in English might impact a woman's

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sense of self and her aspirations,

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and also her key family relationships.

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Uh, and I also wanted to understand how the way

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that she was being constructed in Australian society might

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be impacting her aspirational sense of self.

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And then to sort of at the same time compare this

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with her sense of her socialization,

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in her primary languages and her country of origin.

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So the A MEP has actually been

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around in Australia since the late 1940s,

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but it is evolved quite a bit over that time.

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And successive governments,

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and this doesn't matter whether they're conservative

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or center left, have always tied inward migration

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to economic development goals.

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But in the time that I was working, at the A MEP,

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which was in the early two thousands,

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we actually saw this connection between,

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inward migration and economic development goals being more

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overtly expressed within the framing of the contract terms

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of the A MEP

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and in the design of the language courses that we delivered.

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So it was also being expressed

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by politicians in their media statements

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and also in the presentations that some of them made to

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A MEP teachers and researchers.

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And so, for example, I was at a session

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where one government spokesperson told us

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that new arrivals who'd come from difficult circumstances

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were, described as very marketable in the workplace

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because of their willingness to do the jobs

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that Australians many Australians would reject.

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Um, and another federal minister describes the role

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of immigration as a job matching agency, for the nation

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because as he saw it,

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Australians were taking up the skilled work

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opportunities that were available.

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And so therefore, shortages of labor in the service sector

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and in regional regionally based industries would

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become more and more acute.

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So in this kind of context,

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the government was increasingly seeing the A MEP

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as really just leading new migrants from the

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airport to the workplace.

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And so this put pressure on the settlement English programs

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to adopt this outcome as a goal

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for English language development.

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And so keep in mind that those programs had

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to bid every few years for a new contract.

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And so they were closely examining government messaging

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for clues as how they could

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best frame their programs in the next contract round

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that they applied for so that they could,

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beat out the competition.

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An example of how this translated into program change while

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I was conducting my study of new Margaret Women was

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that some of the curriculum

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and assessment content was being reframed

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to focus on, gaining skills that were needed

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for things like applying for a job or doing a job interview

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or communicating in the workplace.

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And there was a really strong emphasis placed on helping

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migrants decide what their future study

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and employment goals would be

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after they were, you know, had left the A MEP.

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And so to this end, each student had to meet

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with a vocational guidance officer,

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when they first arrived,

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and they set up, what they called a learning plan.

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And this plan was updated by teachers

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and vocational guidance officers over the course

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of their time, at the A MEP.

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And then the students all met with the, the,

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guidance officer again,

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when they were exiting the program.

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The way I see it, learning a language when it's framed like

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this becomes a commodity that people have to attain in order

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to achieve economic settlement goals rather than something

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that they're doing as a way of seeking knowledge

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and maybe personal growth

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and a sense of belonging

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through developing a voice in a new language

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and, and a new culture.

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And the way that the migrant language learner is positioned

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in this kind of context is

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as someone who's deficient in English rather than as someone

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who is an emergent bilingual or even a multilingual,

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but there's no place in all of this where the deficiencies

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of the society or

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of the labor market are ever problematized or even discussed.

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And so, for example, racism in the Australian labor market,

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which has actually been well attested in the research

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literature, is never discussed.

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And new migrants are not given strategies for how

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to counter this when they're out there in the labor market.

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Um, and what's also not discussed is that Australia has

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a quite persistent monolingual mindset in spite

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of there being hundreds

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of languages spoken in the community.

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And so in this kind of context, people may be judged only

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for their proficiency in English

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'cause that's all that seems to matter

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to the dominant society, rather than being judged by their

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combined language capital, which might include two

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or three or more languages.

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But in the settlement English program,

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language learners are led to believe that

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if they develop English proficiency to a certain level,

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they'll be able to achieve their social

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and economic settlement goals.

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And so when they struggle to realize those goals, even

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after they've achieved

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what are actually good functional levels of English,

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and this was actually the case for some

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of the women in my project, they might naturally assume

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that the failing is theirs

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and that their English is not good enough.

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Whereas it actually might be a failing of,

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of a prejudiced English monolingual labor market

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or maybe an unwillingness of employers to adequately,

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adequately, acknowledge the skills

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and qualifications that the person brings to them.

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And, and this kind of thing happens a lot too

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to realize my research goals.

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I carried out an ethnographic study

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of nine women who'd recently migrated

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from a range of countries.

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Um, and they're all studying in an intermediate level class

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in the A MEP.

