West african female migrants in the city of Athens: language and identity

Abstract

This study focuses on West-African female migrant narratives. The central research question is ‘How do West-African migrant women who live in Athens present themselves in their narratives?’ The analytical lens adopted sees identities as constructions. They are perceived as relational and sociocultural phenomena that emerge and circulate in interaction. An approach of narratives as co-constructions functions as an overarching conceptual lens. The data are approached from a discourse analytic perspective. The analysis focuses on the women’s discursive self-presentations alongside the presentation of their relations and social realities, based on three linguistic structures: pronominal use, spatial deixis and represented speech. According to the findings, pronominal choices define the role of the self in relation to others through claims of group membership, normality and knowledge; spatial deixis anchors the speakers in different worlds, and gives them the opportunity to move between ‘here’ and ‘there’; and represented speech enables them to align with different voices while activating parts of their identities both in the story world and in the wider social context. Throughout their narratives, the women present themselves as active agents and subjects of their histories. Claims for power, acts of agency, and resistance against hegemonic discourses define their linguistic choices.