A narrative inquiry into the lives of low English proficiency Bangladeshi migrants in Australia
Farzana Y. Chowdhury | School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
M. Obaidul Hamid | University of Chittagong, Chittagong, Bangladesh
This article explores language experiences of three Bangladeshi migrant workers with low English proficiency in Australia through narrative inquiry. The narrative of each participant presents insights into the ways in which these migrants navigated through their work and social life, and developed social and communicative strategies to survive in the host country where English is the dominant language. Analyses of the narratives suggest that despite their limited English proficiency, these migrant workers were able to find ways to contribute to the host society and they felt satisfied with their lives in Australia. Although not generalisable, the findings call for taking a critical look at the prevailing assumption that without English language proficiency migrants cannot enjoy a successful life or ensure their social and economic wellbeing in the host society. At the same time, there needs to be a greater recognition of the role of migrants’ first languages in the new society. We also argue that instead of taking a generalised view of ‘success’ and ‘wellbeing’, taking a differentiated view may be warranted and this may require taking into account migrants’ individual circumstances and their desires and expectations in relation to their social origins.
Ahearn, L. M. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30(1), 109–137.
Amit, K., & Litwin, H. (2010). The subjective well-being of immigrants aged 50 and older in Israel. Social Indicators Research, 98(1), 89–104.
Atkinson, R. (1998). The life story interview. London: Sage.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2011). Census of population and housing: Directory of census statistics. Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Bakewell, O. (2010). Some reflections on structure and agency in migration theory. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(10), 1689–1708.
Bak-Klimek, A., Karatzias, T., Elliott, L., & Maclean, R. (2015). The determinants of well-being among international economic immigrants: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 10(1), 161–188.
Bamberg, M. (2005). Narrative discourse and identities. In J. C. Meister, T. Kindt, & W. Schernus (Eds.), Narratology beyond literary criticism (pp. 213–237). Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Bamberg, M. (2011). Who am I? Narration and its contribution to self and identity. Theory & Psychology, 21(1), 3–24.
Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 1–26.
Barkhuizen, G. (2013). Maintenance, identity and social inclusion narratives of an Afrikaans speaker living in New Zealand. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2013(222), 77–100.
Barkhuizen, G., & Hacker, P. (2008). Inquiring into learning about narrative inquiry in language teacher education. New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics, 14(1), 36–52.
Benson, P. (2014). Narrative inquiry in applied linguistics research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 341, 154–170.
Bonfanti, S. (2013). ‘New rules for labour immigration’: Delving into the 2008 Swedish reform of labour migration and its effects on migrants’ well-being. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 15(3), 371–386.
Bron, A. (2003). From an immigrant to a citizen: Language as a hindrance or a key to citizenship. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 22(6), 606–619.
Buitelaar, M. (2014). ‘Discovering a different me’: Discursive positioning in life story telling over time. Women's Studies International Forum, 431, 30–37.
Burns, A., & Joyce, H. S. (2007). Adult ESL programs in Australia. Prospect, 22(3), 5–17.
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Agency and power in intercultural communication: Negotiating English in translocal spaces. Language and Intercultural Communication, 13(2), 202–224.
Cederberg, M. (2013). Public discourses and migrant stories of integration and inequality: Language and power in biographical narratives. Sociology, 48(1), 133–149.
Chiswick, B. R., & Miller, P. W. (2005). Linguistic distance: A quantitative measure of the distance between English and other languages. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 26(1), 1–11.
Chiswick, B. R., Lee, Y. L., & Miller, P. W. (2004). Immigrants’ language skills: The Australian experience in a longitudinal survey. International Migration Review, 38(2), 611–654.
Chiswick, B. R., Lee, Y. L., & Miller, P. W. (2005). A longitudinal analysis of immigrant occupational mobility: A test of the immigrant assimilation hypothesis. International Migration Review, 39(2), 332–353.
Colic-Peisker, V. (2002). Croatians in Western Australia: Migration, language and class. Journal of Sociology, 38(2), 149–166.
Colic-Peisker, V. (2009).Visibility, settlement success and life satisfaction in three refugee communities in Australia. Ethnicities, 9(2):175–199.
Colic-Peisker, V., & Tilbury, F. (2007). Integration into the Australian labour market: The experience of three ‘visibly different’ groups of recently arrived refugees. International Migration, 45(1), 59–85.
Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14.
Department of Immigration and Border Protection. (2013). Temporary work (skilled)(subclass 457) visa. Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Lucas, R. E. (2002). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and life satisfaction. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 63–73). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Eck, D. L. (2007). Religion. In M. C. Waters & R. Ueda (Eds.), The new Americans: A guide to immigration since 1965 (pp. 214–228). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fozdar, F., & Torezani, S. (2008). Discrimination and well-being: Perceptions of refugees in Western Australia. International Migration Review, 42(1), 30–63.
Fraser, B. (1981). On apologizing. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routine: exploration in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech (pp. 259–271). Mouton: The Hague.
Han, H. (2012). Being and becoming “A new immigrant” in Canada: How language matters, or not. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 11(2), 136–149.
Harrison, G. (2009). Language politics, linguistic capital and bilingual practitioners in social work. British Journal of Social Work, 39(6), 1082–1100.
The International Wellbeing Group. (2006). Personal Wellbeing Index–Adult (4th ed.). Melbourne: Australian Centre on Quality of Life, Deakin University.
Judge, T. A., & Watanabe, S. (1993). Another look at the job satisfaction-life satisfaction relationship. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78(6), 939–948.
Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. London: Sage Publications.
