Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey: Migration and the Channel Islands [1st ed.] 9783319975641, 9783319975658

This book examines transnational identities, integration and linguistic practices on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands.

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Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey: Migration and the Channel Islands [1st ed.]
 9783319975641, 9783319975658

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
Introduction (Jaine Beswick)....Pages 1-19
Front Matter ....Pages 21-21
Island Migrations: Conceptual Considerations (Jaine Beswick)....Pages 23-41
Historical Migrations: Jersey as a Multicultural Space (Jaine Beswick)....Pages 43-78
Front Matter ....Pages 79-81
Contemporary Migrations: Global Movement and Transnationalism (Jaine Beswick)....Pages 83-112
Problematising the Local: Islanded Identities and Sociolinguistic Realities (Jaine Beswick)....Pages 113-174
Contemporary Migrations: The Madeiran Portuguese (Jaine Beswick)....Pages 175-242
Concluding Remarks (Jaine Beswick)....Pages 243-247
Back Matter ....Pages 249-273

Citation preview

Migration and the Channel Islands

Jaine Beswick

language and globalization series editors: sue wright and helen kelly-holmes

Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey

Language and Globalization

Series Editors Sue Wright University of Portsmouth Portsmouth, UK Helen Kelly-Holmes FAHSS University of Limerick Castletroy Limerick, Ireland

In the context of current political and social developments, where the national group is not so clearly defined and delineated, the state language not so clearly dominant in every domain, and cross-border flows and transfers affects more than a small elite, new patterns of language use will develop. This series aims to provide a framework for reporting on and analysing the lingustic outcomes of globalization and localization. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14830

Jaine Beswick

Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey Migration and the Channel Islands

Jaine Beswick Modern Languages and Linguistics University of Southampton Southampton, UK

Language and Globalization ISBN 978-3-319-97564-1 ISBN 978-3-319-97565-8  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Marcello Mascia/EyeEm/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

In memory of Fred, who always inspired and encouraged me to reach for the stars, even in daylight. You were a legend Dad; I miss you more than words can ever say.

Acknowledgments

I am hugely grateful to all my participants on Jersey, who t­hroughout my fieldwork gave generously of both their time and energy and inspired me to write this book. I am also indebted to Amanda Hilmarsson-Dunn, who helped me gather fieldwork data, and to Anna Baghiani, Pauline Syvret, Roland Quintaine and Linda Romeril, to mention just a few of the people on Jersey who graciously supplied me with information and advice over the years. I also gratefully acknowledge the concession of the Sociétè Jersiaise’s Millennium Award as well as the generous financial support of the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme. I am also indebted to my commissioning editor Cathy Scott, for her everlasting patience, as well as to the series editors for their extremely insightful comments. And finally, eternal thanks and love must go to my family; to my mum Shirley, for her unwavering support, to Scarlett, for her delightful company on my forays to Jersey, and to Julian, for the endless supplies of gin.

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Contents

1 Introduction 1 Methodological Considerations 5 The Status of Jersey 8 Chapter Outline 11 References 16 Part I  Jersey Through the Ages: Island of Migration 2 Island Migrations: Conceptual Considerations 23 Islands: Borders and the Sea, Isolation and Insularity 24 Islands: Islandness and Identity 26 The Island as Metaphor: Space, Place, Home 27 Popular Culture: The Myth and Reality of Islands 31 An Island Paradise: Tourism and Travel 34 Chapter Summary 36 References 37

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x      Contents

3 Historical Migrations: Jersey as a Multicultural Space 43 The Pre-Norman Era: Invasion and Conquest 44 The Medieval Period: The Duchy of Normandy and the English Crown 47 The Middle Ages: The Anglo-French Battleground 48 The Nineteenth Century: Tourists and Residents 52 The Nineteenth Century: Economic Migration 54 The Aliens Restriction Act: Migrant Registration 56 World War II: Invasion, Occupation, Legacy 60 Out-Migration: Emigration Through the Ages 67 Chapter Summary 72 References 75 Part II Jersey in the Twenty and Twenty First Centuries: Ideologies, Identities, Integration and Language 4 Contemporary Migrations: Global Movement and Transnationalism 83 Twentieth-Century Migrations: From Agriculture to Tourism 84 Policy and Planning: Employment Law, Residency and Citizenship 89 Language as Symbolic, Economic and Cultural Capital: Jersey Emigration 92 Contemporary Migrations: The Banking and Finance Industries 94 Contemporary Migrations: Transnational Lives 96 Contemporary Migrations: The Multicultural Island 101 Chapter Summary 106 References 109 5 Problematising the Local: Islanded Identities and Sociolinguistic Realities 113 Peoples and Populations: Representation and Identity 114 Islanded Representations and Identities: Norman Heritage 120

Contents     xi

Islanded Representations and Identities: The Mainland British 122 Islanded Representations and Identities: The Bretons 125 Island Representations and Identities: Resistance and Collaboration 126 Island Representations and Identities: Nation Branding 129 Islanded Representations and Identities: Language Ideologies and Attitudes 132 Linguistic Identity and French Language Varieties 135 Language and Nation Branding: Jèrriais 140 Language in the Linguistic Landscape 143 Identities of Belonging: Being a Local 146 Identities of Belonging: Being a Migrant, Becoming a Local 154 Chapter Summary 161 References 164 6 Contemporary Migrations: The Madeiran Portuguese 175 National and Regional Identity: Portugal and Madeira 176 Madeira to Jersey: Island-to-Island Migration 181 Neither Here Nor There: Return Migration and Home 192 Social Embeddedness and Belonging: Transnational Practices and Translocal Spaces 195 Language in Interaction: Ideological Precepts of Belonging 209 Language in the Workplace 213 The Third Generation: Ideologies of Language and Authenticity 218 Chapter Summary 228 References 232 7 Concluding Remarks 243 Reference 247 Appendices 249 Index 257

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Madeira social club, St. Helier, Jersey 7 Fig. 4.1 Population Statistics by Place of Birth (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2014: 42–43) 106 Fig. 6.1 Representations of the Madeiran, Portuguese and English flags alongside the Union Jack, Alfonso Bakery & Coffee Shop, St. Helier, Jersey 198 Fig. 6.2 A selection of Portuguese cakes, Alfonso Bakery & Coffee Shop, St. Helier, Jersey 200

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Jersey Registration Card foreign nationals born before 1900 58 Table 3.2 Registration Card foreign nationals born on Jersey 1901–1916 59 Table 3.3 Registration Card foreign nationals born on Jersey 1901–1916 by nationality (excludes French nationals) 60

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1 Introduction

July 2003. I am sitting outside a street café on the main pedestrian thoroughfare in St. Helier with a friend who lives on Jersey, the biggest island of the Channel Islands situated between Britain and France. Two girls walk by, engaged in lively and animated conversation in Portuguese. My friend knows the girls; they attended her secondary school and are employed at de Gruchy’s, one of Jersey’s central department stores. A man on the adjacent table looks rather confused and comments to his wife that the French of the Island sounds nothing like he remembers from his school days in Birmingham. Just who are these people and what language are they speaking? Why are there so many foreigners living on the Island? How do they find work when they don’t speak English? This book is the culmination of over a decade of detailed research into migration, identity and language on Jersey, one of the main inhabited Channel Islands, along with Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm. As a sociolinguist working primarily on these themes with various Portuguese communities in the UK, my interest in the Island was piqued when I met six Portuguese-speaking university students who lived on Jersey in what they themselves termed a Madeiran Portuguese migrant community. These students regaled me with stories about their lives on the Island and also invited me to listen to their families’ and friends’ tales about © The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8_1

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their experiences on Jersey. From the outset, these narratives centred on the idea of migration in terms of spatial dislocation and movement as well as of belonging to different places at the same time. Participants often problematised their identities in terms of ‘real-world problems’ (Brumfit 1995: 27), with language but also culture and social practices foregrounded in their self-perceptions. Key was how they conceptualised Jersey as a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual island and the ensuing consequences for encounters with the receptor population. A deeper understanding of the complexities of these lives also necessitated a fuller appreciation of historical migratory trajectories to Jersey than that proffered by previous scholarship, with the focus turning squarely to the roles in particular of language, ideology, attitude and identity. However, this book is not intended as a chronological account of Jersey’s migration history. Rather, it serves as a distinctive and innovative contribution to the growing body of research on recent migration contexts, transnational and translocal lives and language use, concentrating in particular on the small island setting and its somewhat unusual Portuguese-speaking diaspora. Clearly, such a focus on the contemporary still requires us to trace, examine, appreciate and understand the earlier contexts and influences. This book then, may have arisen from my interest in contemporary perspectives, but it is structured to build into the empirical, micro-focus of Part II from the historical, conceptual, macro setting of the book in Part I. The small island context of Jersey is extremely unusual in research on global migration, transnationalism, translocalism and language, with most studies focusing on cityscapes. It is not my intention however, to suggest that an island setting can be viewed as a microcosm of British or European mainland experiences, despite similarities between receptor community infrastructures and migrant trajectories. I draw on an island studies’ approach to demonstrate that Jersey’s tradition of migratory in-movement offers an excellent comparison of the historical and contemporary impact of migration, which allows me to examine how transnational and translocal identities have been negotiated through linguistic, cultural and social network practices and how they shape social embeddedness, belonging, place and home. This juxtaposition of historical and contemporary migratory movement also opens

1 Introduction     3

up a compelling area of interest concerning the presence of so-called minority languages in a multilingual environment. It affords a comparison of the symbolic, identification roles and representations of Jersey French, Standard French, English and contemporary migrant languages such as Portuguese, how language is perceived as a tool of social integration, the potential of such integration for consequent shifts in migrant group allegiances, and receptor community responses. Indeed, a major facet of this book’s originality lies in its examination of the receptor population’s official representations of self and its ideologies and attitudes towards migrant populations. Jersey has long been an Island of strategic importance to Britain and France, and historical publications abound about the German Occupation during World War II. In a significant departure from such accounts, this book examines the Occupation’s legacy on the Island as well as its impact on Island identities and ideological precepts concerning nationhood. Throughout, I adopt a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach to migration, identity and belonging, which engages sociolinguistic and island studies models with concepts from social psychology, mobility studies and human geography. Since the late twentieth century, global debates about population movement, migration, diaspora and transnationalism have undergone a hitherto unprecedented increase in number and significance. However, many modern nation states articulate migration as a problem in society that needs to be solved by stemming their means of arrival. As a corollary, in the media’s mainstream, populist discourse, misinformation regarding non-integration and anti-assimilation practices may echo political anti-immigration rhetoric, rife on both sides of the Atlantic as well as beyond. Often, images of the plight of many migrants simply serve to reinforce largely stereotypical and negative portrayals (see, for example, Baker et al. 2008). Thus, migrants may be depicted as hapless victims laid bare to the proclivities of their ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds and with little control over their fate, or as delinquents, freeloaders and benefit cheats, with no moral compass or contrition. Rights to citizenship and residency may be overlooked or even dismissed outright as migrants take the blame for the social, economic and even cultural problems of the receptor society.

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Academic discourse has sought to unpack these issues through a grounded and theoretical analysis of a number of global case studies, and has demonstrated that such stereotypical representations of migration are often replicated in attitudes and ideologies towards identity and language use.1 Integration has often been a requisite of national citizenship in multilingual and multicultural environments, with acquisition of the receptor society’s official language articulated in institutional policies not only as an indispensable communication tool but also as an indicator of group belonging, a way of trying to encourage migrants to identify with and conform to the shared majority culture, often implying that their social situation will improve in this way. Sometimes, such top-down legislation simply reinforces social boundaries and tensions regarding linguistic pluralism and diversity, and perhaps as a response to this, certain academic debates have focused on the development and viability of linguistic policy and planning initiatives. It is nonetheless true that some migrants may well embrace the receptor language as a way of demonstrating commitment to their role in the new space, a way to foster a sense of ‘fitting in’, belonging, improving their circumstances. However, others point out the issue of familial loss of identification, seeing language as an indispensable feature of their collective heritage. Furthermore, postmodern, global migrations above all are, by their very nature, multidirectional and cyclical. Just as the sea ebbs and flows, migrants may continually be on the move in search of work and opportunities across different spaces, including islands. Tenets regarding meaning making and representations of place are often contested through such movement, and retaining the autochthonous language may be one way of lessening the feeling of rootlessness, reinforcing connections to a perceived homeland, even if permanent return is not the ultimate goal. Electronic communication systems, in particular, thus facilitate regular contact between global migrants and their families and render geographical distance less relevant. Ultimately, subsequent generations of migrant families may start to consider the receptor language a viable communication tool in some form or other, but such ideologies do not necessarily imply a rejection of what their grandparents and parents have considered familial heritage, their

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ethnic identity and their link to a distant homeland. Rather, situationally determined, multifaceted, multicultural and multilingual identification practices, which encompass features, associations and behavioural aspects that go way beyond traditional considerations but also encompass them, may become the norm in contemporary migration contexts.

Methodological Considerations This book focuses on longitudinal, empirical fieldwork on Jersey and integrates key ethnographic practices such as participant observations within a more general sociolinguistic approach to language use, linguistic behaviour and identity such as face-to-face semi-structured interviews, informal focus group discussions and participation exercises. Although by necessity I use preconceived labels and categorisations that could potentially reinforce social and cultural stereotypes to describe my participants’ groupings, nonetheless my research gains important insights into their life stories and testimonies, real-life practices, affiliations and perspectives. From a socio-psychological perspective, an individual’s process of meaning making is also key: relationships, experiences, actions, self- and other identification strategies can thus be enacted and observed within a given discursive space (see Coupland and Creese 2015; Rampton et al. 2015; Wardhaugh and Fuller 2015; Atkinson 2014; O’Reilly 2011). As social practices, storytelling and the narrative turn are historically related to the study of identity (see, for example, Bruner 1994). In line with other sociolinguistic tenets, recent research has pointed to the importance of seeing the configuration, reconfiguration and mediation of identities through such discourse as constructed conceptualisations (De Fina et al. 2006), often as a response to the specific self-representation requisites of the speaker. However, the use of autobiographical narratives and personal stories in migrant contexts as a means of foregrounding positive self-portrayals and experiential identities in the face of negative external discourse has, to date, not received the full attention it merits. This book aims to partially redress the balance by furnishing my participants with agency, a voice through which they can articulate a discourse that foregrounds their own representations of

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self-identities, even if these are influenced by pervading stereotypes and macro-level portrayals. In doing so, the objective is to fill a gap in current research on the nature, positioning and import of discursive practices that underlie migrants’ avowed rather than ascribed self-identity representations. Thus, the debates and considerations of Part I pave the way for the more empirical discussion in Part II, which is based in part on local ideologies concerning immigration and the inherent complexities of ‘local/migrant’ relationships, including issues pertaining to language, and in part on participant-led narratives about specific life events, experiences and practices resulting from migratory trajectories, focusing in particular on the Madeiran Portuguese. The data I discuss in Part II of this book come from fieldwork carried out between 2003 and 2014. As the principal fieldwork researcher, over time I became constructively immersed in the community of individuals with Madeiran backgrounds on Jersey and was privy to their daily interactions and practices within the discursive spaces of St. Helier, ever mindful of my role as a co-producer of data as well as its situated nature (see, for example, Holmes 2017: 83; 91). Access to discursive spaces was initially difficult; older participants were reticent but gradually they shifted their perceptions of me as an outsider when they accepted that I really could communicate with them in Portuguese, which greatly facilitated my discussions. Interviews and focus groups were conducted within ‘neutral spaces’, such as quiet cafes and bars in parts of St. Helier away from the Madeiran Quarter.2 They were kept informal, allowing participants to engage with their discursive repertoires and thus, to afford access to their attitudes, positionings and experiences, as well as to take the conversation in new directions. Participants retold their life stories, memories, experiences, etc., as migrants or as children of migrants often topics related closely to the reasons they and their families migrated, their lives on Madeira and Jersey, the challenges they had overcome and the opportunities they had taken advantage of; throughout, participants referenced language as well as aspects of self-identification as important themes of their experiences.

1 Introduction     7

There were various stages to this fieldwork: • Initial interview and focus group research considered situated linguistic behaviour and language in interaction alongside participant reflections on the presence of Portuguese-speaking sociolinguistic networks and their own perceptions of ethnic identity. Observational fieldwork looked at discursive spaces as linguistic and sociocultural contact zones between participants, family members, and other individuals on Jersey, focusing on the relationship between language ideologies and attitudinal stances, language experiences and linguistic performances (Beswick 2007; see also Mar-Molinero 2010).3 Observations of day-to-day routines and informal group discussions at mass and coffee mornings, in shops, cafes, stores, hairdressers, etc., in the Madeiran Quarter, and at events such as football matches and cultural festivals were facilitated by the associational activities of Portuguese-speaking clubs and societies (Fig. 1.1). Snowball sampling techniques allowed for a representative sample, as participants were self-selecting and variables such as gender were not delimited, although I avoided any sampling frame bias through suitability criteria such as migration from Madeira to Jersey or being born on Jersey to parents from Madeira. As key themes started to emerge, the age variable was used to delimit certain groups, for example,

Fig. 1.1  Madeira social club, St. Helier, Jersey

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those who remembered the initial migrations discussed in Chapter 4. I also recruited gatekeepers and cultural brokers such as religious and community leaders, owners of Portuguese-speaking businesses and event organisers as their inclusion was paramount to gaining access to other participants. • Later research took a slightly distinct approach by examining migrant economic participation, and integrative and non-integrative sociolinguistic practices of Portuguese and Polish speakers on Jersey (see Beswick 2013; Hilmarsson-Dunn et al. 2010). The thematic focus explored the role of multi-language competencies and performance within the Knowledge Economy as symbolic and economic capital in migrant workspace environments, ideological investments and language visibility in the overarching urban linguistic landscape. Observational and interview data were collected from substantial fieldwork with shop assistants, waiters and baristas, cleaners, front and back of house staff, construction workers, accountants, nurses and teachers. Two research trips to Madeira also allowed me to consider the complexities of the Island as a place of out-migration.

The Status of Jersey In order to contextualise my study of island-to-island migratory movement, a brief but pertinent overview of Jersey’s geographical position and political, legislative, official status is now necessary. The Channel Islands are situated in the English Channel, in the Gulf of St. Malo, 85 miles south of England and 14 miles off the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy on the north-west coast of France. In geological terms, the Islands form part of the Armorican Massif (Driscoll 2010: 66), as do Brittany and parts of Normandy in France. The Bailiwick of Jersey, the largest and most southerly of the Islands, has a surface area of 45 square miles, although this is subject to a degree of significant tidal variation, and its territories include two groups of largely uninhabited islands, the Minquiers and the Écréhous, and the noteworthy rocks, the Dirouilles and the Pierres de Lecq. Jersey has a temperate climate and its central area comprises a large plateau intersected by valleys dense with

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lush vegetation, sloping downwards to the bays and beaches of the south coast from the cliffs and inlets of the north (CIA 2018). The Channel Islands are not part of the UK; the UK itself has no democratic accountability in or for the Islands. Rather, they are classified as British Crown Dependencies or Peculiars, being what remains of the medieval Dukedom of Normandy that ruled in both France and England from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, when a Royal Charter established the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey (History of the States Assembly, no date) discussed further in Chapter 3. As territories of the Crown, the Islands owe their allegiance not to Britain but to its reigning monarch. Although the monarchy has not been required to explicitly acknowledge the privileges, rights and customs afforded to the Channel Islands since the end of the seventeenth century (Hunt 2007: 4; 11), Elizabeth II retains the traditional title of Duke of Normandy, her representative and adviser on Jersey being the Lieutenant Governor. Jersey has the constitutional right to self-government and judicial independence; its own charter is based, therefore, on local statutes and common law and practice and independent administrative, legal and fiscal systems (Jersey’s Relationship with the UK and EU, no date). The Island’s civic head is the Bailiff, appointed by the Crown and the President of the States of Jersey Assembly, the 53-member legislative government on the Island (History of the States Assembly, no date). Jersey’s legislative system is pluralistic, being influenced by Norman, English and French law as a consequence of its historical, political and social infrastructure, and even now largely based on feudalism and the seigneurial system (Hunt 2007: 18). However, although Jèrriais or Jersey Norman French is considered the local language variety, the official languages of the Island are English and (Standard) French (Jèrriais: Jersey’s Traditional Language, no date). Until the early twentieth century, French was the sole language of debate in the States of Jersey, although nowadays English predominates. Although the Channel Islands have no official representation in Parliament, the British Crown has certain constitutional duties and commitments to them, such as their defence against the threat of invasion and formal diplomatic representation in international

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contexts (Jersey’s Relationship with the UK and EU, no date). In 2007, the Chief Minister of Jersey and the UK Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs jointly agreed a framework for developing the distinct, international identity of Jersey (States of Jersey 2007a), and in recent years, Jersey has started to negotiate directly on particular issues with certain foreign powers, such as France, after the development of the Common Policy for External Relations (States of Jersey 2015). The Channel Islands’ status as a protectorate of Britain has affected their relationship with Europe and the European Community, provided by Protocol 3 of the UK’s 1972 Treaty of Accession (Channel Islands Brussels Office 2018) regulating the free movement and trade of goods between the Channel Islands and the EU (Sutton 2005). This is not an entirely straightforward relationship. In effect, the Islands are part of the Customs Union and the Single Market, but in many other respects they are outside the EU and not bound by its fiscal legislation. There is no VAT on Jersey, the alternative arrangement being a 5% Goods and Services Tax (GST), and income tax on the Island is levied at a flat rate of 20% (Taxation in Jersey, no date). Immediately after World War II, the traditional industries of the Island were supplanted to a degree by the tourist industry, as I discuss in Chapter 4. A noteworthy electronics industry has also been recently established, but the most profound upheaval in the economic infrastructure arose as globalisation opened up better opportunities for international trade and commerce. Although it remains an important agricultural producer, in recent years Jersey has been recognised as one of the world’s leading offshore financial services centres, employing one-quarter of the total Island workforce and accounting for two-fifths of its total economic activity in 2012 (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2017). The right to non-compliance with EU law is particularly important with respect to the movement of people. Island-born residents are designated British citizens and belong to the Common Travel Area, but their ‘Islander’ status means that they do not have an automatic right to live or work in Europe other than in the UK (British Nationality Act 1981; Jersey’s Relationship with the UK and EU, no date). Although the Island does not have the authority to control immigration at the point of entry for EU and wider European Economic Area citizens, as

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well as those from mainland Britain and Commonwealth countries, it is constitutionally entitled to restrict movement across its borders through employment and residency legislation (Residential and Employment Statuses and What They Mean, no date). Indeed, population size has become one of the most contentious issues permeating public debate for some time, as I discuss in Part II of this book.

Chapter Outline The aim of Part I of this book is to establish Jersey’s key historical events, focusing on the relationship between migratory movement, the notion of the island and islandness, in order to create a conceptual framework for the discussion in Part II of the more contemporary situation. In order to do so, I examine the Island’s topography through a consideration of borders, boundedness, space and place in order to frame my consideration of Jersey’s configuration and linguistic, social and cultural identification practices. Paramount to this interpretation of Jersey as a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual space is an appreciation of the major historical events and important movement to and from the Island, which culminated in the configuration of a ‘local’ Jersey population and which established a frame of reference pertaining to ethnicity, language and culture, by which all other incomers would, potentially, be evaluated, accepted or rejected in terms of belonging. Throughout, therefore, island status, the ‘being’ of an island, plays an important role in how Jersey’s story has unfolded. In order to develop an appropriate framework through which to contextualise such an exploration of the Island’s history and people, Chapter 2 looks at the main theoretical concepts encapsulated by the field of island studies pertinent to sociolinguistic research, such as interpretations of small islands as hard-edged, bounded sites in contract to ‘mainland’ definitions and the role of the sea and the land therein. I pay particular attention to the conceptualisation of islands as sites of islandness, of insularity and of spatial separateness, themes important to characterisations of ‘Jerseyness’ often delineated in the literature.

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Physical and imagined metaphorical representations of the island and comparisons of space and place are also pertinent to later discussions of Jersey as a key space of multilingual and multicultural migration, as are romantic and allegorical notions of island life and the notion of islands as utopic destinations of tourism. In Chapter 3, I begin by considering how Jersey’s configuration as an island of movement has shaped its ethnic and linguistic composition My discussion centres on the Island’s long-standing connections with France and Britain and I begin by establishing the migrations characterising Jersey’s history until World War II (WWII). The movement of the earliest inhabitants across land and sea, Jersey’s annexation to Normandy, the influx of Norman French speakers and the decision to declare allegiance to the English Crown are key to population development on the Island, and these events paved the way for successive events of incursion, invasion and linguistic conflicts that typify the Island’s history. Ultimately, the start of large-scale British immigration in the nineteenth century, which resulted in a substantial shift in urban society and identity, superseded the successive arrival of French speakers. The multilingual and multicultural configuration of the population in the last two hundred years is particularly significant, and the early twentieth-century Alien Registration Cards allow me to examine the important socioeconomic migratory movement that shaped the Island’s multilingual, rural and manual labour population in the run-up to World War II, the German invasion and the occupation of Jersey. My subsequent aim is not to focus on the historical-political significance of the German presence, but to examine the impact on local populations in terms of sociolinguistic and sociocultural identification practices. My argument explores how ideological precepts regarding the Channel Islands’ relationship with mainland Britain were dashed by their strategic and symbolic importance to Germany’s ideological aspirations of conquest. With Jersey as ‘the island prison’, I consider how Islanders were confined physically by the bounded space and symbolically by their own perceptions of isolation from, and rejection by, the British authorities. Factors that played a pivotal role in often shared expressions of local, ingroup identity as a counterfoil to the German outgroup identity are briefly explored, as are some of the occupying forces’ own perceptions of island life and relationships with the local population. I also

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comment on the UNESCO German Occupation Registration Cards produced in the 1930s and 1940s in order to further contextualise the composition of the population at the time and to explore civilian evacuations and the exodus of foreign nationals. In the final section of this chapter, I briefly explore out-migration, and the significance of the coastline and of the sea in times of economic hardship and lack of employment opportunities experienced historically by many on Jersey as part of island life. Whereas Part I of this book sets out some of the macro-implications of Jersey’s key historical migratory movement, Part II adopts a more contemporary and focused approach to recent migrations to the Island, culminating in a detailed examination of the Madeiran Portuguese. Ideologies behind island policy and planning initiatives concerning immigration as well as official representations of the Island, its people and its migratory legacy may be reflected in micro-level attitudes to migrants and their communities. The complexities surrounding the relationship between those considered to be ‘local’ and those considered to be ‘immigrant’ are pivotal to our understanding of identity practices, social embeddedness and belonging on Jersey, and the role of language is often an important factor, highlighted in particular in my interrogation of generational fieldwork data of the Madeiran Portuguese. The Island’s top-down sociopolitical and legislative initiatives may reveal macro-level ideological motivations behind efforts to impose limits on in-migration. On the other hand, micro-level ideologies and attitudes to migrant island communities may be a response to their visibility within the local landscape, including their use of languages other than English. In Chapter 4, I consider the nature of multilingual migratory movement to and from Jersey over the last 70 or so years, in line with current principles of transnational migration and islanded identities. The socioeconomic context, the ongoing reliance on seasonal farm labourers and the increasing economic need for a service and hospitality sector workforce are key factors in Jersey’s migration history since World War II. Indeed, institutional policy and planning legislation regarding population size, employment, residency and citizenship is often tempered by the constant need for such economic migrants, particularly with the growth of the tourist industry. However, other types of migration,

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such as that of the mainland British, have helped secure Jersey’s external reputation as an island of wealth. The status of English as an official language on the Island and the situated ways in which it thus functions as symbolic, economic and cultural capital have allowed such migrants access to better employment opportunities. My primary source material is empirical fieldwork data, through which I consider migratory trajectories and experiences, including those of out-migration, as well as the relevance of space, place and home to conceptualisations of belonging and return. This chapter thus serves to contextualise my subsequent discussion of local Island ideologies about, and responses to, the visibility of migrant island communities and their languages on Jersey. The focus of Chapter 5 is how Jersey’s image is represented and interpreted, including expressions of a local, island identity and the role of language therein. By reference to the earlier discussion of island configuration and spatial location as well as migration trajectories over the past hundred or so years, the discussion examines the multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic composition of Jersey as a way of engaging with the multifaceted and complex nature of representations and positionings of the ‘local’. Key then is how the Island’s own identity is bound up in local attitudes towards those labelled ‘immigrants’, for example, and throughout symbolic borders of belonging, particularly with respect to linguistic practices and social networks, become significant. I begin by problematising a communal, historically embedded identity on Jersey, its potential for social and cultural stereotyping and its relevance within the context of ‘multiplicity’—of ethnicities, heritage, customs, language varieties, cultural and societal artefacts. In this way, I explore Island representations of and attitudes towards Norman heritage, the French and the Bretons, the legacy of the Occupation and its importance to the notion of a Jersey ‘local’ memory and consciousness overlaid by ‘Britishness’, in order to consider local self-perceptions and self-identification strategies, institutional and media portrayals, and the commodification of locally bound epithets through marketing exercises. I also review the diglossic relationships and symbolic roles of Jersey French, French and English through sociolinguistic interpretations, my argument targeting language ideologies and their relevance in the enactment of local identification strategies. In this way, the ways in which language often finds expression in intra- and intergroup

1 Introduction     15

interactions how such groups cooperate across symbolic borders and how they frame conceptualisations of ‘immigrant’, particularly in terms of linguistic visibility, become paramount to the discussion. Once again, fieldwork data are interrogated but I also refer to institutional literature and written depictions of the Island and its peoples. Chapter 6 is dedicated to a detailed, generational analysis of the most significant migration to Jersey in recent times, that of the Madeiran Portuguese. I am especially interested in how individuals engage with attitudinal stances and ideological positionings of othering, ingroup and outgroup belonging and being labelled as ‘immigrant’, ‘migrant’ and ‘Non-Islander’, as well as how notions of return and attitudes towards home intersect with self-identification portrayals and practices, as well as with situated language use. I begin by contextualising how a generic Portuguese national identity has been reified, its pertinence to the Madeiran diaspora and the potential for articulations of a regional group identity. My fieldwork participants are primarily economic migrants or families of such, and older individuals above all, provide rich data about island-to-island migratory trajectories, their perceived temporary nature as an interlude to life on Madeira and the consequences of this transnational lifestyle, in which ideologies of home become paramount, on local social embeddedness and integration. The importance of the thematic roles of social and cultural stereotypes on group and individual identification practices and that of Portuguese as an emblem of diasporic belonging are examined through a generational analysis across the boundaries of the Madeiran Quarter, with space becoming an important factor in how younger participants consider themselves to be part of Jersey’s local social networks. Thus, ideologies of legitimacy and authenticity, alternative representations of home and belonging, the situated use of English and the innovative linguistic repertoires of the youngest participants, in particular, are thus explored and analysed in the final part of this chapter. The final chapter 7, serves as a brief, but significant conclusion to this book. The question of whether these findings offer new directions for future research is deliberately left somewhat open, but the type of innovative linguistic behaviour in multilingual environments evidenced in the present research will no doubt play an important role in pertinent academic scholarship going forward.

