Mexican Temporary Agricultural Workers in Canada: a Language and Migration Approach

The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the sociolinguistic research on language issues faced by temporary migrants. My research involves a compilation and analysis of the sociolinguistic facts relating to the situation of Mexican Temporary Agricultural Workers (MTAW) who come to Ontario and Quebec through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Following an ethnographic approach and methodology, I investigated the following research questions: 1). How do the biographic backgrounds –human capital- of MTAW restrict or allow them to renegotiate their identity and to be able to deal with their new social and linguistic environment? 2). What and how are the communicative practices of MTAW? 3). What linguistic barriers do MTAW face and how does it affect their daily lives? 4). How do the receiving communities include or exclude MTAW? Among other results, I have found that MTAW live in conditions where language/dialect and contacts happen. However, MTAW’s communicative practices show a stable language maintenance phenomenon, with transidiomatic[1] practices (Jacquemet, 2005), where sociolinguistics barriers impact their lives in almost every space of their life creating dehumanizing barriers that marks them as vulnerable individuals that suffer from linguistic inequalities and exclusion. On the other hand, these same conditions have promoted social awareness among the community at different levels, where there has been an active participation to help MTAW adapt to the community, while at the same time the community also tries to adapt to MTAW’s seasonal presence and needs. [1] Transidiomatic practices describe communicative practices of transnational groups with linguistic interactions using different languages and codes (Jacquemet, 2005)

When civil servants meet consultants: Convergence or conversion in the representations of change?

Public Sector Reform has been on the agenda of governments in United Kingdom for many decades. New Public Management is the most recent thinking that is driving the changes in Public Administration since the 1980s. This thesis explores the social psychology of an encounter of Civil Servants and the Consultants, engaged by the government in the late 1990s. This encounter between two fundamentally different groups, that is, the institution of the British Civil Service and the community of practice of the management consultants, resulted in a culture clash of ethos, languages, rites and rituals, perceptions of change, and actions. This is a crucial moment to capture the experience of change and the consequences of these representations in the process. This thesis tracks the social representations of change and the acts of representing the change over a nine-month period. Over 800 staff members from both groups worked intensively together, impacting over 10,000 employees, and documenting this change period. Drawing on a social psychological theory of representations, this thesis looks at these processes both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Representations are analysed using co-occurrence analysis on the languages used in the documentation about the change (using ALCESTE software). The results of this study looks at the implications of this 'arranged marriage' between two different cultures being put together by a third party, in this case, the government. The study presents evidence of convergence and conversion of representations over time, and offers putative conditions for one or the other to occur. The recommendations made for Private Sector change models to work towards convergence rather than conversion

Key Concepts in Public Archaeology

This book provides a broad overview of the key concepts in public archaeology, a research field that examines the relationship between archaeology and the public, in both theoretical and practical terms. While based on the long-standing programme of undergraduate and graduate teaching in public archaeology at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, the book also takes into account the growth of scholarship from around the world and seeks to clarify what exactly ‘public archaeology’ is by promoting an inclusive, socially and politically engaged vision of the discipline. Written for students and practitioners, the individual chapters provide textbook-level introductions to the themes, theories and controversies that connect archaeology to wider society, from the trade in illicit antiquities to the use of digital media in public engagement, and point readers to the most relevant case studies and learning resources to aid their further study