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So I wanted to research with them over an extended period,

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of time during that early phase

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of their post-migration settlement,

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because I wanted to find out if the development

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of their voice in English actually was making changes in the

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way that they saw themselves

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and also in their aspirations for the future.

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So there had been other interview studies done,

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on language learning and identity, you know,

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after, migration.

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But these had more often been a kind

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of retrospective reflection

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by the participant on that whole process.

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And so what I wanted to do was try to capture this

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as it was being experienced by the women.

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And so I used, qualitative methods of inquiry

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and data collection, and this included

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two semi-structured research, interviews,

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so personal interviews with each woman.

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And these were done at the beginning

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and at the end of a 22 month data collection period.

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And I held a series of focus groups in the first year

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of the project, which were

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discussions among all of the women.

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I also gave them an essay task at the beginning

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and at the end of the data collection period.

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Um, and I asked them

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to write about their aspirations for the future.

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In the final interview, I gave each woman the same kind

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of broad question prompts

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that I had given them in the first interview.

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'cause I was curious to know if their ideas had changed over

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that intervening period, and if they would respond

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differently to those questions.

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And, and maybe I was anticipating

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that maybe the changes might be as a result

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of changes in their sense of self, from learning,

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and using English and also changes in their aspirations.

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I had also asked them to keep an email journal

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of their experience of learning and using English,

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and how they felt about their lives.

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And because they were really emergent users of English,

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I had actually thought that they might find it easier

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to write in English than to speak it.

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But I was proven very wrong, during the early stages

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of the, the data collection,

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because for the most part they didn't really engage

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with the journal task,

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but they were actually really happy to talk

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to me and talk to each other.

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So I ended up, covering

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that topic from the email journal in a,

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in a third personal interview that I set up in the middle

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of the data collection period.

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And so what emerged from the first stage analysis

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of the raw data was that the impact of

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language learning on identity could be usefully organized

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into three domains where the, the woman's self

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or the sense of self was being both

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constructed and performed.

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And this was the self in key family relationships,

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the self in wider social interactions and the self in work.

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And I analyzed each of these three domains

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to identify the sub themes that existed in relation to

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language and race and gender.

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And this was across the whole data set.

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So I was exploring identity and language learning,

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but this was also a way into understanding what it's like

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to be someone who has undertaken transnational migration

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involving language change and who's trying to find inclusion

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and a sense of belonging, in a new society.

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Social inclusion is a term

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that has been used in used since the 1990s, at least,

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to convey ideas about the goal of creating pathways

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for economically marginalized people so

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that they can achieve greater participation in

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society through employment.

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And it's also used to refer to the inclusion

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of people from diverse cultures

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and languages within the mainstream in,

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multi-ethnic societies.

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So we might think of people who have migrated

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to a new society as being on trajectories of belonging

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and inclusion, where they might be perhaps on the social

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edges when they arrive,

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especially when the dominant language is not

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one that they use well.

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But eventually the idea is that they will gain acceptance

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and inclusion and a sense

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of belonging within the mainstream of that society.

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And this is in part due

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to developing better competence in a dominant language.

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But what studies like mine have found is

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that this trajectory towards social inclusion is not always

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straightforward and not always complete for many migrants.

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And this is often due to things

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that a person may have little control over, like

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for example, the way that their race or gender is viewed,

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or the way their language proficiency is judged as a result

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of ideologies and prejudices within the receiving society.

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In my study, I didn't actually set out to explore race

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and prejudice, but to explore more broadly the way a woman's

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sense of self was being impacted

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by language learning in this cultural context.

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However, as I was listening to the experiences of the women

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who participated in the study,

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and this was both in the personal interviews I conducted,

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but also when they were in conversation with each other,

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I began to realize that race was something I needed

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to discuss because it was a determiner of differences

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in the, experiences and the imaginings of inclusion

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and belonging that the women were reporting.

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So, for example, the women from European countries all

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expressed the realization that they were just like

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everyone else because it seemed to them

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that most people in Australia came from families

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that had at some point in their history

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migrated from somewhere else.

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And so these women, yes,

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they felt despondent in the early settlement period about

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their English proficiency and how hard it was to communicate

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with others, but they could also easily imagine

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becoming a part of the mainstream as their English improved.

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And, and they express this.

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And this kind of trajectory is actually normalized in the

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history of European migration to Australia

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and in the lives of the people

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that these European women were interacting with.

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So they were communicating a sense

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of optimism about their trajectories of, of inclusion

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and belonging in Australia.

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But in contrast to them, the Asian women in the study

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did not express this kind

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of optimism about their settlement trajectories,

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and they talked about the everyday racism that they,

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and people that they knew were experiencing.

