Language, Labour and Migration

Anne J. Kershen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351923354
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

Language, Labour and Migration explores two fundamental aspects of the migrant experience through a multi-disciplinary lens which combines the research of leading academics at the cutting edge of their fields. This latest volume from the centre for the Study of Migration brings together the work of anthropologists, economists, geographers, historians, political scientists and medical practitioners. Essays explore topics which include the role of mother tongue as a bridge to assimilation, the racialization of immigrants and refugees through language, the patterns of resistance undertaken by lascars, the experience of black British seamen in the eighteenth century, health advocacy in the twentieth century and the way in which cyber-space is being used to rediscover ethnic identity in the twenty-first century. Other essays examine Chinese labour in France during the First world war, employment opportunities for those deficient in the majority language and poverty in old age. All provide new and at times controversial, insights into the problems of language and labour in an alien society.

1 Introduction

Anne J. Kershen

Language and Labour,¹ the ability to communicate and the facility to provide for dependants and self as a result of personal - physical or mental - work are two essentials of civilised society; equally as important to the native resident of a nation-state as to settlers from beyond its boundaries. For immigrants however these two pillars of survival are, all too often, far more difficult to support. In order to communicate with the majority community some, if not total, fluency in the tongue of the receiving society will be required, whilst levels and availability of immigrant employment will be reliant upon the economic barometer, contemporary labour requirements and the influence of racism and negative stereotyping. This volume sets out to explore the experiences of migrants, some voluntary others not, as measured by the words of its title. What role has language played, and does it play, in the integration process? How important is bilingualism and where should the emphasis lie, on the acquisition of the majority tongue, with the goal of eventual monolingual fluency, or on the retention of mother tongue whilst acquiring that of the receiving society? For some, such as the Bangladeshi community in late twentieth century Britain, the ‘People’s right to use and maintain their mother language is a prerequisite’,² for others, such as the British Jewish community of the late nineteenth century, the need for their Eastern European coreligionists to eschew Yiddish in favour of English was paramount. But does an inability to verbally communicate with the receiving society automatically preclude employment? In other words can an immigrant, deficient in the majority language, get a job? How serious a handicap is majority language deficiency? Further, if jobs are available to incomers, what form do they take, what kind of labour is on offer? Are there any opportunities for the unskilled labourer, the indentured worker or the enslaved black mariner to escape the shackles of exploitation and join the ranks of the upwardly mobile? And, can the stigmas and stereotypes attached to those alienated by reason of sound of voice or low level of employment, ever be eliminated? The chapters in this book set out to examine and respond to these, and other such, questions.

Before briefly exploring the core themes of the book, a note of linguistic explanation. In this volume the noun ‘language’ will be used in several forms. As describing a means of communication, as denoting the language of a particular community or country - thus enabling the incorporation of dialects and vernaculars - or to signify the style and use of words, as for example the languages used by proselytising missionaries in the nineteenth century or that used by those communicating on the Internet in the twenty-first century. The word ‘labour’ has already been used in its verbal form to describe physical exertion, as illustrated in Eric Hobsbawm’s early 1960s publication, Labouring Men.³ In this work Hobsbawm focused not only on those who laboured, as members of the working class(es) but, additionally, on the conditions that activated their responses, thus combining the active with the passive. At the same time E.P. Thompson in his seminal work, The Making of the English Working Class,⁴ was bringing to our attention those labouring men whom he considered to be the ‘losers of history’. Some of those losers, such as Paul Bailey’s First World War indentured Chinese labourers, Shompa Lahiri’s Indian lascars and Ian Duffield’s Black African slave mariners, find their way into this book, rescued from invisibility as a result of diligent archival research.

In its noun form the word labour has, as Robin Cohen highlights, two senses,⁵ as a collective noun, for example ‘migrant labour’, or ‘industrial labour’ and as an abstract, as in the title of another of Hobsbawm’s books, Worlds of Labour.⁶ When in operation as a noun to describe a group of workers, the word both takes on, and bestows, a (lower) class value. In whichever form the word appears, it remains the one most frequently applied to the majority of those who move from one place to another, either within or beyond national boundaries, to achieve economic advancement. It is applied equally to those who have chosen, and those who have been forced, to become part of that collective of labour that has fed, and continues to feed, the requirements of communities, nations and organisations eager to grow rich on the backs of exploited and majority language deficient immigrants and refugees.

