Emotions in Transnational Migration

This project follows a multidisciplinary approach that integrates perspectives and methodologies from psycho-, socio- and neurolinguistics. It is the continuum of the project entitled "Language anxiety in the immigrant context: An interdisciplinary perspective".

Yesim Sevinc

Photo: Mathias Fossum, UiO

About the project

This project examines multilingualism and emotions (i.e., negative and positive) across different immigrant communities in Norway (e.g., Pakistani, Polish and Turkish communities). The central focus is on multilingual practices, social and emotional dynamics and experiences of minority groups in various social settings (i.e., family, school, work and outside).

The project centres on the relationships between emotions, language competence and practices, social and cultural challenges that members of an immigrant community face in their everyday lives as ethnic, cultural and linguistic minorities. It also investigates the possible link between immigrants’ psychosocial, neurological and physiological responses to their multilingual and immigrant experiences. It contributes to our understanding of why and how individuals, researchers and societies should deal with social and emotional challenges of multilingualism, migration and integration.

Methodology

This project takes a mixed-methods approach by incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data through interactional sociolinguistic methods, focus group interviews, questionnaires and EDA and EEG experiments.

It follows an multidisciplinary approach that combines neurolinguistic (neurophysiology), psycholinguistic (applied linguistics and psychophysiology), and sociolinguistic (e.g., multilingualism and migration, social justice and diversity) perspectives.

Researchers and sub-project(s)

Shafqat Ullah Khan (MA) is involved in the project as a research assistant, to facilitate data collection and transcription from the Pakistani community in Norway.

Mekki Jani Artturi Lumio joined the project as a master's student to investigate "Sociolinguistic and Socioemotional Experiences of Polish Workers in Norway" (MA thesis in progress).