Revisiting conceptual tools at the crossroad of postcolonial and sociolinguistic studies

This is the first research brief in the DisPOSEG Project. DisPOSEG stands for “Disentangling postcolonial encounters in globalisation: a sociolinguistic-ethnographic study of Lusophone migrant workers’ positioning in third space,” a three-year CORE project funded by the FNR, Luxembourg. This multi-sited project contributes to the fields of postcolonialism, migration studies, sociolinguistics and workplace studies by investigating language, history and migration from Portuguese-speaking countries (Portugal and its former colonies) into Luxembourg, with a focus on migrants’ work, social and linguistic interactions. It problematises interactions of/between concomitant populations of those countries that form this dichotomic colonial matrix of former coloniser and former colonised, and their descendants in Luxembourg, a geographical spaces traditionally perceived as non-colonial. In this first research brief we outline and revisit four interlinked key concepts guiding the project.