ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore the processes of the self-conceptualization of identity among first-generation Chilean migrants in Sydney. The Chilean case offers a cross-section of contrasts—in terms of political alignments, experiences of class pre- and post-migration, presence of or challenge to community attachments—that afford a heightened example of the disputed negotiations in the terrain of identity and the linguistic features involved in these negotiations. Sydney is a city known not just as the home of the largest number of Chilean migrants in the Southern hemisphere outside of Latin America but one whose urban realities are highly decentered. As such, the dynamic centrifuge of Sydney’s social and physical geography past and present—as well as the promises of multiculturalism and its vagaries as policy and practice over the period this study covers—mold the contours of the lived experiences, relations, and narratives of self and other. Through an in-depth case study, the aim of this chapter is to explore the discursive practices and operations that are at play in the configuration of self-conceptualizations of identity. Our analysis addresses an important gap in the literature on Latin American migration to Australia. The chapter is developed as follows: after the first section, which addresses Sydney as a global city, we profile the place of Spanish in relation to English and other languages in the city; we then move to highlight the chapter’s key issues in relation to concerns addressed in this volume. We also highlight the chapter’s engagement with the sociolinguistics of globalization that informs the other contributions in this book, in order to establish critical definitions of the theoretical perspectives that underlie our approach. We draw on a variety of theoretical developments in the areas of migration studies and Dialogical Self Theory to make our argument about the ways in which particular language terms and distinctions generate social and identity positions among Chileans. Key methodological considerations are followed by a presentation of an analysis of data as gleaned from 15 interviews and 2 focus groups. We conclude by relating features of language, identity, and differentiation to the issue of languages as resources for mobility within the framework of a sociolinguistics of globalization, vis-à-vis the salience that identity labels assume in a global city such as Sydney. 313