13:22.985 --> 13:25.845
Um, and they also talked about what it was like trying

13:26.005 --> 13:27.485
to gain meaningful employment.

13:27.985 --> 13:29.765
So in the focus group discussions, some

13:29.765 --> 13:32.085
of the Asian women expressed the feeling that

13:32.235 --> 13:33.245
because of all this,

13:33.315 --> 13:35.325
they might never achieve sediment success,

13:35.345 --> 13:36.765
and they might end up leaving

13:36.765 --> 13:38.245
Australia to have a better career.

13:39.105 --> 13:40.405
And so when they said things like this,

13:40.435 --> 13:42.405
this really surprised the European women.

13:42.405 --> 13:43.405
And they'd say things like,

13:43.625 --> 13:45.365
but during English is really good, you know,

13:45.405 --> 13:46.485
I don't understand why you feel

13:46.485 --> 13:48.485
so hopeless about your future and about your career.

13:49.745 --> 13:50.765
And, and actually one

13:50.765 --> 13:53.005
of the Asian women did end up going offshore.

13:53.305 --> 13:55.885
Um, and that sort of happened soon after the project ended

13:56.395 --> 13:58.765
because she was offered a job with a global company

13:58.955 --> 14:01.525
that actually valued both of her languages.

14:01.545 --> 14:03.805
So her full language capital instead

14:03.805 --> 14:05.765
of just her English in Australia,

14:05.775 --> 14:08.085
where only her English proficiency was being judged.

14:08.085 --> 14:10.605
When she went for jobs, she'd constantly been

14:10.805 --> 14:11.965
rebuffed in the labor market.

14:12.065 --> 14:14.925
And she was told that she needed to brush up on her English.

14:15.305 --> 14:17.205
And her English was actually functionally very good

14:17.205 --> 14:18.645
and certainly adequate to the jobs

14:18.645 --> 14:19.805
that she was applying for.

14:20.225 --> 14:23.245
But offshore, she was being judged for, as I said,

14:23.245 --> 14:24.525
her entire language capital,

14:24.525 --> 14:26.245
which included Japanese and English.

14:26.545 --> 14:29.885
And so she said she was seen as a fantastic bilingual,

14:29.885 --> 14:31.765
that's her words, fantastic bilingual.

14:32.585 --> 14:36.365
So when a migrant's full language capital is being

14:36.765 --> 14:40.125
considered, which was not the case for this woman,

14:40.185 --> 14:42.725
but it was the case for another Asian woman in the study,

14:42.985 --> 14:45.365
the employment outcome was actually quite different.

14:45.425 --> 14:48.485
So this woman, had migrated from China

14:49.025 --> 14:51.685
and she had a single similar kind of English proficiency

14:51.905 --> 14:53.485
to the woman that I just described.

14:54.025 --> 14:57.205
Um, but when she began exploring professional employment

14:57.205 --> 15:00.085
opportunities, she was fairly immediately successful

15:00.085 --> 15:02.925
because the very first company that interviewed her

15:02.985 --> 15:04.845
for a legal role was trying

15:04.845 --> 15:06.885
to build their client list in China.

15:07.465 --> 15:11.925
And so their impression of her was they saw her as

15:12.605 --> 15:16.525
a bilingual and a bicultural asset to the team instead

15:16.525 --> 15:18.285
of someone who's deficient in English.

15:18.545 --> 15:20.845
And actually in contrast to the first woman,

15:20.945 --> 15:23.125
she was never told she needed to brush up on her English.

15:23.185 --> 15:25.005
And in the entire hiring process,

15:25.115 --> 15:26.565
they never once commented on

15:26.705 --> 15:28.805
or even asked about her English proficiency.

15:31.115 --> 15:33.415
So another finding from the study, related to

15:33.415 --> 15:36.095
how new migrants might feel socially excluded

15:36.275 --> 15:38.135
by the language practices of locals.

15:38.435 --> 15:41.535
So some of the women, in the study reported

15:41.535 --> 15:44.175
that in social situations with locals,

15:44.195 --> 15:47.335
and this was examples they gave were,

15:47.855 --> 15:49.415
communicating in the church or

15:49.565 --> 15:51.775
with fellow students in post-secondary courses.

15:52.245 --> 15:54.775
They found that the locals in the group would speak in

15:54.905 --> 15:56.655
rapid, quite colloquial English.

15:56.655 --> 15:58.935
They used lots of idiomatic expressions

15:59.555 --> 16:00.935
or they would speak to everyone else,

16:01.035 --> 16:03.055
but they would never make eye contact with the women,

16:03.055 --> 16:04.335
and they would never speak to the women.