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Notes 1. The number of academic journals on migration has proliferated in recent years; see, for example, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; Immigrants & Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora; Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies; Diaspora Studies. Articles often adopt a case study approach, for example Kasbarian (2009), or they examine theoretical perspectives, for example Collyer and King (2015), Glick Schiller and Salazar (2013), Bivand and Oeppen (2013), whilst edited volumes are often interdisciplinary, for example Blayer and Scott (2016), Burrell (2016), Berg and Eckstein (2015), Sigona et al. (2015). The field of island studies also engages with identity as a topos of island-to-island movement and migratory practices, paramount within the exploration of place and space in island contexts; see, for example, the Island Studies Journal and Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, as well as various edited volumes such as McCusker and Soares (2011) and Cohen and Sheringham (2008) in particular. 2. The zone designated the Madeiran Quarter is a spatially demarcated area in the centre of St. Helier, where the majority of Portuguese shops, cafés, restaurants, etc., are to be found and where many Madeiran Portuguese migrants and their families live. 3. Mar-Molinero’s postgraduate research was carried out in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Southampton and was partially funded by a Instituto Camões Fernão de Mendes Pinto research scholarship.

References Atkinson, Paul. 2014. For Ethnography. London: Sage. Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid Khosravinik, Michał Krzyzanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak. 2008. A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press. Discourse & Society 19 (3): 273–306.  Berg, Mette Louise, and Susan Eckstein (eds.). 2015. Reimagining Migrant Generations. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies (Special Issue) 18 (2/3): 1–23.

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Beswick, Jaine. 2007. The Portuguese Diaspora in Jersey. In The Consequences of Mobility: Linguistic and Sociocultural Contact Zones, ed. Bent Preisler, Anne H. Fabricius, Hartmut Haberland, Susanne Kjaerbeck, and Karen Risager, 93–105. Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University. Beswick, Jaine. 2013. Ideology and Language: Assumed and Authentic Linguistic Practices of Portuguese Migrants in British Workspaces. In Ideological Conceptualisations of Language: Discourses of Linguistic Diversity, ed. Erzsebet Barat, Patrick Studer, and Jiri Nekvapi (Special Issue Prague Papers on Language, Society and Interaction ), 119–144. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Bivand Erdala, Marta, and Ceri Oeppen. 2013. Migrant Balancing Acts: Understanding the Interactions Between Integration and Transnationalism. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Special Issue) 39 (6): 867–884. Blayer, Irene Maria F., and Dulce Maria Scott (eds.). 2016. Intersecting Diaspora Boundaries: Portuguese Contexts. In Interdisciplinary Studies in Diasporas, vol. 1. New York: Peter Lang. British Nationality Act. 1981. See online at: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1981/cukpga_19810061_en_1. Last accessed 22/05/18. Brumfit, Christopher. 1995. Teacher Professionalism and Research. In Principles and Practice in Applied Linguistics, ed. Guy Cook and Barbara Seidlhofer, 27–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bruner, Jerome. 1994. Life as Narrative. Social Research 54 (1): 11–32. Burrell, Kathy (ed.). 2016. Polish Migration to the UK in the ‘New’ European Union: After 2004. London: Routledge. Channel Islands Brussels Office. 2018. The Channel Islands and the European Union. See online at: http://www.channelislands.eu/eu-and-the-channel-islands/#trade-and-investment. Last accessed 19/10/19. CIA. 2018. Europe: Jersey. The World Factbook. See online at: https://www. cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/je.html. Last accessed 22/05/18. Cohen, Robin, and Olivia Sheringham (eds.). 2008. Special Issue: Islands, Diaspora, and Creolization. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 17 (1): 1–120. Collyer, Michael, and Russell King. 2015. Producing Transnational Space: International Migration and the Extra-Territorial Reach of State Power. Progress in Human Geography 39 (2): 185–204. Coupland, Fiona, and Janet Creese. 2015. Linguistic Ethnography: Collecting, Analysing and Presenting Data. London: Sage.

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De Fina, Anna, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg (eds.). 2006. Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Driscoll, Paul. 2010. The Past in the Prehistoric Channel Islands. Shima, International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 4 (1): 65–81. Glick Schiller, Nina, and Noel B. Salazar. 2013. Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Regimes of Mobility: Imaginaries and Relationalities of Power (Special Issue) 39 (2): 183–200. Hilmarsson-Dunn, Amanda, Jaine Beswick, Marián Sloboda, Ivo Vasiljev, Jernej Mirna, and Karl Ille. 2010. Language Use and Employment Opportunities of Economic migrants in Europe: Policy and Practice. In Multilingualism in Contemporary Europe: Challenges for Policy and Practice, ed. P. Stevenson. Special Issue, European Journal of Language Policy (EJLP) 2 (2): 205–228. History of the States Assembly. See online at: http://www.statesassembly.gov. je/about/history/Pages/StatesAssemblyHistory.aspx. Last accessed 22/05/18. Holmes, Sam. 2017. Lusondoners: An Account of Portuguese-Speaking-Inflected Superdiversity in a South London School. Unpublished PhD Thesis, King’s College, London. Hunt, Peter. 2007. A Brief History of Jersey. St. Helier: Société Jersiaise. Jèrriais: Jersey’s Traditional Language. See online at: http://www.gov.je/Jersey/ Pages/Language.aspx. Last accessed 22/05/18. Jersey’s Relationship with the UK and EU. See online at: https://www.gov.je/ government/departments/jerseyworld/pages/relationshipeuanduk.aspx. Last accessed 02/12/19. Kasbarian, Sossie. 2009. The Myth and Reality of “Return”—Diaspora in the “Homeland”. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 18 (3): 358–381. Mar-Molinero, Vanessa. 2010. Family and Transmission: Collective Memory in Identification Practices of Madeirans on Jersey. In Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora in Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Jaine Beswick and Mark Dinneen, Special Issue, Portuguese Studies, 26 (1): 94–110. McCusker, Maeve, and Anthony Soares (eds.). 2011. Islanded Identities: Constructions of Postcolonial Cultural Insularity. Amsterdam: Rodopi. O’Reilly, Karen. 2011. Ethnographic Methods. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rampton, Ben, Janet Maybin, and Celia Roberts. 2015. Theory and Method in Linguistic Ethnography. In Linguistic Ethnography: Interdisciplinary Explorations, ed. Julia Snell, Sara Shaw, and Fiona Copland, 14–50. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Residential and Employment Statuses and What They Mean. See online at: https://www.gov.je/Working/Contributions/RegistrationCards/Pages/ ResidentialStatus.aspx. Last accessed 22/05/18.

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Sigona, Nando, Alan Gamlen, Giulia Liberatore, and Hélène Neveu Kringelbach (eds.). 2015. Diasporas Reimagined: Spaces, Practices and Belonging. Oxford: Oxford Diasporas Programme. States of Jersey. 2007a. Framework for Developing the International Identity of Jersey. See online at: https://www.gov.je/Government/Pages/ StatesReports.aspx?ReportID=329. Last accessed 22/05/18. States of Jersey. 2007b. Jersey Brand Identity Guides. See online at: www2.jersey.com/brand. Last accessed 16/01/18. States of Jersey. 2015. External Relations: Common Policy. See online at: https://statesassembly.gov.je/assemblyreports/2015/r.86-2015.pdf. Last accessed 27/04/20. States of Jersey Statistics Unit. 2017. Measuring Jersey’s Economy: GVA and GDP 2016. See online at: https://www.gov.je/News/2017/pages/ GVAandGDP2016.aspx. Last accessed 22/05/18. Sutton, Alasdair. 2005. Jersey’s Changing Constitutional Relationship with Europe. Jersey Law Review 9 (1). See online at: http://www.jerseylaw.je/ Publications/jerseylawreview/feb05/JLR0502_Sutton.aspx#P001. Last accessed 22/05/18. Taxation in Jersey. See online at: https://www.gov.je/lifeevents/movingtojersey/ pages/tax.aspxretax. Last accessed 22/05/18. Wardhaugh, Ronald, and Janet Fuller. 2015. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 7th ed. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.

Part I Jersey Through the Ages: Island of Migration

In the first part of this book, my aim is to explore Jersey as an island of migration and movement and to demonstrate that island status plays an important role in how Jersey’s migration story has unfolded. I focus in particular on the physical setting in that my conceptual framework is based predominantly on how migratory movement to islands often embodies conceptualisation of borders and boundedness, space and place. Paramount to such an interpretation is an appreciation of the major historical events and important flows of movement to and from the Island, which culminated in the configuration of a ‘local’ Jersey population and which established a frame of ingroup reference pertaining to ethnicity, language, culture, etc. In the second chapter therefore, I delineate key historical and contemporary events that have impacted the population configuration and that facilitate the framing of my subsequent discussion of the ethnolinguistic composition of the Island in the twentieth century, as well as linguistic, social and cultural identification practices.

2 Island Migrations: Conceptual Considerations

In order to develop an appropriate framework through which to contextualise my exploration of the major historical events and important movements to and from Jersey that have culminated in recent interpretations of the Island as a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual space, the present chapter adopts a fundamentally interdisciplinary perspective by appraising the main theoretical concepts of the field of island studies relevant to a sociolinguistic study of migration and language. Interpretations of small islands as hard-edged, bounded sites in contract to ‘mainland’ definitions and the role of the sea and the land therein are explored, and I unpack the conceptualisation of islands as sites of islandness, of insularity and of spatial separateness in order to investigate often tenuous and reductionist characterisations of ‘Jerseyness’ often delineated in current literature about the Island. Physical and imagined, metaphorical representations of the island and comparisons of space and place are also important later in discussions of Jersey as a key space of multilingual and multicultural migration, as are romantic and allegorical notions of island life and the notion of islands as utopic destinations of tourism. I begin by examining interpretations particularly of small islands as hard-edged, bounded sites in order to © The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8_2

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consider how such interpretations contrast with definitions of what is often controversially termed ‘the mainland’ by considering the function of both the sea and the land in such approaches. I develop the discussion in order to problematise the conceptualisation of islands as potential sites of islandness as well as of insularity and spatial separateness in articulations of identification practices.

Islands: Borders and the Sea, Isolation and Insularity The late twentieth century saw an unparalleled interest in the conceptualisation of islands and Islanders and their relationship with Non-Islands and Non-Islanders, leading to the emergence of the academic field of island studies (Shima Editorial Board 2007: 1). One of the main proponents, Godfrey Baldacchino (2007: 169), highlights the ‘geographical precision’ of an island (2007: 169) as a key factor in the development of what Weale terms a somewhat complicated ‘sense of psychological distinctiveness and specific identity’ (1992: 81; 82) characteristic of island people. Such physical specificities and conceptualisations of island identity have recently become important tropes of island theory, and in order to contextualise my ensuing discussion of Jersey it is to these debates that I now turn. Let us first consider the sea, which has long played an important role in the way in which islands have been conceptualised both in popular culture, as we see later, and in academic circles. By defining and delimiting their territories in physical terms, some island scholarship has tended to emphasise what Hay, in his comprehensive and elucidative appraisal of island studies, has termed the hard-edged condition of such boundaries (2006: 20). He points out that for some scholars such as Péron, who avers that ‘the maritime boundary surrounding [the island] is always there, solid, totalising and domineering’ (2004: 300), the shoreline often serves as the delimiting marker of the physical boundary. In other recent research, the precise nature of an island’s territorial limits has often been contested, not least because the shoreline is, by

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its very nature, a shifting entity, a contested terrain (Baldacchino 2005: 248) that changes with the ebbs and flows of an island’s tidal range.1 Yet this is patently not the whole story. Traditional academic discourse on island studies has often focused on what Baldacchino terms ‘the allegedly insulating function of the sea with respect to an island’; that the physical position of being encircled by water has long emphasised the sensation that the Islander is somehow cut off from the world through geographic isolation or ‘spatial separateness’ (ibid.: 273). Such discourse has generally championed the idea of island insularity as its cause célèbre and advocates of this approach, very often Non-Islanders, may venture ‘the almost automatic existence of an island-based and island-driven national identity’ (ibid.: 274), based on the concept of one, local community isolated and cut off from outside influence. Kenneth Olwig contends that dictionary definitions tend to reflect Non-Islanders’ bias towards Islanders: insular thus relates ‘to the people of an island’, and insularity is defined as ‘isolation or characteristic of isolated people’, its consequent secondary meaning being ‘narrow, circumscribed, illiberal, prejudiced’ (2007: 175). Such generic definitions may thus find expression in attitudes towards others by Islanders themselves, as I discuss further in Chapter 5. Not surprisingly, negative connotations associated with insularity and isolation generally fell out of favour in academic discourse, the focus turning to the impact of globalisation on island culture and traditional ways of life. Foremost proponents of island studies maintain that for island territories, hard-edged boundaries between the land and the sea do not necessarily exist at a metaphysical level. Hay, for example, argues for a ‘mobile, fluid, or permeable boundary […] a liberated zone; a site of possibility’ (2006: 22). He continues: ‘It may even be that, rather than constituting movement-constraining barriers, island boundaries invite transgression; inspire restlessness; demand to be breached’ (ibid.: 23). Indeed, throughout history, island communities have not necessarily been limited to or enclosed by their landmass. Seascapes, ‘contoured, alive, rich in ecological diversity’ (Cooney 2003: 323) have long been an indispensable part of island life; ‘the sea […] is a part of the island, not a separate entity and is perceived as an extension of land whilst differing in its properties’ (Driscoll 2010: 77).2 At a purely practical level, the sea

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becomes an important economic resource (Baldacchino 2005: 248) that generates sustenance and a livelihood for many Islanders and alternative roles of the sea as the conduit to other lands, other means, other economic possibilities and other people are now widely acknowledged, whereby many islands are connected to the outside world by the same bodies of water that were once thought to isolate them. Thus, ‘the island edge is actually the portal to roads and sea-trails fanning out to other (is)lands, a natural bridge to the world beyond’ (Hay 2006: 23).

Islands: Islandness and Identity The term islandness, employed variously by theorists as a way of encapsulating the identifying qualities that differentiate island contexts and, by definition, their inhabitants, has also been at the forefront of recent deliberations of island theory. Although the notions of insularity and isolation are generally out of favour in current academic discourse, as we saw above, exponents of islandness have often favoured conceptualisations of (varying) degrees of geographical isolation in their discussions of island identity. Indeed, particularly in the case of small islands, the notion of being contained or confined has been important in claims that Islanders themselves are generally fully aware of the physical and territorial limits of their island home and of the need to be economically self-sufficient, and as Hay explains, as a result may share a deeply rooted sense of isolation, often equated in the discourse with characteristics such as resilience and versatility (ibid.: 21; 22) but embedded in the psyche of Islanders as a constraint and limitation. Once again, the shoreline is conceptualised as the source of this psychological malaise (Baldacchino 2005: 248), since it emphasises their peripheral position with regards to the rest of the world. In line with Relph (1976: 41), Hay argues that people have a psycho-social need to be able to identify with a physical space, to be able to call somewhere home, to come from and belong to somewhere (2006: 30; 34). Thus, the island and the term islandness often place the emphasis on primordial and inherent values of ‘identity, uniqueness and home’ (ibid: 28), in line with my later discussions. As Baldacchino

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avers: ‘Islands are platforms for the emergence of national identity and for the affirmation of cultural specificity’ (2006: 4). The very nature of an island’s geographical precision fosters a strong sense of island identification, of belonging and of place; thus ‘Islands—real islands, real geographical entities—attract affection, loyalty, identification’ (Hay 2006: 31). Both Baldacchino and Hay also consider, a collective ‘thick, proto-ethnic identity’ (Baldacchino 2005: 248) to be a defence mechanism, a way to emphasise a sense of independence and difference to others (Hay 2006: 28), whether the people in question are indigenous to the island, emigrant populations living far away, temporary visitors or, I would add, immigrants intending to remain or not. In contemporary contexts then, ‘globalization both standardises and homogenises, as well as highlights and invigorates, local initiatives and identities’ (Baldacchino 2004: 279). Identity thus ‘protects and preserves its citizens in a person-driven regimen of obligation, reciprocity, family, familiarity, gossip, assumed knowledge, tradition, social capital, networks but also anti-networks, often articulated via an own language or dialect, as well as an own sense of time, space and decorum’ (Baldacchino 2005: 248). In order to further explore such representations of island identity, I now explore the thematic of place in particular, and the relevance of such tropes to island identities.

The Island as Metaphor: Space, Place, Home In the politically turbulent late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the notion of a metaphorical island was becoming the embodiment of many western states’ relationship with the nation, with the national and the local portrayed as a self-sustaining and readily defensible space set apart from the outside world (Shannan Peckham 2003) irrespective of geographical configuration. The island as metaphor became an important topos of popular literary narrative; the geographically discrete, bounded space of the island was often construed as a site of survival in western literary output (see, for example, Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island [1875] and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island [1883]), a reflection of the increasing isolated political situation Britain

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found itself in during the nineteenth century (Shannan Peckham 2003: 504) but also serving to reinforce a coherent national identity and belief that the nation as a bounded space was impregnable.3 Nonetheless, many islands have long served as points of contact or ‘open systems’ (Driscoll 2010: 77) with the outside world; as refreshment stops (Baldacchino 2007: 170) on arduous sea journeys, or as places of refuge, succour, or exile in times of civil unrest. The Canary Islands, for example, served as stopping off points for Spanish adventurers to take on provisions and to refresh themselves during the long maritime voyages to colonise Latin America and the Caribbean from the late fifteenth century onwards. Inevitably, some travellers elected to remain on the Islands the Canaries representing spaces of refuge, a means of escape from the harsh realities of the arduous and long sea crossing (see, for example, Penny 2000). Some islands still serve as places of sanctuary and shelter; for example, the Greek Islands of Lesbos, Kos and Samos currently accommodate Syrian and other refugees fleeing the Civil Wars in the Middle East. However, contemporary movements of people across global geographical borders are more commonly a result of enhanced economic opportunities, with published scholarship emphasising how the axiomatic and largely irreversible nature of changes to the global infrastructure have accelerated such migratory movement. Subsequent reconceptualisations of diaspora and migration have moved away from the portrayal of migrants as undergoing both physical and psychological feelings of uprootedness and dislocation, recognising instead the presence of transnational interconnectedness and leading to the continual and seemingly inexhaustible framing and reframing of transnational studies as a complex theory of migration and mobility.4 In the next few pages, my intention is to summarise certain aspects of transnational studies related to space, place and home in order to offer a workable context for my later analysis of contemporary migratory movements, diaspora and identity expression, rather than to problematise the theory itself; this would simply be outside the remit of this book. To this end, I begin with the significance of transnational social spaces in island contexts. There have been recent, noteworthy advances in theorisations of space. Watt and Llamas (2017: 195; 214), for example, outline how

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leading proponents in the field of sociolinguistics emphasise the concept of the boundary or border by reference to Britain’s classification of space (2013) as simultaneously physical, social and perceptual (see, for example, Auer et al. 2013; Johnstone 2010; Beal 2006). Thus, Social space tends to rely on speakers sharing similar socioeconomic backgrounds that do not necessarily ‘map’ onto the physical space, with perceptual space relying on a speaker’s psychological construction of home and belonging, often conceptualised and enacted through daily practices and routines.5 This latter point is particularly pertinent to discussions of migration and mobility. In an earlier paper (Beswick 2013), I argued that Faist’s micro-focused perspective of transnational social space encompassing ‘transnational small groups, transnational circuits, and transnational communities’ (2000: 191) can be applied to spaces such as St. Helier as the focus on Jersey of continual cross-border migratory movement and diasporic settlement. This broader application of the term, which more commonly tends to employ a macro-perspective to multifaceted urban spaces (see, for example, Conradson and Latham 2005: 228; Gauci 2020: 29–34), such as the global cities of London, New York and Hong Kong thus allows us to see islands such as Jersey as hubs of such movement through which migrants proactively establish and sustain relationships and ties with their homelands, as I discuss in more detail in Part II of this book. Brah’s definition of diasporic spaces as dynamic, multiethnic and multicultural (1996: 181; 184), whilst somewhat revised in recent years, may nonetheless apply equally to innovative transnational social spaces. Importantly, the presence of migrants in a given society also influences the sociocultural fabric of that society, potentially creating new social networks and communities of practice. Thus, by their very nature, transnational lives are enacted in more than one place; the phenomenon undergoes a ‘complex interweaving of individuals and social networks within and through places’ (Conradson and Latham 2005: 228) via movement across boundaries and borders. The very notion of place—and indeed of home—as something static and bounded, is challenged then, by approaches that explore what it means to live, work and socialise in different places at different times

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(see for example, Sheringham 2010: 61), implying that the dichotomy of home and away may no longer be tenable in the discourse of migrant identity, in line with Baldacchino’s observation of ‘a contradiction […] between roots and routes’ (2007: 166). As Peth et al. observe (2018: 457) places or localities are part of the physical space that become contextualised as they are imagined, defined and lived by individuals. Indeed, as I explore further in Chapter 6, transnational studies do not reject the concept of place as a type of ‘process’ shaped by psychological constructions of home and belonging (Watt and Llamas 2017: 196), nor do they reject the production of locality (Appadurai 1996), nor do they deny that such concrete localities matter (see, for example, Conradson and Latham 2005; Ehrkamp 2008), particularly in translocal spaces. Rather, transnational studies allow for the existence of multiple homes (Blunt and Dowling 2006: 199) that cross perceptual as well as physical borders and boundaries. Over time, such perceptual borders may be blurred and contested, as symbolic representations of place come to mean something different to different age groups, for example. Mobility, of course, has profound implications for the notion of identity. Often, individuals only begin to consider their own identities when they find themselves dislocated from the familiar surroundings of a distant homeland, and when their sense of group or community belonging is disrupted and disjointed (Preece 2016: 2). In line with Brah’s work on diasporic spaces (1996: 181–184), Hall has observed that traditional, essentialised or primordial associations of identity tend to place the emphasis on ‘one shared culture […] which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common’ (2003: 234), as we saw earlier. These somewhat rigid, homogeneous and largely ascribed representations imply that membership of a group involves the sharing of similar characteristics, intrinsic or acquired, and that it is these characteristics that define the group’s boundaries (see, for example, Joseph 2016: 19; Bucholtz 2003: 400). The social constructivist notion, however, sees identity as a fluid, indexical and occasioned practice or act, manifest in interactions and in avowed social representations that in themselves are embedded within ideologies and attitudes towards the self and others. Such definitions allow us to appreciate how in transnational contexts, migrants negotiate many heterogeneous, diverse identities across

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multiple localities and across the perceptual and physical boundaries I outlined above. Nonetheless, as will become important in my ensuing discussions, in certain contexts migrants still rely on essentialised associations of shared identity and reductionist characteristics to invoke a sense of place, of being from, and belonging to, a distant, remembered home, what Brah has termed a ‘desire for a homeland’ (1996: 197). Islands may thus function metaphorically as an anchor, allowing Islanders to retain a sense of homeland identity and place irrespective of whether they remain there, move away or journey back and forth, a function that Kenneth Olwig has termed ‘isle centrality’ (2007: 175; 186). As Brah further observes, the ‘multi-locationality within and across territorial, cultural and psychic boundaries’ (1996: 197) inherent in diaspora space engenders a ‘homing desire’ (ibid.), a need to belong to somewhere, in line with Andersen’s imagined community (1991). Thus, mindful of Hall’s earlier observations regarding the fluid and transitional nature of identity, perhaps it would be sensible to conclude here that a migrant’s recollection or even concrete knowledge of a homeland identity may be largely idealised or even reconstructed (Stock 2010: 24) to suit their own ends, just as their other identities may be manipulated according to context and suitability. I will examine these concerns in more detail in Part II of this book.

Popular Culture: The Myth and Reality of Islands Let us now return to the ways in which, particularly in western cultures, islands have long captured the imagination as ‘they lend themselves to sophisticated fantasy and mythology’ (Baldacchino 2005: 247; 248), particularly in popular culture. We saw above that strictly reductionist and generic definitions of islandness based solely on the concept of insularity are generally the constructs of Non-Islanders, for whom the physical attributes and geographical position may well convey such a sense of confinement, of finite space, of distance from elsewhere. Nonetheless, islands continue to elicit a fervent fascination and allure. Variously conceptualised as ‘sites of paradox: prison or paradise’ (Hay

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2003: 203) or ‘heaven and hell’ (Baldacchino 2006: 5), islands may also extend such a paradox to encompass the juxtaposition between island and the mainland, that is, between what is conceived of as ‘here’ and what is ‘there’, in line with my earlier discussion of place. In historical times, islands inspired adventure, pilgrimage and discovery and offered exile, refuge and often, life-changing experiences. Islands are also depicted in this way through the medium of popular culture such as film, theatre and literature, music, poetry and fine art. For example, in both fictional and factual literary production, the infusion of an almost mythical and charismatic spirit of exoticism and romanticism, of derring-do and hope for the future has long been inherent to many tales of journeys to and sojourns on islands, which fire the reader’s imagination and satiate their need for vicarious adventure. Baldacchino sees this as a way of commodifying certain predominant characteristics and describes how modern western genres often rebrand and repackage largely enigmatic and charismatic features in a similar way to which islands were conceptualised in ancient Greek epics, such as Homer’s poem Odyssey (2005: 248).6 Earlier we saw that the bounded island space metaphorically represented a nation’s fight for survival in eighteenth century western literature, and the motifs of the castaway and their struggle to return home were also central to such output. In Robinson Crusoe, for example, Daniel Defoe’s 1719 epic novel, the desert island is depicted as a faraway yet exotic place where the main protagonist is marooned and lives in exile, confined by its territorial boundaries and for a long time, unable to escape what could be somewhat paradoxically described as a ‘lost garden of earthly delights’ (Hay 2006: 27). The 1960s TV series Gilligan’s Island introduced the genre of sitcom to the theme of the isolation and survival of a group of castaways shipwrecked on a desert island. More recently, one of the main themes of the long-running US drama series Lost is the mystique of the tropical island as the survivors of a plane crash attempt to stay alive amidst the drama and intrigue that enfolds in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the bounded space. Often, Small, remote islands are often thought of as being on the geographical and psychological periphery, ‘out of sight and so out of mind’ (Baldacchino 2007: 165). Yet they often serve as a place of flight, a hideout from the law, a forgotten place, such as the safe ports of the

2  Island Migrations: Conceptual Considerations     33

Caribbean and the coast of Africa used as island hideouts by pirates and buccaneers, particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed, the Island of Tortuga was recreated as a pirate stronghold in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. Similarly, Like the island incarceration of famous and powerful people, such as Napoleon Bonaparte (Saint Helena), Alfred Dreyfus (Devil’s Island) and Nelson Mandela (Robben Island) (see, for example, Gillis and Lowenthal 2007: iv), factual memories and images of banishment, ostracism and confinement on prison islands are often reproduced on paper and on screen: the experiences of inmates of the prison island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay are replicated in the 1962 film Bird Man of Alcatraz, for example. The use of island incarceration implies complete segregation, both literally and figuratively, from the rest of the world, such as that of the Azkaban prison island in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and as with other examples of engagement with islands and island life, may result in perceptible changes in the personalities—and sometimes fortunes—of the characters involved. Baldacchino cites Golding’s (1954) Lord of the Flies and H.G. Wells’ (1894) The Island of Dr. Moreau as examples of how the island setting itself was instrumental in such change, contesting that often, characters ‘return disturbed, broken, refreshed, redeemed, resolute, shaken or somehow transformed, by the experience’ (2006: 5) of being on an island. Thus, in Lord of the Flies the island setting fostered anarchist tendencies in the main protagonists, cut off from the norms of what was considered civilised society at the time. In The Island of Dr. Moreau, we are privy to elements of social engineering; on his return to England after witnessing the grotesque Beast Men and their barbaric treatment by their creator, Prendick, the central character develops a type of anti-social phobia. Ironically, the only way for him to survive is to cut himself off once again from the outside world by living in rural solitude, echoing once again the metaphorical role of the island (see, for example, Hay 2006: 27). Other literary output also takes a direct approach to the context of the island, focusing on its effects on the psyche of its characters. In John Fowles 1965 postmodern work The Magus, the main protagonist undergoes significant negative psychological changes brought about by the island setting and the island characters he

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meets on the Greek island of Phraxos. In contrast, in Arthurian legend, the King is taken to the magical Isle of Avalon to recuperate and recover from battle and returns to his kingdom revitalised and strong again. British television is also replete with programmes based on the theme of the island, mirroring the public’s fascination with the genre. The recent fictional crime comedy drama Death in Paradise gratifies our imaginings of an idyllic island paradise shrouded in mystery, intrigue and glamorous crime, just as the US TV series Fantasy Island did when it was aired in the 1970s and 1980s. However, like the US hit series Hawaii 5-0, Bergerac, the British crime series based on Jersey in the Channel Islands in the 1980s juxtaposed the portrayal of an utopic island life with that of an island with a far-reaching, international outlook as a backdrop to the main theme. Shetland, the recent Scottish crime drama, uses strong, panoramic imagery of windswept, bleak vistas of land and sea in the Shetland Isles to conjure up the atmosphere of isolation, yet at the same time, ferry trips to the outlying isles and plane journeys to Glasgow and elsewhere are everyday occurrences in the lives of local people. Moreover, its storylines emphasise the clear community aspect of the Islands, with perpetrators, witnesses, bystanders and the police often knowing each other extremely well. In the UK in particular, Factual broadcasts also abound; from reality TV series such as Love Island to survival series such as Castaway 2000 and the more recent The Island with Bear Grylls, to real-life documentaries of island life such An Island Parish, based in the Isles of Scilly, Outer Hebrides, Channel, Falkland and Shetland Islands, to the BBC’s natural history programmes such as Britain’s Treasure Islands and Nature’s Wonderlands: Islands of Evolution, as well as the Earth’s series Mythical Islands, Enchanted Islands, Tropical Islands and Paradise Islands, the later due for broadcast in mid 2020.

An Island Paradise: Tourism and Travel A further stereotypical imagery of islands that pervades popular culture is what Gillis and Lowenthal term ‘the sea, sand, sun, and sex syndrome’ (2007: iv). We have already seen that myth and fantasy are common

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themes in the way that islands are imagined on screen and paper, and this is particularly the case of small, tropical islands. Thus, the fictional island of Ball Ha’l in the 1950s film South Pacific is rendered exotic, otherworldly but at the same time, eminently attractive to the viewer through its portrayal of the climate, infrastructure and local population. According to Baldacchino, the association between such islands and the tourist industry can be considered one of the best branding exercises in the history of marketing (2005: 248; 2006: 5). To the global tourist, the geographic barrier that inherently defines an island as an island— the sea or ocean—is one of its most alluring features. By delimiting a finite—and thus accessible—level of exotic, mythical and dreamlike qualities, the sea invokes once again the notion of the fantasy island, where real life can be largely left behind (see in particular Festa et al. 2009). Globalisation has recently made far-flung locations more accessible to mass tourism, with islands becoming the favoured destination of many. As epicentres of cyclical movement in which the migratory outflow of Islanders are, to varying extents, replaced by the inflow of migrants, islands with deeply entrenched and successful mixed economies, including a well-grounded tourist industry, may well become attractive to those searching for an exotic, if temporary, experience outside the range of their particular ethnocultural knowledge, whilst at the same time providing them with the reality check of a living wage in sectors such as hospitality, service or agriculture. However, islands may also become accessible to the retired who have sufficient disposable income to ensure themselves a comfortable, if somewhat cocooned, lifestyle. As Hay observes, ‘for whatever reason, islanders leave, some with joy in their soul, some to evermore lament their alienation from a lost island home. And they are replaced by – and often displaced by – immigrants from elsewhere, often wealthier people seeking scapes of romantic isolation, and innocent of the cultural disruption that their coming entails, or at least represents’ (2006: 25). This gentrification of the island (see Clark et al. 2007) may be exacerbated by the incomers’ interest in being involved in island politics and local affairs, since their opinions often differ from those of local residents regarding how the island should be run: as Gillis observes, retirees may well ‘become staunch conservationists of the islescapes’ (2004: 156).

