Home, transit, return: Chronotopes and pre-resettlement language ideologies in the trajectories of Iraqi refugees preparing for resettlement in New Zealand

Research on language maintenance and shift has predominantly focused on post-arrival settlement, generating rich accounts of intergenerational transmission and shift pressures while leaving pre-resettlement ideological work less examined. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Iraqi refugees in Jordan preparing for resettlement in New Zealand, this article examines how pre-resettlement language ideologies are articulated as participants invoke, enact, extend, and at times contest chronotopic orientations to home-worlds, transit normalcy, return, anticipated settlement, and sacred futures in constructing the value, legitimacy, and future roles of Arabic, Assyrian, and English. It argues that in pre-resettlement discourse, chronotopes operate as moral grounds through which language ideologies are constructed, languages are positioned as legitimate, necessary, or acceptable across domestic, religious, and institutional domains, and their value is projected across layered temporal horizons before arrival.