16:04.755 --> 16:06.415
And so this practice made the women

16:06.445 --> 16:07.735
feel invisible, they said.

16:08.235 --> 16:10.255
And so it's a fairly overt microaggression

16:10.255 --> 16:11.575
that excludes newcomers.

16:13.055 --> 16:15.475
And actually this kind of experience was only,

16:15.915 --> 16:17.875
reported in my study by the Asian women,

16:18.375 --> 16:19.995
but it seemed that some

16:19.995 --> 16:23.515
of the European women were listening, to these kind

16:23.515 --> 16:24.955
of comments made by the Asian women

16:24.955 --> 16:27.115
because towards the end of the project, one

16:27.115 --> 16:29.475
of the women told me in her final interview

16:29.475 --> 16:32.115
that she remembered what the Asian women had said about

16:32.115 --> 16:34.075
being made to feel invisible by locals.

16:34.255 --> 16:36.355
And although she said she'd never experienced it,

16:36.355 --> 16:38.555
she'd always been made to feel welcome and included.

16:39.015 --> 16:42.675
She, she came to witness it, with some Asian members

16:42.675 --> 16:46.195
of her tennis club, that she played social games with.

16:46.195 --> 16:47.195
And so she kind

16:47.195 --> 16:48.875
of thought about all this and processed it all.

16:48.875 --> 16:51.475
And, and she expressed in, in the final interview,

16:51.535 --> 16:53.595
she expressed it to me as,

16:53.895 --> 16:56.995
she was really expressing her white privilege when she said,

16:57.015 --> 16:58.675
it's nice to be a beautiful white woman.

17:00.735 --> 17:03.275
So those were findings related to race and inclusion.

17:03.455 --> 17:05.075
Um, but apart from these,

17:05.075 --> 17:06.875
there were really interesting findings,

17:06.875 --> 17:10.115
from the study on negotiating language use in key family

17:10.115 --> 17:12.675
relationships, and also on how some women felt

17:12.945 --> 17:14.955
that they could actually express a different

17:15.095 --> 17:17.235
and more confident self in English than they could in

17:17.235 --> 17:18.355
their primary language.

17:18.895 --> 17:21.675
The way that language proficiency is framed in the labor

17:21.675 --> 17:25.675
market impacts how successful new migrants are in achieving

17:25.675 --> 17:27.875
settlement goals through meaningful employment.

17:28.095 --> 17:29.155
And as I've suggested,

17:29.155 --> 17:31.355
the Australian labor market is predominantly

17:31.355 --> 17:32.595
English monolingual.

17:32.855 --> 17:34.955
And this usually means that a migrant's full language

17:34.955 --> 17:37.635
capital is often not being considered

17:37.635 --> 17:38.915
when they're looking for work.

17:39.265 --> 17:42.315
However, in the few instances when their full language

17:42.315 --> 17:45.155
capital has been considered, this has the potential

17:45.175 --> 17:48.795
to greatly improve the settlement trajectory of new migrants

17:49.065 --> 17:50.525
and also to allow the economy

17:50.665 --> 17:53.485
to benefit from better utilizing the qualifications

17:53.905 --> 17:56.125
and the skills that migrants bring to the country.

17:57.105 --> 17:58.765
And I think it's kind of ironic really

17:58.765 --> 18:02.405
because skilled migration is strongly desired

18:02.405 --> 18:04.365
for Australia's continued economic development.

18:04.365 --> 18:06.805
And so it makes up the largest proportion

18:07.145 --> 18:09.365
of the country's annual migration intake.

18:09.945 --> 18:13.805
Yet many people who come under this particular scheme,

18:14.065 --> 18:17.245
who actually migrate under this scheme, end up struggling

18:17.245 --> 18:18.525
to find meaningful work in the

18:18.525 --> 18:19.725
fields that they qualified for.

18:19.725 --> 18:21.245
And this is in part because of the way

18:21.395 --> 18:22.965
that ideologies about language

18:22.965 --> 18:26.045
and attitudes to race impact hiring practices.

18:26.105 --> 18:28.805
And, and this was evidenced in my research as well

18:28.805 --> 18:30.725
as other studies that have been done in this context.

18:31.985 --> 18:34.365
One of the implications of these findings is

18:34.365 --> 18:36.885
that they can be used to develop the way

18:36.885 --> 18:38.925
that English language learning is framed within

18:38.945 --> 18:40.085
the settlement English program.

