This presentation contributes to the South-North dialogue on languaging, (im)mobilities, and colonial constructs through an exploration of how East African women of refugee-backgrounds strategically play with language ideology to assume identities and create spaces of increased mobility.
In this presentation, I engage with current South-North dialogue on languaging, (im)mobilities, and (de)coloniality. I consider the idea of 'masking' – or how women of refugee-backgrounds purposefully take up or shed racio-linguistic identities and strategically play with their languages in order to perform roles, assume identities, and create possibilities of increased mobility within and among the socio-cultural spaces they encounter in both southern and northern contexts.
Drawing on short narratives from South Sudanese women of refugee backgrounds now settled in Australia, I explore the women's use of languaging to facilitate physical and social mobility. Through the experiences they share, the women reveal that they regard themselves as agents who intentionally made use of their linguistic repertoires. Their framing of experiences points to calculated choices to use aspects of language and appearance to manipulate sociolinguistic situations. The women's experiences of masking and mobility lead to considerations of perspective –what is centre and what is periphery – and to questions of what is truly a 'space of otherwise?'
