Transnational Perspectives on Sociolinguistic Capital among Luso-Descendants in France and Portugal

I argue in this article that language practices and ideologies are central to French–Portuguese transmigrants’ efforts to obtain recognition of legitimate identities in both French and Portuguese national contexts. Drawing on ethnographic work, I describe the encounters of Luso-Descendants, the adult children of Portuguese migrants, with French and Portuguese monolingual language ideologies. Although these actors’ lives are led transnationally, their life possibilities are structured by sociolinguistic norms centered within two ideologically monolingual nation-states. This article thus contributes to scholarship about the sociolinguistics of migration by advocating a more transnational approach to the study of migrant populations. Similarly, it contributes to discussions of transnationalism by looking specifically at how language becomes an important site for the enactment of identities within and across multiple national boundaries in the context of the European Union.