18:40.505 --> 18:43.405
So in my experience, language learning was framed

18:43.465 --> 18:46.965
as the development of a kind of ideology free,

18:47.505 --> 18:49.965
but bounded lexio grammatical system

18:50.305 --> 18:52.285
and learners were encouraged to believe

18:52.285 --> 18:55.565
that developing proficiency in English was the key to social

18:55.665 --> 18:56.925
and economic inclusion.

18:57.425 --> 18:59.645
But studies like mine have shown this is

18:59.645 --> 19:00.845
not necessarily the case.

19:01.585 --> 19:03.965
Um, and the findings suggests that instead

19:03.965 --> 19:06.485
of framing learners as deficient speakers of English,

19:06.665 --> 19:08.805
we should actually be seeing them as emergent bi

19:08.805 --> 19:09.965
or multilinguals.

19:10.185 --> 19:12.685
And we should be problematizing interactions

19:12.685 --> 19:14.725
that they have in the wider society

19:15.305 --> 19:17.365
and using an evidence-based approach

19:17.705 --> 19:20.405
to better inform language learners within the settlement

19:20.405 --> 19:22.125
English program about what

19:22.125 --> 19:24.285
to expect when they're looking for employment.

19:24.745 --> 19:26.765
And then we should be advising them,

19:26.945 --> 19:29.405
on different strategies for managing,

19:29.405 --> 19:31.085
their entry into these important spaces

19:31.185 --> 19:32.485
of belonging and inclusion.

19:33.025 --> 19:35.085
And so without this kind of approach, I think

19:35.085 --> 19:37.285
that many new migrants end up blaming themselves

19:37.305 --> 19:38.845
for their lack of settlement success.

19:39.425 --> 19:41.805
And also importantly, I think the society

19:41.825 --> 19:44.845
as a whole denies itself the valuable contributions

19:44.845 --> 19:46.685
that can be made by its newest members.

19:48.115 --> 19:50.535
And incidentally, many of the findings,

19:50.535 --> 19:54.175
from my study are included in a forthcoming co-authored book

19:54.175 --> 19:56.255
from Ox Oxford Junior Press Cord LA in a New Language.

19:56.595 --> 19:57.815
And this is a collaboration

19:57.815 --> 20:01.375
that sees data from five existing ethnographic studies

20:01.375 --> 20:04.615
of language learning and migration, including mine,

20:05.275 --> 20:07.055
all within Australia in that context.

20:07.355 --> 20:09.855
Um, they're all combined into a single large data set

20:09.855 --> 20:11.095
with over a hundred participants.

20:11.595 --> 20:15.135
And thing sociolinguistic ethnography like this is usually,

20:15.715 --> 20:19.255
usually involves small data sets with very rich data,

20:19.515 --> 20:21.855
but it's often considered to lack generalizability.

20:21.875 --> 20:24.495
And so it really makes an impact outside specialist circles

20:24.655 --> 20:27.055
'cause it's widely dismissed as being kind of anecdotal

20:27.295 --> 20:28.455
'cause it's got small data sets.

20:28.635 --> 20:31.055
So what this book project does is it marries depth

20:31.055 --> 20:32.575
with scale by combining

20:32.955 --> 20:36.495
and re-analyzing data sets from these existing small scale

20:36.495 --> 20:39.895
longitudinal ethnographic studies, with the objective

20:39.895 --> 20:42.375
of making convincing conclusions about language learning

20:42.395 --> 20:43.535
and social inclusion.

20:43.915 --> 20:46.815
That's based on the premise that a larger qualitative data

20:46.875 --> 20:49.765
Set increases, the scope for generalizability.

20:50.025 --> 20:52.845
So it represents something of an innovation, I believe,

20:52.905 --> 20:54.965
in linguistic ethnography as in sort of

20:55.055 --> 20:57.925
after the fact multi-site ethnographic study, which is

20:57.925 --> 20:59.405
what it, it, comprises.

