(Im)mobility infrastructure and the production of the linguistic precariat

Abstract

Based on an 18 month long ethnographic fieldwork in self-organised English language lessons in a radical café and a squat in two neighbourhoods of Athens, this article deals with (im)mobility infrastructure and the production of the linguistic precariat in Greece. To do this, I investigate how waiting as a bordering technology shapes language learning practices of refugees whilst they plan their journeys to northern Europe via human smugglers. I explore how language and communication intersect with (im)mobility infrastructure, how it is rationalised and what it does in the context of forced migration. More specifically, I investigate how language learning and communication practices of refugees are shaped by this apparatus and turn them into the linguistic precariat. The notion of linguistic precariat refers to uncertainties, anxieties, vulnerabilities, insecurities experienced by individuals who make temporary investments in their language learning choices. I discuss how my participants, including refugees and anti-authoritarians, mobilise vulnerability, lack of language(s), through self organised teaching and learning, to reduce condition of precarity.