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Chapter Summary This chapter serves as an overview of various important theoretical concepts pertinent to the field of island studies, as a way of contextualising my subsequent exploration of Jersey’s history and people. My discussion of small islands and their juxtaposition with what is termed the mainland has been intended to emphasise the significant and interpretive roles of the sea and the land reflected within conceptualisations of physical and symbolic boundaries and borders that are often key to the notion of islandness. I have also considered how insularity and spatial separateness emerge in ideologies of belonging and identity, by focusing specifically on imagined, metaphorical representations of islands and the plethora of romantic and allegorical notions of island life in literature. The representation of the exotic, utopic, heavenly island in branding exercises as a familiar trope of tourist brochures and advertising slogans will serve to underline my discussion in subsequent chapters of Jersey as an island space of multilingualism and multiculturalism. I now go on to examine the major historical events and important migratory movements to and from Jersey up until World War II as a way of initiating my elaboration of a definition of ‘local’ in this context.

Notes 1. In the case of Jersey, its territorial land size is subject to substantial changes as the tidal range varies by around 12 metres, making the southeast corner of the Island in particular Europe’s largest rocky intertidal zone at extreme low tide. 2. In the same vein, as we discuss in Chapter 5, Le Feuvre comments that traditional lifestyles on Jersey have implied that ‘For the Jerseyman there was no division between the land and the sea’ (2005: 49). See also Karen Fog Olwig (2007: 262). 3. More recently, certain proponents of island studies have started to emphasise the relevance to a global world of such reconceptualisations of islandness as a metaphorical construct. Gillis and Lowenthal, for example, contend that the world itself has become archipelagic, with cities becoming ‘heat islands’ and rural areas becoming ‘islands of tranquility’ (2007: iii).

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4. For the seminal framing of the transnational and translocality models, see Glick Schiller et al. (1992) and Basch et al. (1994). For early critiques of transnationalism as a theoretical construct, see Vertovec (1999), Portes (2001), Portes et al. (1999), Glick Schiller (2004). For more recent debates, see Smith and Guarnizo (2017), Duff (2015), De Fina and Perrino (2013), Blommaert (2010), Vertovec (2009). For transnational interconnectedness, see Mann (2016), Liebscher and DaileyO’Cain (2013), Amrith (2011), Batalha and Carling (2008), Fitzgerald and Lambkin (2008). 5. For an extremely recent and detailed discussion of space, place and belonging in contexts of mobility, see the edited volume (Horner and O’Cain 2019). 6. In a similar way, Plato’s works Timaeus and Critias and the creation of the mythical island of Atlantis paved the way for several important Renaissance works such as Bacon’s New Atlantis and More’s Utopia, and the fascination with the notion of an island sunken beneath the seas continues in popular culture to this day.

References Amrith, Sunil S. 2011. Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andersen, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Auer, Peter, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.). 2013. Space in Language and Linguistics: Geographical, Interactional, and Cognitive Perspectives. Berlin: de Gruyter. Baldacchino, Godfrey. 2004. The Coming of Age of Island Studies. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie 95 (3): 272–283. Baldacchino, Godfrey. 2005. Islands—Objects of Representation. Geografiska Annaler 87B: 247–251. Baldacchino, Godfrey. 2006. Introduction to New Journal. Islands, Island Studies, Island Studies Journal 1 (1): 3–18. Baldacchino, Godfrey. 2007. Islands as Novelty Sites. Geographical Review 97 (2): 165–174.

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Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach. Batalha, Luis, and Jorgen Carling. 2008. Transnational Archipelago: Perspectives on Cape Verdean Migration and Diaspora. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Beal, Joan C. 2006. Language and Region. London: Routledge. Beswick, Jaine. 2013. Ideology and Language: Assumed and Authentic Linguistic Practices of Portuguese Migrants in British Workspaces. In Ideological Conceptualisations of Language: Discourses of Linguistic Diversity, ed. Erzsebet Barat, Patrick Studer and Jiri Nekvapil (Special Issue Prague Papers on Language, Society and Interaction ), 119–144. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. 2006. Home: Key Ideas in Geography. Oxford: Routledge. Brah, Avtar. 1996. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (Gender, Racism, Ethnicity). Oxford: Routledge. Britain, David. 2013. Space, Diffusion and Mobility. In Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 2nd ed., ed. Jack K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling, 471–500. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Bucholtz, Mary. 2003. Sociolinguistic Nostalgia and Authentication of Identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (3): 398–416. Clark, Eric, Karin Johnson, Emma Lundholm, and Gunnar Malmberg. 2007. Island Gentrification and Space Wars. In A World of Islands: An Island Studies Reader, 483–512. Charlottetown/Malta: Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island/Agenda Publishers. Conradson, David, and Alan Latham. 2005. Transnational Urbanism: Attending to Everyday Practices and Mobilities. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31: 227–333. Cooney, Gabriel. 2003. Introduction: Seeing Land from the Sea. World Archaeology 35 (3): 323–328. De Fina, Anna, and Sabina Perrino (eds.). 2013. Transnational Identities [Special Issue]. Applied Linguistics 34: 5. Driscoll, Paul. 2010. The Past in the Prehistoric Channel Islands. Shima, International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 4 (1): 65–81. Duff, Patricia. 2015. Transnationalism, Multilingualism, and Identity. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 35: 57–80.

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Ehrkamp, Patricia. 2008. Immigration, Integration and Citizenship. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 32 (3): 347–364. Faist, Thomas. 2000. Transnationalization in International Migration: Implications for the Study of Citizenship and Culture. Ethnic and Racial Studies 3 (2): 189–222. Festa, M. Charles, Seth Macinko, and Marc L. Miller. 2009. ‘Islandness’ as a Resource: A Look at How Being Small and Isolated Has Found a Place in a Globalizing World. In Proceedings of CMT2009, 6th International Congress on Coastal and Marine Tourism, June 23–26, Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa. Fitzgerald, Patrick, and Brian Lambkin. 2008. Migration in Irish History, 1607–2007. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gauci, Jean-Pierre. 2020. Migration and the City. Integration of Migrants in Middle and Small Cities and in Rural Areas in Europe. Commission for Citizenship, Governance, Institutional and External Affairs. Online at https://cor.europa.eu/en/engage/studies/Documents/Integration%20of%20 Migrants.pdf. Last accessed 11/05/20. Gillis, John. 2004. Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gillis, John R., and David Lowenthal. 2007. Introduction to Islands. Geographical Review 97 (2): iii–vi. Glick Schiller, Nina. 2004. Transnationality. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, ed. David Nugent and Joan Vincent, 448–467. Oxford: Blackwell. Glick Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1992. Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 645: 1–24. Hall, Stuart. 2003. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In Theorizing Diaspora, ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, 233–246. Oxford: Blackwell. Hay, Pete. 2003. That Islanders Speak, and Others Hear…. In Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (Summer). 10 (2): 203–206. Hay, Pete. 2006. A Phenomenology of Islands. Island Studies Journal 1 (1): 19–42. Horner, Kristine, and Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain (eds.) 2019. Multilingualism, (Im) mobilities and Spaces of Belonging. Encounters 17. Bristol: Multilingual Matters Johnstone, Barbara. 2010. Language and Geographical Space. In Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation—Theories and Methods, ed. Peter Auer and Jürgen E. Schmidt, 1–17. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

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Joseph, John. 2016. Historical Perspectives on Language and Identity. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity, ed. Siân Preece, 19–33. London: Routledge. Le Feuvre, David. 2005. Jersey: Not Quite British: The Rural History of a Singular People. St. Helier: Seaflower Books. Liebscher, Grit, and Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain. 2013. Language, Space, and Identity in Migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mann, Jatinder. 2016. The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s–1970s (Interdisciplinary Studies in Diasporas), vol. 2. New York: Peter Lang. Olwig, Karen Fog. 2007a. Islands as Places of Being and Belonging. Geographical Review 97 (2): 260–273. Olwig, Kenneth R. 2007b. Are Islanders Insular? A Personal View. Geographical Review 97 (2): 175–190. Penny, Ralph. 2000. Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Péron, Francoise. 2004. The Contemporary Lure of the Island. Tijdschrifr voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 95 (3): 326–339. Peth, Simon Alexander, Harald Sterly, and Patrick Sakdapolrak. 2018. Between the Village and the Global City: The Production and Decay of Translocal Spaces of Thai Migrant Workers in Singapore. Mobilities 13 (4): 455–472. Portes, Alejandro. 2001. Introduction: The Debates and Significance of Immigrant Transnationalism. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 1 (3): 181–193. Portes, Alejandro, Luis E. Guarnizo, and Patricia Landolt. 1999. Transnational Communities. In Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo, and Patricia Landolt (ed.), The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research. Special Issue, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): 217–237. Preece, Siân. 2016. Introduction: Language and Identity in Applied Linguistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity, ed. Siân Preece, 1–16. London: Routledge. Relph, Edward. 1976. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion. Shannan Peckham, Robert. 2003. The Uncertain State of Islands: National Identity and the Discourse of Islands in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Greece. Journal of Historical Geography 29 (4): 499–515. Shima Editorial Board. 2007. An Introduction to Island Culture Studies. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 1 (1): 1–5.

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Sheringham, Olivia. 2010. A Transnational Space? Transnational Practices, Place-Based Identity and Making of ‘Home’ Among Brazilians in Gort, Ireland. In Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora in Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Jaine Beswick and Mark Dinneen, Special Issue, Portuguese Studies, 26 (1): 60–78. Smith, Michael Peter, and Luís Eduardo Guarnizo (eds.). 2017. Transnationalism from Below: Comparative Urban and Community Research. New York: Routledge. Stock, Femke. 2010. Home and Memory. In Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities, ed. Kim Knott and Sean McLoughlin, 24–28. London: Zed Books. Vertovec, Steven (ed.). 1999. Migration and Social Cohesion. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Vertovec, Steven. 2009. Transnationalism. New York, NY: Routledge. Watt, Dominic, and Carmen Llamas. 2017. Identifying Places: The Role of Borders. In Language and a Sense of Place: Studies in Language and Region, ed. Chris Montgomery and Emma Moore, 191–214. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weale, David. 1992. Them Times. Charlottetown, P.E.I.: University of Prince Edward Island, Institute of Island Studies.

3 Historical Migrations: Jersey as a Multicultural Space

Migration to the island of Jersey is in no way a recent phenomenon, and in this chapter, I establish many of the migratory movements that characterise Jersey’s historical development up to and after World War II. Through a consideration of island theory as outlined in Chapter 2, I start to reflect on the significance of Jersey’s configuration as an island of movement and the pivotal role of the sea in shaping the ethnic and linguistic composition of the Island. Among other things, my argument explores the Island’s long-standing connections with both France and Britain as a stopping off point for trade and provisions and as a source of seasonal labour. I begin far back in time by considering human movement across land and sea in order to establish the provenance of the earliest inhabitants. The importance of Jersey’s annexation to Normandy in the tenth century and the influx of Norman French speakers are key factors in the development of the Island’s population and language, as is the subsequent decision to declare allegiance to the English Crown, since these events paved the way for the many invasion attempts and linguistic conflict that typify the Island’s history. I discuss how, after the Island’s scission from Normandy and France, further groups of French s­peakers continued to settle on the Island and to play an influential role in its © The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8_3

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characterisation, but how the nineteenth-century arrival of English tourists paved the way for British immigration on a much larger scale, resulting in a marked shift in the Island’s urban identity through the development of a highly Anglicised society as well as the linguistic dominance of English. Conversely, I also appraise important socioeconomic factors and events that, through economic migration, shaped what is often seen as the ethnic configuration of the Island’s multilingual, rural and manual labour population. Central to my subsequent discussion is the archival research of Alien Registration Cards, through which I contextualise early twentieth-century migratory movement to the Island. My discussion of the World War II Occupation of Jersey is a noteworthy aspect of Jersey identification and heritage as I focus primarily on its impact on and repercussions for the population, rather than adopting a chronological account of events. Here, I am particularly interested in how representations and articulations of shared identity, reinforced by language practices, became pivotal to both the population’s means of withstanding the occupying forces’ presence and as a means of facing up to their perceived abandonment by the mainland British authorities. My discussion also develops the earlier exploration of conceptualisations of Jersey as a potentially bounded space in the context of its vulnerability to Nazi invasion as well as issues surrounding national and ethnic identities, using, for example, the UNESCO German Occupation Registration Cards. My final discussion in this chapter centres on out-migration as a key characteristic of island life. Once again, I return to the significance of the coastline and the sea for movement away from the Island in times of economic hardship, and I examine the phenomenon of return. This migratory movement thus serves to underline my discussion in Part II of island identity, heritage and islandness.

The Pre-Norman Era: Invasion and Conquest Relatively little is known about the Channel Islands and their peoples before they were integrated into the Duchy of Normandy in the tenth century, and what is known has largely been gleaned from archaeological

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and geological evidence. Around 8000 years ago, during the post-glacial Mesolithic period, the largest tsunami ever recorded hit the European landmass. Until then, what we now know as Britain had been a peninsula; its various islands and protectorates part of the landform as a whole as the Irish and North Seas as well as the English Channel were dry land. The movement of hunter-gatherers across the landmass was thus unimpeded by substantial bodies of water (indeed, on Jersey there is good evidence of cave dwellings from the Palaeolithic era (Hunt 2007: 12)), but as sea levels rose, such low lying land became flooded, effectively creating the configuration of island nations we have today. Henceforth, passage across land back to the European landmass by the small populations of early modern humans marooned on these islands was prevented by the sea (Lane 2011). Although some 20% of the total population of mainland Britain may have been recent immigrants at the start of the Neolithic era (around the fifth century BC), massive expansion and migration through Europe and across the waterways to British have largely been discounted (see, for example, Thomas 1999, 2013). Nonetheless, well-preserved archaeological evidence of Neolithic settlement to Jersey, such as La Hougue Bie ritual ceremonial site and other passage and gallery graves, burial chambers, cist-in-circles and standing stones dating from 4800 to 2250 BC, supports the claim of significant Neolithic migration to—and a degree of social organisation on—at least Jersey, the population of which at the time is estimated to have stood at around 2000 (Boleat 2015: 2; see also Sebire 2005; Patton 2002). It is unrealistic to try and determine accurately the origins of the Neolithic presence on Jersey, although archaeological evidence discussed in Driscoll (2011: 69) appears to support an early Breton influence. Interestingly, one of the main tenets of Driscoll’s thesis is how the prehistoric Islanders defined their own identity and engaged with the world around them, trading goods and gaining knowledge and expertise through various inter-island and island-mainland alliances and networks. Later, Bronze Age excavations reinforce the existence of sea routes with sites in northern France and southern Britain, facilitated by their geographical proximity. Some hoards even contain objects from Scandinavia (ibid.: 72; 75), suggesting that a degree of maritime traffic to the Islands—be it for trade of nefarious reasons such as pirateering—was occurring from even further afield than France and

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mainland Britain. It is probable, therefore, that over the centuries, innumerable groups en route to and from Britain, France and beyond landed on the Channel Islands to rest up, take on board provisions, etc., and that some settlement resulted as an indirect consequence of this movement. These early voyages and forays to the Islands across the sea from the French coast would have had to deal with extremely strong local sea currents and the vast tidal range, particularly at spring tide around the rocky south-east corner of Jersey (Le Dain 1997: 109).1 In the Celtic era, the Channel Islands were integrated into the Gaulish Empire of Armorica and seafaring tribes of Brittany such as the Curiosolites, whose shipbuilding skills appear to have been equal to those of the Romans, established important trading routes across the English Channel, taking wine and other goods from southern Europe to Britain, where Jersey and Guernsey became stopping off points: on Jersey, landing sites were established in accessible sheltered bays dotted around the Island. The transportation of people as well as goods, particularly from the Celtic strongholds of Cornwall and Ireland, may also have occurred (Le Dain 1997: 79), although this is difficult to confirm. By the time Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in 52 BC, the Channel Islands had become part of the Province of Lyonnais and thus, part of the Roman Empire itself. Across Europe, the Romans had made huge territorial gains, and mainland Britain, for example, underwent substantial transformations in its infrastructure as a Roman colony for nearly four centuries. Yet there appears to have been little economic benefit to the Romans in establishing a significant Roman community on Jersey at least.2 Part of the problem seems to have been the lack of a decent deep-water harbour. The Jersey historian Doug Ford comments that Guernsey probably developed as a Roman trading centre and local seat of administration due to its accessible and safe water anchorage at St. Peter Port (Ford 1995: 2); however possibly as it had no such natural harbour that was large, deep and safe enough to take Roman vessels, Jersey was left to its own devices for some time after the initial Roman incursions (no author 2010). Yet, as part of the large unified Roman Empire and trading network, a degree of Romanisation of the Island’s infrastructure was ultimately inevitable.3 Indeed, the recent archaeological discovery of a Roman dwelling,

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pottery, skeletons and other cultural artefacts from the same era (no author 2010) points to some settlement. A hoard of coins found by two amateur metal detectorists in the east of the Island in 2012 and initially reported to contain many Roman coins was vaunted as proof of a significant Roman presence. However, it later became clear that it actually comprised many Iron Age coins of Celtic provenance similar to that of other hoards found on Jersey (no author 2012), reinforcing the belief that in the first century BC groups of Gauls regularly fled to the Channel Islands to escape the onslaught in what is now France (Hunt 2007: 14).4 By AD 410, the last Roman troops in Britain were called away to fight elsewhere and never returned to British waters. Exacerbated by endemic internal divisions, the ensuing power vacuum on the mainland was filled by marauding Nordic invaders, Vikings from the north and many Celts thus fled to settle in what they named ‘Lesser Britain’: Bretagne or Brittany. Once again, the Channel Islands acted as a stopping off point, with some settling there during the fifth and sixth centuries AD, although they appear to have little impact on the overall population size (no author 2010; see also Hunt 2007: 15).

The Medieval Period: The Duchy of Normandy and the English Crown The geographical location of the Channel Islands, near to the French coast but accessible from southern England, played a pivotal role in the later establishment of a significant local population. Throughout the ninth century, Viking invaders made systematic incursions on the Channel Islands, establishing sporadic settlements on Jersey in particular (ibid.: 18). However, the Islands remained politically linked to the independent Breton kingdom until the Norman invasion of 933, often considered to be a pivotal date in their history and in their relationship and association with the northern territories of what would ultimately become the nation of France. In 911, the French Crown had relinquished the lands around Rouen, henceforth known as Normandy, to the Viking chief Rollo, in exchange for assurances of no further incursions into French territories.5 However, in 933, Rollo’s son, William

48     J. Beswick

Longsword, seized the Cotentin Peninsula and the Channel Islands (Hunt 2007: 18), effectively annexing them as Norman territories and adding the lands of Brittany and Lower Normandy by the early eleventh century. The Viking settlers in Normandy appear to have quickly embraced local culture and norms, losing their Scandinavian customs, adopting the French language and becoming Christians (ibid.: 18). This association of the Islands with the Duchy of Normandy as personal estate lasted over 200 years. When William IV defeated the English at Hastings and became William I of England in 1066, he united the Duchy—and hence the Channel Islands—with England under the same sovereign leader (Le Caudey 1999: 8–9). However, the pivotal year in the Islands’ fortunes was 1204, when the French Crown conquered Normandy from King John. Although William’s close heirs had chosen to settle in England, retaining control over their lands in northern France and the Islands from afar (Le Feuvre 2005: 29), the advent of the feudal system had created fiefdoms on Jersey and Guernsey, the largest presided over by powerful Norman Seigneurs or Lords of the Manor (Hunt 2007: 18). Rather than becoming part of the nation of France and lose their wealth, lands and influence in the Channel Islands, these barons made a choice that was to play a vital role in determining the Islands’ future. By declaring their fidelity to King John, they ensured that the Islands remained part of the English territories as his personal possession (Le Dain 1997: 80), and it is highly probable that in return for this loyalty the King granted them certain privileges and rights pertaining to self-determination (Le Feuvre 2005: 30) that have had a far-reaching impact on legislation regarding their status in relation to Britain, as we saw in Chapter 1. Furthermore, the consequent influx of British subjects caused for example, the population of Jersey at the time, to grow to over 6000 people (Boleat 2015: 2).

The Middle Ages: The AngloFrench Battleground By the mid-thirteenth century, France had ostensibly given up any strong claim to the Channel Islands. However, the Islands’ geographical position meant that in reality the French continued to contest their governance for the next seven centuries (Nettles 1992: 21), since possession

3  Historical Migrations: Jersey as a Multicultural Space     49

by the English Crown of lands so close to mainland France was of strategic importance to both nations. The English viewed the Islands as their first line of defence against invasion by France in ensuing conflicts, as ‘Jersey became the outpost of England’ (Nettles 1992: 21), and the French in turn regarded them as a threat to their own defences, a tactically important position from which the English could launch attacks on the French coast. Successive attempts to capture Jersey by the French were nearly always repelled either by local effort, by the intervention of the English fleet or by an alliance between both (Hunt 2007: 21). The continual use of Jersey as an Anglo-French battleground led, inevitably, to English troops spending time there, although this was often under protest: even the appointed island governors often chose not to live on Jersey, believing that being stationed there was a deadend job. Le Feuvre’s comments are intended to reflect the feelings of the day: ‘There was certainly no reason why anybody, apart for the local population, should choose to live in the Island. The British troops, for example, did so only because they had to’ ‘[…] there was no special advantage for anybody hopeful of advancement in taking up anything but temporary residence in Jersey’ (2005: 34–35). This, of course, was patently not the case for the more well-off local inhabitants of the era. Leading Seigneurial landowning families were often educated at Oxford, yet returned to Jersey to govern the farming of their lands. However, this educational advantage afforded them further opportunity for advancement and power. Knowledge of English court law and a competent command of the English language meant that many became Jurats and Bailiffs of the Jersey legal system, whilst others became Militia officers and merchant adventurers (Hunt 2007: 29). Part of the disinterest in settlement on Jersey at this time was once again to do with its relative remoteness from the seats of power back in England, and even getting there was fraught with danger. In the seventeenth century, privateers started to patrol the coastal waters against the French, as I discuss below (Nettles 1992: 21) but they were also a potential threat to alien seaborne vessels. Furthermore, the local language, customs and lack of economic opportunities (Le Feuvre 2005: 34) were seen as barriers to integration, from the perspective of the English at least, an issue I return to with regards to the more contemporary situation in Chapter 5.

50     J. Beswick

Yet the language may very well be a significant reason why the Channel Islands became the destination of a few thousand Huguenots, French Calvinists who arrived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Fleeing from religious persecution in France (Nettles 1992: 25), most refugees had scattered widely throughout northern Europe, South Africa and North America. On Jersey, Jersey Norman French was widely spoken both by the landowning gentry and by the general populace and may have greatly facilitated linguistic integration, since most refugees came from Normandy due to familial links on the Island (Powell 1988a: 12). Measures to convert the local population to Protestantism during the Reformation had been taken under Edward VI, and the religious form adopted had come from France, not England, so Jersey was generally sympathetic to the strict Calvinist ethos (Ward Rutherford 1976: 28–29). Le Feuvre describes the Huguenots as ‘men and women of severe conscience and considerable intelligence’ (2005: 34). Many were well-educated and skilled craftspeople, whose contribution to the improvement of the economic infrastructure of the Island was significant, as we see below. Their visible economic impact and public presence were no doubt reinforced by their Protestantism, which that sat comfortably with the somewhat conservative and parochial outlook of the local population. Even Jersey’s most influential families converted to the Calvinist faith, such as the de Carterets, the wealthiest of the Seigneurial families who held allegiance to the English Crown (Ward Rutherford 1976: 29). Ultimately, relatively few Huguenots settled on Jersey, preferring instead to move to England, the New World or to return to France once persecution ended, and this is reflected in estimates of population size at the time, however imprecise, but ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 people (Boleat 2015: 2; Baker 1844: 59). Although a somewhat essentialised perspective, Powell postulates that the outward-looking perspective of the Huguenots may be part of a so-called ‘immigrant identity’, a point reconsidered in Chapter 5: Not only are immigrants often enterprising, but they also tend to be outward looking. They tend to be less trapped by their environment, being less rooted to the soil than the native stock. (Powell 1988b)6

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Several accounts reveal the presence of other nationalities on the Island in the eighteenth century, a period of severe political tension between Britain and France in Channel waters. In his account of famous characters from Jersey history, Nettles comments that in 1781 Scottish soldiers were based on the Island, and David Bandinel, a famous Parliamentarian during the Civil War, had arrived years earlier as a impoverished Italian immigrant (1992: 21–25; 40–41). Yet despite the political strife in existence in Europe, the majority of migrants at this time were somewhat better heeled. During the French Revolution, for example, many French Roman Catholic refugees, including Royalists and members of the clergy, fled to the Island. According to the official census at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in nearly twenty years Jersey’s population increased by over 10% at least, to 22,855 (Boleat 2015: 2). This French migration was an essentially pragmatic move, since Jersey was now seen as both a familiar and safe, but relatively close haven (Le Dain 1997: 64) should these refugees be ever able and want to return to France. The pervading religious intolerance on the Island no doubt was a factor in decisions to return, since the Island’s earlier conversion to the Protestant faith had involved the systematic removal of all signs of Catholicism, and the quallies law of 1793 forbade any foreigner of the Roman Catholic church from living in Jersey or from marrying a local girl (Le Caudey 1999: 84)7: Under the 1635 Act […] Aliens were not permitted to live in the Island nor marry a Jersey woman without the permission of the Governor. Roman Catholics were not permitted to establish themselves in the Island without the permission of a Civil Magistrate as well as the Governor. By way of contrast the Act states that all Protestants, of good character, were to be received with encouragement. (Powell 1988a: 12)

Furthermore, the Napoleonic Wars underlined the continuing mistrust of France’s intentions by prompting the very real fear that Jersey would be invaded once again. When the Wars ended in 1815, the instigation of peace between England and France once again made sea voyages in the region less treacherous, prompting significant increases

52     J. Beswick

in net migration to the Island over the next few decades. Indeed, as at other periods in Jersey’s history, increases and decreases in population rates have been significantly affected not by the numbers of births and deaths on the Island, but, rather, by net migration. The Island’s population increased annually by over 2% from 1821s figure of 28,855 (Hunt 2007: 44), and nineteenth-century numbers peaked at 57,020 in 1851 (Boleat 2015: 20), a figure that includes the arrival of Polish, Russian, Hungarian, Italian and French political refugees after 1848 (ibid.: 6).

The Nineteenth Century: Tourists and Residents In 1823, the first reliable passenger paddle steamer crossing between mainland Britain and Jersey was introduced, facilitating and reinforcing links between the mainland and the Channel Islands as a whole and paving the way for tourism as well as the more permanent immigration discussed further in Chapter 4. By 1824, there were two reliable weekly steamer services to Jersey and Guernsey from Southampton, rapidly superseded by a regular daily service (Le Caudey 1999: 99–100). On Jersey, small hotels started to spring up, and as more mainland tourists arrived, local dwellings were converted into boarding houses. Yet more permanent visitors started to arrive, with the period of rapid population growth on Jersey in the first half of the nineteenth century due in no small part to retirement immigration from the British mainland. By the 1820s, Britain was in the throes of significant social and political upheaval, and many affluent citizens were penalised financially by punitive legislation regarding taxation and inheritance duties. In line with my discussion in Chapter 2 of scapes of romantic isolation (Hay 2006: 25), many military officers and senior colonial officials retired to the Channel Islands on half pay, their numbers swollen by former employees in public administration. Attracted by a favourable economic climate, the low, tax-free cost of living, the balmy weather, the more leisurely pace of life and, perhaps, the notion of arriving on a small island that conjured up both feelings of exoticism akin to that of the dominions and colonies of the British Empire but also of a home from home, an

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extension to mainland Britain from which they could easily escape and return by ferry (Monteil 2005: 238), these prosperous migrants were largely unaware of their cultural impact on the Island. Most settled in and around the capital St. Helier, at the time a relatively small, provincial town that with the arrival of the Huguenots had grown from a mediaeval fishing village consisting of around 300 dwellings clustered around a parish church. The newly established British community comprised around 5000 individuals by the early 1840s (Boleat 2015: 20), some 21% of the total population of the Island (ibid.: 63). Having few money worries and plenty of time on their hands, they were able to maintain closed, exclusive social networks and spent their time frequenting private clubs, playing golf, strolling along the coast, picnicking in the parks and countryside, playing bridge and attending cocktail parties. Yet their influence on the Island was significant in other ways as well, since the British began to exert a considerable impact on the cultural and political infrastructure. Thus, they took steps to change certain local legislative measures (Monteil 2005: 276) and commissioned the construction of fine buildings and crescents modelled largely on Regency architecture (Le Dain 1997: 93). With the addition of a new harbour, the conurbation of St. Helier started to expand substantially under the British influence, cementing the perception of ‘the gradual Anglicisation of all aspects of life’ (Le Dain 1997: 93) on the Island. The establishment of strong network ties between members of the English-speaking ingroup effectively excluded the majority of the receiver population from the significant reconfiguration of the Island’s urban linguistic landscape at least, an issue discussed further in Chapter 5. Nettles (1992: 16) wryly comments about this period: ‘It is the end of the relatively short process of making the island more English and less Norman French that began at the end of the Napoleonic Wars […] the old distinctive ways and customs of the island began to change’. Maugham boasts that: ‘Society in Jersey, we should imagine, is in few if in any respects dissimilar from that which you would find in Cheltenham, Bath, or any of those residential centres wherein Britons of the Service and official classes, on retirement from active service, have made a home’ (Maugham 1950: 127)

54     J. Beswick

The Nineteenth Century: Economic Migration Although the small island infrastructure had once been incompatible with industrialisation initiatives, the years from 1821 to 1851 saw great economic expansion on Jersey, boosted to some extent by the arrival of these wealthy British retirees and their local spending potential (Boleat 2015: 20). In a series of newspaper articles chronicling the lengthy ­connections between France and Jersey, the former States Economic Adviser Colin Powell explains that the optimum conditions for economic growth and prosperity—freedom of trade and an absence of tax and import duties, a plentiful supply of provisions and goods from France and the British colonies and cheap building materials—were to slot neatly into place (1998c: 12). Some Local Islanders were able to take advantage of the better employment opportunities afforded by urban expansion, effectively generating a small but significant rural exodus that necessitated an influx of labour from elsewhere. Seasonal, economic migrants thus became an integral part of Jersey’s infrastructure during the boom period of the first half of the nineteenth century.8 Initially, most migrants who arrived to carry out the planting and harvesting came from Ireland and mainland Britain, largely as a result of the Irish potato famine and widespread agricultural depression (Crossan 2007: 150). Cornish quarrymen and other semi-skilled workers, severely incapacitated by the Industrial Revolution and its seismic changes to the British economic landscape, also arrived on Jersey to work on the capital building projects commissioned by new British residents, in the newly invigorated shipbuilding industry as well as on other major construction projects financed by the British Government, such as a new network of roads, Fort Regent and St. Catherine’s breakwater (Boleat 2015: 6; Crossan 2007: 95; Hunt 2007: 44; Ford 1995: 5). However, the Island’s population remained quite static at around 55,000, since many immigrants were replacing Jersey-born emigrants to the Americas or Australia, as we see later. The fact that most of the new arrivals spoke English was to provoke significant changes in the Island’s linguistic landscape, an important issue I discuss in more detail in Chapter 5. As the economic climate started to improve, the Irish began to return to Ireland. A comparison of the 1851 and 1911 Jersey Census shows a

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drop from some 2704 people to 510 by the end of the nineteenth century, equal to a reduction from 4.7 to 1% of the total population of the Island (Boleat 2015: 26; 63; see also Fitzgerald and Lambkin 2008). The new wave of economic migrants from Brittany and, to a lesser extent, Normandy were also escaping severe penury. Brittany in particular was an extremely poor backwater of France, with few employment prospects for its burgeoning population (Le Feuvre 2005: 133) outside their own important agricultural seasons. This then, was once again a particular type of migratory process: although Jersey could perhaps be considered at the time an attractive place to live, like the vast majority of Irish and British migrants before them, the Bretons and Normans were not interested in Jersey as an island paradise as outlined in Chapter 2. For them, migration was a sheer instrumental necessity, part of a more general pattern of rural exodus in France. In his monograph on the migration of French nationals to Jersey from the 1850s to the 1950s, Monteil contests that arrival on Jersey was simply a consequence of the Island’s location within reach of the Brittany coast as well as the availability of employment (2005: 274). French migrants were also willing to work for less money than British labourers: more often than not these manual workers came to Jersey informally, on a ‘goodwill’ nod of the head (ibid.: 108). They provided a regular and reliable source of seasonal labour, employed at various times of the year to sow seed potatoes and tomatoes, to harvest crops and to prepare the soil for next season’s planting (Boleat 2015: 21). When there was little work, they were required to leave the Island and return to France, albeit with valuable remittances. Le Feuvre’s detailed account of the rural characterisation of Jersey offers an evocative assessment of the significant contribution made by the Bretons to agriculture well into the twentieth century: he comments ‘At one time the Bretons came on a contract of perhaps no more than six weeks merely to dig the early potato crop, to help with the hay harvest and hoe the root crops’ (ibid.: 137). The somewhat informal nature of agreements between farmers and the hired labour meant that there were no guarantees of employment, which often caused huge problems for the authorities on the Island (Monteil 2005: 100). Some years seasonal workers would arrive before the harvest was ready for picking; other years too many migrants arrived at the same

56     J. Beswick

time, so regular work was difficult to find and many were thus forced to beg on the streets of St. Helier. Accommodation, often in damp, cold and overcrowded hangars, was generally located on the farmer’s land, so that seasonal workers were on site all the time and worked the maximum hours possible. By the end of the nineteenth century, the situation had become so acute the Jersey States appointed a commission to investigate the situation de la maniere la plus  possible [‘in the most impartial way possible’] (ibid.: 163). The first official legislation to specifically control French immigration was enacted in the early twentieth century, in an attempt to formalise and control migration movement (ibid.: 108–110),9 although accommodation issues were still acute on certain farms as recently as twenty years ago, as we see in Part II. In an attempt to remain more permanently on the Island, a number of male Breton workers became farm tenants in order to circumvent Jersey’s stringent property laws on alien ownership of land (Hunt 2007: 44), whilst others married local women and bought smallholdings outright in their wives’ names (Channel Islands Study Group 1944: 5). Breton labourers were an integral part of Jersey’s rural landscape until just after World War II (Beswick 2007: 98) when they were employed to pick the tomato crop, although by then their numbers were often bolstered by ‘scores of lively Welsh girls (who) arrived each summer to sort and pack the fruit for export […]’ (Le Feuvre 2005: 142). Away from the countryside, many French workers registered by the 1841 Census were also working in St. Helier as ship carpenters, shoemakers and servants, and the French hotels that were springing up employed French managers and staff (Powell 1988c: 12), although the 1851 Census shows that the British population continued to be the most significant in terms of numbers.