Language Learning and Identity in Migration

00:00:00 - I did research on language learning and identity, among people who were studying in the Australian Adult Migrant English program, which we call A MEP for short. And I was working there as a teacher for about nine years. So this is a federally funded and administered settlement English program that provides subsidized language classes for new migrants, and the people who, who might have like beginner to intermediate levels of English proficiency on arrival in the country.
00:00:33 - that successfully bid for fixed term contracts through, what's actually a competitive tendering process. and historically this program has most often been delivered by state-based post-secondary colleges of further education. However, during the time that I was, working at the A MEP, we saw a successful move into that space by profit seeking private sector organizations that had built their brand really on providing fee
00:01:03 - for international students. And so at the A MEP, I often taught classes that were mostly made up of women, and I kind of, over a period of time developed a real curiosity about what it was like to be them. So I'm standing in front of them and they're sitting in front of me and I kept thinking, what's it like to be them sitting in that class learning English? In that context, I kind of wondered how it made them feel about themselves, and how it might be impacting their relationships
00:01:36 - ideas about who they were, but also who they felt they could be in the world. and so this led me to design a study that was about language learning identity and gendered subjectivity, in the context of migration. And the aims were based around me wanting to find out how developing a voice in English might impact a woman's sense of self and her aspirations, and also her key family relationships.
00:02:06 - that she was being constructed in Australian society might be impacting her aspirational sense of self. And then to sort of at the same time compare this with her sense of her socialization, in her primary languages and her country of origin. So the A MEP has actually been around in Australia since the late 1940s, but it is evolved quite a bit over that time. And successive governments, and this doesn't matter whether they're conservative
00:02:37 - to economic development goals. But in the time that I was working, at the A MEP, which was in the early two thousands, we actually saw this connection between, inward migration and economic development goals being more overtly expressed within the framing of the contract terms of the A MEP and in the design of the language courses that we delivered. So it was also being expressed by politicians in their media statements

Government Perceptions of Migrant Employment

00:03:07 - A MEP teachers and researchers. And so, for example, I was at a session where one government spokesperson told us that new arrivals who'd come from difficult circumstances were, described as very marketable in the workplace because of their willingness to do the jobs that Australians many Australians would reject. and another federal minister describes the role of immigration as a job matching agency, for the nation because as he saw it,
00:03:36 - opportunities that were available. And so therefore, shortages of labor in the service sector and in regional regionally based industries would become more and more acute. So in this kind of context, the government was increasingly seeing the A MEP as really just leading new migrants from the airport to the workplace. And so this put pressure on the settlement English programs to adopt this outcome as a goal for English language development. And so keep in mind that those programs had
00:04:08 - And so they were closely examining government messaging for clues as how they could best frame their programs in the next contract round that they applied for so that they could, beat out the competition. An example of how this translated into program change while I was conducting my study of new Margaret Women was that some of the curriculum and assessment content was being reframed to focus on, gaining skills that were needed
00:04:39 - or communicating in the workplace. And there was a really strong emphasis placed on helping migrants decide what their future study and employment goals would be after they were, you know, had left the A MEP. And so to this end, each student had to meet with a vocational guidance officer, when they first arrived, and they set up, what they called a learning plan. And this plan was updated by teachers and vocational guidance officers over the course
00:05:10 - And then the students all met with the, the, guidance officer again, when they were exiting the program. The way I see it, learning a language when it's framed like this becomes a commodity that people have to attain in order to achieve economic settlement goals rather than something that they're doing as a way of seeking knowledge and maybe personal growth and a sense of belonging through developing a voice in a new language and, and a new culture. And the way that the migrant language learner is positioned
00:05:43 - as someone who's deficient in English rather than as someone who is an emergent bilingual or even a multilingual, but there's no place in all of this where the deficiencies of the society or of the labor market are ever problematized or even discussed. And so, for example, racism in the Australian labor market, which has actually been well attested in the research literature, is never discussed. And new migrants are not given strategies for how to counter this when they're out there in the labor market.

Language Proficiency and Migrant Identity Challenges

00:06:15 - a quite persistent monolingual mindset in spite of there being hundreds of languages spoken in the community. And so in this kind of context, people may be judged only for their proficiency in English 'cause that's all that seems to matter to the dominant society, rather than being judged by their combined language capital, which might include two or three or more languages. But in the settlement English program, language learners are led to believe that if they develop English proficiency to a certain level,
00:06:45 - and economic settlement goals. And so when they struggle to realize those goals, even after they've achieved what are actually good functional levels of English, and this was actually the case for some of the women in my project, they might naturally assume that the failing is theirs and that their English is not good enough. Whereas it actually might be a failing of, of a prejudiced English monolingual labor market or maybe an unwillingness of employers to adequately, adequately, acknowledge the skills
00:07:18 - And, and this kind of thing happens a lot too to realize my research goals. I carried out an ethnographic study of nine women who'd recently migrated from a range of countries. and they're all studying in an intermediate level class in the A MEP. So I wanted to research with them over an extended period, of time during that early phase of their post-migration settlement, because I wanted to find out if the development of their voice in English actually was making changes in the
00:07:48 - and also in their aspirations for the future. So there had been other interview studies done, on language learning and identity, you know, after, migration. But these had more often been a kind of retrospective reflection by the participant on that whole process. And so what I wanted to do was try to capture this as it was being experienced by the women. And so I used, qualitative methods of inquiry and data collection, and this included two semi-structured research, interviews,
00:08:19 - And these were done at the beginning and at the end of a 22 month data collection period. And I held a series of focus groups in the first year of the project, which were discussions among all of the women. I also gave them an essay task at the beginning and at the end of the data collection period. and I asked them to write about their aspirations for the future. In the final interview, I gave each woman the same kind of broad question prompts that I had given them in the first interview.
00:08:51 - that intervening period, and if they would respond differently to those questions. And, and maybe I was anticipating that maybe the changes might be as a result of changes in their sense of self, from learning, and using English and also changes in their aspirations. I had also asked them to keep an email journal of their experience of learning and using English, and how they felt about their lives. And because they were really emergent users of English, I had actually thought that they might find it easier

