Doctoral Dissertation Research: Return Migration and Linguistic Interaction

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

The research supported by this award uses a linguistic anthropological approach to investigate the integration of voluntary return migrants as a lens through which to better understand the contemporary nation state. Return migrants are members of the diaspora who migrate back to their homeland. There they are not always easily assimilated, even though they share a language and cultural history with local residents. Thus, return migrants challenge common sense ideas of borders, nation, and citizenship. Given the increased global mobility of the world's populations today, it is important to understand why and how return migrants remain apart from the society they have returned to and whether or not this situation can be remedied. The research will be conducted by University of Texas at Austin anthropology doctoral student Hannah Foster, with guidance from Dr. Anthony Webster. The researcher has chosen to study the situation of return Kazakh migrants in Qaraghandy, Kazakhstan, a city that has received large waves of return migrants in recent years. Because the returnees may come from countries with which the Kazakhstan government has uneasy relationships, these return Kazakhs have been the object of governmental attention and special programs. This makes this a productive research site for studying return immigrant integration. The researcher will focus her data collection on a special integration center where the migrants learn Russian and get access to services. Prior research has demonstrated that these interactions may be mediated by the use of multiple languages and shaped by connections back to the diasporic community they left, creating complex communication networks. The researcher will collect data with a combination of linguistic and ethnographic methods including participant observation, recording naturally occurring discourse, matched-guise experiments, feedback interviews, and narrative analysis. Findings from this research will produce new understandings of the return migration processes in relation to maintaining the stability of the nation state. The findings will also be shared with policy makers concerned to improve the lives of the immigrants as well as their social, political, and cultural integration. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.