The Aliens Restriction Act: Migrant Registration By 1871, the overall population of Jersey had risen sharply to its highest of the century, with some 56,627 people registered as living on the Island (Monteil 2005: 84). Boleat (2015) offers an overview of these figures and their implications. The 1851 Census had recorded the

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number of French nationals as 3.5% of the overall Jersey population, compared to the figure of 20.5% for those born on the British mainland. By the 1871 Census, some 7.2% of the population were registered as French-born, with the British mainland population being registered as 15.6%; by 1901, French numbers reached their peak of 11.4%, with the British seeing the largest drop that century, to 10.9% (ibid.: 57, 63). Furthermore, numbers were swollen every spring by the hundreds of predominantly French-speaking seasonal workers not recorded on the Census (ibid.: 3; 38; Monteil 2005: 85).10 Reflecting perhaps the overriding unease of the period regarding these shifts in migrant origin, particularly within urban areas (Boleat 2015: 31–38), a report published by the state-endorsed special committee on immigration in 1906 began by portraying the cyclical movement of outward and inward migration as the replacement of young, enterprising individuals by foreign workers who were poorly educated and far less qualified. By emphasising the need to be able to distinguish between those migrants who were ‘desirables’ and those who were not, the report highlighted the increase in the numbers of children born on the Island to French parents—from 23% in 1843 to some 30% in 1901—and suggested that by 1921 this figure would equal the number of births to Jersey-born fathers. Questioning the impact this would have on Jersey’s social and political infrastructure, the report concluded that formal registration of foreign workers was warranted. The intention is clear; the report conceptualises the influx of migrant workers as a redoubtable attack. Although an unarmed invasion, it was nonetheless seen as a threat to the civil rights and liberties of Jersey people. Of course, the juxtaposition of British and French immigrants does not tell the whole story of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century migration to Jersey. On the 17 February 1920, the States adopted the doctrines of the 1914 English Aliens Restrictions Act, ratified by the UK Parliament and amended in 1919, whereby all so-called ‘aliens’ over sixteen years of age on the Island had to register with the Immigration Office and carry papers to this effect.11 In 2015, the Jersey Heritage Archives released a set of online digitised files of the surviving microfilms of such registration cards of and other documentation pertaining to those who were living on the Island at

58     J. Beswick Table 3.1  Jersey Registration Card foreign nationals born before 1900a Designated nationality on registration card

Individuals

1. Argentina 2. Austria 3. Belgium 4. Czechoslovakia 5. Denmark 6. France

1 6 3 3 1 1207

7. Germany

12

8. Greece 9. Holland

3 11

10. Hungary 11. Iran 12. Italy 13. Japan 14. Norway 15. Palestine

1 1 10 1 1 1

16. Persia 17. Portugal 18. Romania 19. Russia 20. South Africa 21. Spain 22. Switzerland

1 1 1 5 1 5 6

23. Uruguay 24. USA

1 26

Other nationality at birth

Reason for acquired nationality

British (2) British (1) French (1) Jersey (1)

Marriage Marriage Marriage

British (5) Canadian (1) Guernsey (1) Dutch (1) Jersey (85) Sark (1) British (2) French (1) Jersey (1)

Marriage

Marriage

Marriage

British (1) Guernsey (1) Irish (1) Jersey (1)

Marriage

Jersey (2)

Marriage

Designated ‘stateless’ British (1)

Marriage

British (1)

Marriage

Dutch (1) Jersey (1)

Marriage (1) Naturalisation (1)

French (3) Jersey (2) British (3) Jersey (2)

Marriage (5) Naturalization (5)

aSee

online at: http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/collection/Details/archive/ 110230194?source=descendants (last accessed 23/02/18)

the time. The set is incomplete: in theory, for example, there were some 3892 registration cards of individuals born in the nineteenth century, but at the time of writing the Archive has managed to digitise just over 1500 cards. Moreover, as the Act did not apply to British

3  Historical Migrations: Jersey as a Multicultural Space     59 Table 3.2  Registration Card foreign nationals born on Jersey 1901–1916a Year born on Jersey

Total number of individuals

French nationals (by parentage)

French nationals (by marriage)

Other nationalities (by parentage)

1901–1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 Totals

150 49 63 54 60 60 76 79 46 57 46 45 32 31 785

106 37 45 39 48 41 60 51 31 35 36 32 19 17 561

24 7 10 4 2 10 4 4 1 3 3 18 – 1 74

20 5 8 11 10 9 12 24 14 19 7 12 13 13 151

aSee

online at: http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/collection/Details/archive/110 230194?source=descendants (last accessed 23/02/18)

individuals born elsewhere, overall figures are indicative only of the nationality of other incomers to the Island. Table 3.1 illustrates the number of migrants born before 1900 who were present on Jersey at some time from 1920 onwards. Some arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s and were allocated some of the first registration cards in 1920, with those who arrived after 1920 being allocated cards soon after disembarkation. Many of the women registered had been born on Jersey yet were assigned their husband’s nationality, which was often French, through marriage. Aside from the British mainland presence, French nationals were the predominant migrant population to Jersey around the end of the nineteenth century, and their registration cards confirm that most were from the northern regions, particularly Brittany and Normandy. There were also individuals from twenty-three other countries on the Island, but their numbers appear to have been small. Apart from those born annually to French nationals, the percentage of individuals born on Jersey between 1901 and 1916 to parents with alien status is also minor, as shown in Table 3.2.12

60     J. Beswick Table 3.3  Registration Card foreign nationals born on Jersey 1901–1916 by nationality (excludes French nationals)a Country of nationality

Total births 1901–1916

Argentina Austria Belgium China Czechoslovakia Denmark Dutch Germany Greece Haiti Holland Hungary Ireland Italy Poland Portugal Russia Spain Switzerland South Africa USA

1 28 7 1 9 3 1 18 2 1 6 1 1 37 7 7 3 5 28 3 7

Other nationality at birth

Reason for acquired nationality

Jersey (1)

Marriage

British (1) Jersey (1) Jersey (1) Austrian (4)

Marriage Marriage Marriage Naturalisation

Jersey (2)

Marriage

British (5) Austrian (1) Jersey (1) South African (1) Jersey (1)

Marriage Marriage Marriage

Jersey (1) Jersey (1) French (2)

Marriage Marriage

Jersey (1)

Marriage

aSee online at: http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/collection/Details/archive/ 110230194?source=descendants (last accessed 23/02/18)

Table 3.3 offers a breakdown by nationality of these children. Although some twenty-one different nationalities were present in this period, individual numbers are not significant, implying that their impact on the multicultural and multilinguistic configuration of Jersey was fairly marginal.

World War II: Invasion, Occupation, Legacy There is little doubt that the German Occupation is the single most momentous episode of the history of the Channel Islands since 1204, the year the French Crown conquered Normandy and the Islands’ bar-

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ons elected to remain an English territory. The legacy of World War II continues to reverberate throughout the Islands, not only in the way it is now articulated in terms of heritage, but also in its impact on the self-identification and characterisation of the population, as I discuss in Part II of this book. Many academic tomes concerned with the German invasion and the Occupation of the Channel Islands are largely historical, chronological accounts detailing the political dilemmas faced by both sides, military manoeuvres and tactics of invasion and fortification against counter-attack (see, for example, King 1991). However, a few volumes integrate a socioeconomic and sociocultural approach, centring on what Sanders terms ‘the civilian face of the occupation’ (2005: xvi) by proffering an examination of the societal relationship between the German occupying forces and the local people.13 Indeed, Nazi doctrines potentially had far-reaching implications for Jersey in terms of shared, opposing expressions of local, ingroup identities, but perhaps one of the most problematic issues faced by Channel Islanders at the beginning of the conflict concerns their official demilitarisation in June 1940. Effectively, this left the Islands largely undefended and this, in turn, may have fostered a general idea that they had been abandoned by the British Government. In order to appreciate how the Occupation and its legacy are commodified in twenty-first-century re-imaginings and representations of local identity, discussed in Chapter 5, we firstly need to understand the impact of demilitarisation on Jersey in particular. Nationalism as a movement to defend political interests and independence (Andersen 1991; Gellner 1983) serves to legitimise the designation of ‘nation’ as comprising of, and being defined by, a group of people who share some form of common ground (Barbour 2002: 1–17). Initially, somewhat essentialised and reductionist representations of Channel Island patriotism were galvanised by the headline ‘At Last’ in local newspaper, the Jersey Evening Post on the 4 September 1939 (Hillsdon 2004: 9–10) and the sense that Britain, its dominions and protectorates were ‘all in this together’ was further exacerbated by subsequent edicts issued by the British Government. For a couple of months, normal island life resumed on Jersey; even the Tourism Committee somewhat incongruously offered optimistic

62     J. Beswick

platitudes to the fundamental moral question as to whether it was appropriate to holiday at such a time (ibid.: 11–14). Advertisements in the British press publicising holidays to the Island aimed to reassure and boost morale through idyllic pictorial depictions of beach holidays that invoked familiar tropes whilst at the same time, constructed a positive portrayal of Jersey once again as an imagined paradise island, a place of refuge and tranquillity. The emphasis on physical location reinforced the Island’s proximity to the mainland, but such images also displaced the experience of vacation from real-world events through a sense of space and harmony and utopic, sublime representations of island life. As Hillsdon points out, visiting British citizens were thus encouraged to feel psychologically dislocated from the harsh realities of a nation at war through a sense of otherworldliness and difference: Situated as it is in the English Channel and sheltered by France, the geographical position of Jersey makes it the ideal resort for wartime holidays. Happily our Island is far removed from the theatre of war. The bays with their eternal sands, sea and sunshine together produce an atmosphere of peaceful tranquillity strangely different from the rest of the world. (ibid.: 12)

This reification of Jersey as both a physical and metaphorical place of safety and tranquillity, in line with my discussion in Chapter 2, may well have reflected the imaginings of the Islanders themselves at the time. Indeed, the belief that the Island would be defended to the hilt by British armed forces should the Germans attack (Sanders 2005: 12; Cruickshank 2004: 1–13) appears to have been fundamental to the way in which a sense of national identity was conceptualised. As earlier examples of Island patriotic fervour attest, ideological precepts regarding the value and significance of a homogeneous, shared identity and shared language with mainland Britain to the Island’s security were commonplace, so it was with a general sense of shock and utter disbelief that the news of the Islands’ official demilitarisation was greeted by the population on the 19th of June 1940 (Hillsdon 2004: 9; 18). It is often reported that this decision was made by Churchill’s government on humanitarian rather than military or strategic grounds, thus avoiding a massive loss of life by British troops in the event of invasion

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(see, for example, Sanders 2005; Cruickshank 2004). Yet by the time the Germans became aware of this tactic, they had already launched a series of air raids over the Channel Islands, culminating in a quick and relatively straightforward invasion on the 30 June. The myth of Jersey as invulnerable, a bounded space that was solid, defensible and impervious to conquest, was thus debunked. The Channel Islands’ lack of involvement in World War I, together with their geographic isolation from the British mainland and seat of national government, had strengthened the generally held belief that they were strategically irrelevant to Hitler’s territorial ambitions (Ronayne 2014), but their importance to his ideological aspirations regarding the invasion of mainland Britain quickly became clear. By securing troops on British soil for the first time, Hitler wanted to gain a psychological advantage over the Allies (McLoughlin 1995), so the Islands were to function as a springboard towards the greater gain of invasion of mainland Britain and its ultimate subjugation to the German nation and language. Thus, the taking of the Channel Islands represented not only a strategic but also a symbolic victory of great propaganda value to the Germans. Although the arrival of occupying forces on Jersey was a military action and not a migratory wave, the Occupation also requires some thematic consideration in the context of island life given its impact and legacy on articulations of island identities. We saw in Chapter 2 that contemporary theoretical models of island, islandness and insularity offer a generic framework that can encompass characteristics and settings shared by different island contexts. The inherent complexity of these interpretations may also be usefully framed by a thematic comparison of interaction/connectivity and isolation, as discussed by Sanders (2005: 1), which, although seemingly disparate, are in effect intimately linked. From a practical perspective, the nature of island—its isolation, lack of natural resources, etc.—may inspire or even force its inhabitants to seek out external relationships and trade links, which may, in turn, foster a sense of knowledge about and appreciation of the world outside. On the other hand, from a more abstract perspective, this nature may also foster an almost idealistic sense of island as a paradise homeland, a sanctuary in times of strife and conflict from which all threatening connections overseas can be either severed or at the very least, ignored.

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This dichotomy is fundamental to our understanding of the Occupation of Jersey. At the time of invasion, the Channel Islands were relatively unsophisticated in terms of their economic infrastructure and the sea was still key to their ability to recognise both their shortcomings and their advantages as islands. Based on my account thus far, it would not be naïve to suggest that perceptions of fundamental island life have encapsulated the sea in three ways: • As a centuries’ old resource for accessing and exploiting new overseas trading partners and for sanctioning the arrival of business-minded migrants, paramount for development and growth; • As a provider of escape in times of hardship, allowing migrants to seek their fortunes elsewhere and to return; and • As a natural resource in its own right, providing sustenance when other foodstuffs have been scarce. The prolonged nature of the Occupation put paid to this, since it became clear that the role of the sea throughout history as a deterrent against invasion would now work to the advantage of the occupiers, to isolate the population from their allies by creating an island stronghold from which escape was extremely difficult. Yet the notion of life on Jersey as one of confinement was not entirely apparent in the first few months of the Occupation. It has been contended that some Islanders regarded the presence of German forces as a temporary nuisance and nothing more, calling them ‘the Visitors’ and treating them contemptuously ‘like another bunch of tourists who would return home when they had had their fill of sea, sun and fun’ (Sanders 2005: 173). Whether this was bravado or not, the situation changed fundamentally with the arrival of some 11,500, highly visible uniformed German soldiers (Hillsdon 2004: 7). The amassing of large numbers of occupiers and occupied appears to have engendered a claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere (Sanders 2005: 1–2), which was to have a profound impact on the way the local population interacted with the occupying forces, exacerbated no doubt by a pervading sense of rejection by the mainland British authorities. Furthermore, the building of defensive fortifications around the Island (Stephenson 2006) seriously forestalled the movement of maritime traffic; indeed, only towards the end of the

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war were a few Islanders able to broach the blockades and escape by boat to the French coast (Patton 2014). Isolated from the outside world, Islanders thus became prisoners of their own island fortress, with Jersey a bounded space demarcated by its own geographical limits: I went down into the town […] outside the Post Office another one (German Soldier) and I realized then that our communication with Britain had been cut. We were suddenly isolated […] Indeed, suddenly one realized that our home had become our prison. (Hillsdon 2004: 37)

As is well documented elsewhere, the most significant aspect of Nazi doctrine was that of nationality and creed.14 Nazi ideology dictated unification within one nation state as the Aryan master race of German speakers, necessitating the oppression and subsequent elimination of all ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity within minority groups. There is no reason why this doctrine of ethnic cleansing should not have had the most severe consequences for the Channel Islands and in particular for Jersey as an island of immigration. However, its role in Hitler’s strategic plans for an invasion of mainland Britain may have curtailed the most violent suppression, at least for the majority of the population since, led by high-ranking military commanders, the German armed forces were instructed to employ a strict code of conduct in order to demonstrate to the rest of Britain that there was nothing to be feared from life under the Third Reich (Sanders 2005: 188; Bard 2014: 48–54). Jersey was also a far from unpopular posting among non-military, high-ranking aristocrats unused to warfare, who, as members of the Feldkommandantur (FK) civil affairs unit, were encouraged to develop a rapport with the Island’s local authorities (ibid.: 174–177) and to demonstrate tolerance and respect. One such officer was Baron Hans Max Von Aufsess, who chronicled an ‘Occupation Diary’ that offers us an insight into the pleasant lifestyle of many high-ranking Germans during the first part of the Occupation, the rapport with the local populations and importantly here, an insight into the multiethnic configuration of Jersey at the time of the Occupation. Although the tone is somewhat moralistic and patronising at times (Sanders 2005: 182), a legacy perhaps of the era the diary was written in, Von Aufsess’ comments do imply a

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degree of tolerance towards such populations in his comments regarding residency: Every century has seen new groups of foreign nationals join the mixture which is the population of the islands. Whereas, however, in former times, the islands have provided a refuge for those suffering from poverty or persecution, in the last eighty years it is the wealthy who have settled down here. The stratum which [sic] owns the country houses was formed, almost exclusively, from English people. Many hundreds of Irish farm labourers have placed themselves at the disposal of the increasingly prosperous farmers. Italians come as waiters, Dutchmen as gardeners, Frenchmen as business people, the Swiss as hotel managers, while Austrian, Hungarian and Polish girls came as nursery-governesses and housemaids. Many have married in the islands and become residents. In this the islands are a good deal ahead of the rest of the continent in their amalgam of the white national groups. (Von Aufsess 1985: 43–44)

Nonetheless, the Germans tightly controlled population movement and the whereabouts of individuals under the 1940 Registration and Identification of Persons (Jersey) Order. This compulsory registration process collected individuals’ personal details, including photos of the adults, place of birth, nationality and occupation, and issued everyone over the age of fourteen with an identity card. These cards are now housed in the Jersey Heritage Archives in paper and microfiche format, and offer us a valuable snapshot of the multiethnic composition of Jersey in the late 1930s and early 1940s.15 Some migration from the Channel Islands occurred in the weeks prior to invasion, generally of individuals whose nationality marked them as adversaries, such as German and Italian nationals who had been working as waiters (Hillsdon 2004: 25).16 A local civilian evacuation plan had been put together in 1940 but although nearly half the Island’s total population—some 23,000 people—initially registered, only 6500 actually left the Island (Hamon 2015: 81; Hillsdon 2004: 19–22). Evacuees generally comprised mothers with children below school age as well as men of military age who were enlisting in the British army (Laine 2009: 41), together with around 20% of the Island’s schoolchildren (Likeman 2012: 193). Most of those who stayed were swayed by

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the local government’s advice that it was the best policy, usually reinforced by scare tactics regarding riots on the mainland, overcrowding on the ships and looting of empty properties on Jersey. On several occasions, the Germans used the registration card details to select individuals and groups for deportation, such as British officers who had served in World War I who were transferred to Germany, as well as those without permanent residency, such as men between 16 and 70 years of age not born on the Island but with British families (Hillsdon 2004: 132). Later on, this list included Jersey-born individuals and people of other nationalities, often designated as ‘undesirables’, ‘unreliables’ or ‘superfluous eaters’ (Sanders 2005: 176), such epithets shorthand for political activists and agitators as well as petty criminals and those of another ethnicity or religion. By 1943, nearly 4000 individuals had been deported, most to internment camps in Germany (ibid.: 136–138) but some also to concentration camps (Hunt 2007: 54). This was of course particularly the case for the Jewish population, many of whom had already abandoned their businesses and homes to flee abroad or had been dispossessed of them by the Germans. Some had no choice but to remain on Jersey, since foreign Jews, as ‘aliens’, were not allowed to take up even temporary residence in mainland Britain for example (Fraser 2000; Sanders 2005: 132). Registration cards, marked with a red ‘J’ and a cross were compiled on the instruction of the German commanders (Hillsdon 2004), however some Jewish Islanders did not obey the order to register even if they had more than two Jewish grandparents. Sanders estimates that only eighteen individuals registered themselves as Jews on Jersey and Guernsey in 1940, somewhat fewer than the true total of thirty to fifty (2005: 132–133).

Out-Migration: Emigration Through the Ages Considering how small Jersey is […] it is remarkable how many of its people have made some stir in the world. (Syvret 2011: 23–24)

Until now, I have focused my discussion of migration to those people who, for various reasons, were attracted to the Island and made their homes there, either temporarily or permanently, before World War II. However,

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migration away from the Island has also been a key feature of the history of Jersey and island life. Certain influential local individuals left Jersey over the centuries, such as members of the de Carteret family (Syvret 2011: 23–24), often in search of adventure.17 Yet, the majority of emigrants migrated for far more instrumental reasons, out of necessity rather than choice. Earlier, I contended that life in the Channel Islands of the Middle Ages was played out far from the hub of central governmental authority, with little intervention from England and its public servants in the Islands’ affairs. Furthermore, England’s rigid, hierarchical social structure was not replicated in the Islands (Le Feuvre 2005: 44–52). Of course, it would be an exaggeration to claim that this policy of non-intervention allowed for total social equality on Jersey, since the local Norman Seigneurs occupied an elevated position within the class system. Importantly, however, they did not wield sufficient power to wrest property or land from the rural population. As Le Feuvre points out, ‘All men had a voice and the population was too small for it not to be heard’ (ibid.: 52). Social standing and status, as well as livelihood and familial heritage, relied heavily on such land ownership, and almost the entire rural population owned at least a couple of intensively worked acres divided into strips between several communally cultivated open fields. This situation was further enhanced by the movement away from pure self-sufficiency to the development of a cash income, based initially on knitted goods and then on other profitable merchandise, as I discuss below. We have already seen that island life on Jersey has long been linked to its coastline, with much of its commercial success being owed to the sea. Even rural workers would collect vraic, the local seaweed, for use as fertiliser on the fields or to dry and burn as fuel (Le Feuvre 2005: 68). From the seventeenth century, the maritime legacy of the Channel Islands had also facilitated a spate of privateering whenever war broke out, with shipowners applying for official, auxiliary naval status that allowed them to continue to sail in the Channel and in doing so, to attack and plunder enemy ships. By the early nineteenth century, smuggling of contraband goods such as tobacco, brandy, gin and wine between the British and French mainlands became a less risky and more profitable enterprise (Boleat 2015: 6). Other less nefarious activities, such as shipbuilding, fishing and overseas trading, exploited Jersey’s

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strategic geographical location at this time, what Le Feuvre (2005: 82) refers to as ‘a focal point, what one might call a marine crossroads, for sailing ships and so of commercial activity’. Ultimately, these lucrative successes paved the way for large-scale economic migration. The expansion of the wooden shipbuilding industry and the construction of more seaworthy vessels allowed for longer voyages away from the Channel trading routes to the more distant fishing grounds of the Americas (Boleat 2015: 6). As early as the 1600s, the Island’s fishermen were involved with the exploitation of cod sources off Newfoundland (Le Feuvre 2005: 82), and by the 1700s, Jersey merchants had established permanent fishing bases in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and had built a thriving deep-water fisheries empire and export business (Boleat 2015: 4; 20). The Jersey presence reached its apogee in the 1830s and 1840s, when up to 2500 sailors worked on over 100 vessels. Some married local women and settled in northeast Canada or across the border in New England. Boleat estimates there were 1237 Jersey-born people in Canada in 1837 and the 1871 Census recorded some 650 individuals (ibid.: 45–46). It is probable that these figures understate the true numbers who remained permanently, yet it appears that some merchant sailors did work seasonally and returned to Jersey every Autumn.18 Nonetheless, Jérriais was spoken widely in these areas, and it survived well into the middle of the twentieth century. However, in order to understand the increase in definitive emigration rates after the discoveries of the New World, I need briefly to go back to the economic infrastructure of the Island at the end of the Middle Ages. Knitting as a cottage industry in the Channel Islands grew as an important offshoot of fishing and maritime trade. The development of the Newfoundland fishing grounds expanded the production of the tight-fitting, warm jumpers we now call jerseys (Le Caudey 1999: 54–55). Yet knitting was also becoming an important home-based business in both England and France and it took off as a commercially viable export with the arrival of the Huguenots, who brought commercial nous and knowledge of intricate French patterns (Boleat 2015: 6; 19; Le Feuvre 2005: 83–84). As a departure for the rural population from traditional farming activities, who until then had lived off crop production, livestock raising and inshore water fishing, knitting became ‘a

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source of considerable wealth to the small-holding community’ (Hunt 2007: 23).19 By the late seventeenth century, up to half of the active population was involved in the production of knitted stockings for export (Boleat 2015: 19). Ultimately, demand for wool far outstripped local supply, necessitating the import of duty-free supplies from England (Hunt 2007: 23). Thousands of stockings were produced and exported back again by experienced seaman traders (Le Feuvre 2005: 84; 89–90), thus ensuring strong trade links with the British mainland. Ironically, this success almost spelt disaster for the Island’s self-sustainability, since the profitability of knitting far outstripped that of local fishing, harvesting crops and collecting vraic, were no longer workers’ top priority. Legislation that forbade knitting during the vraiking and harvest seasons and imposed strict quality controls on stockings produced for the export market (Ward Rutherford 1976: 45) was introduced to ensure a more equitable balance between the production of goods for sale abroad as cash generators, and those for use at home, thus assuring the Island’s ability to be self-reliant (Le Feuvre 2005: 85), essential given the ever-present threat of war with France and potential isolation from overseas markets. This situation could not last indefinitely. The rapid expansion of knitting and the development of other agricultural commodities are often considered to be significant turning points in the socioeconomic history of Jersey (Le Feuvre 2005: 83) since they underline major changes in land use and land management that had a far-reaching impact on traditional agricultural practices. Cider production was superseded during the nineteenth century by Jersey cattle, the Jersey Royal potato and the Jersey tomato as valuable commodities (Boleat 2015: 20; 21). Such changes also had a significant impact on emigration movement. By the late 1500s, strip-farming and mutual ownership of common land, also prevalent in England until the Industrial Revolution, were giving way to separately owned and intensively worked small plots of land (Le Feuvre 2005: 45–46), a subsistence or smallholder type of farming. In theory, local inheritance laws carved up such plots between benefactors, but in practice this did not often happen. Before the 1700s, the eldest son inherited the family plot, leaving brothers to seek their fortunes elsewhere, often at sea and ultimately for many, in

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the Americas. Irrespective of any spirit of adventure and desire to seek their fortune, as Le Feuvre suggests (2005: 34), second sons were economic migrants with little choice but to seek employment elsewhere. Hunt comments that such individuals were ‘positively encouraged to emigrate to the new colonies of North America’ (2007: 30), and by 1666, enforced emigration to British dominions of Ireland, New Jersey and New England was even tentatively proposed, although never carried out (Le Feuvre 2005: 57–58). Nineteenth-century economic expansion on Jersey was profitable for many on the Island, but favoured middle-class landowners who took advantage of new agricultural opportunities and employed a largely immigrant—and cheap—workforce. By necessity, many locally born people thus emigrated to the British colonies of Australia and New Zealand (Boleat 2015: 4; Hunt 2007: 49), emboldened by active immigration recruitment programmes and facilitated by the relative ease of linguistic integration. The lure of the Gold Rush also encouraged a degree of fortune seeking emigration, with up to 6000 people going to Australia from the Channel Islands between 1852 and 1855, although they did not generally settle as communities.20 A sharp downturn in economic activity on the Island meant that by the end of the nineteenth century more than 10,000 Jersey-born people had left for England in search of better work prospects (Boleat 2015: 4), with a substantial number, some 5935 in total, going to Guernsey (Crossan 2007: 73). At this time then, a lack of work opportunities was often the push factor for emigration, particularly for those who had moved to the Island from elsewhere, especially from France, and who were simply moving on again (Kelleher 1994: 199–200; Crossan 2007: 101). Emigration to the USA was also prevalent in the nineteenth century, with economic opportunities in construction and agricultural practices attracting Jersey-born people with the requisite skills. The Californian Gold Rush of 1848 once again encouraged fortune seeking emigration, and for many, immigration to the Americas was definitive and permanent, unlike the Newfoundland example. Despite the influx of economic migrants, by the end of the nineteenth century, the Island’s overall population was in a steady decline; by 1901, it had fallen 7.8%; and by 1921, it was to fall 12.8% below the 1851 peak (Boleat 2015: 3).