Lotherington, H. (2003). Multiliteracies in Springvale: Negotiating language, culture and identity in suburban Melbourne. In R. Bayley & S. Schechter (Eds.), Language socialization in bilingual and multilingual societies (pp. 200–217). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
May, S. (2003). Rearticulating the case for minority language rights. Current Issues in Language Planning, 4(2), 95–125.
Mazzei, L. A., & Jackson, A. Y. (2009). Introduction: The limit of voice. In A. Y. Jackson & L.A. Mazzei (Eds.), Voice in qualitative inquiry: Challenging conventional, interpretive, and critical conceptions in qualitative research (pp. 1–13). London: Routledge.
Mercer, S. (2011). Understanding learner agency as a complex dynamic system. System, 39(4), 427–436.
Miller, E. R. (2010). Agency in the making: Adult immigrants’ accounts of language learning and work. TESOL Quarterly, 441, 465–487.
Miller, E. R. (2012). Agency, language learning and multilingual spaces. Multilingua, 31(4), 441–468.
Miller, E. R. (2013). Positioning selves, doing relational work and constructing identities in interview talk. Journal of Politeness Research, 9(1), 75–95.
Murray, M. (2003). Narrative psychology and narrative analysis. In P. Camic, J. E. Rhodes, & L. Yardley (Eds.), Qualitative research in psychology: expanding perspectives in methodology and design (pp. 95–112). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Nawyn, S. J., Gjokaj, L., Agbenyiga, D. L., & Grace, B. (2012). Linguistic isolation, social capital and immigrant belonging. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41(3), 255–282.
Norton, B. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change. New York; Harlow, England: Longman.
O’ Malley, J., & Chamot, A. (1990). Learning strategies in second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Boston, Mass: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Pavlenko, A. (2001). Language learning memoirs as gendered genre. Applied Linguistics, 221, 213–240.
Pavlenko, A. (2007). Autobiographic narratives as data in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 28 (2), 163–188.
Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Piller, I. (2012). Multilingualism and social exclusion. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge, & A. Creese (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of multilingualism (pp. 281–296). London and New York: Routledge.
Piller, I., & Lising, L. (2014). Language, employment, and settlement: Temporary meat workers in Australia. Multilingua-Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 33(1-2), 35–59.
Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2011). Linguistic diversity and social inclusion. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 371–381.
Rassool, N. (2012). English and migration. In A. Hewings & C. Tagg (Eds.), The politics of English: Conflicts, competition, co-existence (pp. 47–92). Abingdon: Routledge and Milton Keynes: The Open University.
Reis, D. S. (2011). Non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) and professional legitimacy: A sociocultural theoretical perspective on identity transformation. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2011(208).
Reissman, C. K. (1993). Narrative Analysis. London: Sage Publications.
Tubergen, F. V., & Kalmijn, M. (2005). Destination-language proficiency in cross- national perspective: A study of immigrant groups in nine western countries. American Journal of Sociology, 110(5), 1412–1457.
United Nations Development Programme. (2009). Human development report 2009. Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development. New York: United Nations Development Programme.
Veenhoven, R. (2000). Well‐being in the welfare state: Level not higher, distribution not more equitable. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 2(1), 91–125.
Visser, S. S., Bailey, A., & Meijering, L. (2014). Food, faith and community: social well-being of Ghanaian migrants in the Netherlands. Gender, Place & Culture, 22(5), 608–625.
Vitanova, G. (2005). Authoring the self in a non-native language: A dialogic approach to agency and subjectivity. In J. K. Hall, G. Vitanova, & L. Marchenkova (Eds.), Dialogue with Bakhtin on second language learning: New perspectives (pp. 149–169). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Warriner, D. S. (2007). Language learning and the politics of belonging: Sudanese women refugees Becoming and Being “American”. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 38(4), 343–359.
Webb, S. (2015). ‘It’s who you know not what’: Migrants’ encounters with regimes of skills as misrecognition. Studies in Continuing Education, 1–19.
Yates, L. (2011). Interaction, language learning and social inclusion in early settlement. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 457–471.
Yates, L., & Major, G. (2015). “Quick-chatting”, “smart dogs”, and how to “say without saying”: Small talk and pragmatic learning in the community. System, 481, 141–152.
Young, M. Y. (2001). Moderators of stress in Salvadoran refugees: The role of social and personal resources. International Migration Review, 35(3), 840–869.
Cited by (7)
Cited by seven other publications
Oliver, Rhonda, Honglin Chen & Sender Dovchin
2024. Review of selected research in applied linguistics published in Australia (2015–2022). Language Teaching► pp. 1 ff.
Wang, Siqin, Wenhui Cai, Qian (Chayn) Sun, Catherine Martin, Shilpi Tewari, Joe Hurley, Marco Amati, Matt Duckham & Suelynn Choy
2023. Landscape of multiculturalism in Australia: Tracking ethnic diversity and its relation with neighbourhood features in 2001–2021. Applied Geography 160 ► pp. 103114 ff.
Doan, Linh Dieu & M. Obaidul Hamid
2021. Economics of English: Examining the Demand for English Proficiency in the Vietnamese Job Market. RELC Journal 52:3 ► pp. 618 ff.
Hamid, M. Obaidul & Md. Mahmudul Hasan
2020. Bangladeshi English. In The Handbook of Asian Englishes, ► pp. 297 ff.
Hamid, M. Obaidul, Ngoc T. H. Hoang & Andy Kirkpatrick
2019. Language tests, linguistic gatekeeping and global mobility. Current Issues in Language Planning 20:3 ► pp. 226 ff.
Petreñas, Cristina, Adelina Ianos, Clara Sansó & Ángel Huguet
2019. The inclusion process of young Romanians in Catalonia (Spain): the relationship between participating in classes of L1, self-identification, and life-satisfaction. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 40:10 ► pp. 920 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.