Language learning, investment, and the experience of time: Finnish integration training as part of highly educated migrants’ trajectories

• Integration trajectories are sensitive to disruptions and changes of direction. • Language learning trajectories evolve at the intersection of different timescales. • Temporal perspectives enhance our understanding of investment in language learning. In political discourse, highly educated migrants’ integration is often constructed as “frictionless” (Merla & Smit, 2023), as they bring with them valuable skills and knowledge and are generally expected to be good (and fast) language learners. However, research has shown that such migrants’ trajectories are sensitive to disruptions, delays and changes of direction. In this case study, I explore the migration and language learning trajectories of two highly educated migrants to Finland and their experiences of Finnish integration training, an educational programme aimed at providing basic language skills and facilitating fast employment. Adopting a temporal perspective on migration and language learning, I examine how trajectories are shaped at the intersection of different timescales and participants’ everyday experience of time. The core data consist of four qualitative interviews, which are analysed combining theory-driven content analysis with a narrative approach. I suggest that a perspective on temporal processes and the experience of time can substantially enhance our understanding of investment in language learning (Darvin & Norton, 2015) in a migration context, as the decisions shaping language learning trajectories are made in response to pressures stemming from bureaucratic, institutional and biographical timescales at the same time as they are embedded in migrants’ everyday experience of time.