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Chapter Summary The main focus of this chapter has been the degree of influence and import of successive invasions, migrations and settlements throughout Jersey’s history as a spatially important island located in the sea between France and Great Britain. Indeed, the importance to the Island’s linguistic configuration of the juxtaposition between Jersey’s annexation to Normandy and its subsequent decision to declare allegiance to the English Crown is underlined by the successive migratory movement from France and England, which played an important role in the configuration of the population. The societal, cultural and linguistic dominance of mainland British Migrant Islanders in the nineteenth century began the inexorable usurping of Jèrriais as the Island’s vernacular, explored in more detail in Part II of this book. However, the configuration of the Island’s population around the turn of the century was far more multilingual than this large-scale migration implies, so in order to establish a sense of the often international nature of immigration leading up to World War II I have briefly discussed the role and significance of the Alien Registration Cards and the German Occupation Registration Cards. The Occupation of Jersey during World War II is still, understandably, an emotive subject on the Island, even though there are few individuals still alive who lived through it. My brief discussion of how certain sectors of the local population reacted to this invasion outlines its potential impact on a sense of patriotism and shared identity with the rest of Britain, severely jeopardised for a whilst with the demilitarisation of Jersey in 1939, as well as the strategic and symbolic significance of occupation of the Channel Islands to Germany’s mainland invasion aspirations. By terming Jersey an ‘island prison’, a bounded space, I have tried to highlight the juxtaposition between the physical and symbolic confinement that Islanders may have experienced, and my final discussion of out-migration trajectories and return in accordance with earlier theoretical premises pertaining to islandness and movement. Throughout this chapter, my intention has been to present a largely historical evaluation of immigration and emigration to Jersey that

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will serve to underline my discussion in Part II of more contemporary migration patterns and of the multilingual and multicultural nature of identities, ideologies and islandness on Jersey within its shifting societal, cultural and linguistic landscape. It is to this analysis that I now turn.

Notes 1. See online at: https://www.jersey.com regarding maritime access to the Islands (last accessed 18/05/18). 2. See online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/about_jersey/history/history_jerseymain.shtml (last accessed 18/05/18). 3. The Museum Conservator at Jersey Heritage believes that the coins belonged to the Coriosolites who may have hidden the money on Jersey from these advancing Roman legions and their tax collectors. See online at: http://www.jerseyheritage.org/treasure-island/history (last accessed 18/05/18). 4. See online at: http://www.jerseyheritage.org/treasure-island/buriedtreasure (last accessed 18/05/18). 5. See online at: http://www.jersey.com/english/discoverjersey/aboutjersey/history/Pages/default.aspx (last accessed 18/05/18). 6. See online at: http://www.huguenotsociety.org.uk/history.html (last accessed 18/05/18) for a fuller account of the Huguenots and their current activities. 7. Religious intolerance was not confined to Catholicism. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, fishermen returning from the Americas brought a Methodist doctrine that was initially subject to prejudice throughout the British Isles, although once George III had secured the freedom of religious practice the first Methodist minister on Jersey was appointed in 1783. 8. Nowadays, a politically motivated use of the term ‘economic migrant’ implying that it is a voluntary action of dislocation in search of better opportunities may carry somewhat undesirable connotations, particularly when compared with ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum seeker’ (see, for example, the Prospero article in the Economist, 04/09/15 online at: https:// www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/09/johnson-political-language (last accessed 28/10/17). However, in the case of many economic migrants, this inference of choice about whether to migrate or not may

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be misleading, since the push factor is often severe necessity engendered by a worsening economic climate at home, as we saw earlier. The term ‘opportunistic migrant’, often used in the USA, encompasses both unskilled and skilled workers but tends to foreground the latter, according to the International Finance Cooperation’s report on sustainability entitled Projects and People: A Handbook for Addressing Project-Induced In-migration, online at: http://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/topics_ext_content/ifc_external_corporate_site/sustainability-at-ifc/publications/publications_handbook_inmigration__wci__1319576839994 (last accessed 23/02/17). 9. In 1635, the first legislation on immigration was enacted, by which no inhabitant of the Island could have an alien in his house for more than one night without notifying the appropriate parish constable (Boleat 2015: 6). 10. Although the French government actively discouraged emigration at this time, migration to Jersey was in effect ignored since it originated in the rural western zone of France away from the Parisian hub. Interestingly, and perhaps as a result of this, by 1891 there were more French in Jersey than in Canada (Monteil 2005: 275). 11. See online at: http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/collection/Details/ archive/110230194?source=descendants (last accessed 23/02/18). 12. Table  3.2 takes into account the 100 year rule that prevents disclosure of the registration cards and private details of anyone born less than 100 years ago. 13. Some of the most comprehensive accounts are: Carr, Sanders, and Willmott (2015), Cruickshank (2004), Nettles (2013), Sanders (2005), Hillsdon (2004). It is perhaps inevitable that such an approach may involve attempts to problematize the issues surrounding resistance and collaboration. We consider these issues in Chapter 5 regarding representations and portrayals of a Jersey identity. 14. Online at: http://www.nazism.net/about/ideological_theory/ (last accessed 11/01/18). 15. These are stored electronically at: http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/ features/german-occupation-registration-cards/. Although access to many online records is restricted to any cards of persons born less than 100 years ago, as I have outlined above, many are referenced by people wanting to trace their heritage, a pastime that is of prime importance to contemporary articulations of belonging, integration and identity on the Island.

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16. These cards were introduced in order to control the movement of what were considered to be local populations, so they do not document the 4000–5000 foreign slave workers and prisoners of war who were forced migrants to Jersey from the end of 1941 onwards, tasked with turning it into a fortress island (ibid.: 51). Russians, Ukrainians, Spaniards, Poles, Czechoslovaks, Jewish Alsatians and other nationalities (Patton 2014) were treated purely as a commodity and some accounts document the cruelty they were subjected to, living at starvation levels (Hillsdon 2004: 129–130). They were held in camps and were not allowed to fraternise with the local population: for them, Jersey was a veritable ile-prison. 17. Philippe de Carteret became Cromwell’s Judge-Advocate in the seventeenth century; Sir George Carteret became Treasurer of the Navy after the Reformation. In recognition for the help given to him during his exile on Jersey, Charles II gave George land in the American colonies, which he named New Jersey (Syvret 2011: 23–24). 18. See online at: https://www.jerseyheritage.org/family-history/jersey emigration (last accessed 21/11/19). 19. The Huguenots also set up other successful businesses, principally in silver working and cider making: indeed, ‘Jersey profited from their presence just as much as did the Huguenots from the protection it provided’ (Le Feuvre 2005: 34). 20. See online at: https://www.jerseyheritage.org/family-history/jersey emigration (last accessed 21/11/19).

References Andersen, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Baker, Thomas (publ). 1844. A Guide to the Island of Jersey. London: Thomas Baker. Barbour, Stephen. 2002. Language, Nationalism, Europe. In Language and Nationalism in Europe, 2nd ed., ed. Stephen Barbour and Cathie Carmichael, 1–17. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bard, Robert. 2014. The Channel Islands at War: A Dark History. London: Amberley Publishing.

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Beswick, Jaine. 2007. Regional Nationalism in Spain: Language Use and Ethnic Identity in Galicia. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Boleat, Mark. 2015. Jersey’s Population—A History. St. Helier, Jersey: Société Jersiaise/Seaflower Books. Carr, Gilly, Paul Sanders, and Louise Willmott. 2015. Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the Channel Islands: German Occupation, 1940–45. London: Bloomsbury. Channel Islands Study Group. 1944. Nos Iles: A Symposium on the Channel Islands. Middlesex: CISG. Crossan, Rose-Marie. 2007. Guernsey 1814–1914: Migration and Modernisation. Suffolk: Boydell Press. Cruickshank, Charles. 2004. The German Occupation of the Channel Islands, 3rd ed. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press. Driscoll, Paul. 2011. The Channel Islands: An Archipelago of the Atlantic Bronze and Early Iron Age. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Bristol. Fitzgerald, Patrick, and Brian Lambkin. 2008. Migration in Irish History, 1607–2007. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ford, Doug. 1995. From Langlois to de Sousa: A History of Immigration into Jersey. Public Lecture, Sociétè Jersiaise. Fraser, David. 2000. The Jews of the Channel Islands and the Rule of Law, 1940–1945. Sussex: Academic Press. Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Hamon, Simon. 2015. Voices from the Past: Channel Islands Invaded: The German Attack on the British Isles in 1940 Told Through Eyewitness Accounts, Newspaper Reports, Parliamentary Debates, Memoirs and Diaries. Barnsley, Yorkshire: Frontline Books. Hay, Pete. 2006. A Phenomenology of Islands. Island Studies Journal 1 (1): 19–42. Hillsdon, Sonia. 2004. Jersey: Occupation Remembered. Wiltshire: Seaflower Books. Hunt, Peter. 2007. A Brief History of Jersey. St. Helier: Société Jersiaise. Kelleher, John. 1994. The Triumph of the Country: The Rural Community in Nineteenth-Century Jersey. Jersey: John Appleby Publishing. King, Peter. 1991. The Channel Islands War: 1940–1945. London: Robert Hale. Laine, Derek C. 2009. Experiences of a World War II Guernsey Evacuee in Cheshire. Occasional Papers, 54. Betley: Cheshire: Local History Society. Lane, Megan. 2011. The Moment Britain Became an Island. BBC News Magazine. See online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12244964. Last accessed 18/05/18.

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Le Caudey, Jeff. 1999. Glance Back in Amazement Over Jersey’s Last Millennium. A Thousand Years of History & Invention. St. John, Jersey: Starlight Publishing. Le Dain, John. 1997. Jersey Alphabet. Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire: Seaflower Books. Le Feuvre, David. 2005. Jersey: Not Quite British: The Rural History of a Singular People. St. Helier: Seaflower Books. Likeman, Janet. 2012. Our Dear Channel Islands: A Survey of Education in Jersey During the Occupation 1940–1945. In Education and the Second World War: Studies in Schooling and Social Change, 2nd ed., ed. Roy Lowe, 191–211. London: Routledge. Maugham, Reginald Charles Fulke. 1950. The Island of Jersey Today. London: W. H. Allen. McLoughlin, Roy. 1995. Living with the Enemy: An Outline of the German Occupation of the Channel Islands with First Hand Accounts by People Who Remember the Years 1940–1945, 2nd ed. St. John, Jersey: Starlight Publishing/Channel Island Publishing. Monteil, Michel. 2005. L’émigration française vers Jersey 1850–1950. Aix-enProvence (Bouches-du-Rhône): Publications de l’Université de Provence. Nettles, John. 1992. John Nettles’ Jersey: A Personal History of the People & Places. London: BBC Books. Nettles, John. 2013. Jewels and Jackboots: Hitler’s British Islands: The German Occupation of the British Channel Islands, 1940–1945. Jersey: Channel Island Publishing. No author. 2010. Glimpses of the Island’s Roman Past. Jersey Evening Post, September 29. See online at: http://jerseyeveningpost.com/ news/2010/09/29/glimpses-of-the-islands-roman-past. Last accessed 18/05/18. No author. 2012. Roman and Celtic Coin Hoard Worth Up to £10m Found in Jersey. BBC News. See online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-18579868. Last accessed 18/05/18. Patton, Mark. 2002. Statements in Stone: Monuments and Society in Neolithic Brittany. New York: Taylor & Francis. Patton, Mark. 2014. The German Occupation of the Channel Islands, May 11. Online at: http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-germanoccupation-of-channel-islands.html. Last accessed 19/05/18. Powell, Colin. 1988a. Knitting and Brawling: The Years of the Huguenots Influx. Jersey Evening Post, July 11.

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Powell, Colin. 1988b. Pioneers of Industry. Jersey Evening Post, July 12. Powell Colin. 1988c. Boom Days in the Nineteenth Century. Jersey Evening Post, July 13. Ronayne, Ian. 2014. Jersey’s Great War: An Island and Its People 1914–18. St. Helier, Jersey: Jersey Heritage. Sanders, Paul. 2005. The British Channel Islands Under German Occupation 1940–1945. Jersey: Jersey Heritage Trust/Sociétè Jersiaise. Sebire, Heather. 2005. The Archaeology and Early History of the Channel Islands. Cheltenham, Glos.: The History Press. Stephenson, Charles. 2006. Fortifications of the Channel Islands 1941–45: Hitler’s Impregnable Fortress. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. Syvret, Marguerite. 2011. Balleine’s History of Jersey. Stroud, Glos.: The History Press. Thomas, Julian. 1999. Understanding the Neolithic: A Revised Second Edition of Rethinking the Neolithic. London: Routledge. Thomas, Julian. 2013. The Birth of Neolithic British: An Interpretive Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Von Aufsess, Baron Hans Max. 1985. The Von Aufsess Occupation Diary, trans. and ed. Kathleen Nowlan. Chichester: Phillimore. Ward Rutherford, John. 1976. Jersey. Newton Abbot: David & Charles.

Part II Jersey in the Twenty and Twenty First Centuries: Ideologies, Identities, Integration and Language

In the Introductory Chapter to this book, I stated that one of the main objectives is for it to serve as an innovative contribution to research on contemporary migrations. In Part I, I took a macro-level approach by tracing and examining the significance, influence and general implications of Jersey’s key historical in-migrations for the Island populations, and I set out the overarching theoretical and conceptual tenets and debates pertaining to small island to island migration and islanded identities. Part II now uses such a framework to focus on micro-level aspects of post-war Jersey migratory patterns through to the twenty-first century, including, ultimately, that of the Madeiran Portuguese. The Island’s institutional policy and planning legislation initiatives pertaining to employment, residency and citizenship belie their ideological rationale for limiting in-migration by certain groups. Against the backdrop of the changing socioeconomic demands of globalisation and through an engagement with current theoretical principles, I interrogate fieldwork data in order to establish the role of English in particular in enhanced employment opportunities for both immigrants and emigrants. Ideologies behind official discourse and legislative measures may also be manifest in emblematic if somewhat stereotypical representations of

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the Island, its people and its migratory legacy for example, which are disseminated through the media and by the Island’s tourist industry. In turn, these may be reflected in receptor community attitudes, beliefs and responses to migrant island communities, their cultures and languages within the landscape. Indeed, in this part of the book, I am particularly interested in demonstrating the inherent complexities of relationships between what are often designated the ‘local’ and the ‘immigrant’, and the role language, or some form of it, plays. This becomes pertinent particularly in my case study of Madeiran Portuguese migration to Jersey. Based on current sociolinguistic and social psychological theoretical models, the discussion engages with the themes of transnational and translocal practices of identity, belonging and language use, as well as island-to-island migration and aspirations for return. The following epithets used to describe my fieldwork participants assume a degree of group identity, and so they are employed merely to indicate the general provenance or role of participants and are not intended to be categorical. Place of residence is relevant for the purposes of the research discussed here only for Portuguese speakers and family members. • Migrant Islanders: Portuguese speakers and family members:   – First-generation participants (1GM): 17. Over fifty years of age, migrated to Jersey from Madeira any time before 1995 and live either in or very near the Madeiran Quarter of St. Helier (10) or on the outskirts of the parish (7).   –1.5-generation participants (1.5GM): 13. In their twenties and thirties, born on Madeira. Attended secondary school on Jersey; over half live in or very near the Madeiran Quarter (8); the rest live on the outskirts of the parish or in nearby St Saviour.    –Second-generation participants (2GM): 12. In their twenties and thirties, born on Jersey. Half live in or very near the Madeiran Quarter (6); the rest live on the outskirts of the parish or in nearby St Saviour and St Clement.   – Third-generation participants (3GM): 12. Eighteen to early twenties, over half live in or very near the Madeiran Quarter (7) and attend college there; the rest live on the outskirts of the parish or in nearby St Saviour.

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  – Recent Madeirans (RM): 7. In their twenties and thirties, migrated to Jersey from the late 1990s, all live in or very near the Madeiran Quarter.    –Portuguese Gatekeepers and other representatives (PG): 5. • Migrant Islanders: Mainland Britain and Irish-born participants (BI): 12. Have lived on Jersey for ten years or more. • Migrant Islanders: Recent Polish Migrants (RP): 7. See Appendix B for further details. • Local Islanders (LI): 19. Includes officials, employers and recruitment specialists as well as younger participants (eighteen to early twenties). • Return Islanders (RI): 3. Born on Jersey, emigrated abroad and have returned to the Island.

4 Contemporary Migrations: Global Movement and Transnationalism

In this chapter, I have chosen to frame my analysis of migration to Jersey since 1945 in line with current principles and models based on global movement and transnationalism, as well as with the theoretical tenets of islanded identities introduced in Chapter 2. As I trace the trajectories and backgrounds of various migrant groups in the mid-to-late twentieth to the early twenty-first centuries, the focus once again is initially economic migration, motivated in particular by prevailing seasonal opportunities in the agricultural industry as well as competition from the burgeoning tourist industry for seasonal workers to shore up the service and hospitality sectors. However, Jersey’s self-conceptualisation as an island of refuge for poor and disadvantaged migrant workers is in sharp contrast to its international reputation as an island of privilege, particularly when language is employed strategically as symbolic capital. Through an interrogation of fieldwork data pertaining to significant mainland British migratory trajectories in particular, I thus demonstrate how language has played an important role in the ways in those who responded to the growth of Jersey’s international banking and finance industries have been able to secure enhanced professional and semi-professional employment opportunities. © The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8_4

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My subsequent examination of the Island’s top-down sociopoliticial and legislative policy and planning initiatives pertaining to employment, residency and citizenship contextualises ideological motivations behind the authorities’ efforts to curb in-migration, which is counterbalanced in Chapter 5 by my exploration of locally held ideologies and beliefs pertaining to status as a bottom-up response to the visibility of migrant island communities and their languages within the local landscape. Here, however, I also consider the somewhat unforeseen consequences of such legislation for out-migration, and whether traditional notions of the Island as a transitory stepping stone of movement to other destinations are just as applicable to recent in-migration.

Twentieth-Century Migrations: From Agriculture to Tourism In Chapter 3, I established that a sustained period of rapid industrialisation throughout the Western World over the past few hundred years initially engendered a boom in manufacturing and production technologies, with many countries ultimately becoming industrial, urban landscapes with full-time, paid labour employment opportunities in factories and other enterprises during the second phase of this industrialisation process in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These opportunities supplanted much of the agricultural work hitherto available, just as employment in the service and hospitality sectors as part of the Knowledge Economy discussed later (Williams 2005: 1–2), were eventually to replace jobs in manufacturing and production during the post-industrial era, signalling a sea change in the type of work specifically accessible in northern and north-western European countries to itinerant workers. On Jersey, this was also to have profound consequences for the multicultural and multilingual infrastructure of the mid- and late twentieth century as well as for attitudes towards and ideologies about these incomers to the Island. It is to these migrations that I turn first of all. Apart from the years under Occupation, the population of early twentieth-century Jersey had remained relatively stable for some decades, around 55,000–60,000 people (States of Jersey Statistics Unit

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2014: 39). In the aftermath of World War II, the socioeconomic dynamics of recuperation and development in Europe and North America, in particular, fuelled the demand for foreign manual labour to shore up the insufficient numbers of local workers (Beswick and Pozo-Gutiérrez 2010). On Jersey itself, this led to a substantial labour shortage as workers from Brittany and Normandy returned to war-torn northern France for employment in profitable rebuilding and reconstruction programmes. The creation of a vacuum to be plugged once again by an alternative foreign workforce is characteristic of many islands that function as the focus of cyclical migration, as outlined in Chapter 2. On Jersey, the departure of the French coincided with severe economic crises in many Global South homelands, including southern European and Mediterranean countries. Indeed, throughout the southern hemisphere, colonial and post-colonial individuals were seeking to escape dire situations at home such as impoverishment, by emigrating abroad in search of better lives and work opportunities, although some also went to seek their fortunes, in search of adventure or as a ‘right of passage’ (Conway and Potter 2016: 1). On post-liberation Jersey, a significant number of construction projects were initiated to bolster the weakened economy and improve the overall infrastructure of the Island, but it did not develop the industrial, urban landscape of other countries and zones. Instead, it largely retained an essentially agrarian and rural way of life, and by the late 1950s, numbers of largely unqualified and so-called unskilled agricultural labourers from southern Italy and Spain (Ford 1995: 6) were arriving on the Island to take up seasonal, instrumental employment opportunities. However, the mechanisation of harvesting and planting processes had a profound effect on the type of agricultural work available as traditional, small-scale farming techniques were dismantled, resulting in a severe reduction in seasonal employment opportunities, as Le Feuvre explains; ‘in 1956, there had been 1,865 separate farming units, there were in 1993 only about five hundred, with numbers falling annually’ (2005: 147). The percentage of the working population employed in the agricultural sector fell significantly from 27.7% in 1921 to 3.7% in 2011 (Boleat 2015: 3).1

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In line with post-industrial trends elsewhere, ultimately the service and hospitality sectors were to establish themselves as significant employers on the Island as part of the tourism industry, which by the late 1950s had taken over from agriculture as the prime source of economic wealth (Syvret 2011: 285). Between the two world wars, the number of annual visitors to Jersey had doubled from 70,000 to 140,000 (ibid.: 22), and by 1949, this had risen to some 250,000 visitors (Le Dain 1997: 113). By the 1960s and 1970s, over 1.25 million tourists annually spent more than £70 million on the Island (Le Caudey 1999: 128), about a quarter of the economic gross value added (GVA: the value of economic activity per year) (Boleat 2015: 33). Initially, these sectors were able to rely on a local workforce (ibid.: 34) for their low-cost catering and cleaning needs, but demand soon outstripped supply. In the decades after World War II then, the call for a largely outsourced, viable workforce paved the way for a greater influx of seasonal, economic migrants, often once again from Italy, Spain and later, Portugal, as I discuss in Chapter 6. Once again, theirs was an instrumental migration focused on the need to find reliable, relatively wellpaid work to support their families at home. As part of the most significant national migration to Jersey since World War II, many migrants also came from mainland Britain to work as in the service sector as shop assistants, receptionists, electricians, mechanics, bus drivers, etc. (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2015: 9–10). Initially, trajectories were primarily instrumental, although through the course of my research it became clear that many individuals were inspired by the stereotypical imagery of an island idyll of opportunity and hedonistic pleasure portrayed by the media and beyond, as I detail in the next chapter. Given their nationality, legislative processes discussed below made it possible for many mainland British workers to remain on the Island and ultimately, to gain residency. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, these workers were joined at the beginning of each holiday season by other young British adults, who took seasonal work in the hospitality and service sectors as waiting and bar staff, chambermaids, cleaners, etc. For the majority of this group however, trajectories were rarely completely instrumental; instead, individuals were often motivated by a re-imagining of islanded seasonal

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migration itself, as some of my British-born participants recalled. Hay’s earlier conceptualisation sees the hard-edged boundary of islands as becoming a ‘natural bridge to the world beyond’ (2006: 23); for these individuals, transcending that of the mainland offered adventure, and working on the economically successful island of Jersey became a time of independence and fun away from the economic unrest of the mainland, in which enough money could be earned to pay for the whole adventure without the disadvantage of excessive income tax. Once again, as for the many British holidaymakers coming to Jersey in the twentieth century, the Island’s appeal was enhanced by touristic framings of geographical and environmental features, discussed in the next chapter, and in particular, by the lure of the ‘exotic familiar’ in the form of an Englishspeaking, spatially acceptable holiday resort, where the language was not only that of the resident English-speaking community but also acted as the lingua franca between the various nationalities of seasonal workers.2 Two of my participants spent a few seasons working on Jersey in the 1970s, one as a waiter and the other as a delivery driver. Both married and settled on the Island, one running a restaurant and the other a corner shop. In line with my observations outlined above, in one particular conversation both reflected on the reasons behind why they went to Jersey in the first place, highlighting the familiarity aspect in particular: P: Well for me.the Island was ‘doable’.not too big.I was seventeen […] in holiday brochures Jersey was talked about as typically British.so my parents were happy […] I guess at the same time it felt a bit glamorous.like an English seaside resort put in an exotic location abroad.(but) allowed to remain English-speaking.I guess// (JJBIM) I: What do you think now about how it is portrayed// P: The reality isn’t so different really.tho’ I guess daily life is much the same as on the mainland […] we all speak English and that makes it English.you know// (JJBIM) P: I wanted to travel.but I never learnt languages and I never had enough money.Jersey was close to home.lots of people went there for

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holidays.my aunty said it was a bit of England thrown out to sea.but different though […] it was easy to find work.make friends.(there were) so many English speakers […]// (DDBIM) I: Tell me about your initial reactions to the Island.have they changed// P: Yes.a little.we’re sold a line by the images of Jersey in the papers.on tele […] to be honest.it feels a bit like London.so cosmopolitan.lots of languages in the street but everyone having to speak English at work […] but no.not really exotic.the rain (xxx)// (DDBIM)

Another participant, an English woman now in her late 50s, migrated with her husband to Jersey in the mid-1980s when she was 22 years of age. She worked for many years as a doctor’s receptionist, whilst her husband worked as a delivery driver and taxi driver. Her reflective narrative revealed her initial reaction on arrival: P: I was so excited to get here.I remember talking non-stop on the journey about the palm trees.they still make me feel like (I’m on) a paradise island er.imagine us.from Doncaster in the sun.(but) still speaking English.and only an hour away (from England) […] the best bit of Britain ever […] always will be// (KKBIM)

A Scottish man, now in his late 60s, who went to Jersey in the late 1970s with his best friend as economic migrants to work as electricians, nonetheless recalled the somewhat hedonistic lifestyle that motivated them to remain, mirroring to a degree Conway and Potter’s description of ‘prolonged sojourners’ (2016) discussed in detail in Chapter 6. His reflections also emphasised the advantages for him of integrating with the local population: P: Well.at first me and me mate were really excited […] ’cos all these girls were down on holiday and looking for fun […] oh yeah.the job was good but the night life was better.but I soon met XXXX.she was local like. spoke English of course.knew where to find mischief when the tourists went away […] after we were married we moved to the beach.spending a summer’s evening down there with a couple of cans never gets boring.it’s a really good life all in all// (HHBIM)

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For such individuals then, everyday situated routines and practices involved regular engagement and social exchange within a shared space, and this may well have led them to becoming socially embedded and even anchored within the receptor society, facilitated greatly by the mutual use of English.

Policy and Planning: Employment Law, Residency and Citizenship As we see above, islands such as Jersey, with well-entrenched and generally successful mixed economies, have become increasingly attractive to those searching for an unusual, if temporary, experience outside the range of their particular ethnocultural knowledge, whilst at the same time providing them with the reality check of a living wage in sectors such as those of hospitality, service or agriculture. However, as I highlighted in Chapter 2, such islands tend to function as epicentres of cyclical movement, in which the migratory inflow of migrants is conditioned, to varying degrees, by the relative outflow of Islanders. Therefore, before I consider the huge impact recent economic transformations have had on the migrant profile of Jersey, I should also examine Jersey’s recent legislation pertaining to employment rights, residency and population control. A detailed examination of such legislation is beyond the remit of this book; nevertheless, as is the case in many countries in the Western Hemisphere, over the past few decades issues of migration and citizenship have become important topics of political and social debate, particularly in the Jersey media, leading in some quarters to calls for strict limits on immigration, residency and property ownership through the imposition of top-down policy and planning initiatives, as I discuss further in Chapter 5. The following account, therefore, is presented primarily as a way of highlighting how legislation affects the feasibility of migrant participation in the pervading economic structure, the ways in which integration within the receptor society may be affected, as well as the oft-overlooked consequences for emigration from Jersey. Unprecedented increases in numbers of inhabitants on Jersey over the past sixty years, due primarily to immigration, have seen the population density recently increase to double that of England (States of Jersey

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Statistics Unit 2014: 41). Between 1951 and 1991, the total resident population grew by 52% and between 2001 and 2011, by 10% (States of Jersey Census 2011; Chapter 1: 5), a threefold increase from 1851 (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2014: 39). By 2014, the total population had exceeded 100,000 and the latest annual estimate (States of Jersey Population 2016) puts the figure at some 104,200.3 As I outlined in Chapter 1, the autonomous, self-governing status of the Channel Islands as a British Crown Dependency means that the UK has little democratic accountability in or for the Islands (British Nationality Act 1981), given that they have the constitutional right to decide and implement their own legal, fiscal and administrative procedures. In theory, Protocol 3 of the UK’s 1972 Treaty of Accession prevents the Islands from controlling the freedom of movement of other British citizens, certain Commonwealth nationals, EU and wider European Economic Area EEA nationals. However, in practice, this is counterbalanced by their constitutional entitlement to restrict immigration through policies that control rights to Island employment. The number of inhabitants on Jersey had grown progressively since censuses were begun in 1821, and for the past few decades, the overt objective of such policies has been to try and maintain the population at around 84,000, a figure seen at the time as manageable but allowing for a degree of sustainable growth in terms of numbers as well as economic output (Boleat 2015: 4; 51). Concerns about local access to employment opportunities have generally been key. On the one hand, legislation has aimed to afford preferential treatment to the local workforce by placing restrictions on immigrant access to the labour market, and on the other, it has aimed to regulate economic growth to limit the demands placed on the local labour market in the first place. In line with the Regulations of Undertakings’ Legislation, employers have long been required to demonstrate any shortage of people with the specific qualifications or skills resident on the Island by applying formally for J Category Licenses, in order to fill vacancies with so-called essential employees with the requisite skills, but who had not been resident continuously for five years or more (Le Caudey 1999: 128). In

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the agricultural, hospitality and service sectors, employees registered as Non-Qualified would generally be hired for seasonal work, meaning that until relatively recently, once the season was over, many had to leave the Island, often for up to three months at a time. Indeed, For some years, this legislation effectively prevented many economic migrants from gaining residential status, which at one time required continuous habitation on the Island for a full sixteen years. J Cat legislation also controlled both Migrant Islanders’ right to buy property and even the right to rent in some parts of the private sector. Early twentieth-century initiatives discussed above regarding the provision of affordable, social housing for long-standing residents as well as for immigrant families resulted in the Housing (Jersey) Law of 1949. In the late 1960s and 1970s, further housing regulations shored up the States’ policy of restricting ownership of property (BBC Legacies, no date) with the aim of stemming a further influx of immigrants. Despite these initiatives, net inward migration still accounts for 75% of increases in resident population since 2006, a figure of some 11,900 individuals (States of Jersey Population 2016). Additional initiatives to create a new system of registration cards that integrate residence and employment have simplified to some extent the onerous system of housing qualification categories that originally determined where people could work and live according to their residential status (see Appendix A).4 In particular, the new category of ‘Entitled for work’ has replaced the Non-Qualified status of anyone who has lived on Jersey for five consecutive years or is married to someone with the same or higher status. In theory, this category of worker can buy property, work anywhere and needs no further permissions to take up employment. Like the licensed ‘essential employees’ (the old J Cat), on paper at least ‘Entitled for work’ employees appear to have transcended from ‘immigrant’ to ‘local’ in respect of certain rights, although the status still comes with caveats: being born on Jersey for example, only affords permanent residency status to anyone who lives there for a combined period of ten years.