Exploring Identity Through Language Learning Experiences

00:09:22 - But I was proven very wrong, during the early stages of the, the data collection, because for the most part they didn't really engage with the journal task, but they were actually really happy to talk to me and talk to each other. So I ended up, covering that topic from the email journal in a, in a third personal interview that I set up in the middle of the data collection period. And so what emerged from the first stage analysis of the raw data was that the impact of
00:09:54 - into three domains where the, the woman's self or the sense of self was being both constructed and performed. And this was the self in key family relationships, the self in wider social interactions and the self in work. And I analyzed each of these three domains to identify the sub themes that existed in relation to language and race and gender. And this was across the whole data set. So I was exploring identity and language learning,
00:10:24 - to be someone who has undertaken transnational migration involving language change and who's trying to find inclusion and a sense of belonging, in a new society. Social inclusion is a term that has been used in used since the 1990s, at least, to convey ideas about the goal of creating pathways for economically marginalized people so that they can achieve greater participation in society through employment. And it's also used to refer to the inclusion
00:10:55 - and languages within the mainstream in, multi-ethnic societies. So we might think of people who have migrated to a new society as being on trajectories of belonging and inclusion, where they might be perhaps on the social edges when they arrive, especially when the dominant language is not one that they use well. But eventually the idea is that they will gain acceptance and inclusion and a sense of belonging within the mainstream of that society. And this is in part due to developing better competence in a dominant language.
00:11:27 - that this trajectory towards social inclusion is not always straightforward and not always complete for many migrants. And this is often due to things that a person may have little control over, like for example, the way that their race or gender is viewed, or the way their language proficiency is judged as a result of ideologies and prejudices within the receiving society. In my study, I didn't actually set out to explore race and prejudice, but to explore more broadly the way a woman's
00:11:58 - by language learning in this cultural context. However, as I was listening to the experiences of the women who participated in the study, and this was both in the personal interviews I conducted, but also when they were in conversation with each other, I began to realize that race was something I needed to discuss because it was a determiner of differences in the, experiences and the imaginings of inclusion and belonging that the women were reporting. So, for example, the women from European countries all expressed the realization that they were just like

Contrasting Experiences of Migrant Women in Australia

00:12:32 - that most people in Australia came from families that had at some point in their history migrated from somewhere else. And so these women, yes, they felt despondent in the early settlement period about their English proficiency and how hard it was to communicate with others, but they could also easily imagine becoming a part of the mainstream as their English improved. And, and they express this. And this kind of trajectory is actually normalized in the history of European migration to Australia and in the lives of the people
00:13:03 - So they were communicating a sense of optimism about their trajectories of, of inclusion and belonging in Australia. But in contrast to them, the Asian women in the study did not express this kind of optimism about their settlement trajectories, and they talked about the everyday racism that they, and people that they knew were experiencing. and they also talked about what it was like trying to gain meaningful employment. So in the focus group discussions, some of the Asian women expressed the feeling that
00:13:33 - they might never achieve sediment success, and they might end up leaving Australia to have a better career. And so when they said things like this, this really surprised the European women. And they'd say things like, but during English is really good, you know, I don't understand why you feel so hopeless about your future and about your career. And, and actually one of the Asian women did end up going offshore. and that sort of happened soon after the project ended because she was offered a job with a global company that actually valued both of her languages. So her full language capital instead
00:14:05 - where only her English proficiency was being judged. When she went for jobs, she'd constantly been rebuffed in the labor market. And she was told that she needed to brush up on her English. And her English was actually functionally very good and certainly adequate to the jobs that she was applying for. But offshore, she was being judged for, as I said, her entire language capital, which included Japanese and English. And so she said she was seen as a fantastic bilingual, that's her words, fantastic bilingual. So when a migrant's full language capital is being
00:14:40 - but it was the case for another Asian woman in the study, the employment outcome was actually quite different. So this woman, had migrated from China and she had a single similar kind of English proficiency to the woman that I just described. but when she began exploring professional employment opportunities, she was fairly immediately successful because the very first company that interviewed her for a legal role was trying to build their client list in China.
00:15:12 - a bilingual and a bicultural asset to the team instead of someone who's deficient in English. And actually in contrast to the first woman, she was never told she needed to brush up on her English. And in the entire hiring process, they never once commented on or even asked about her English proficiency. So another finding from the study, related to how new migrants might feel socially excluded by the language practices of locals.

