Biographies langagières, compétences plurilingues et sentiments d’appartenance : Enquête auprès de cadres étrangers en entreprise internationale de la région Rhône-Alpes

Abstract

Our contribution focuses on qualified migrants and executives in international companies whose employment depends on a solid capital of skills in several languages. As such, these temporary migrants who are social actors in the community the company represents are implicitly or explicitly subject to certain rules governing communication within the firm (Thamin, 2007). The issues addressed here are as follows: How do they perceive their plurilingual skills and what uses do they say they make of them in professional situations? What values do they attribute to the languages comprising their linguistic repertoire and what feelings of social belonging do they allude to?The results presented here pertain to a group research project being carried out at present entitled: Biographies langagières et mobilité professionnelle : recomposition des répertoires plurilingues (Language biographies and professional mobility : reconstruction of plurilingual repertoires – our translation) involving 50 questionnaires collected from salaried executives in 15 international firms in the Rhône-Alpes region. The study was designed to extend research undertaken in Thamin (op. cit.). We will analyse in particular the composition of the plural repertoires of the executives concerned, the skills they declare in the “official” languages of their firms (French and English), but also the values they attribute to their plurilingualism and how they perceive it in terms of feelings of belonging. The study recognises the importance of partial skills and the way they are mobilised in the workplace.

Keywords

• plurilingual skills
• international firms
• feelings of social belonging
• language biographies