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Language as Symbolic, Economic and Cultural Capital: Jersey Emigration One unwelcome side effect of the burgeoning demands on the housing market in the second half of the twentieth century for prospective buyers at least, was that property prices soared and building land became valued at a premium. As a result, many Jersey-born, lower-income families no longer had access to the property ladder, and subsequent price increases in the relatively poor rental market meant that such families started to emigrate in order to enhance their families’ prospects. Knowledge-Based Economy theory underlines the empowering and wealth-creating effect of both top-down and bottom-up knowledge, in this case language, particularly the state-sponsored L1, in the workplace. As part of the interchangeable, market-force, symbolic and economic capital (Bourdieu 1992: 21–23), its use demonstrates that competent communication is a linguistic and economic exchange aimed at making material or symbolic profit (Beswick 2013: 123). This is particularly relevant in the case of twentieth-century Jersey emigration. At the point when the emergence of global English was being linked directly to the prevailing economic climate and commercial supremacy of countries such as the UK and the USA (Bhatt 2001: 532), Jersey families were emigrating to other Englishspeaking countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand (see, for example, Boleat 2015: 47), where linguistic integration was largely unproblematic and where well-paid, skilled and semi-skilled employment was plentiful. Recent return migration numbers are not huge comparatively speaking; to date, around 150 people per annum appear to return to Jersey at some point. However, given that the States’ predicted population growth forecasts assume a total increase of around 325 migrants a year (ibid.: 5, 47), return migration numbers do make a significant contribution. It is worth briefly exploring why some of these emigrant families made the decision to return to Jersey in their later years, since permanent resident status for children born outside Jersey cannot be assumed.5 Three of my Return Islander participants were born in Australia (AARI and BBRI) and Canada (CCRI) and their families moved back to Jersey in the early/mid-1990s. Our conversations tended

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to revolve around the recurrent themes of identity, social positioning of self and status. BBRI, for example, stated that his parents would not have contemplated returning to Jersey without the funds to buy a house as a form of status symbol of success in their retirement: P: The one thing they wanted to be able to do was.to buy a house and have no money worries.to feel worthy of the Island.I guess […] like they were successful.like leaving had been worth it// (BBRI)

In one group conversation, participants recalled their parents’ constant reminiscences of island life on Jersey, largely through imagery and stories that captured their sense of belonging to a distant, remembered homeland (Brah 1996: 197). In part, comments echoed my discussion in Chapter 2 of isle centrality (Olwig 2007: 175–186) and boundedness: P1: Australia was just too vast for them to comprehend.they felt too exposed I guess.they seemed tied somehow to Jersey.my dad always said that ‘home’ wasn’t Melbourne but Jersey […] they went on all the time about how safe they felt there.how one day they would come back// (AARI) P2: My mum was always going on about how her childhood on Jersey. how she still felt part of it […] dunno// (BBRI) I: Can you elaborate// P2: I guess she liked being on a small island.felt contained// (BBRI) P3: Yeah.my parents hated being so far away..they were determined to return home// (CCRI)

Yet it would appear that like British participants on Jersey, discussed below, these families were able to take advantage of the mutual use of English as the L1 within their daily lives in Australia and Canada, even though they continued to reminisce about returning to Jersey. Indeed, language became a key component of their migration as well as their return: P: They chose Australia because of the language thing.you know.English. (they) wanted to make sure we were raised speaking English at least.the language of Jersey […] so we could all come back one day// (AARI)

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Interestingly, only when the return actually happened was a heightened sense of ‘in-betweenness’, of belonging ‘neither here nor there’ experienced (see, for example, Smith and Guarnizo 2017; Conway and Potter 2016: 1–2). Return thus raised important issues about the migrants’ imaginings of a static, bounded homeland and community that did not square with reality, in line with Stock’s earlier observations (2010: 24) regarding idealised and reconstructed notions of home: P: When we got here.they were shocked at how much it had changed.my mum felt like an outsider.all her friends had left […] my dad joined the golf club but in the end.they went back to Australia to retire// (BBRI) P: In Canada they had felt more at home than (xxx) on Jersey they felt like strangers […] they just didn’t seem to belong anymore// (CCRI)

Contemporary Migrations: The Banking and Finance Industries In Chapter 5, I explore how the variable ways in which Migrant Islanders may be portrayed and treated by the resident population on Jersey, one of my premises being that attitudes may be exacerbated by legislative measures outlined above, as well as by institutional, ideological representations, which may lead to contested images of the Island itself as a place of constant refuge for ‘the disadvantaged’. Yet, alternative imaginings may well challenge such conceptualisations, at least in the case of Jersey. We saw earlier that the Island has long been accessible and attractive to retirees with sufficient disposable income to ensure themselves a comfortable lifestyle on an island that, as we see later, may still be imagined as one of Hay’s ‘scapes of romantic isolation’ (2006: 25), and after World War II, its reputation as an offshore tax haven also attracted wealthy families from mainland Britain and the former colonies. Moreover, Jersey’s property law considerably facilitated the lifestyles of many wealthy Migrant Islanders. We saw above that Jersey’s housing regulations underwent significant modifications in the twentieth century in order to curb the numbers of economic migrants on the Island. However, although legislation exercised tight control on the

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economic background of migrants, it also legislated in favour of the rich through the Wealthy Immigrant Provisions, which permitted newcomers who had a non-Jersey source income of over £1 million to apply for consent to purchase property on the Island.6 Such migrants, who Le Dain appears to somewhat derisively term the ‘economically necessary’ (1997: 96), were required to pay a contribution of around £200,000 per year in tax to the Island’s coffers. Significant transformations in the economic profile of Jersey since the 1960s have, in turn, enhanced and altered the profile of employment opportunities on the Island. Mirroring widespread trends in internationalisation and globalisation of trade markets, legal reforms facilitated the unprecedented growth of a highly successful banking and finance industry, with Jersey becoming one of the leading offshore and international finance centres in the world. As within the new Knowledge-Based Economies in post-industrial, Western societal economic transformations (Williams 2005: 1–9), the main wealth-creating power on Jersey became top-down knowledge in the form of new information and technology (Beswick 2013). The importance of this industry should not be underestimated: figures from the States of Jersey Statistics Unit (2014: 2) show that financial services comprised 42% of Jersey’s GVA even in 2013 compared to the 4.2% of tourism and the 1.6% of agriculture. Given the paucity of highly skilled labour with suitable and specialised work experience or appropriate qualifications on the Island (commonly a tertiary degree), this significant economic growth launched a plethora of intellectual and skilled work opportunities for banking professionals, accountants, financial investment analysts and IT specialists from the UK and beyond (Beswick 2013: 128). Although many employees initially came on short-term contracts, these were very often systematically renewed, and the semi-permanent influx of this new, highly mobile category of migrant (Aceska 2016; Koser and Salt 1997) led to unavoidable pressure being placed on the civil service, the health service and other public service sectors, thus triggering their expansion (Syvret 2011: 286). In turn, this attracted even more essential skilled employees such as nurses, doctors, dentists, solicitors, technical and managerial staff to the Island. By December 2014, 23% of the 57,250 people employed on Jersey

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were working in financial, legal and computer-related services; 14% in wholesale and retail trades; 14% in the public sector; 12% in education, health and other private sector services; 9% in construction and quarrying, compared to just 9% in the tourism sectors of service and hospitality (hotels, restaurants and bars); and only 3% in agriculture and fishing (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2014: 18).7

Contemporary Migrations: Transnational Lives Let us now briefly reconsider my earlier discussion of late twentieth-century seasonal migrations to Jersey in the context of home, belonging and return. We have seen that Migrant Islanders regularly maintained regular contact with their families who remained in the country of origin, often by sending remittances, keeping in regular contact, making visits, etc. Lives then were very much acted out in more than one place rather than with a definitive rupture from homelands, but the attention in academic discourse at the time generally focused on integration/assimilation practices rather than the complexity of such migrants’ ‘multiple homes’ (Blunt and Dowling 2006: 199) across borders and boundaries.8 However, as a consequence of changes to the global infrastructure, the focus has now shifted to the ways in which migrants are seen to ‘forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link their societies of origin and settlement’ (Basch et al. 1994: 6). Thus, as we saw earlier, ‘in ontological terms, the hard-edged boundary becomes a zone of accessibility and of movement, a natural bridge to the world beyond’ (Hay 2006: 23). In Chapter 2, I summarised specific aspects of transnational studies related to space, place and home in order to offer a workable context for my analysis of contemporary migratory movement, diaspora and identity configurations in island contexts. The advent of transnational studies as a theoretical construct during the early 1990s was in many ways a response to the challenges of describing and analysing such multilocational contact phenomena, engendered in particular by the mobility of highly skilled professionals as well as that of other migrant groups. As Vertovec explains, transnationalism recognises similarities to seasonal

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migration contexts but also emphasises why and how recent examples of cross-border interconnectedness in social spaces are different or more intense than earlier forms (Vertovec 2002: 3; see also Foner 1997; Portes et al. 1999). So, for example, such communities occupy transnational spaces in which their dense social networks allow participants to negotiate ethnic, sociocultural and sociolinguistic practices at the same time as they adopt local alternatives (Kivisto 2005) and, in the case of certain groupings, even influence the sociocultural fabric of the receptor society itself. To varying degrees, the three professional, UK-born banking employees interviewed during the course of my fieldwork research on Jersey would appear to conform to some degree to Vertovec’s criteria of transnational migrants insofar as their strategies pertaining to cultural, economic and social integration in both their original and receptor communities are concerned (2002: 3). Now in their sixties, all took up posts in the financial sector on Jersey in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During a series of informal group discussions, it became clear that all three participants were keen to emphasise that their relocation to Jersey was inspired not really by pecuniary necessity but rather, by the enhanced career prospects and promotion opportunities on the Island: P1: Well I earnt enough but I was keen to get out of the London rat-race. keen to further my career prospects […] at the end of the day.I got the chance to come here and my career has really taken off// (EEBIM) P2: Me.I applied for a promotion and got told the new post was in Jersey […] I’ve never been afraid of a challenge.I like pushing myself.so even though the new job was in IT.I went for it and ended up getting it.(I) would have been fine staying put but well.look where I ended up// (GGBIM) P3: Well.being part of what looked like it was going to be the greatest financial boom in recent history was the main incentive for me […] I got a first in economics at uni.wanted to show what I was made of.and it has really paid off// (IIBIM)

Such aspirational migrants then, are generally self-selecting, with personal and often ambitious aims and objectives, largely based on a recognition of their own qualities and skills acquired as part of the

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sender population. This conforms, for example, with Czaika and Vothknecht’s contention (2014) that many such migrants are young, educated and often benefit from a superior socioeconomic background. As with the earlier examples of British retirees to the Island (see Chapter 3), these participants reinforced the advantages in lifestyle enrichment afforded by living on an island with low taxation and relatively high wages as some of the reasons for wanting to remain on Jersey: P1: We have a good life here,don’t we// (EEBIM) P2: Yep.love the fact I get to keep most of the money I earn […] I have a rolling contract/which lets me stay here kinda permanently.buy a house// (GGBIM) P3: Mm.yeah/low income tax.excellent pay packet and great standard of living.what’s not to like about Jersey// (IIBIM) P1: (I) should of (sic) come over sooner […] I bought a yacht last year. never would of (sic) happened in England […] now I’ve residency.I’ll probably retire here// (EEBIM)

All these participants indicated that Jersey is their permanent place of residence but they also claimed to maintain strong cross-border relationships and close network ties with the UK, and in particular, with London, and to an extent played out their lives across the social space, again in line with Vertovec (2002: 3). From a micro-focused perspective (see, for example, Faist 2000: 191), their employment networks and communities of practice regularly spanned this transnational social space, as they were all involved in constant travel back and forth to the UK for work. All three also maintained dense family and friendship networks in the UK, spending a month or so a year on visits they saw as an integral part of their lives: P1: I fly back to London for a couple of days every two.three weeks or so.and I go back to stay with family every year for a few weeks.(it’s) a kind of tradition now// (EEBIM)

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P2: I go back to the UK for work.it gives me a chance to catch up with friends and family.but I also go for a few weeks in summer […] I fit right back in// (GGBIM)

Such comments raise the question of place and home. Unlike the British retirees of the nineteenth century, the sociocultural fabric of St. Helier and its environs felt extremely familiar to these men, a point I discuss in more detail in Chapter 5. As Hunt and Syvret posit, the closely-knit, cohesive, English-speaking social networks established on the Island appear to have facilitated aspirational migration (Hunt 2007: 60; Syvret 2011: 286). Football, pubs, the beach all evoked life in the UK in the microcosm of a small island, what I have earlier termed the ‘exotic familiar’. This familiarity made it relatively easy for these participants to appreciate, and sometimes to actively become involved in a few local alternatives (Kivisto 2005), as we saw earlier. Thus, EEBIM was involved with the organisation of the annual Jersey Battle of Flowers celebration and GGBIM and his wife were Jersey Heritage volunteers. A more marked example is that of IIBIM’s wife: P1: What is it your wife’s doing?// (EEBIM) P3: She’s learning Jérriais as a way of embacing the local culture.she wants to understand who these people are.she says as this has been our home for so long […] we need to try to feel part of it.even though she’s determined to retire on the mainland// (IIBIM)

This type of reported behaviour may typify how clichéd and even imagined representations of Jersey are reified through the Island’s institutional branding exercises discussed in the next chapter, which Non-Islanders (Olwig 2007: 175; Hay 2006: 27) and even those who have lived on the Island for many years may embrace portrayals of a ‘local character’ as accurate. Yet once again, it also highlights a dichotomy regarding the conceptualisation of home. From a socio-psychological perspective, IIBIM’s interpretation of his wife’s comments regarding the Island seems to reveal the illusory nature of her actions, indicating perhaps a distancing from a locally shared outgroup identity. However,

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language learning may well be operating as an integrative practice as this woman perhaps started to reconfigure some form of home as Jersey itself rather than putting her life on hold whilst she waited to return to the UK, in line with Hay’s earlier argument that people have a need to identify with a given geographical place (ibid.: 30–34) even if this is transitory or based on well-worn reductionist tropes. This fluidity in terms of home is a key component of transnational lives, and other participants’ comments emphasised this heightened sense of ‘in-betweenness’: P1: Well.they say home is where the heart is.but.that.that is here I guess. more than there now […] I dunno.I feel at home here. when I am in London now.it feels as if I belong there.but not forever.if that makes sense// (EEBIM)

GGBIM often identified perceptually as a ‘migrant Resident’ who physically lived on Jersey and was slowly becoming what he termed ‘a local’, but at other times he emphasised his affiliation to the mainland and to ‘us, the people of the UK’. The way in which these participants articulated their agency is individualistic of course, but it echoes Hall’s earlier claims regarding the fluidity of identity formation (2003: 110). Identification and affiliation with the official language of Jersey also facilitated these participants’ integrative practices on the Island. Throughout the twentieth century, Jersey’s recharacterisation as an English-speaking island, reinforced by the arrival of British retirees, was further compounded by the increasing number of economic migrants from the UK. English, not French, thus became the dominant, state-sponsored language within Knowledge Economy exchanges (Bourdieu 1992: 21). Communication is a linguistic and economic exchange aimed at making material or symbolic profit (Beswick 2013) and practical competencies in the status language, the language of power—here, English, proved to be extremely advantageous for professionals, at the very least in urban workspaces. Linguistic expertise in English became symbolic and economic capital (ibid.: 22) within the market economy, and greatly facilitated Jersey’s ability to attract a UK professional workforce. Indeed, cross-border mobility, integration into the receptor society and access to material and pecuniary profit were

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seen by my three participants as unproblematic given their explicit knowledge (Williams 2005: 9) of the dominant and official language of the Island: P3: Moving my family to Jersey seemed like a no-brainer given the financial incentives […] and the similarity to England.my wife had been here on holiday as a small child, and.eh.she remembered how happy and surprised she was hearing English all the time […] so that really sealed the deal// (IIBIM) P1: Ha before I applied I though they spoke French here.which did put me off a bit// (EEBIM) P2: Ha me too// (GGBIM) P1: But when I got here.well it made me realise that having the same language makes Jersey feel like home in many ways// (EEBIM) P2: Agreed.being able to speak English at work.at home.well it’s basically no different to being anywhere else in Britain.gives us a huge advantage in the workplace.we tend to occupy the high status positions.speaking English// (GGBIM) P3: Yeah.everyone who works in the finance industry has to speak English.I wouldn’t have been so successful if I wasn’t a native speaker. couldn’t have worked here// (IIBIM)

The ideological precepts held by these participants regarding the hierarchical status of languages within Jersey’s Knowledge Economy thus suggest that in professional St. Helier workspaces there is an implicit system of asymmetric linguistic power relations, in which communicative competence in English ‘[…] becomes requisite for access to power and mobility within the society’ (Eckert 2018: 18).

Contemporary Migrations: The Multicultural Island Chapter 6 is dedicated to a detailed examination of one of the most significant economic migrations to Jersey in the past few decades, that of the Madeiran Portuguese. However, Polish migration to the Island has also been noteworthy since around the turn of the millennium, when

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a few Polish workers started to arrive on the Island to work in the agricultural and service sectors, primarily to underpin the number of Portuguese migrants as the demand for employees increased (Hilmarsson-Dunn et al. 2010: 212). The ratification of Poland’s membership of the EU in 2004, together with the country’s worsening economic situation, paved the way for a mass Polish exodus throughout Europe (see for example, Trevena et al. 2013). Unlike the majority of Portuguese workers, some of the young Poles who were recruited by visiting delegations and agencies from the Island to work in the tourism and agricultural sectors on Jersey had either degrees or professional qualifications (ibid.: 212), and indeed, this has increasingly been the case in recent years.9 Nonetheless, the majority were economic migrants in search of reliable, relatively wellpaid work with which to support their families at home, and so trajectories appear to have been primarily instrumental. Given the somewhat stringent regulations in force in the 2000s governing residency rights and employment categories, this does not explain, however, why Jersey was the intended destination for these particular migrants post accession, since unlike most EU member states, the Island’s legislation avers that unless migrant workers are invited to the Island to take up employment in a specific professional position, they have to take so-called unskilled jobs, such as those in the agricultural, hospitality and service sectors, in order to fulfil the statutory five-year employment requirements, and only after can they seek work in their chosen vocation. Rather than being seen initially as an island of professional opportunity then, for young, single Poles, pragmatic choices of Jersey as a destination for employment were perhaps reinforced once again by its imagined and often metaphorical portrayals as an island idyll of hedonistic pleasure, the ‘the sea, sand, sun, and sex syndrome’ (Gillis and Lowenthal 2007: iv) we saw earlier, as two of my participants explained: P: It is holiday island.I can have fun and work also.my job is café waiter […] (xxx)I go to the beach.drink beer.err talk to pretty girls.lots of Polish do same/Jersey has fame for party// (FFRP) P: When I come here.I want adventure you know.I like islands and sea.I get to know many people in the sun (laughs).is like paid holidays// (GGRP)

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Interestingly, once again issues of space and place were also often conceptualised in participants’ narratives, with some emphasising dislocation from mainland Europe across the sea as pivotal to their decisions ‘to escape from problems at home on adventure’ (AARP). Jersey was also initially conceptualised as small, bounded and therefore secure, in line with Riddell’s notion of ‘existence within a compact space’ (2007: 72): P: it is little.surrounded by sea.is good.my family know I am safe// (BBRP)

Group discussions also indicated that both the Island’s exoticism and holiday feel, together with its sense of bounded protection, attracted many of these migrants to Jersey. Furthermore, their general linguistic and communicative competencies in English, the official language, also seems to have been one of the prime motivators for selecting the Island as their destination, as I discuss below. We have seen that English often functions as a lingua franca within multicultural and multilingual Jersey spaces, and as it is commonly learned in schools in Poland, many of my Polish participants had at least basic skills in spoken communication when they arrived on the Island. Those who did not were often motivated to learn English either in night classes or in tandem groups organised with colleagues. The manager of a couple of Polish shops outlined its pragmatic use within local social networks and communities of practice (Hilmarsson-Dunn et al. 2010: 214): P: I mean you get court cases sometimes.you get er you know speaking with people from err err tax office.and social security.you need to write letters.and er the traffic wardens (laughs from all) as well so yeah definitely you need English// (EERP)

Despite the legislative restrictions regarding the type of work available to the Poles on arrival, participants also talked about English in terms of workspace empowerment in Knowledge Economy exchanges, as a form of economic and even cultural capital (Bourdieu 1992: 21–22):

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P: Everything I does here on the level I am now.you need English for everything.really// (EERP)

Interestingly, unlike Phillips et al.’s findings in Southampton (2015), my research found that my Polish participants generally felt that their English communicative competencies were sufficiently advanced to enable them to engage confidently in multicultural social networks and communities of practices with locals and migrants of other ethnicities alike. However, in line with the Southampton research, they also confirmed that there was a sense of mistrust between Polish migrants from different towns in Poland, which affected their relational practices and attitudes. Thus, they tended to spatially distance themselves from each other and live dispersed around St. Helier, and despite the presence of Polish delicatessens and other shops, there was little sense of a Polish ingroup. Although Jersey’s employment, housing and permanent residency legislation appeared to be having an effect on the retention of Polish migrant workers, some decided to stay on the Island simply because they had started families. Others, primarily young, single people, argued that the economic benefits of working on Jersey were often outweighed by the restrictive nature of their contracts and temporary residency permissions: P: That’s probably the main reason why people doesn’t (sic) want to stay. you know here in Jersey.and would like to go to UK maybe.more opportunity.you can buy a property.and er (there is) less obvious cost// (CCRP)

To an extent, these findings regarding mobility echo those of Trevena et al. (2013) regarding internal mobility in the UK. However, many of my own younger participants emphasised the transitory nature of their time on Jersey itself, by using the very notions of spatial confinement and island boundedness that had attracted some there in the first place: P: Now island feels too small.I not stay here much longer.I am nurse.I find good job in England.Jersey is good for short time but it is holiday island […] time to leave.I want space// (CCRP)

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Indeed, Jersey is often conceptualised as a stepping stone to elsewhere, and in particular to mainland Britain and Canada, facilitated once again by the use and knowledge of English: P: maybe next year I go to Canada for good job […] I am dentist.I speak good English.maybe Australia (laughs)// (GGRP)

The Jersey Annual Social Survey, as well as official censuses, demonstrates the evolution of migrant groups on the Island over the past few decades and the ways in which the population profile of Jersey has changed significantly. A comparison of census data from 1981 and 2011 shows, for example, that the number of individuals born in Portugal has increased 3–7% to some 7031 people officially, whereas the relative proportion of Jersey-born residents and those born in the British Isles has decreased from 53 to 50% and from 37 to 31%, respectively. Whereas migrants born in Poland were subsumed under the ‘Other’ designation in previous censuses, their presence on the Island was significant enough for them to be categorised separately in the 2011 Census, the 3100 individuals registered constituting some 3% of the population. The ‘Other’ designation in the 2011 Census was small given that it includes migrants born in France as well as in South Africa, Romania, Germany, India, Australia, Italy, Thailand, USA and Canada; the French presence decreased from 2 to 1% (Jersey Census 2011, Report: 9). The following pie chart offers a summary (Fig. 4.1).10 Together with migrants born in other countries that had recently joined the EU, the Poles were the largest contributor (4100 individuals) to the total net inward migration figure of 6800 between 2001 and 2011, surpassing even the figure for the British Isles (3500), with the Portuguese figure being 1900 (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2014: 40).11 Long-term trends show that Portuguese-born arrivals have remained fairly stable over the past three decades: in 2001, for example, over 70% of residents had lived on the Island for more than 10 years. Significantly, however, there appears to be a net reduction in the number of Poles on Jersey at the time of the 2011 Census compared to the number who had migrated there between 2001 and 2011, suggesting that movement either to another country or back to Poland was already happening.

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Jersey Census 2011: Popula on Place of Birth

Jersey 50%

Bri sh Isles 31%

Portugal/Madeira 7%

Poland 3%

Ireland 2%

Other European Country 3%

Elsewhere 4%

Fig. 4.1  Population Statistics by Place of Birth (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2014: 42–43)

Chapter Summary As has become clear in my discussion in this chapter, post-war migratory movement to and from Jersey has very often been for economic reasons, and sometimes for aspirational ones. The socioeconomic context of the Island in the mid-twentieth century meant that the need for a seasonal agricultural workforce was counterbalanced by one for the tourist industry, and as Jersey developed an international banking and finance centre, it almost became a victim of its own prosperity. Of course, the advantage of an enormous influx of capital is the contribution it makes to Island life, not only in revenue to the Treasury but also in employment and by its circulation throughout the community. There is, however, the other side of the coin; success creates enormous pressures on an island such as Jersey, with its limited space and its desire to maintain a balance between its rural attractiveness and the need for

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development (Hunt 2007: 60). Furthermore, Jersey’s self-image as an island of refuge for many poor and disadvantaged migrant workers runs counter to its international reputation as an island of privilege. Official legislation and initiatives regarding employment, residency and citizenship have attempted to address what is conceptualised as an ‘immigration issue’, yet despite the somewhat stringent restrictions in force until recently, economic migration to Jersey still continues. The Island may well be a temporary workspace for some Polish migrant workers who are on their way to other destinations, and such issues will be problematised further in Chapter 6 with respect to the Madeiran Portuguese. Jersey’s status as a tourist destination is a further important aspect of its economic viability. Demands for the Island to be branded as an exotic and glamorous location have been tempered by an institutional awareness of the needs of British holidaymakers for representations of the familiar and the commonplace, facilitated considerably by the pervasive presence of English as an official language throughout the Island. To a degree, this can be seen as a strategic, if somewhat inevitable, step, and these deliberations contextualise my discussion in Chapter 5 of receptor community representations, ideologies, attitudes and responses to the conceptualisation of a ‘local’ identity as well as the presence and visibility of recent migrant communities.

Notes 1. In the post-war period, the arrival of even more wealthy, mostly British migrants, who bought up many of the grand but somewhat dilapidated farmhouses to convert into smart country residences (Boleat 2015: 150), further underlined the systematic transformation of both the rural and the urban landscapes of Jersey over the last century. 2. As I discuss further in the next chapter, such visitors may be responding to a series of successful branding exercises (Baldacchino 2005, 2006) promoted by the Island’s tourism industry. By the late 1970s, globalization started to make far-flung locations more accessible to mass tourism and for many, the appeal of Jersey was eclipsed. More recently, however, visitor numbers to Jersey increased once again, due in part to high value, short-stay-type breaks (Boleat 2015: 35); between 2013 and

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2014, the total number of visitors was 701,400, of whom 337,400 were leisure visitors staying at least one night, an increase on the previous year of 4% (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2014: 12). Total on-Island visitor expenditure in 2014 was £232 million, an average of £331 per person. The numbers of tourists visiting the Island on ferry days trips also appear to have steadily increased, attracted in part by the availability of duty-free luxury goods: between 2013 and 2014, the number of leisure day visits rose by 8% to 109,300 (States of Jersey Statistics Unit 2014: 12). 3. In line with my earlier comment regarding professional employment, the highest population concentrations are in St. Helier and its environs, with some 33,522 inhabitants in 2011, 34% of the Island’s total, a density of 3541 people per km2 (States of Jersey Census 2011; Chapter 1: 6). 4. For a simplified summary of changes, see online at: https://www. beachandcountry.co.uk/jersey-housing-qualifications/ (last accessed 23/10/17). The following data are taken from the States of Jersey Information and Public Services pages; see online at: https://www.gov. je/working/contributions/registrationcards/pages/residentialstatus.aspx (last accessed 23/10/17). 5. Even for children of emigrants born on Jersey, obtaining permanent status depends on the age at which they move there, since this determines whether they need to remain for ten continuous or combined years. If the candidate is over twenty years of age when they first arrive, then they only gain permanent status after living there continuously for thirty years. 6. See online at: https://www.beachandcountry.co.uk/the-super-rich11k-housing-qualification-rules-for-purchasing-property-in-jersey-background/,    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/jersey/ 8467696.stm (last accessed 20/05/18). 7. The configuration of employment has changed even further in the past few years on Jersey. The Jersey Annual Social Survey (JASS) of 2015 shows that some 38% of the working population are now designated as ‘professionals’, such as accountants, solicitors, medics, teachers, engineers, computer and financial experts, 10% as ‘senior managers’, mostly in the finance sector and 11% as ‘middle or junior managers’ in banks, restaurants, shops, warehouses, etc. Farm workers and those working in the hospitality and service sectors in largely unskilled or semi-skilled roles are subsumed into an overarching category that also includes drivers, security guards, sales assistants, etc., and comprises some 18% of the working population.

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8. Contemporary reformulations of integrative practices emphasise the proactive role of migrants selectively engaged in adopting certain strategies in order to become inserted and functional in the receptor society and others in order to preserve certain ethnic practices. Skutnabb-Kangas points out that such integration ‘is characterised by voluntary mutual additive ‘learning’ of other cultures. Integration means a choice of inclusive group membership(s)’ (2000: 124). However, societal assimilation, which she defines as ‘the enforced subtractive ‘learning’ of another (dominant) culture by a (dominated) group’ (ibid.: 123–124), may affect processes of voluntary integration as well as processes of social or ethnic inequality. In terms of language ideology, integration implies a choice that assimilation does not (Beswick 2013: 10–11). 9. Recruitment agencies have also been used elsewhere in Eastern Europe as well as in Kenya and Nigeria, primarily to source employees for the hospitality and service sectors; however, numbers remain relatively small. For a recent summary of Polish migration to the UK, see online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37183733 (last accessed 20/05/18). 10. The use of the ‘Other’ epithet is pervasive in censuses and other survey documentation of many countries. My brief discussion in Chapter 5 of ‘othering’ sheds some light on the oppositional force of such categorisations. 11. Coincidentally, net outward migration for this period was also 4100 individuals, but no detailed information on who this comprised of is available at this time in the statistics.

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Riddell, Adam. 2007. Jersey: The Development of an Island Cultural Strategy. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 1 (1): 72–87. Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 2000. Linguistic Genocide in Education—Or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Smith, Michael Peter, and Luís Eduardo Guarnizo (eds.). 2017. Transnationalism from Below: Comparative Urban and Community Research. New York: Routledge. States of Jersey Census. 2011. See online at: https://www.gov.je/Government/ Census/Census2011/Pages/2011CensusResults.aspx. Last accessed 19/05/18. States of Jersey Population. 2016. See online at: https://www.gov.je/Government/ JerseyInFigures/Population/Pages/Population.aspx. Last accessed 19/05/18. States of Jersey Statistics Unit. 2014. Jersey in Figures 2014. See online at: https://www.gov.je/SiteCollectionDocuments/Government%20and%20 a d m i n i s t r a t i o n / R % 2 0 Je r s e y % 2 0 I n % 2 0 Fi g u r e s % 2 0 2 0 1 4 % 2 0 20150428%20SU.pdf. Last accessed 19/05/18. States of Jersey Statistics Unit. 2015. Jersey Annual Social Survey. See online at: https://www.gov.je/SiteCollectionDocuments/Government%20and%20 administration/R%20JASS%202015%2020151202%20SU.pdf. Last accessed 20/05/18. Stock, Femke. 2010. Home and memory. In Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities, ed. Kim Knott and Sean McLoughlin, 24–28. London: Zed Books. Syvret, Marguerite. 2011. Balleine’s History of Jersey. Stroud: The History Press. Trevena, Paulina, Derek McGhee, and Sue Heath. 2013. Location, Location? A Critical Examination of Patterns and Determinants of Internal Mobility Among Post-accession Polish Migrants in the UK. Population, Space and Place 19 (6): 671–687. Vertovec, Steven. 2002. Transnational Networks and Skilled Labour Migration. Paper given at Ladenburger Diskurs ‘Migration’, Ladenburg, 14–15 February 2002. See online at: https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3012174/component/file_3012175/content. Last accessed 30/05/19. Williams, Glyn. 2005. Multimedia, Minority Languages and the New Economy. Noves SL. Revista De Sociolingüística (Winter 2005). See online at: http://www.gencat.cat/llengua/noves/noves/hm05hivern/docs/williams. pdf. Last accessed 24/10/19.