Experiences of Marginalization in Language Learning

00:15:41 - that in social situations with locals, and this was examples they gave were, communicating in the church or with fellow students in post-secondary courses. They found that the locals in the group would speak in rapid, quite colloquial English. They used lots of idiomatic expressions or they would speak to everyone else, but they would never make eye contact with the women, and they would never speak to the women. And so this practice made the women feel invisible, they said. And so it's a fairly overt microaggression
00:16:13 - And actually this kind of experience was only, reported in my study by the Asian women, but it seemed that some of the European women were listening, to these kind of comments made by the Asian women because towards the end of the project, one of the women told me in her final interview that she remembered what the Asian women had said about being made to feel invisible by locals. And although she said she'd never experienced it, she'd always been made to feel welcome and included. She, she came to witness it, with some Asian members
00:16:46 - And so she kind of thought about all this and processed it all. And, and she expressed in, in the final interview, she expressed it to me as, she was really expressing her white privilege when she said, it's nice to be a beautiful white woman. So those were findings related to race and inclusion. but apart from these, there were really interesting findings, from the study on negotiating language use in key family relationships, and also on how some women felt
00:17:15 - and more confident self in English than they could in their primary language. The way that language proficiency is framed in the labor market impacts how successful new migrants are in achieving settlement goals through meaningful employment. And as I've suggested, the Australian labor market is predominantly English monolingual. And this usually means that a migrant's full language capital is often not being considered when they're looking for work. However, in the few instances when their full language capital has been considered, this has the potential
00:17:49 - and also to allow the economy to benefit from better utilizing the qualifications and the skills that migrants bring to the country. And I think it's kind of ironic really because skilled migration is strongly desired for Australia's continued economic development. And so it makes up the largest proportion of the country's annual migration intake. Yet many people who come under this particular scheme, who actually migrate under this scheme, end up struggling
00:18:18 - fields that they qualified for. And this is in part because of the way that ideologies about language and attitudes to race impact hiring practices. And, and this was evidenced in my research as well as other studies that have been done in this context. One of the implications of these findings is that they can be used to develop the way that English language learning is framed within the settlement English program. So in my experience, language learning was framed as the development of a kind of ideology free,

Rethinking Language Learning and Inclusion Strategies

00:18:50 - and learners were encouraged to believe that developing proficiency in English was the key to social and economic inclusion. But studies like mine have shown this is not necessarily the case. and the findings suggests that instead of framing learners as deficient speakers of English, we should actually be seeing them as emergent bi or multilinguals. And we should be problematizing interactions that they have in the wider society and using an evidence-based approach
00:19:20 - English program about what to expect when they're looking for employment. And then we should be advising them, on different strategies for managing, their entry into these important spaces of belonging and inclusion. And so without this kind of approach, I think that many new migrants end up blaming themselves for their lack of settlement success. And also importantly, I think the society as a whole denies itself the valuable contributions that can be made by its newest members.
00:19:50 - from my study are included in a forthcoming co-authored book from Ox Oxford Junior Press Cord LA in a New Language. And this is a collaboration that sees data from five existing ethnographic studies of language learning and migration, including mine, all within Australia in that context. they're all combined into a single large data set with over a hundred participants. And thing sociolinguistic ethnography like this is usually, usually involves small data sets with very rich data,
00:20:21 - And so it really makes an impact outside specialist circles 'cause it's widely dismissed as being kind of anecdotal 'cause it's got small data sets. So what this book project does is it marries depth with scale by combining and re-analyzing data sets from these existing small scale longitudinal ethnographic studies, with the objective of making convincing conclusions about language learning and social inclusion. That's based on the premise that a larger qualitative data Set increases, the scope for generalizability.
00:20:57 - in linguistic ethnography as in sort of after the fact multi-site ethnographic study, which is what it, it, comprises.

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