The issue of the transformation suffered by the linguistic habitus of an immigrant agent has not been explored so far in the specialized literature. Similarly, the relationship between the habitus of an agent and the process of immigration has not been extensively developed so far, neither empirically, nor theoretically. However, there are various notable attempts towards understanding this latter relationship, focused on the manner in which the habitus of immigrants is modified in different ways by such a process. It must be emphasized that such research has been conducted predominantly in relation to the experiences of first-generation immigrants, as this discussion will show. However, as Vertovec (2009, p. 76) implies, the concept of habitus has potential for understanding the experiences and social trajectories of second-generation immigrants.
Probably one of the most important calls for the investigation of the consequences suffered by the habitus of immigrant agents is made by Noble (2013) in an article where he argues that resettlement involves “the transformation of the embodied capacities of migrants” (p. 341). In the same line, Vertovec (2009, p. 83)claims that “a reorientation of habitus takes place in the course of any person’s relocation and integration into a new social system”; furthermore, Vertovec argues (2009, pp. 69) that this concept might be suitable for understanding how dual orientations rise in transnational migrants as well as how transnational experiences lead to the development of a “personal repertoire comprising varied values and potential action-sets drawn from diverse cultural configurations”. In contrast with Vertovec, Noble (2013, p. 345) criticizes previous attempts in migration studies, transnational migration studies, sociology and geography, of employing the concept of habitus while placing too much accent on “the dualistic dispositions the migrant embodies and the ‘constraints’ the migrant experiences”. Indeed, in such approaches the focus is laid on the problematic of ‘here’ and ‘there’, understood either as a ‘double-absence’ (Sayad 2004), ‘double belonging’ (Nedelcu 2012), or ‘between belonging’ (Marshall and Foster 2002) of the agent.
Similarly, Guarzino (1997) and Oliver and O’Reilly (2010) discuss about the habitus of transnational migrants in terms of dualistic dispositions. Noble’s critique of such approaches is two-fold: first, the focus on such binarisms fails to engage with the transformative nature of an agent’s habitus, leaving the “migrant in a perpetual state of disjuncture born of the original moment of arrival, as though the migrant’s body never learns capacities for adapting to the new” (2013, p. 346); second, underlining the dualistic experience of migrants does not take account of the manner in which the present of the migrant reshapes the culture of the host country” (Noble 2013, p. 345). In spite of this fair critique, it may be argued that some of the research criticized by Noble (2013) does foreground some of the main processes through which the habitus of an agent is reshaped.
A first aspect is introduced by Erel (2010) in an article which explores the life experiences of Turkish immigrant women in the UK and Germany. She argues that in their resettlement, these agents construct a particular migration field, which, according to her, functions as an autonomous field, where ‘migration-specific cultural capital’ is validated. Most importantly, Erel (2010) contextualizes her findings as contrary to the migration studies ‘rucksack approach’ to migrants’ practices. Briefly, this approach refers to the dualistic understanding of habitus criticized by Noble (2013) in that it poses the habitus of agents as a particular set (rucksack) of fixed characteristics that may fit or not in the new context (see, for example, Kelly and Lusis 2006), failing to engage with the possibility of these characteristics being modified in any way by the process of migration. While she does not engage with the specific question of how such processes reshape the habitus of migrant agents, Erel (2010) does offer a significant account of how new forms of capital are created (or how the rucksack gets unpacked)66. In spite of being different from mainstream legitimate practices, such alternative, illegitimate practices can become valuable within a certain field of migration. In Erel’s (2010, p. 649) words,
First, migrants do not only unpack cultural capital from their rucksacks, instead they create new forms of cultural capital in the countries of residence. They use resources they brought with them and others they develop in situ to create quite distinct dispositions. Second, migrants engage in creating
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Positioning her Bourdieusian approach against the ‘rucksack approach’, Erel (2010, p. 649) states the following: “Where human capital theorists conceptualize cultural capital as a key that the migrant puts into her rucksack and, once in the country of immigration, unpacks to see if it fits the ‘keyhole’ of the cultural system on the country of immigration, Bourdieusian scholars view migrants’ cultural capital as a treasure chest consisting of language skills, knowledge of customs and lifestyles, professional qualifications, etc. Again, these are put in the rucksack, but when unpacked in the country of migration, rather than looking for a ‘fit’, according to the Bourdieusian approaches the migrant engages in bargaining activities with institutions (such as professional bodies of universities) and people (such as employers or managers) about the value of these treasures. In the process of bargaining, the migrants’ treasures are often undervalued, as she has limited power over the rules of the game … Yet, she can also add new skills and treasures to her chest that may not be seen as particularly valuable in the country of immigration but are considered treasures in her country of origin, thus negotiating and benefiting from differential ‘exchange value’ … of cultural resources, practices and forms in two national contexts.”
mechanisms of validation for their cultural capital. They do not rely on the dominant institutions and people, but also engage with migrants’ networks *in order to create specific institutions which legitimise this capital].