5 Problematising the Local: Islanded Identities and Sociolinguistic Realities

The focus of this chapter is the portrayal and interpretation of Jersey’s internal and external image, the conceptualisation of a ‘local’ island identity and the role language plays as an indexical marker. It offers a complementary perspective of migration in that I re-engage with my earlier discussion of the Island’s geographical location and physical configuration, migratory movement and its socio-political, sociocultural and sociolinguistic history in order to examine the multifaceted and complex nature of how such an identity is represented externally and perceived, embedded and articulated internally, within a society that is multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic. Particularly noteworthy is how these characterisations may be reflected in attitudes towards and ideologies regarding recent immigrants, and how such a local identity may be embedded within allegiances to space and place, ethnicity and language. Important to my discussion here are the role of ­socio-psychological borders, the perception of ingroups and outgroups, particularly with respect to linguistic behaviour and conceptions of belonging. I begin by examining the notion of a communal, historically embedded sense of identity on Jersey and its relevance in terms of social categorisation within the context of ‘multiplicities’—of ethnicities, heritage, customs, language varieties, cultural and societal artefacts. In order to do this, I explore ascribed and avowed representations, including © The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8_5

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perceived links to Norman heritage, attitudes towards the French and in particular, the Bretons. I also consider the far-reaching consequences of the Occupation and its import even nowadays within the Jersey ‘local’ memory and consciousness that appears to be embedded within a self-identification strategy of ‘being British’. In this sense, of particular importance are the ways in which the promulgation of social and cultural stereotypes impacts on local self-perceptions and self-identification strategies, and how the Island has been re-framed and re-imagined in institutional and media portrayals in order to respond to the demands of tourism and migrations alike. Moreover, the commodification of epithets such as ‘Islander’ and ‘Local Islander’ as well as nation branding and the articulation of ‘Jerseyness’ in marketing and publicity campaigns may also reinforce locally-held observations regarding ‘otherness’. The sociolinguistic, pragmatic and  symbolic roles of Jersey French, Standard French and English are also key to the discussion of l­ocally-held attitudes towards migrants and multilingualism. My argument centres on the significance of language ideologies to the development of distinctive, local identification strategies, including how linguistic behaviour and practices play a fundamental role in how ‘otherness’ is expressed and defined. Thus, I explore how language often finds expression and import through the ways in which those who consider themselves to be ‘local’ interact with and categorise other members of their social networks, as well as those they perceive to be outside the borders of these networks, and how they frame their own perceptions of who constitutes a ‘immigrant’ or ‘Non-Islander’ and  the visibility of languages other than English in the linguistic landscape. Throughout this treatise, I refer to official literature, written portrayals and depictions of the Island and its people as well as empirical data from interviews, group discussions and observations of my participants, the comments of whom form the basis of the latter sections.

Peoples and Populations: Representation and Identity I begin by examining the trope ‘ethnic identity’. Although this became prominent in intellectual debates around nationalism, as I argue below, it is still often key to how self and other identities are represented and

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thus, to our understanding in this book of the contexts of Jersey migration, lived encounters and perceptions of belonging on the Island. Twentieth-century debates about identity and ethnicity often centre on the somewhat polarised opposition between essentialised and constructed paradigms, as we saw in Chapter 1. Socially constructed, situated debates see ethnicity as the outcome of a dynamic, changeable and negotiable process of identity construction (May 2012: 9; 18–19; 27–44), what Hall terms an on-going ‘process of production’ rather than an ‘accomplished fact’; a process of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’ (2003: 110): Not ‘who we are’ or ‘where we came from’, so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. (Hall 1996: 12)

In this sense, language too may be seen to be a social construct, historically, contextually, socially and discursively constructed in the discourse. Fluid and hybrid ethnic identities are thus characterised by linguistic diversity and multilingual repertoires (Lytra 2016: 132). Complex and multiple identities can thus be constructed, assumed or abandoned as required or as relevant to a given situation; identity is a ­multi-dimensional process subject to constant appraisal and modification (Kivisto 2005). Essentialised debates, however, stress ethnicity as the outcome of shared, fixed and bounded cultural and linguistic categories, and focus, for example, on the portrayal of the nation as the mainstay of society. The nation is ancient, steadfast and as such, the embodiment of a people’s common origin and of an ethnic identity that is both binding and immutable and based on collectively inherited, predetermined and unifying attributes and traits such as language, social and cultural traditions and customs, historical background and ancestry, and religion. Assumptions regarding the nation largely grew out of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical and territorial expansionist dogma, with nationalism being considered a movement in the defence of the political interests and independence of a nation or to secure such interests through, among other things, self-determination (see, for example, Andersen 1991;

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Gellner 1983). Barbour comments that the development of a more complex structure of social organisation, the overarching nation state, was also upheld as a useful political and doctrinal tool considered inherent to the maintenance of a cohesive world order (2002: 4–5). The canon imposed and enforced a dominant group’s ethnically exclusive monolingual, monocultural and homogeneous idealisations of societal structure and national identity onto other ethnic groups and communities within its spatial borders. However, by legitimising dominant ‘one nation-one-language-one state’ ideologies and by depicting other ethnicities as limited, primitive and illustrative of misguided nostalgia and outmoded characteristics, nation state doctrine was, ultimately, seen to be discriminatory and divisive as well as extremely simplistic; it is rare, for example, for the boundaries of political and national identity to coincide in such a way that ethnically exclusive linguistic and cultural homogeneity is tenable (see, for example, May 2012; Llamas and Watt 2010). The aftermath of World War II paved the way for the adoption by many countries of modern democratic ideology, which, through its aims to legitimise and guarantee the rights of all citizens, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, colour, political persuasion, faith etc., facilitated a generally insightful and serious debate on ethnicity, national and ethnic identity and kinship.1 May’s ground-breaking account (2012) of the interplay between ethnicity, nationalism and language considers Max Weber’s definition of ‘ethnic group’ (1978), which established an inherent link between the self and the other and our origins, our ancestral, cultural and racial traits, and Holmes’ exploration of ethnic categorisations highlights how ethnicity embodies an implicit reference to the collective, since: ethnic categorisations come with specific expectations about the appearance, practices and other features of those they are attached to […] “ethnicity” not only draws in all members of a defined group of people, but draws them in completely […] There is a neat correlation between the individual, the group and an ethnic essence. (Holmes 2017: 23, original emphasis)

This is especially interesting when we consider stereotypical, ascribed representations of collective identity, the attributes that those outside a particular

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group may believe are the characteristics of the group and thus, use to portray them. Bourhis and Maass summarise the situation succinctly: […] individual’s attitudes towards their ingroups and any outgroups are at the core of intergroup cooperation and conflict because all intergroup relations are essentially characterized by stereotypes (i.e. beliefs), prejudices (i.e. affects), and discrimination (i.e. behaviours) – be they positive or negative. (Bourhis and Maass 2005)

Stereotypical traits are employed to establish and reinforce difference as an unwelcome anomaly, in line with the theoretical tenets of ‘otherness’ and ‘othering’ (Harmer and Lumsden 2019: 21). Othering engages with top-down processes of social distance and differentiation to establish, define and maintain boundaries between the insider, the powerful dominant ingroup and the outsider, the subordinate outgroup—the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy (Lister 2004: 101–102; Schwalbe et al. 2000: 422). Thus, it tends to reify differences through collective, ideological and homogenising portrayals of self-proclaimed traits of the ingroup that the ‘Other’, the outgroup, cannot identify with (Harmer and Lumsden 2019: 16). Although the term was initially employed by Spivak in 1985 in his treatise of British colonial power in India, as De Fina (2016) points out, in mainstream discursive processes and narratives, modern nation states may also uphold beliefs and judgements based on clichéd and often negatively biased images and representations of migrants and their social identities in order to rally popular consensus, in line with my earlier discussion in Chapter 1 (see also Baker et al. 2008). Ensuing affective feelings about, and attitudes towards, the other group may, in turn, be reflected in dominant behaviour (Bohner 2001; Kircher 2016: 196–197) directed towards specific members of the group as well as in subsequent ideological perspectives about the legitimacy of such behaviour. There is not always a direct correlation between attitudes, emotion and behaviour of course, nor do implicit, unconscious attitudes necessarily correspond to explicitly professed attitudes (see, for example, Pantos and Perkins 2012). However, to varying degrees reductionist and banal attitudes may be socially structured and socially structuring (Garrettet al. 2003: 5), in that they may develop beyond individual behaviour. They may also fulfil a role in reinforcing

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and maintaining inequalities, such as acting as a barrier to progression at work or school. For example, a speaker may elicit a particular attitudinal stance (Du Bois 2007: 163; see also Jaffe 2009) during a public social interaction about a group of migrants who are evaluated, portrayed and thus function as the ‘Other’ through the use of specific linguistic markers that ascribe such negatively viewed shared social characteristics (Garrett 2010: 32). They may also manifest discriminatory institutional practices and even prejudice, as we have seen in the case of the World War II Occupation Registration Cards on Jersey. Thus, representations of stereotypical characteristics may be embedded from the bottom up within the collective psyche of a given group of individuals or a community (see, for example, Tajfel 1981; Tajfel and Turner 1986) as well as in top-down ideological tenets. In migration contexts, members of the receptor community may even choose to highlight self-imposed reductionist characteristics as requisite for ingroup membership in order to justify their direct exclusion of those considered to be outsiders (Wagner et al. 2009). ‘Othering’ could of course, be criticised for ignoring the agency of such out-groups, but members of a migrant group may well demonstrate agency and reflexivity in situated practices (Pérez-Milans 2016: 85) by accentuating such socially structured and socially structuring, externally imposed characteristics and traits (May 2012: 19; 27) that reference their status of the ‘Other’, in order to legitimise their own existence as a distinct and cohesive group (Beswick 2014). However, they may also clearly recognise the advantages to their overall situation of underplaying such traits through positioning and indexicality processes, and of accentuating instead less socially defined and ultimately discriminatory facets of self-identification.2 For the individual, identity as a situated and social practice is often a fluid, social paradigm subject to interpretation, manipulation and adjustment on a daily basis, in line with specific aspirations. As Barth’s early anthropological focus emphasises, the creation of a type of symbolic boundary between groups is based on these pivotal features, negotiated and defined in order to emphasise and maintain such mechanisms of distinctiveness (1969: 9; 1994: 12). Socio-psychological approaches proposed by Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory highlight the importance of these boundaries as a way of negotiating identities and belonging, as I discussed in Chapter 1 (see also Watt and Llamas 2017; Joseph 2010), even when protagonists move away from the use of external, social categories. In principle, such approaches highlight once again the roles

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of reflexivity and agency in how individuals perceive, relate to, articulate and even reinforce their perceptions and sense of self and belonging through their external relationships and behaviour (Tajfel 1978; Isajiw 1992), what Bucholtz and Hall define as ‘the social positioning of self and other’ (2010: 18; see also Fiske [1998]). In this approach, the perception of boundaries as an interface between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that shores up membership or non-membership may exist both in the characteristics that once served to underpin this membership as well as in the minds of the people who express them as characteristics of this membership. However, as I started to explore above, ingroup and outgroup categorisations may not correspond. So in my earlier example of migration contexts, the receptor community may well posit that certain features are the key behavioural manifestations of the ethnic identity of a given migrant group, but members of this group may, in turn, consider different features to be more pertinent to their membership. Along these lines then, ethnicity can be seen as ‘multidimensional’ and may be reinforced through ‘self-ascribed and other-ascribed ethnic labels’ (Padilla 1999: 115). Using ethnonational difference to demarcate Migrant Islanders may be particularly problematic. As I highlight above, individual migrants may not always locate themselves according to national or even ethnic taxonomies (Glick Schiller et al. 2011: 405) and in some situations and for certain age groups, may not consider themselves to be distinct from other groupings in their place of settlement. That is, being associated with a plethora of different social, cultural and linguistic groups may afford a sense of belonging and embedding as boundaries between these groups are crossed or even collapsed (Canagarajah 2017: 1) and individuals are able to participate in diverse social networks and communities of practice and thus weave a complex multiplicity of self-identification strategies and ties that underlie concurrent social relationships, what Blommaert has termed relationships of ‘layered simultaneity’ (2005: 237); relationships that, in point of fact, may have little to do with ethnicity. These issues are particularly relevant within the context of global mobility. In a similar way to conceptualised and implicitly constructed symbolic borders, physical borders may also become permeable, with transnational movement contesting essentialised definitions (Canagarajah 2017: 1–2) linked to the notion of spatial boundedness. To sum up, in the ‘fluid social spaces’ (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007: 6)

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that are engendered, symbolic boundaries between different groups may be increasingly blurred, challenged and rejected (see, for example, Block 2007, 2016; Prior 2011; Blommaert 2005), but not necessarily. This latter point is particularly important in my later discussions regarding the interplay between portrayals of the ‘immigrant’ and the ‘local’. In order to consider these, I now turn to how Jersey and its population are often represented in the discourse.

Islanded Representations and Identities: Norman Heritage In this section, my intention is to examine the multifaceted nature of what is often portrayed as an authentic ‘Jersey Islander’, how this is conceptualised as being bound up in allegiances such as to space and place, heritage, ethnicity and language, and how it is reconstructed and redefined as a model of integration and citizenship from a top-down and bottom-up perspective (International Organisation for Migration 2011). I frame my analysis by reference to my preceding discussion of identity as well as to that of the Island’s geographical location and physical configuration, its populations and its socio-political, sociocultural and sociolinguistic history as discussed in Part I of this book. I begin by examining ascribed representations of features of what are often considered Norman, French and Breton identities as well as English and British identities. Going forward, I am particularly interested in how such representations of a local identity are often largely situated practices, by being articulated, manipulated, foregrounded or even obscured as needed in context. Jersey’s political, social and economic infrastructure still owes much to Norman law and tradition, as we saw in Chapter 3, and many books written over the last two hundred years about the Island discuss the impact of this immigration. Many nineteenth-century British authors attempted to correlate a portrayal of the ‘typical’ Jersey person with largely essentialised characteristics of Norman lineage. Both negative traits (parsimony; Inglis 1835) and those more positively viewed (independence; Le Quesne 1856; Latham and Ansted 1862) were traced by the authors back to the Norman legacy. By the early twentieth century,

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the perceived blood link to this heritage had become increasingly significant in ascribed representations of the ‘authentic Jersey Islander’ and their strong communities of practice within the island space: The typical Jerseyman today, in his sturdy independence, his self-reliance, his shrewdness at a bargain, his tremendous industry, his reticence, his thrift, is almost the exact counterpart of the peasant farmer on the opposite Normandy coast. (Syvret, citing Balleine 2011) The islanders originated from Norman stock of the pioneering freeman type, and they have never lost this strong feeling of independence […] a love of individual enterprise, ability to work hard, a liking for autonomy and freedom of speech, and a veneration for their own language, laws and ancient customs. As in many other small isolated communities, their hospitality is abundant, yet the stranger is soon aware of the tenacious nature of their own family connections, and it is a long time before the settler in their midst is accepted as one of them. (Lockley 1950)

Of course, such representations of Jersey island identity reveal a great deal about the ideologies and perspectives of the authors themselves as a product of the time they were writing in and therefore, their usefulness as an impartial and unbiased source of information is questionable. Nonetheless, an important source of local information about twentieth-century bucolic life on the Island is Le Feuvre’s book on the rural history of Jersey (2005). As we saw in Chapter 3, this comprises a series of personal observations and recollections about Jersey’s traditional small-scale farming techniques. Le Feuvre himself refers to stereotypical characterisations of heritage, local tradition, and independence in his portrayals, at times quixotic, of Jersey farming and farmers. For example, he posits that the farming techniques practised by himself and others on the Island are still modelled on Norman practices as a time-honoured tradition at the core of the local identity, ‘a manner of living stretching back through the generations which had done so much to make Jersey special’ (ibid.: 144–146). As we saw above with ascribed representations of the heritage of the ‘authentic Jersey Islander’, for Le Feuvre a Norman bloodline is inherent to his positive conceptualisation of a collective

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Jersey ethnicity based on primordial identity tropes linked to ancestry, tradition and practice (see May 2012). Le Feuvre also posits that a strong community of practice borne out of necessity prevailed in the countryside, despite the lack of a spatial communal hub in the form of a village or hamlet; ‘Almost without exception these small, distinct and separate holdings were run by families, but they could always depend on relatives or neighbours when extra help was needed’ (2005: 47). In doing so, he once again sees as positive traits the stereotypical identity markers of independence, familial and group self-reliance he sees as being embedded within the collective psyche of such communities of practice.

Islanded Representations and Identities: The Mainland British I now turn to the presence of the mainland British. One of the few sources of information about the Channel Islands available in Britain in the nineteenth century were the handbooks, travel guides and pamphlets written by visiting English gentleman. Clichéd, ascribed representations of island habitats were rife in western philosophies at this time; consider, for example, the Daniel Defoe images in Chapter 2, and the portrayals of distance and of isolation (both in geographical and perceptual terms) reflected in such writings. The relative proximity of the Channel Islands to the British mainland was countermanded by descriptions of their remoteness; their alien quality was also implied through their depiction as underdeveloped and primitive outposts. The few utopic representations of Jersey that existed also offered largely sympathetic depictions of the people themselves. Thus, the first true guidebook written for general consumption, A Picture of Jersey, or Stranger’s Companion Through That Island (Stead 1809), offered a charming and sympathetic portrayal of the countryside and rural life, mirroring traditional representations of island as an imagined community by evoking a rural idyll, a paradise, a harmonious lifestyle, and echoing to

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some extent my earlier contentions about island perceptions. Le Feuvre adds that in this guide the women involved in the cottage industry of knitting, for example, were depicted as innocently happy with their lot and faithful to the traditions of the Island (2005: 20). Such ascribed representations were, of course, somewhat idealistic and at odds with the generally harsh realities of day-to-day survival for many Islanders. Nonetheless, they ‘anticipated the cloying romanticism of the Victorian era’ (ibid.: 19–20) as we see below. Later portrayals were not so complementary, however; Le Feuvre reports that the Island’s rural population were often depicted with few redeeming features, being altogether too industrious and miserly, devoid of any sense of humour or jollity; taciturn, boorish, stolid and inhospitable to strangers (ibid.: 22–23). Just as damning were the descriptions of their physical appearance, which variously painted them as short, squat, ugly and ungainly, and which were often linked to the practice of intermarriage (see, for example, Inglis 1835: 61). These ascribed and highly problematic representations of the rural Jersey population made by certain mainland British travellers at the time were symptomatic of the attitudes towards and beliefs and value judgements about the ‘Other’, the ‘foreigner’, of a particular sector of British society. As Panayi (2014) explains, Britain was largely both a multicultural and xenophobic society in the Victorian period, a time of emancipation as well as of violent racism, often on religious grounds. Well-heeled travellers were also products of an era in British history when a clearly demarcated social class structure was firmly entrenched (Le Feuvre 2005: 25–27), meaning that whilst wealthy refugees, exiles and migrants from Europe were welcomed in, poor labourers were not. Despite their huge contribution to the industrialisation of Britain, Catholic Irish navvies and factory workers, for example, were subjected to systematic racism; so too were the thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Russia in the late nineteenth century (Panayi 2014: 37; 85). Unlike their Jersey compatriots, labourers in mainland Britain generally showed subservience to the type of urban gentlefolk who could sample the pleasures of foreign travel. Many visitors, largely ignorant of Jersey’s societal infrastructure and land ownership, thus tended to judge the locals by the standards and ideological precepts of their homeland.

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One of the most controversial works of this ilk is Maugham’s The Island of Jersey Today (1950), which abounds with his own pejorative descriptions of the rural population alongside boorish comments regarding physical characteristics and attributes. Maugham’s imperialist beliefs, attitudes and behaviour appear to resonate with those of the Victorian era, even though his book was in fact written towards the middle of the twentieth century. He portrays retired officers like himself, and their families, as somewhat objectionable products of the British Empire who created a microcosm of a British elite lifestyle, treated the Island like a colonial outpost, and expected as an inalienable right deferential treatment from staff and all of the working class. Le Feuvre cites Maugham’s own remarks on his daily habits as evidence of the hedonistic and narcissistic routine of British residents with time and money on their hands: A visit to St Helier in the mornings to lay in cigarettes or fill up the petrol tank, followed by a call at the club; a cinema, bridge or a round of golf in the afternoon as the prelude to a cocktail party, and finally, dinner, more bridge, and so to bed. (Le Feuvre 2005: 17–19)

Through a somewhat judgemental and skewed perspective, Maugham’s account also reinforces an image of the mid-twentieth-century Jersey autochthonous population based on detrimental reductionist epithets. What is interesting from the perspective of this book are the ways in which he champions the maintenance of social and spatial isolation of the British from this population through a strong community of practice, reinforced by both physical borders that denied access to British spaces (houses, clubs, restaurants etc.), and symbolic boundaries that denied access to a British lifestyle by dint of place of birth, social class, social standing etc. Indeed, belonging to, and identification with this exclusive ingroup by members of the receptor population appears to have been by invitation only, access being primarily afforded by class affiliation, wealth and place of residence. As we will see later, the legacy of British interest in Island affairs has had far-reaching implications for Jersey’s officially sanctioned external image and portrayal.

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Islanded Representations and Identities: The Bretons A further migrant trajectory that had a profound impact on the ethnic composition of the Island from the end of the nineteenth century was that of the Bretons, who also travelled to Jersey to work as seasonal, agricultural labourers. Monteil believes that in St. Helier at least, there was often a pervading sense of wariness of and hostility towards these workers, their customs and traditions, which played out as what he terms the peur du Français [‘fear of the French’] (2005: 144–146) and which, he avers, resulted in their poor treatment and victimisation. Indeed, although once again symptomatic of the class obsessed era that pervaded western society at the time, the plight of the Bretons was no doubt exacerbated by their French national identity. Monteil argues that many mistrusted the motives behind any French presence for long-standing historical reasons regarding invasion, and that British residents were well aware of recent territorial and political rivalry between France and England. He concludes that the creation of new, top-down legislation regarding immigration was a result of bottom-up prejudicial attitudes about, and discriminatory behaviour towards, such Breton workers (ibid.: 156; 163). Interestingly, as we see in the next chapter, unlike other migrant groups such as the Madeiran Portuguese, Bretons who ultimately took up residence on the Island do not appear to have established many cultural, social or religious associations and only the French national holiday on July 14 (Bastille Day) is celebrated at the present time by descendants. Monteil terms this disengagement son absence d’identite [‘their lack of identity’] (ibid.: 263). Although documentary evidence of why this should have happened is largely unforthcoming, this apparent disassociation from clear markers of a Breton identity, however stereotypical, could putatively be an agentive action, an intentional act through which the Bretons themselves could mitigate their status as the outgroup on the Island and the harsh treatment that this engendered. Of course, it is unclear whether acculturation into a Jersey way of life was a clear aspiration, at least initially, but Monteil believes that the Bretons

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were willing to undergo processes of invisibility and homogeneity, processes indicative at the time of ‘successful’ assimilation, freely and at any price (ibid.: 243). This included a rejection of the Catholic faith, which once again was at odds with the strict Methodist ethos of the Island, over time, individuals with Breton heritage who remained on the Island almost became plus jersiais que leurs hotes [‘more ­Jersey-like than their hosts’] (2005: 276), with language playing a pivotal role in this process, as I discuss below. Of course, Monteil’s comments are in themselves reliant to a large extent on widely held stereotypes about what it means to be a local; nevertheless, such behaviour, together with a conscious breaking of ties and associations with a migrant’s country of origin (Beswick and Pozo-Gutiérrez 2010: 42) is reminiscent of the classic assimilationist model, decried in the mid-1960s as a largely authoritarian process that negates fundamental human rights to do with ethnic, social, cultural and linguistic diversity and identity, but which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not in any way recognise such considerations.

Island Representations and Identities: Resistance and Collaboration In Chapter 4, I examined the historical events surrounding World War II, noting that my intention is not to problematise the highly contentious issues surrounding resistance and collaboration on Jersey during the Occupation years; this is best left to leading academics in the field, such as Carr et al. (2015), Carr (2014), Sanders (2005), Cruickshank (2004). However, in order to investigate the legacy of the Occupation with regard to conceptualisations of heritage and identity, the ways in which these polemical issues are often inextricably linked to representations of collective consciousness on the Island should now be briefly explored. Halbwachs’ early delineation of collective memory as a constructed and continuously modified trope of social interaction (1925, 1992; see also De Cillia et al. 2009: 6) sees it as comprising the selective recollection of historical events significant to a specific community. Thus, members may draw on a repository of memories that reinforce a sense of communal identity and through which a sense of belonging to the

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group is thus promoted, irrespective of whether all have lived experience of such events or not. In the case of some individuals who lived through the Occupation, similar historical narratives and memoirs based largely on eyewitness accounts have emerged that would suggest that a collective memory of various experiences under the Germans is still in existence. The Occupation diary of Jersey resident Nan Le Ruez, for example (1994), conveys a very personal and probably reliable account of the trials and tribulations of daily life under the German forces on Jersey, as does McLoughlin’s collection of local people’s first-hand experiences of living with the enemy in times of war (1995), even if more emphasis is placed on the emotive element. As an Islander herself, Le Sueur chooses to highlight the unifying element of differing lived experiences that form part of such a collective memory and embody a sense of collective identity: Veterans of that era once so silent about their experiences are beginning to tell their tales […] Those of us who lived it each experienced it in our own way. Our memories are unique and for the Islanders they are probably as different as our personalities. We do share a common bond […]. (Le Sueur 2000: 27)

Representations of assumed collaboration and resistance by authors of recent work on the Occupation tend to criticise the Island authorities’ cooperative actions, and whilst many also recognise the inherent difficulties of the situation, they may do so with some reluctance. For example, Bard’s claim that ‘there was a brazen collaboration’ (2014: 6) between the Island’s government and the Germans under what Bunting (1995) has somewhat disparagingly termed a ‘model occupation’3 is countered by his later admission that such actions probably protected the civilian population from extremely harsh treatment (Bard 2014: 49). However, whilst the local historian Jeff Le Caudey refutes claims of collaboration as ‘ill-informed’ (1999: 125), he too concedes that a minority of the local population may well have curried favour with the Germans, often as informers, either for pecuniary gain or as an act of vengeance against others (ibid.: 123). Collaboration has been one of the most contentious issues surrounding debates about the Occupation of the Island, often offset by criticisms regarding the lack of armed resistance rife in other European

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countries during World War II. Both McSmith and Taylor (2008) and Hillsdon (2004) emphasise the huge barriers to such systematic resistance engendered by the sheer number of German soldiers on such a small island, estimated to be one for every four local inhabitants (ibid.: 2004: 7), although McSmith and Taylor do concede that underground, passive resistance ‘that included listening secretly to the BBC’ did occur. Perhaps what emerges as significant from the debate for the purposes of this book is how the Occupation of Jersey is seen as ‘an important identity-building experience’ (Carr et al. 2015) for the population under enemy control, as indeed it was in the rest of occupied Europe. This seems to be the case certainly as far as the prototypical image of ‘Jersey at war’ is concerned. It is tempting to assume that the initial German invasion was tolerated precisely because as an island, Jersey has long been privy to the arrival and settlement of many peoples, as we saw in Chapter 3. Indeed, we should recall Sanders’ earlier comment that many Islanders regarded the presence of German forces as a temporary nuisance and treated them ‘like another bunch of tourists who would return home when they had had their fill of sea, sun and fun’ (2005: 173); echoing to some extent my earlier discussion of islanded attitudes. However, to consider this to be the whole story would be to trivialise the profound effect the Occupation had on many inhabitants, their health, their lifestyles, as well as on their conceptualisation of the Island as their home, as a place of belonging, of safety and of protection from outside forces. As Hillsdon’s research demonstrates (2004: 37), the Germans intended to turn their sanctuary into an ile prison [‘island fortress’], isolated both from Britain and the rest of the world, in line with the deeply entrenched and somewhat reductionist imaginings of islands we saw in Chapter 2. Accounts of the time suggest that the war aroused as strong sentiments on Jersey as it did elsewhere in Europe. Again, these accounts often articulate primordial ‘blood’ ties to the Island itself as well as to its traditions, customs and heritage, as we saw earlier. When the evacuations began for example, Jurat Dorey was reported in the States’ papers as declaring that ‘that morning he had been filled with disgust […] he did not understand those of old Norman stock, who should be rooted in the soil, pressing to leave’ (ibid.: 2004: 22). Such essentialised identity tropes of bloodlines and links to the land play out even in more recent representations of what it means to be a local, as we discuss below.

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Island Representations and Identities: Nation Branding Nation branding commodifies the idea of an authentic national character. Nations may thus construct a type of narrative about their identity (Dinnie 2008: 45–46) in institutional discourse at the macro-level, by embracing a selective list of traditional, enduring, and often stereotypical attributes as well as more modern elements denoting ‘authenticity’, depending on, for example, the aims of a particular marketing or advertising campaign. Thus, representations could be seen as somewhat occasioned, situated practices. Of course, what constitutes such an ‘authentic’ characterisation is often open to debate. On Jersey, institutional ideologies may well find expression at the group and individual level in terms of authenticity through the ways in which those who consider themselves ‘locals’, ‘Islanders’, or ‘Jerseymen’ categorise members of their social networks and communities of practice and frame conceptualisations of ‘immigrant’, ‘immigrant visitors’ or ‘Non-Islanders’. Similarly, consumers’ avowed mental representations and image formation of a given country or place may also be based on national stereotypes and portrayals promulgated through tourism and the media. However, in both cases, personal, first-hand experiences or word-of-mouth narratives (ibid.: 47) may also determine people’s precise impressions.  So on Jersey, individual perceptions of an authentic characterisation of a ‘local’ and a ‘non-local’ for example, could be more affected by their own daily encounters than by institutional rhetoric. Furthermore, just as transnational migration highlights the permeability of physical borders and the obscuring of spatial boundedness (Canagarajah 2017: 1–2), the upsurge in international travel engenders adjustments in how foreign consumers in particular perceive and imagine other ethnicities and cultures across symbolic boundaries. As a corollary, the onus is on countries, regions and cities to reflect on and reconfigure how they themselves commodify and project brand identities, images and positionings in order to create meaningful differentiation from others (Dinnie 2008: 41), since such tropes may very well be contested and even challenged both by local residents and by consumers as not in line with their own experiences and perceptions.

