Language socialization of Urdu speaking migrants in France : Invisible men's access to the clandestine labor market

Résumé En

This paper explores the complex nature of Urdu-speaking migrants and asylum-seekers in France from Pakistan and Afghanistan to enter the clandestine labor market in Paris and its suburbs. Drawing the data from the National Research Agency's four-year project LIMINAL (2017-2021) and on my separate interaction with Urdu-speaking migrants in France, the lack of fluency in French accompanied by restrictive conditions on work permits, the aforesaid migrants find themselves in the web of the clandestine labor market, where the principal language remains Urdu or Punjabi. With the help of field surveys conducted in Calais, Paris, and Parisian suburbs between 2018 and 2020, employing qualitative modes of inquiry such as interviews, participant observation, and narratives, I present here a case study of seven people who were working in a clandestine labor market accessible only to Urdu and Punjabi speakers. Urdu emerged as the lingua franca among the different ethnicities of Pakistan, Bangladesh (formerly Pakistan), and with Pashto-speaking migrants of Afghanistan. Many lexical items under the influence of Punjabi, English, Urdu and Arabic were observed which were categorized as « Migralecte » under the project LIMINAL and this is somewhat in the lines of « new word order » (Roberts 2010). As much as Migralecte remains an undercurrent practice for the external language community, its speakers along with their heritage language remain « invisible » in the main linguistic landscape of France.