Therefore, Erel67 (2010) focuses her attention on how agents co-construct institutions which validate both their cultural capital specific to the structures of the society where their habitus was originally developed for, as well as new forms of capital specific to the structures of the migration field of the new society. On the one hand, if linguistic capital is taken as a specific migration-field capital, Erel’s approach is akin to the notion of linguistic submarkets - specific illegitimate practices (in contrast to the legitimate practices at the level of the relatively unified linguistic market) may be validated within special fields/submarkets. Erel’s ideas contribute to the notion of submarket with the dimension of the process of immigration. As a consequence, submarkets may be thought of as specific contexts where the rules and laws of price formation brought by immigrant agents through their habitus and practices may be validated. On the other hand, the problem with Erel’s findings, which is also probably why Noble (2013) classifies her research as falling into the dualistic fallacy exposed above, is that she does not pay proper attention to the relationship between the migration field and the field of power (or social space) of the entire society. It is crucial to note that a migration field can never appear in a vacuum, but always in relation to the social space of a society. Furthermore, it can be argued that such a migration field can only function under the rules of the new social space. In other words, the migration field cannot be understood as fully autonomous, but only relatively autonomous. Arguably, the notion of linguistic submarkets can account for this unbalanced power relation and the consequences this has for the internal validation of ‘illegitimate’ linguistic practices, and the transformation of the habitus and linguistic habitus of immigrant agents (first- or second- generation). In spite of this critique, Erel’s (2010) research does introduce a particularly significant issue - the problem of validation of alternative practices, which, while rendered illegitimate within the broader structure of a society, may be validated within specific migrant fields or even linguistic submarkets.
A further step from Erel’s (2010) approach is taken by both Parker (2000) and Noble (2013), who offer a more nuanced understanding of how mismatches between the fields of a new society and the habitus of migrant agents influence the partial transformation of habitus; these approaches are most faithful to the Bourdieusian definition of habitus as a unifying principle, which is cumulative, generative and profoundly dynamic in relation to new experiences (Noble 2013, p. 344). Both
67 Similar research is conducted by Oliver and O’Reilly (2010). Their focus is on the creation of a British migrant
field in Spain. Although they do explicitly engage with the concept of habitus (whereas Erel focuses on the concept of field), they are much less articulate than Erel (2010) and they conclude that the possibilities of partially reinventing habitus are limited. Noble (2013) classifies their research under the same issue of binarism.
authors employ the notion of ‘internalization of difference’ as the linchpin of their analyses. In his article, Parker (2000, p. 75) develops the concept of ‘diasporic habitus’ understood as “the embodied subjectivities poised between the legacies of the past, the imperatives of the present, and the possibilities of the future”. This is, indeed, the closest research has been to moving away from the dualistic understanding of the habitus under the conditions of migration. By bringing forth the diachronic dimension of habitus, Parker (2000) analyses the Imperial history between the UK and China, and how this relation shapes the habitus of Chinese migrants in England. His main focus is on the racialization and internalization of difference of these agents in contact with their English customers in a Chinese food takeaway restaurant. Parker (2000) includes in his analysis the manner in which the social structure of the UK has been influenced by the historical relation of domination between the UK and China. However, although he understands this issue as affecting the habitus of Chinese migrants through the internalization of these historical structures, his focus is on how this relationship functions as a mechanism of racism, bringing his analysis closer to the manner in which the host society is transformed by the contact between ‘the migrant’ and ‘the host’. In spite of this, as Noble (2013) argues, Parker’s (2000) research is important in that it moves beyond a state of disjuncture, acknowledging the concept of habitus as “the transformed and transformative means by which we negotiate intercultural relations” (p. 346).
Noble (2013), on the other hand, focuses precisely on the impact the internalization of difference has on the habitus of migrant agents. Interested in examining the experience of migrant resettlement, he draws on the habitus of a Lebanese immigrant in Australia in order to show that “resettlement entails the transformation of the embodied capacities of migrants” (Noble, p. 342). The core of the author’s argument is that, in spite of the transformation suffered by the habitus to adapt to the structures of the new society, this transformation never leads to a perfect adaptation (in other words, the habitus is never going to be in sync with the structures of the society) because of the simultaneous internalization of difference. In Noble’s words (2013, p. 349), “in making oneself at home, the migrant finds a way to live in a new place, but also becomes accustomed to a sense of disorientation. Learning to make yourself at home in Australia, then, is not just learning the differences of a new place, it is learning that you are ‘different’”. In his analysis, Noble (2013) implies the diachronic characteristic of habitus. In a way, Noble (2013) complements Parker’s (2000) and Erel’s (2010) analyses. By identifying the element of the internalization of difference, the author underscores the idea that an agent’s habitus is the totality of the history with all the fields (and linguistic markets and submarkets) it has been active in. Consequently, the linguistic habitus of a multilingual immigrant agent may be conceptualized in line with this notion of internalization of difference between the relatively unified linguistic market and the linguistic submarket under which
an agent operates. The dynamic between such linguistic markets is always that of an unbalanced power relation, which affects the development of the habitus and linguistic habitus through the internalization of difference.
Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that Noble’s (2013) insistence on difference and disorientation may jeopardize his analysis, at the risk of taking it back to the dualistic idea of fit and unfit fixed characteristics. However, both the notion of internalization of difference as conceptualized by Noble (2013) and Parker (2000) as well as Erel’s (2010) concepts of migrant fields and migrant-field specific capital pave the way towards a better understanding of the processes of adjustment of habitus and linguistic habitus developed under multiple and heterogeneous structural constraints which are strongly linked among themselves in terms of power relations. While the discussion has focused on research on what can be called first-generation migrants, the logic of the notions discussed here is useful when adapted to the social and linguistic trajectories of second-generation agents as well (as discussed in Chapter 5 and 6). Furthermore, the discussion has focused mainly on how heterogeneity influences the transformation of habitus in general. The following sub-section explores whether the concept of linguistic habitus can offer a useful tool when discussing individual multilingualism.