Language

The chapters included in this section embrace themes which are central to any debate on the role of language in the migrant experience. It has to be universally acknowledged that language and identity are entwined. For immigrants whose skin colour and physical characteristics are no different to that of the majority society, language and voice are the first means of identifying difference. In her chapter on ‘Language and Racialisation’, Bronwen Walter illustrates the way in which the Irish voice and syntax have been the catalyst for racism and negative stereotyping, ‘to the uninformed all Irish accents are the same, and lower class’. Thus language is used not only as a means of separating the alien from the mainstream but, in addition, as a means of establishing class. Even the Huguenots, positively stereotyped as the ‘profitable strangers’ suffered criticism from members of the receiving society for the ‘great noise and croaking of the Froglanders’.⁷ Criticism can also come from within the same ethnic or national group. Anne Kershen describes how, at the end of the nineteenth century, Yiddish speaking immigrants were at the receiving end of snobbism from their British coreligionists, whilst Sylheti speaking Bangladeshis are considered inferior by the more educated élite of their native country. The spoken and written foreign tongue not only identifies the ‘alien in our midst’ it can also, sometimes mistakenly as Tony Kushner explains, spotlight the enemy. German refugees in Britain seeking sanctuary from the evils of Nazism were warned ‘not to read German papers in public’ and ‘not to speak German in the street’. Thus, in order to remain invisible a policy of silence is adopted by those whose voices identify them as other.

Language not only works as a negative means of identification, it can also be used as an aid to the construction and confirmation, and in some instances the reconstruction, of ethnic identity. Wayne Parsons, in his chapter on Cyber-Cymru, combines one of the oldest of languages, Celtic, with the most modern of technological advancements, the Internet, to demonstrate how, in North America, Welsh-Americans are reclaiming their ethnic identity and rediscovering the language of their forefathers. Using the World Wide Web they are opening up the frontiers of diasporic awareness, reconfirming their roots, which for some have been submerged under decades of acculturation, by means of a virtual reality which, it has to be said, uses as its dominant tongue, the language of the Web, English. The construction of a national/ ethnic identity through the dominance of language is now written into the history of the Bangladeshi people, and plays an important part in their diasporic self-evaluation process. Kershen explains how the struggle for Bangladeshi independence began over the language issue and how, consequently, Bangladeshis choose to identify themselves by their language – as Bengalis – rather than by the name of their nation-state.

As a number of chapters illustrate, language deficiency frequently acts as a catalyst for tension and racism, imposing behavioural pressures on the immigrant. It encourages conformity and invisibility. However, at times, as Kushner and Veronica White show in the case of Belgian refugees to Britain during the First World War and late twentieth century Sylhetis in London’s East End, lack of fluency in English can elicit sympathy for those considered unfairly treated or those unable to communicate their health problems. But the plus side of language deficiencies are rare, as the norm for those who suffer from this condition is loss of self-respect and feelings of insecurity, emotions common to the Huguenots in the late eighteenth century and more recent Irish arrivals. In fact, recent medical research has shown that amongst elderly immigrants to Britain who have not mastered the native tongue the resultant feelings of isolation have produced the depressive condition known as SAD (symptoms of anxiety and depression).⁸

