Constructing Refugee English Language Learners and the "Other" through Institutional Language Ideologies

In this study, I explore how institutional practices at refugee resettlement centers ideologically promote language learning with the goal of employment in mind, and I investigate how this language ideology is subsequently taken up within refugee communities. Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with Syrian refugee women living in Chicago, I explore how language ideologies are constructed along an axis of differentiation and upheld through institutional practices, uptakes of the English language, rhematized conjectures, and ideological erasures. Ultimately, I argue that because resettlement agencies frequently associate ESL classes with pipelines to employment, these institutional language ideologies are taken up and reimagined by refugee clients who produce rhematized conjectures about the types of women who learn English and enter those pipelines as opposed to those who do not.