MIGRalect, a multilingual database of migration languages

MIGRalect.org - Parlers en migration, langues aux frontières, is the fruit of four years' intense work by LIMINAL program researchers with plurilingual actors in migration, on the Franco-Italian and Franco-British borders, in camps and structures in the Île-de-France region, in sometimes isolated reception centers, in Calais, Grande Synthe, Dover, Paris or Ventimiglia.

Starting from the observation that "language practices in situations of migration are made up of violence and imposition, but also of borrowings, detour and creativity", that "the migratory experience invents (...) a language of migration made up of acronyms, invented words, hijacked or coded words, shibboleths, used by exiles but also, sometimes, by supporters and asylum authorities", the team members "identified these words used orally, observed their usage and developed a methodology of analysis with exile and refugee speakers" and built up this lexical database.

Migralect lists over 500 entries of words and expressions that "capture the cultural, sociological, political and poetic dimensions of migration journeys".

It features:

- specific lexicons created for five of the main languages encountered in the migration field: persan (FA), pashto (PS), ourdou (UR), tigrinya (TI), arabic (AR) lexicons with various variants and the MIGR lexicon, which groups together words used in border or asylum situations, the contexts of their use and referents in regions and countries of origin and transit. These are 2194 words, 223 documents and nearly 600 word records documented in these five majority languages.

- a mapping of the study areas

- a presentation of the methodology

What is a migralecte?

The title comes from two words: migra for migration and lecte, a language specific to categories of people.

"The migralecte thus designates the parlers of contemporary migration in France, closely linked to recent national and European migration policies, as much as parlers in migration, transformed by the migratory experience." (Migralect.org)

The term "migralecte" was also explicated at the international closing conference of the ANR Liminal "Lingua non grata. Les langues à l'épreuve des politiques migratoires" (September 14-15, 2021, at Inalco) - Panel 3: Migralecte - Langues et migrations (with: Shahzaman Haque, Alexandra Galitzine-Loumpet, Aman Mohamed, Cherif yakoubi, Stefan Lalande, Aurélie Veyron-Churlet, Omar Zeroual, Dimitri Galitzine).

View video: Lingua (non) grata, languages put to the test by migration policies.