Die Fachbibliothek Bildungswissenschaft, Linguistik, Europäische und Vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft lädt zur Präsentation und Diskussion des Buches Inside Refugee Support Work. An Ethnography of Language, Labour and Subjectivity ein.
Program Book Launch
Opening & welcome
Ariella Sobel | Head of the Education, Linguistics, European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies Library
Introductory words
Jürgen Spitzmüller | Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna
About the book and the series Language, Mobility and Institutions by Multilingual Matters
Melissa Moyer Greer | Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, co-editor of the series
Presentation of the book
Jonas Hassemer | Departament of Linguistics, University of Vienna
Discussion
Moderated by: Sabine Lehner | Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research, University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten
Light refreshments will be served
About the book
Presents a situated, ethnographically grounded, sociolinguistic critique of politics of difference and inequality in contemporary Central Europe. This book explores the construction of “languaged”‚ and professional subjectivities in the context of refugee support work in Austria. It presents ethnographic insights into how language and linguistic practice come to matter both as part of a migration infrastructure in transformation, and in the efforts within a particular institution to reinvent itself as it struggles for survival in the context of shrinking public and state support for refugee provision. The author focuses on how transformation processes play out in counsellors‘ and volunteer interpreters‘ conceptions of themselves as professionals and speaking subjects when confronted with the political and ethical dilemmas of an increasingly precarised work context. It becomes clear that language, while being central to the services offered, remains a sign of Otherness in a “languaged” institutional order.
- Jonas Hassemer
Inside Refugee Support Work. An Ethnography of Language, Labour and Subjectivity
erschienen in der Reihe Language, Mobility and Institutions by Multilingual Matters. Bristol, 2026
Link zum Buch bei u:search
About the author
Jonas Hassemer is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Vienna, Austria. He previously worked in the Section of Intercultural Communication and Multilingualism Research within the Department of Language, Media Studies, and Musicology at the University of Bonn. His research focuses on ethnographic approaches to multilingualism, the relationship between language and social inequality, processes of subjectivation, and the lived experience of language.
