Enrico Maria Buonaura – University of London, United Kingdom
Zhu Hua – University of London, United Kingdom
Keywords
Cultural Identity, Disciplinary Identity, Hybridity, Academic Workplace, European Identity, Post-national, Cosmopolitanism
Abstract
This paper draws on recent studies in migration contexts fostering post-national views about identity issues (Zappettini, 2019; Cacciatore & Pepe, 2018) to expand investigations on the workplace as an area for intercultural interactions (Angouri & Marra, 2011). The professional setting analysed is the academic workplace in London’s HE with particular attention given to the experience of Italian PhD students in relation to their cultural and disciplinary identities (Zhu Hua, 2019; Hyland, 2012). Here culture is understood as ‘small culture’, an emerging small group of individuals with shared attitudes and values that transcend their ethnic backgrounds (Holliday, 1999).
Most research on the Italian diaspora to English-speaking countries tends to identify such a group as a homogenous minority with a solid ethnic identity and static linguistic repertoires (Cervi, 1991; Haller, 1987; De Fina, 2007). This paper, on the other hand, attempts to deconstruct such an assumption by relying on qualitative data showing how nationhood and ethnicity are restrictive labels to grasp the experience of recent professional migrants. Thus, European Identity or European-ness seem more appropriate categories to scrutinise the linguistic practices of mobile individuals in super-diverse environments (Zappettini, 2019; Vertovec, 2006). These findings are in line with recent scholarship on identity studies where hybridity and fluidity are the core of the research (Serra, 2017; Fellin, 2014).
The methodology relies on narrative data elicited through unstructured interviews, with six participants including officers, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students and collected during a master dissertation project as a scoping exercise. Further interactional data will be obtained for a doctoral project by focusing on small talk interactions between two key PhD participants and their colleagues. The research questions revolve around how stereotypes and disciplinary conventions interfere with professional communication in a migratory environment. Specifically, the aim is to frame cultural identity attitudes, map out strategies of language use and communication styles by connecting fine-grain linguistic data with the macro-social environment. The analysis will be carried out through Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 2003), with Linguistic Ethnography as the overarching framework (Creese, 2010). The findings reported here are based on the initial scoping project.
The findings indicate that the participants embrace cosmopolitan stances (Hawkins, 2018) about identity that transcend traditionally essentialised views of nationhood and ethnicities. In fact, they show attachments to an all-inclusive, shared ‘European-ness’ by denationalising stereotypes and emphasising their multilingual repertoires. This emerges from the labelling of any ‘local’ practice as restrictive in contrast to positive elements, such as language mixing, transnational bondings and post-national views about cultural identity. Notably significant is the experience of PhD students, who operate in more conflictual roles as students and workers at the same time. Further doctoral investigations are currently being carried out to understand better their experience as academic migrants.
Such preliminary findings are particularly timely given the heightened rhetoric around European identity in the UK connected to recent social phenomena, such as Brexit and Euroscepticism. With further research, this study may have potential lessons for diversity training in super-diverse work teams where traditionally essentialist approaches are to be overcome.
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