What does it mean to leave home and build a life within unfamiliar systems of language, labour, culture, and power?
Social Class, Language, and Migrant Agency offers a compelling examination of the lived experiences of Indonesian migrant workers within an anonymised Middle Eastern migration context. Moving beyond representations of migrants as either powerless victims or heroic economic actors, the book presents them as complex individuals who actively negotiate identity, dignity, belonging, obligation, and opportunity within unequal transnational labour systems.
Drawing on narrative inquiry, applied linguistics, migration studies, and critical social theory, the book explores how social class, linguistic resources, institutional power, family responsibility, faith, and social networks shape migrant journeys. It follows these journeys from recruitment and departure through workplace participation, multilingual communication, adaptation, family separation, and eventual return.
By bringing blue-collar and white-collar migration pathways into conversation, the volume demonstrates that international mobility is never experienced equally. Migrants cross borders with different levels of economic, cultural, social, linguistic, and symbolic capital. These differences influence the employment they obtain, the risks they encounter, the authority they can exercise, and the recognition they receive.
At the centre of the book is the concept of migrant linguistic agency: migrants’ capacity to mobilise linguistic, multilingual, embodied, digital, and relational resources to navigate unequal circumstances. Agency is revealed not only through visible acts of resistance, but also through quieter practices such as learning workplace language independently, seeking support, interpreting institutional expectations, choosing when to speak or remain silent, sustaining family relationships, practising faith, and preserving dignity under constraint.
The book also challenges the assumption that migration is simply geographical or economic movement. Migration involves movement across class positions, linguistic hierarchies, occupational identities, cultural expectations, moral worlds, and systems of recognition. Through carefully contextualised narratives, migrant workers emerge not merely as sources of labour, but as multilingual communicators, knowledge producers, and interpreters of their own social worlds.
Combining theoretical innovation with grounded human experience, this book will be valuable to scholars and students of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, migration studies, anthropology, sociology, labour studies, education, and international development. It also offers important insights for policymakers, educators, migrant-support organisations, advocates, and practitioners working toward more humane systems of migrant preparation, protection, labour governance, and reintegration.
Ultimately, this book asks readers to listen differently – to recognise migrant workers not only for the labour they perform, but also for the knowledge, creativity, resilience, and dignity through which they navigate transnational life.
Penulis : Helena Verusha Ali & Yanuarius Yanu Dharmawan
Editor : Agatha Wuri Yayi Saputri
Halaman buku : 220
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