The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language

by Suresh Canagarajah (Editor)

Overview

Winner of AAL Book Award 2020 | Shortlisted for the BAAL Book Prize 2018

The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language is the first comprehensive survey of the intersection between language and human mobility in today’s globalised world. Now in its newly updated second edition, this handbook broadens its scope to include chapters on the mobility of disabled people, ethics of working with vulnerable migrant groups, and diversifying knowledge production relating to mobility.

This vital resource combines interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives across fields such as migration studies, geography, philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Featuring over thirty chapters written by leading experts from around the world, this book:

• Examines how core constructs such as community, place, language, diversity, identity, nation-state, and social stratification are being retheorized in the context of human mobility;
• Analyses the impact of the ‘mobility turn’ on language use, including the parallel ‘multilingual turn’ and the concept of translanguaging;
• Discusses the migration of skilled and unskilled workers, various forms of displacement, and new superdiverse and diaspora communities;
• Explores new research orientations and methodologies, such as mobile and participatory research, multi-sited ethnography, and the mixing of research methods;
• Investigates the place of language in citizenship, educational policies, employment and social services.

This handbook is a foundational text for researchers and students interested in migration studies, language policy, sociolinguistics, and development studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040728178
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/15/2026
Series:	Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	600

About the Author

Suresh Canagarajah is Evan Pugh University Professor at Pennsylvania State University. He teaches in the Applied Linguistics and English Departments and previously taught in the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. He is the author of the award-winning book, Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmpolitan Relations (Routledge, 2013).

Table of Contents

Part 1. Concepts Introduction. The nexus of migration and language: The emergence of a disciplinary space. Introduction to the Second Issue 1. Translanguaging in mobility 2. Nation-state, transnationalism, and language 3. Superdiversity and language 4. Neoliberalism, language, and migration 5. Space, place, and language. 6. New orientations to identities in mobility 7. Class in migration, identity, and language research 8. National and ethnic minorities: Language rights and recognitions Part 2. Contexts 9. Regional flows and language resources 10. Internal displacement and language: A southern perspective 11. Migrant trajectories: Implications for language proficiencies and identities 12. Slavery, indentured work, and language 13. Settler migration and settler varieties 14. Trade migration and language 15. Migrations, religions, and social flux 16. Language in skilled migration 17. Rethinking (un)skilled migrants: Whose skills, what skills, for what and for whom? 18. Diaspora and language 19. Disability, language, and mobility: The case of deaf mobilities Part 3. Methods 20. Complexity, mobility, migration 21. Spatiotemporal scales and the study of mobility 22. Narrative in the study of migrants 23. Multi-sited ethnography and language in the study of migration 24. Traveling texts, translocal/transnational literacies, and transcontextual analysis 25. Intersections of necessity and desire in migration research: Queering the migration story 26. The ethics of researching and working in multilingual refugee settings: Lessons from support agencies Part 4. Policies 27. Citizenship, immigration laws and language 28. A rhizomatic account of heritage language 29. Language-in-education policies and mobile citizens 30. Mobility and English language policies and practices in higher education 31. Mobility, language and schooling 32. Communication practices and policies in workplace mobility 33. Language-mediated services for migrants: Monolingualist institutional regimes and translinguistic user practices 34. Empathy and walls: Knowledge construction in mobility studies.

Editorial Reviews

* SHORT-LISTED FOR THE BAAL BOOK PRIZE 2018 *

“Human mobility, migration, dislocation and displacement present a challenge to established notions of language in use. In this book Suresh Canagarajah has met the challenge, doing justice to the multilingual realities of lives led on the move: he has assembled a stellar array of scholars who together present exciting new understandings and re-examinations of language in contexts of mobility. This wide-ranging, compelling volume could not be more timely.”

- James Simpson, University of Leeds, UK

"A terrific selection of articles by cutting edge scholars, useful for teachers, researchers and theorists across disciplines looking for an overview on language and migration. An excellent introduction to the field for both novices and experts."

- Anne Whiteside, City College of San Francisco, USA.

“Ever since the cultural turn and the mobility turn in the social sciences, the study of language in migration studies has assumed new urgency. This Handbook is the place where I turn for stimulating and informed accounts of research. Beyond that, the contributions provide vital insights that, like its subject matter, transcend national borders and disciplinary boundaries.”

- Thomas Faist, Bielefeld University, Germany

"This impressive, compelling volume looks at human migration and language, a growing field of study emerging from the accelerated pace of individuals and groups uprooted because of political conflict, civil rights degradation, economic woes, and religious and social persecution. (...) This is an excellent book. (...) Summing Up: Essential."

- C. Machado, Norwalk Community College in CHOICE

From the Publisher