Migration, languages and identities. With speaker Dr Ana Souza (MOSAIC Seminar)

MOSAIC Group for Research on Multilingualism seminar series 2019-20

Migration, languages and identities: Brazilians in the UK

Speaker: Dr Ana Souza, University of Brasília (Brazil) / Oxford Brookes University (Oxford, UK)

Brazil, in the last 30 to 40 years, has witnessed the move of a large number of its nationals to other countries. The increase in the number of Brazilians living abroad has led the UN to consider it to be a country of emigration in 2004.

Researchers have also noticed this phenomenon and a number of studies on the experiences of Brazilians in a variety of countries have been conducted. The UK, being the main destination for Brazilian migrants in Europe, is one of these countries.

In this talk, historical and statistical information on the migration of Brazilians to the UK is shared.  The aim is to set the context for presenting a sociolinguistic profile of this group of migrants compiled through a collection of studies conducted over a decade.

The studies shared explore issues of language and identity and allow an understanding of language planning by parents, teachers and religious leaders as well as of the children’s language socialisation in three different contexts (i.e. home, complementary schools and migrant churches).

Biography

Dr Ana Souza is a Visiting Professor at the Post-graduate Programme in Linguistics at the University of Brasília (Brazil) and an Honorary Visiting Academic at Oxford Brookes University (England). Her research interests include bilingualism, language and identity, language planning (family and migrant churches), the teaching of Portuguese as a Heritage Language and training of language teachers. Her work has been published in edited books and academic journals such as the Children & Society, Current Issues in Language Planning, International Journal of Multilingualism, Language Issues, Portuguese Studies, Revista Travessia, The Curriculum Journal and Women’s Studies International Forum.

Ana’s research has been transformed into social action through ABRIR, the Brazilian Association for Educational Projects in the UK (https://abrir10anos.wordpress.com/), which she co-founded in 2006 and coordinated until 2016. With support from ABRIR, she co-created SEPOLH (The European Symposium on the Teaching of Portuguese as a Heritage Language - www.sepolh.eu) in 2013. This event aims to encourage the collaboration between academics and practitioners in European countries.

Ana has also contributed to academic networking through the creation of the Migration to the UK Research Group (https://geb2008.wordpress.com/) and presently leads the research group on multilingualism in family, religious and educational contexts (https://tinyurl.com/multifare2019) at the University of Brasília.