A number of chapters illustrate the way in which migrants deficient in a minority language have adopted both positive and negative strategies to cope with the disadvantages that ensue. The most obvious route to overcoming the problems of weakness in the primary language is through education. Whilst 100 years ago, as Kershen demonstrates, it was left to the immigrant community to provide pedagogic bridges between Yiddish and English, through trade unions, charitable organisations etc., in the multi-cultural twenty-first century the state takes a far more dominant role, cooperating with ethnic minority groups to ensure that mother tongue teaching, viewed as a vital step on the road to bilingualism and the acquisition of the majority language, is available to all those, especially schoolchildren, who need it. In her chapter on health advocacy, White leaves us in no doubt as to the dangers to health of illiteracy and inarticulacy in English. Adequate verbal communication is deemed vital to the health of the patient. She quotes one American physician as commenting that, ‘What the scalpel is to the surgeon, words are to the clinician ... the conversation between doctor and patient is the heart of the practice of medicine’.⁹ White, a senior hospital registrar and thus at the grass roots, describes the way in which health advocates in hospitals in East London have to some extent overcome the communication barrier, facilitating the ethnic patient/ doctor relationship and consequently reducing the dangers of misdiagnosis and inappropriate medication. However, not all strategies have been, or are, as constructive. Kershen, Kushner and Walter all highlight the way in which the racialisation of language has reinforced the ghetto mentality and encouraged immigrants to adopt policies of silence as a means of acquiring invisibility.

Labour

As noted above, the word labour as it appears in this book provides a vehicle for the actual and the abstract, the individual and the group. It embraces the willing and the unwilling, the hopeful and the hopeless. The chapters which appear in the section headed Labour, similarly to those which appear under Language, demonstrate that time has not reduced the hardships undergone by ‘strangers’ seeking employment. Duffield in his chapter on African slave mariners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries describes all too painfully the inequities suffered by Black slave labour. Though their situation was not without a glimmer of light - patience and providence could buy freedom - the value of the ‘invisible’ slave seaman was such that sale and resale, as a commodity on the stock market, took place irrespective of the individual’s legal status. It was not only the enslaved that were subjected to inhuman treatment, both Bailey and Lahiri describe how indentured labour, Chinese and Indian, were dehumanised - the former often by their own government for political gain. Victims of racial stereotyping and exploitation, their varying skill levels were used as tools in the cruel battle for survival and economic reward.

Just as those condemned by their language deficiency adopted strategies of survival so did those whose labour made them appear docile, malleable and exploitable. Lahiri recounts how strikes were organised by lascars who refused to be exploited by their employers. She also explores the ‘subtle manipulation’ of the missionaries by lascars who were prepared to accept charity yet determined not to succumb to conversion to Christianity. The latter was a strategy adopted by pauper Jewish immigrants in London’s East End. They metaphorically closed their ears to the religious tracts and chants of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, whilst accepting the food and warmth of the mission halls.¹⁰ Other strategies for survival were adopted by Duffield’s protagonist Olaudah Equiano who, ‘eventually accumulated ... the £40 to buy his freedom’ and by Chinese workers who took industrial action to protest against the ‘breaches in contract, the dangerous nature of their work and the harsh treatment... received’.

As noted, hardship and exploitation is not the preserve of migrants of the past. As we enter the twenty-first century the problems facing immigrants and refugees who seek to provide for themselves and their families continue. Alice Bloch describes how refugees in the London Borough of Newham, one of the poorest in Britain, in spite of their education and ability, have been unable to find employment commensurate with their qualifications. One of the major barriers being the level of language skill and the ‘Catch 22’ of a training scheme which requires full-time attendance, thus denying access to employment which might support until work becomes an option. Those without an academic background suffer still more; lack of awareness or understanding of what training is available reduces the scale of opportunity. However, Bloch reveals that, even if training is undertaken, job opportunities for refugees in Newham are few. She argues in favour of a receiving society which, instead of marginalising new arrivals, takes advantage of what they have to offer and uses a system of ‘fast-track conversion’ courses to enable both established community and incomers to benefit.

Not all the problems of migration and settlement are immediate, some accrue over the years. This is particularly evident in a post-modern world which has an increasingly large ageing population. Whilst longevity is, for the most part, to be desired, it brings with it economic pressures. Theoretically the pension system should be able to provide a safety net for the elderly. However, as is becoming apparent in a number of European countries, this situation is rapidly reaching crisis point. M...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• PART ONE: Language
• PART TWO: Labour
• Index