Jan Blommaert’s article Citizenship, Language, and Superdiversity: Towards Complexity focus on our understanding of citizenship, and how superdiversity has challenged this view. Altering concepts of community, language, and citizenship by analysing the integration process, and realising that the idea of citizenship has many centres of power and importance. Blommaert has challenged the complexity of dis-citizenship, investigating the many interconnected parts, including the problems faced by imagination, communicative competence, and the use of registers in society.
One main point that Blommaert addresses of community, language, and citizenship, is the dramatic social changes that have occurred over time, concerning these notions. Vertovec …show more content…
When migrants are integrated into new societies they are expected to understand the culture and values that are surrounding them. Including the language, social environment, and when to use the correct registers. This is known as ‘en-registering; when you have to acquire the resources to be integrated. (Agha, 2007; Moller & Jorgenson, 2012) However, the issue people are having with integrating migrants into new societies, is that culture is interpretive. It isn’t just restricted to features like race and country of origin, or a persons beliefs. For a person can be apart of multiple cultures, for culture is fluid. Nor is it an assumption and it cannot be fit into a specific mould. According to Blommaert, this is where the problem of imagination enters. Citizens that are born in one country, and have people migrating there only have one view of how there culture should be, because they lack the imagination to see it otherwise. They see not only there culture, but other peoples culture as solid. For example, people may suggest that cultural tools are items such as chop sticks. Cultural tools are not just limited to objects, but to language, signs, and beliefs passed through generations. Language is ambiguous because it can mean different things to different people, and have different meanings. We jump to conclusions based on what has happened in our lives, and how we have been raised. Each person interprets a sentence differently. (Scollon, R., Scollon, S., & Jones, pg. 1-24) Just as Scollon, Scollon and Jones have discussed culture as interpretive, Blommaert has also discussed the problems that may arise from this topic in relation to culture being interpretive. Using a hijab as an example that immigrants also have their own niches, and cultural values that cannot be integrated. Blommaert argues that immigrants are subjected to pressures
One main point that Blommaert addresses of community, language, and citizenship, is the dramatic social changes that have occurred over time, concerning these notions. Vertovec …show more content…
When migrants are integrated into new societies they are expected to understand the culture and values that are surrounding them. Including the language, social environment, and when to use the correct registers. This is known as ‘en-registering; when you have to acquire the resources to be integrated. (Agha, 2007; Moller & Jorgenson, 2012) However, the issue people are having with integrating migrants into new societies, is that culture is interpretive. It isn’t just restricted to features like race and country of origin, or a persons beliefs. For a person can be apart of multiple cultures, for culture is fluid. Nor is it an assumption and it cannot be fit into a specific mould. According to Blommaert, this is where the problem of imagination enters. Citizens that are born in one country, and have people migrating there only have one view of how there culture should be, because they lack the imagination to see it otherwise. They see not only there culture, but other peoples culture as solid. For example, people may suggest that cultural tools are items such as chop sticks. Cultural tools are not just limited to objects, but to language, signs, and beliefs passed through generations. Language is ambiguous because it can mean different things to different people, and have different meanings. We jump to conclusions based on what has happened in our lives, and how we have been raised. Each person interprets a sentence differently. (Scollon, R., Scollon, S., & Jones, pg. 1-24) Just as Scollon, Scollon and Jones have discussed culture as interpretive, Blommaert has also discussed the problems that may arise from this topic in relation to culture being interpretive. Using a hijab as an example that immigrants also have their own niches, and cultural values that cannot be integrated. Blommaert argues that immigrants are subjected to pressures