Biodiverse Anthropocenes Presents: Special Guest Seminar

Dr. Chimaobi Onwukwe is a senior lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Communication Studies/Igbo, Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria where he has worked for over a decade now. He was a research fellow, at the Institute for French Research in Africa (IFRA) 2020, and a Postdoctoral fellow at, the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARCHi) on migration, language, and social change, Linguistics section, University of Cape Town, South Africa (2019-2021), as well as a research fellow at the Leeds Center for African studies, University of Leeds, 2022. Dr Onwukwe was a Carnegie Corporation of New York fellow 2021, and 2020 recipient of the research grant of the African Peacebuilding Network of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York, USA. He teaches “Colonialism, Migration and Decolonization: Perspectives on African Languages and Cultures” as part of the University of Oulu’s HS-DP doctoral courses and other training events for 2025.

Adult Nigerian Immigrants’ Linguistic Integration in South Africa and Finland

Abstract: Immigrant integration has become an increasingly hot topic in academic and policy debates. This was fueled, among other things, by the rise in global migration. Linguistic integration, particularly of immigrants, is shaped by different sociolinguistic factors. This study examines Nigerian immigrants' linguistic integration experiences in two different but interesting linguistic ecologies—South Africa and Finland. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, I identify fluid language practices including learning and use of South African local languages (isiZulu, isiXhosa, and to a limited extent Afrikaans) that relate to social identity negotiation against the backdrop of xenophobia that is prevalent in South Africa. Also, drawing on video-recorded semi-structured interviews with recruited nurses, and nursing students in Finland, I identify their experiences with learning Finnish, encounters with patients, with whom they do not share a strong language, and embodied means of getting by in those encounters. Equally identified is the development of family-based alternatives to overcome the barriers associated with the immigrants’ Finnish learning. The project contributes to the current public interest in migrants’ social involvement and equality, and deepens discussion on social sustainability, expanding the transdisciplinary Biodiverse Anthropocenes Research Programme.