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The repositioning of a country’s image may also encourage further economic development and promote its global standing (ibid.: 18; 42; see also Anholt 2007; Bolin and Ståhlberg 2010: 82 and in particular Jaffe and Nebenzahl 2006: 14), but nation branding is not without its pitfalls. As Dinnie (2016: 16–17) explains, in the 1990s Prime Minister Tony Blair’s attempts to rebrand and modernise Britain’s image under the banner of ‘Cool Britannia’ were met with some hostility both at home and abroad. On Jersey, institutional endeavours to harness the Island’s significant, recent past events, artefacts and people since the Occupation as a resource with which to construct such an authentic island identity have also been somewhat controversial. In Chapter 3, I discussed the wartime efforts of the Island’s Tourism Committee to reify Jersey as an island paradise, a bounded space of refuge from the realities of war. This re-invention of Jersey as an exotic, romantic and perceptually far-flung tourist island was, ultimately, simply an opportunity to commodify imagined attributes as social and cultural capital at the time; a way of bolstering the Island’s reputation as a holiday destination through officially endorsed place branding efforts but based to some extent on conceptualisations that were presumed to be held by Islanders themselves of their space as an idyllic safe haven. In the immediate years after the Occupation, re-framings and ­re-imaginings of Jersey eschewed these earlier imaginings of the Island as an exotic paradise. Branding initiatives focused more on the Island’s topography and its spatial dislocation from France and indeed, from the British mainland (Johnson 2012: 239), turning to pecuniary advantage recognisable features of its geographical and environmental assets: balmy climate, lush, green countryside, miles of coastline and accessible, sandy beaches. For the British, the cosy familiarity of these alluring and accessible physical features encapsulated within an island space offered a pleasantly recognisable, not too adventurous and contained distraction from the reality of post-war life on the mainland, and scant mention was made of the Island’s proximity to France. The burgeoning tourist industry and State institutions also  commodified and foregrounded recognisable, generic and well-known tropes already present in the landscape but that typified stereotypical, post-war era representations of mainland Britishness. Thus, the use of sterling, the Union Jack flown outside pubs and restaurants, window boxes and hanging baskets

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of summer flowers, double-decker buses, the eponymous fish and chip shops and ice cream stands, together with the predominance of English in St. Helier in particular, were repackaged as authentic emblems of Jersey Britishness with the aim of evoking a sense of home from home. A recent States’ marketing initiative points out that the notion of an authentic Jersey ‘brand’ still relies to an extent on such tropes, at least within external, ascribed representations of ‘Jerseyness’: ‘a set of perceptions that many people share about what Jersey is like. Safe, secure, beautiful, great beaches, a little old fashioned, off shore, Jersey Royals, wealthy, a bit inward looking’ (States of Jersey 2007: n.p.). The use of wealth is noteworthy. Over the past few decades, many islands have rediscovered or even reinvented narratives about their identity (Dinnie 2008: 45–46) by commodifying ‘unique’ aspects of their heritage and tradition as a way of foregrounding an official sense of distinctiveness and authentic character.4 Jersey’s external, global reputation has been forged not through images of it as a haven for economic migrants in search of a decent wage but instead, as an island of privilege and prosperity, a tax haven for celebrities from the world of sport and entertainment and a playground for the rich and famous (BBC Legacies, n.d.). Moreover, the States’ 2005 Cultural Strategy has highlighted how to an extent, the opportunity to be a key player in international financial markets reframes the perception of Jersey islandness, what Riddell terms ‘a distinct sense of its coastal boundaries, an acute awareness of what lies beyond those boundaries, an existence within a compact space […]’ (2007: 72). Another key trope in the marketing of an ‘authentic’ Jersey is the historical narrative surrounding the Occupation. For some time after World War II, the legacy of the German presence on the Island was played down by the tourist industry, which, understandably perhaps given the degree of sensitivity still felt regarding demilitarisation, focused instead on re-establishing amicable relationships with the British mainland. Thus, portrayals of post-war Jersey as an island idyll based on familiar tropes may well have been inadvertent, but nonetheless they may have also painted an unrealistic and skewed picture of the reality of daily life and even run counter to visitors’ experiences and impressions of the Island. For example, one of my mainland British migrants living on the Island comments that in the early 1950s, her parents spent a two-week holiday on Jersey. Rather than keep to the

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beaches on the southern side, they explored the entire Island by bicycle and bus and were considerably affected by the vestiges of occupation visible in the landscape: P: […] and they found the whole experience very depressing.they felt like they had been cheated somehow.they asked (the Tourist Office) why they didn’t say there were (sic) still lots of evidence of the Germans around […] yeah.the Island was very like a home from home.but I dunno. they wanted to know why the Occupation was hidden away somehow// (KKBIM)

In recent years, the Occupation has undergone a degree of official and academic reinterpretation as an important trope of communal heritage, to the extent that from an institutional perspective, taking into account as far as possible the sensitivity of its issues, it is now a highly valued marketing commodity (Carr 2014) rather than a censured legacy of World War II. Important evidence of the Occupation such as the Jersey War Tunnels and Underground Hospital, bunkers, gun emplacements and observation towers remain as part of the historical landscape across the Island. Bard argues that at times, the collective memory of the Occupation may have been reconfigured slightly to include, for example, tales of overt resistance not evident in factual reports of the time (2014: 12; 16). Indeed, this official reconstruction of Jersey’s wartime history may also emphasise the role of the British in the liberation of the Island through the ‘substantial tourist trail’ (ibid.: 33–34) of visible memorials to resistance heroes as well as significant events such the commemoration of Liberation Day on 9th May, in order once again to appeal to the notion of a shared, pan-British experience and national identity.

Islanded Representations and Identities: Language Ideologies and Attitudes A key strand of this book concerns ideologies and attitudes pertaining to language on Jersey. Milani and Johnson’s comprehensive citation underlines the importance of societal underpinnings and mechanisms of

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certain representations and ideologies of, as well as attitudes and beliefs towards, situated language use: while it is axiomatic for linguists that “all languages are equal” […] a cursory glance at any sociolinguistic environment in the ‘real world’ will reveal a less equal scenario – one in which linguistic phenomena are ranked according to different meanings and values […] through the production, reproduction and/or contestation of conventional indexical ties between (i) perceived or presumed features, genres, styles or varieties of language and (ii) broader cultural representations of their purported speakers in terms of nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, aesthetics, morality and so forth. (Milani and Johnson 2010: 4)

Thus, ‘language is not conceived of as a neutral medium of communication, but is understood with reference to its social meaning’ (Norton 2013: 45 [2000]). Often an important trope of group identification practices (see Beswick 2007: 37–52) language still plays an influential role in power struggles across the globe. Late capitalism approaches to the role of language as capital within the Knowledge Economy (Bourdieu 1992; Williams 2005) focus on its economic and technical exchange value discussed in Chapter 4, but they also highlight the symbolic value of language and the significance of ideological discourse to its relationship with issues of status and power. Traditional top-down, political ideological propositions have often treated language ‘as a whole, bounded system, consistent with the territorial boundaries of the nation-state and the historical continuity of a putatively culturally (and, often, genetically) unified population’ (Heller 2010: 101) and as such, fundamental to the characterisation of national identity (May 2003: 140–141). Within multilingual societies of course, such ideologies are often somewhat idealised and potentially divisive constructs, as I explore below. Yet such macro-level orders of discourse or ‘regimes of language’ (Kroskrity 2000, 2007; Blommaert 2005) may be ‘socially and culturally embedded metalinguistic conceptualizations of language and its forms of usage’ (ibid.: 241). In line with Coupland (2003), Heller points out that considering language as an economic commodity within the overall

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Knowledge Economy not only highlights its value as a whole, bounded system to the given nation or state as a sign of authenticity (2010: 102– 103) but importantly, also flags its value as a medium of representation of this authenticity. Language is thus often appropriated and given added import within industries such as tourism and marketing, as well as through media discourse. Heller’s research in francophone Canada of heritage tourism as a profitable niche market (ibid.: 108; Heller 2003: 475) demonstrates, for example, that knowledge of the French language often plays a notable role in the sale of ‘authentic’, culture-based and largely essentialised tropes of identity. As in the case of an ‘authentic’ culture, what counts as legitimate and commodifiable language in a given society is often subject to debate, particularly with respect to the implementation of standardisation processes that add an ‘authentic’ value by catering to a particular niche market (Heller 2010: 103), along the lines of Bell’s ‘audience design’ (1984; see also Bachmann 2010: 81–82). What is key is that niche markets such as heritage tourism may invest in a particular form or even variety of language as social capital to advertise and promote a specific, politically and socially advantageous representation through nation and place branding (see, for example, Baldacchino 2010), as we see later with the case of Jèrriais. From the perspective of migrant communities of course, the presence of a state language as the official and institutionally sanctioned medium of common interpersonal communication and thus, representation of societal inclusiveness (Lippi-Green 1997: 152–170) does not preclude the situated use of a community language. Even if such use is not pervasive throughout the whole community, such a language may invoke a sense of collective solidarity through its representation as a positive symbol of an ‘authentic’ and distinctive communal identity and often also functions as the medium through which other ethnic identity characteristics are foregrounded, even though they may well be emblematic and largely tokenistic. Individuals may demonstrate agency by choosing to use or not to use the language concerned as a situated practice, but what is key is that a sense of communal identity may still be achieved through such mechanisms of distinctiveness, as we saw earlier (Barth 1969: 9; 1994: 12).

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Smolicz’s early research in Australia on ideology, identity and language in migrant ethnic groups (1981) inspired his elaboration of core value theory to draw on the concept of linguistic, social and cultural markers as the ‘building blocks of the group’s cultural identity’ (1997: 67), and, therefore, as central to the reputation, survival and differentiation of ethnolinguistic groups and communities. A degree of insightful criticism has been levelled at certain assumptions it proposes (see, for example, Kennedy 2015; Woods 2006), particularly regarding the complex issues pertaining to how global speech communities are able to manipulate such values. Portuguese-speaking diasporas across the world, for example, may well share a national language, but they may not share the same country of origin, migratory trajectory, familial heritage, etc. (see, for example, Holmes 2017: 19),5 and in the same vein, they will likely not share the same social and cultural encounters and experiences in the country of settlement. Thus, their value systems, affiliations and linguistic practices are often both conditioned by and emerge through social networks that connect the ancestral homeland with the new space of residence (De Fina 2016: 164), potentially influencing perceptions of the value of language as a viable expression of identity. Yet even if language is functionally obsolete for many, it may continue to carry a heavy symbolic and emotional load in transnational contexts, as a reinforcer of migrants’ continued identification with the homeland. To a degree then, this runs counter to Smolicz’s contentions regarding language use and the generational demise of a group’s ethnolinguistic and ethnocultural vitality. Nonetheless, despite its limitations, the general term remains a useful one in both academic and non-academic discourses.

Linguistic Identity and French Language Varieties In recent years Jèrriais, variously termed Jersey French or Jersey NormanFrench in English, has often been cited at the macro-level as a key component of a traditional, ‘local’ Jersey identity. In order to gain an

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appreciation of the symbolic role of Jèrriais in representations of Jersey as a multilingual Island, I should take a brief look at the conceptualisation of such a ‘local’ or ‘island’ language. Through her exploration of language in the Channel Islands, Mari Jones has suggested that the fact the Islands themselves do not form a single, political unit may go some way to explaining why differing, island-based local identities rather than one that encompasses the whole archipelago are present (Jones 2015: 2), and language seems to be important at least in terms of branding activities. In line with general tenets of language identification (see in particular May 2012; ­Skutnabb-Kangas 2000; Beswick 2007: 109–112), although the Norman French varieties of the Islands are collectively referred to as Insular Norman or even ‘Channel Island French’ (Jones 2015: 4–5), displaying a high degree of structural similarity and mutual intelligibility, from a socio-political perspective, Jersey and Guernsey in particular adopt epithets based on place to describe their autochthonous languages, and their respective States tend to use Jèrriais and Guernèsiais in their official literature. Many of the nineteenth- and twentieth century-accounts written as tourist materials by British visitors to the Island also discuss language and the continued use of a French variety at the time, particularly in the rural areas. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that these accounts are imbued with personal opinions and subjective attitudes regarding the prestige of languages, varieties and dialects strongly indicative of the linguistic ideologies of the era, particularly given the writers’ social class. Le Feuvre observes that often, Jèrriais was described as ‘that terrible jargon’ or a ‘barbarous dialect of French’ (2005: 23). Baker’s comments are especially telling, since they assign value judgements regarding the perceived authenticity of a variety based on its presence or lack of mixed lects: The upper ranks understand and speak the French language in its purity, but in their conversation with the lower classes, they usually converse in the provincial tongue […] Jersey French. This is a heterogeneous compound of old French, intermixed with modern expressions and Gallicised English words: it is pronounced, especially in the country districts, with a most determined patois. (1844: 61–62)

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Such attitudes also pervade the comments of French writers who visited the Island. Le Lievre, for example, is quite disparaging about the presence of a vernacular, Jersey French variety. In line with ideological linguistic precepts of the time, he is strongly in favour of the standard French variety, reserved primarily in nineteenth-century Jersey for the formal functions of the courts and government, for ceremonial purposes and sometimes for business transactions in urban, bilingual contexts: French is the language of the Islanders. In the service of the Church, and in all judicial and public proceedings, pure French is observed; but that spoken by the common people is corrupt. It is founded on the old Norman French […]. (1861: 6)

Many writers of the time hypothesised that within a generation, English, which was already starting to pervade the upper echelons of urban society, would be universally spoken on Jersey (see Giffard 1838: 167; Baker 1844: 62; Le Lievre 1861: 6). Payn’s observations neatly summarise this pervasive dissemination of English throughout the Island: Except, however, here and there a primitive one or two, all the native Jersey people are more or less familiar with the English tongue, and the higher classes completely so. Indeed, so great and so increasing is the proportion of the British inhabitants, so frequent the communications, the intermarriages, between them and the natives, that the use of English is fast becoming universal; and it will, I conceive, eventually be the language of the Islands, legally no less than practically. (1844: 51)

Part of what we have already seen as some Islanders’ rather disparaging attitudes towards Breton migrant workers at the time appears to have been to do with language as well as with stereotypical images. Most Breton migrants to Jersey came from eastern Brittany, from Ile et Vilaine and Loire Inferieure as well as eastern Cotes-du-Nord and Morbihan. Unlike the western half of Brittany, these areas had been predominantly French-speaking since the Middle Ages (see, for example, Broudig 1999). Monteil suggests that these Bretons were seen as a

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threat on Jersey precisely because they were French, not Breton speakers, fomenting the fear that they would strive to maintain the use of French by advancing its cause on Jersey (2005: 249–251). French was the language of top-down, official practices on the Island, but at the time ‘its use in everyday conversation was regarded not merely as a snobbish affectation but as a demonstrable lack of patriotism [to England]’ (Ward Rutherford 1976: 43). The presence of the language was a legacy of the past, one which reminded many of ‘the old enemy’: ‘there was neither much need for French nor any great desire to speak the language of a people who lived within sight of the Island but who had to be treated with caution’ (Le Lievre 1861: 38–39). We have seen that the Bretons integrated with the pervading local community by collectively and agentively disassociating with social and cultural artefacts of what was typified as an eastern Breton identity (Monteil 2005: 243). French too, started to be supplanted by English as the language of general use. From a linguistic perspective, Norman French varieties are closely related to the standard French variety (Jones 2015: 24) and Jèrriais was prevalent as the primary means of communication in the countryside where the majority of Bretons worked. Monteil suggests however, that above and beyond their willingness to integrate with the local community, the adoption of English and not Jèrriais by Breton descendants was motivated by ingrained ideological precepts regarding the inferior language status of Jèrriais (2005: 262). Following classic lines of language revitalisation however (see, for example, Fishman 1991), the struggle to reassert Jèrriais at the end of the nineteenth century as a characteristic and emblematic marker of Jersey island identity tended to be of the local, urban intelligentsia. Situated language practices were a general feature of St. Helier society, but certain speakers of Jèrriais were concerned about the encroachment of English as well as its cultural and societal markers, and founded the Société Jersiaise in 1873 (Jones 2015: 30–31). Le Feuvre cites Sir Frank Ereaut, who attempted to raise the profile of Jèrriais by portraying its association with largely essentialised markers of communal island identity:

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The Jersey language had served Jerseymen as their ordinary means of communication for centuries […] But it is much more than that. It is the repository of life and thoughts of our Island people. Their long and vibrant history, their remarkable achievements and their sturdy independence of character are all reflected in the richness of its idiom and vocabulary. (2005: 153)

It is unlikely, however, that the rural sector of society was entirely aware of the sociolinguistic tensions engendered by the pervading diglossic framework, nor of the intellectual debates surrounding their autochthonous language. Moreover, the sheer numbers of English speakers on Jersey and their political and social authority in urban circles meant that by the beginning of the twentieth century, a significant language shift among the Island educated classes had occurred (Jones 2015: 29–30), with Jèrriais eventually losing speakers even in the country parishes. Nonetheless, even though English was increasingly promoted by ­top-down institutions for certain situated functions, such as the language of instruction, it took some decades for it to transcend its role as the language of prestige and power of the ingroup elite. Although revitalisation initiatives failed to establish Jèrriais as the official language of the Island, Monteil believes that such schemes reinforced certain tropes regarding the existence of a common heritage and culture distinct from those of England and Normandy France (2005: 23). During the Occupation, the unintelligibility of Jèrriais to ­Non-Islanders led to its unexpected, if brief, revival as a secret code used in urban public contexts. This use of the local variety is often conceptualised as a defiant yet subtle act of resistance, a key marker underlining a strong, ingroup, island identity (see, for example, Hillsdon 2004: 70). However, it would appear that this unifying, enhanced prestige role of Jèrriais as was little more than a temporary interruption of the reinforcement of its reputation as the variety of lowly status within its diglossic relationship with English. Indeed, negative stereotypes of this ilk were reinforced after the war by the return of Jersey evacuees who had been sent to mainland Britain. Jones states that at the time, many younger individuals either no longer felt communicatively competent in Jèrriais, had never learnt it as children

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or simply preferred to use English, the ‘more fashionable, progressive variety, the language of social advancement and the key that unlocked the world outside the Island […]’ (2001: 4), in line with stages of language shift (see, for example, Hinskens et al. 2005: 11). The attraction for families of adopting English as the primary language used in the home was further reinforced by the subsequent arrival of a succession of English-speaking Migrant Islanders, who continued their progressive dominance of the urban cultural landscape, particularly with the establishment of the hugely successful financial sector I discussed in Chapter 4.

Language and Nation Branding: Jèrriais Recently, a strategem to further the promotion of  Jèrriais as part of the revitalisation of an emblematic Jersey cultural heritage has surfaced once again. At the beginning of the new millennium, when regional nationalism as a political doctrine was gaining support in the UK and elsewhere (see Beswick 2007), major changes in Jersey’s constitutional and political climate emphasised not only the Island’s continued political and financial independence but also its linguistic and cultural distinctive characterisation from the rest of Britain (Fleury and Johnson 2013: 207–208). In 2005, the Education, Sport and Culture Committee drafted a document outlining the Development of a Cultural Strategy for the Island (ibid.: 209–210), intended as a ‘new vision and infrastructure for the arts and other cultural providers on Jersey’ (Riddell 2007: 72). Despite State ratification, this document initially prompted heated debate in many quarters. What can be seen as a largely situated response to the Anglicisation of Jersey’s political, cultural and social institutions and the concomitant decline of the Island’s links to its Norman heritage, as well as to the social tensions engendered by globalisation, the Cultural Strategy thus depicts external, mass-produced cultural production and dissemination as a ‘global threat’ to the promotion, development and enhancement of a locally articulated, ‘authentic’ identity (ibid.: 75; 80). The macro-level establishment of Jèrriais as an official minority language alongside the two high-status, global state languages of French

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and English (Hopkins 2016: 1; 5) has been a way of foregrounding its emblematic role as part of the Island’s self-identification strategy based on the tropes of heritage and tradition. This has primarily been the responsibility of L’Office du Jèrriais and is disseminated by institutions such as the Jersey Evening Post and BBC Radio Jersey (Fleury and Johnson 2013: 213; Riddell 2007: 74). It includes the introduction of elective extracurricular language courses in schools and the promotion of Jèrriais within the community through festivals and other cultural events. Whereas justification for these renewed endeavours is articulated at the top-down level as the need to celebrate the value and import of Jèrriais as a ‘living language’ (L’Office du Jèrriais 2014) and ­deep-seated core value of island self-identification, what Johnson calls ‘the Island’s living heritage’ (2008: 57), for the vast majority of inhabitants, Jèrriais has not been the familial language, part of community life, or of intrinsic value within their social networks for some time, since ­intra-generational breaks in its transmission have produced a shift to English. In my own research, older Island interviewees who had been raised speaking Jèrriais in the home environment recalled using the variety on a daily basis in the 1960s and 1970s, but their children learnt and then used English at school and then began to use it also in the home. In my own fieldwork I observed that in the few locations Jèrriais is still used fairly regularly, this use is limited to close-knit social networks comprising friends and colleagues of a similar age, rather than familial domains of use: P: My family used Jèrriais.Jersey French.with us all […] I still use it but only with my old friends.the kids don’t know it at all// (CCLI)

The detrimental effect on speaker numbers of such a restricted, situated language use appears to be borne out by the statistics: there were an estimated 7000–10,000 speakers of Jèrriais in the mid-1980s (Birt 1985: 1) but by the turn of the millennium this figure had dramatically dropped to 2874 people, or 3.2% of the population, with around some 15% of the population having some understanding of the language. Figures from the Jersey Annual Social Survey 2012 indicate that more children

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are able to speak the language, no doubt as a result of the Jèrriais teaching programme, but the number of returns was fairly low and it is clear that almost all the remaining native speakers are now in their 70s at the very least, with the official estimate in 2012 at fewer than 1000 speakers, just over 1% of the total Island population (ibid., 2012). Starkly put, the revitalisation of Jèrriais as a language even of situated practices depends not only on institutional, formal endorsement of its status through policy initiatives, but also on the acceptance by a substantial percentage of residents that its contribution to the sociolinguistic environment on the Island will be in some way beneficial. Indeed, Hopkins argues that there exists a tacit, bottom-up societal belief that Jèrriais can never recover its former status as a viable language of daily use (2016: 4). If this were indeed the ultimate objective of top-down policy, then it would be a somewhat unfeasible proposition. It is more likely, however, that the majority of the States’ initiatives focus specifically on language as one of a series of core values of an ‘authentic’ island identity, as Riddell points out: It is perhaps not what Jèrriais is as a language that these preservation groups are fighting for however, but what it means symbolically – losing a part of their accepted identity as a direct result of the impact from outsiders. (2005: 22)

Recently, the tourist industry in particular has been important to such initiatives. Earlier in this Chapter, I emphasised the role of language as a valuable economic commodity within the Knowledge Economy, including within tourism and the media. Through branding exercises, a language such as Jèrriais may thus be appropriated and given a noteworthy role both as an emblem of what is conceptualised as an authentic local identity as well as a conduit to communicate this identity. Indeed, although Jersey is very much part of the contemporary, global world of the continued movement of people, goods and information (Johnson 2008: 239), in recent years macro-level ideologies advocating the foregrounding of Jèrriais as social capital in the explicit indexing of heritage and tradition, have become pivotal to their niche marketing strategies. Thus, the Island’s brand image has been commodified, marketed and sold to an external and internal audience based on a language that is portrayed as a viable, authentic trope of island life.

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There are, of course, issues with this. Johnson, for example, highlights how the Fête Nouormande, the annual celebration of collective island heritage and culture based on the notion of a strong, Norman legacy, uses ballads sung in Jèrriais to evoke and reinforce associative references. Yet in line with my earlier discussion of audience design, the Fête is more visually entertaining than necessarily factually accurate, appealing in particular, therefore, to spectators such as tourists. The use of a particular dress code, for example, is simply a reinvented representation of the historical context (ibid.: 56–59), often based on appealing, if reductionist, portrayals that are intended to capture the audience’s attention rather than offer a bona fide depiction of the era in question, as I discuss in more detail below.

Language in the Linguistic Landscape The argument regarding language revitalisation initiatives on the Island highlights the interplay of top-down and bottom-up ideologies and attitudes. This is also apparent in the use of Jèrriais within the Island’s linguistic landscape. Landry and Bourhis’ seminal study on ethnolinguistic vitality and signage in Canada comments that: The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration. The linguistic landscape of a territory can serve two basic functions: an informational function and a symbolic function. (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 25)6

Moriarty articulates the linguistic landscape as ‘a symbolically constructed social space’ where ideologies regarding the functions and values of different languages or varieties of language can be present, debated, indexed and performed as part of the ecology of language (2012: 74; see also Hult 2009). In multilingual societies, the informative power and status function of language is apparent when signs on shops, cafes, etc. not only display information in a particular language but in doing so, also inform the reader of the language to be employed within the establishment (Cenoz and Gorter 2006: 78). Moreover, it is the official state, institutionally supported language that tends

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to be more prominent than other languages in place names and commercial signs in particular, which in sociolinguistic terms may influence viewers’ attitudes regarding its perceived higher status, and as a consequence, its use (ibid.: 2006: 67–68). When active institutional policies promote the use of other languages in the linguistic landscape, such as is the case of Galician in Galicia (Beswick 2007), the ultimate intention is often pragmatic, that is, to reverse language shift. However, embedded within this is an important symbolic rationale, since the enhancement of a language’s visibility and prominence in the linguistic landscape can, in turn, contribute to a group’s positive social identity (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 27), which may then encourage more people to use the language in their everyday lives. On Jersey, the names of districts and places are mostly of French or Norman French origin, such as La Corbiere, Le Dicq, L’Etacq (Lempriere 1985: 52; 88), St. Ouen, St. Brelade, etc., thus reflecting the historical predominance of these languages particularly in rural and semi-rural areas. Road and street names are also generally in French although English tends to prevail in St. Helier, reflecting to a large extent what Jones explains were the nineteenth-century attempts to adopt a British culture and way of life through the language (2015: 29–30). Until recently, most official signage on the Island such as road signs, parking information, etc. was solely in English, although other public informational signage such as school names and tourist sites tended to be in both English and French, as indeed were many of the names of the States’ own buildings in St. Helier: States Assembly/Assemblée des Etats; States Chamber/Chambres des États. However, the States are now making substantial efforts to expand the visibility of Jèrriais. Following the Jèrriais Plan 2017–2019, the government’s scheme ‘to provide greater prominence to the language’7 the year 2019 became the International Year of Indigenous Languages on the Island and calls to include Jèrriais alongside English on public signage, etc. were quickly followed by initiatives that also appear to considerably enhance its official status.8 Following on from earlier steps to incorporate the language in the public sphere, such as the renaming of certain streets in the capital, the addition of welcome signs at the ports, the inclusion of Jèrriais on local stamps and banknotes etc., the recent guidelines published by the States outlines its commitment to make the inclusion of the language mandatory in its own endeavours and to encourage the same

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behaviour in non-governmental, public sector bodies and institutions. To this end, all official stationary, printed materials and certain governmental signage will henceforth either be written in both English and Jèrriais or will include the English and Jèrriais logos (States of Jersey 2019: 3).9 Perhaps as a rejoinder to the potentially negative effects of local portrayals of Jèrriais and Norman heritage as emblematic but largely outmoded tropes superfluous to self-identification strategies, similar to those I mentioned above, the States’ formal report outlining this guidance places an emphasis once again on the pressing need for the Island to rekindle a homogeneous, idiosyncratic identity based on heritage, culture and tradition: The Government of Jersey wishes to increase the awareness and visibility of Jèrriais as a language – aiming to promote a positive image of Jèrriais as an integral part of Jersey’s heritage, and fostering a sense of pride on our unique culture. (ibid.: 2)

Although his comments were made before the new guidelines were published, Hopkins cites the main justification for the use of Jèrriais in official signage as that of promoting and disseminating a particular, monoethnic interpretation of Jersey’s cultural heritage and perceived distinctiveness (2016: 14). Furthermore, the States’ assertion regarding the enhancement of Jèrriais’ visibility within their ‘corporate identity’ is an example of a rather clever branding activity. Official marketing materials will be produced in Jèrriais as well as in English to visually ‘promote Jèrriais events, cultural anniversaries and Jèrriais language campaigns’, thus adding an exotic motif to the Island’s international image and reputation, which once again reinforces the value of the language, its historical and cultural tropes to the tourism industry and in turn, to the Island’s economy, in line with Cenoz and Gorter’s observations (2006, 2009) regarding the value of language in the linguistic landscape. Jèrriais then, becomes both social and economic capital, and offsetting the use of Jèrriais with English reinforces an image of the Island as an idyll that embraces its Jèrriais heritage but is nonetheless highly accessible to an international audience.10

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Hopkins has also commented that previous revitalisation attempts on the Island were patently not inspired by speakers’ concerted efforts to establish their linguistic rights, as is the case with other linguistic minorities such as the Catalans in Spain and the Welsh for example (2016: 16). In these latest guidelines, an institutional desire to disseminate knowledge of Jèrriais is apparent, encapsulated as the aim to ‘aspire to more people understanding the language’. However, despite these guidelines and the undertakings of various other bodies to promote language learning and language visibility we saw above, the vitality of the Jèrriais ethnolinguistic group on Jersey is still extremely precarious. Similar policies in other multilingual contexts such as the Basque Region (Cenoz and Gorter 2009) and Galicia in Spain (Beswick 2007) have had some success, albeit tentative, in reversing the overall decline in speaker numbers, but this has taken some decades to achieve and it is doubtful at this stage of the process on Jersey that language revitalisation efforts are sufficiently embedded to encourage more people to learn and use it on a regular basis. Once again, what is perhaps more realistic in the short term is the enrichment of its status, its role as an identity signifier of the local ingroup, as well as its usefulness to the tourist industry as a token of ‘local’, differentiated, cultural heritage.

Identities of Belonging: Being a Local In the previous section, I discussed the significant upsurge in interest in the role of heritage and language in institutional ideologies, marketing and branding initiatives that endorse them as fundamental core values of an authentic Jersey identity. However, the ways in heritage in particular is portrayed may be subject to questioning by the very people it purports to represent. Thus, micro-level attitudes may be influenced to some degree by macro considerations, but as Tunbridge and Ashworth (1996) claim in their discussion of ‘dissonant heritage’, disparities surrounding incompatible articulations of such heritage are inevitable, such as when contemporary users have to face conflictual and difficult periods of their past or, as I discuss further later on, when such articulations fail to take multilingual and multicultural diversity into consideration.

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Twentieth-century official discourse characterised a ‘good Jersey citizen’ by maintaining the premise that inhabitants should assume a self-conscious (Leutzsch 2014: 174), communal and visible identification strategy by adopting and emphasising relevant tropes (customs, language, etc.) to ally themselves with Britain as a ‘micro-state’ (Sanders 2005: xv), at the same time as they embraced tropes such as an independent streak and self-determination, emblematical of a primordial Norman heritage (see, for example, Monteil 2005: 236; 252; Le Caudey 1999: 10). Yet just as migrants do not necessarily locate themselves according to national or even ethnic taxonomies (Glick Schiller et al. 2011: 405), as we saw earlier, the identities of other groups are also multidimensional and individuals may weave a complex multiplicity of self-identification strategies and ties across and between their social networks and communities of practice. However, what is key once again is that individuals may still rely on communal tropes as a way of consciously reinforcing their sense of self and belonging in opposition to that of those outside the group. The arrival of wealthy British retirees in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had profoundly altered the social, cultural, linguistic and ideological urban landscape, but it was the German Occupation that provoked outpourings of British national fervour on the Island, such as the flying of the Union Jack at the beginning of the war as a visual expression of identity. Its subsequent lowering and the raising of the Nazi swastika, followed by its reinstatement and the tearing down of the Nazi emblem after liberation, were extremely symbolic acts, one of subjugation and the other of emancipation, linked to highly stylised connections with the dominant, overarching British community, as Hillsdon reports: Tuesday, 8th May 1945. Truly this is the greatest day of our lives for most of us in these islands […] all put their Union Jacks up and other flags of the Allies. Anyone who has not had the experience that we have had under occupation cannot realize what it meant to hoist our beloved flag once again. For five years we have had our patriotism suppressed […] (The British troops) were, in a word, men of our own blood and king […]. (2004: 153; 158)

As I explored in Chapter 4, the Occupation has become a focal point of post-war, top-down efforts to reposition the Island’s authentic

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portrayal by encapsulating and foregrounding the era as a shared and above all, unique experience that embodies a sense of collective memory within the notion of an island identity. In doing so, these initiatives address the legacy of the Island’s recent past through the retelling of stories and events in accessible formats to ensure that this significant period is not relegated to a terse mention in a history textbook. For example, the Jersey Evening Post, the foremost print media outlet on the Island, often functions as a discursive space about the Occupation, where those with social, cultural and symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1992) may dominate in articles and editorials, but where other views and opinions can be voiced and heard (Heller 2010; Milani and Johnson 2010: 5–6) through posts about readers’ memories and anecdotes about life under the Occupation. Moreover, my participants talk frequently about the ‘Jersey tradition’ of families searching for Occupation registration cards and other documentation in the Jersey Heritage Museum and Archives, which offer an insight into their relatives’ histories and thus validate remembered and retold stories of wartime experiences.11 Irrespective of whether wartime stories have been repackaged, rebranded and refocused and the extent to which individual’s deliberations and attitudes are influenced by macro-level ideologies, recollections of the time of the Occupation from my own fieldwork demonstrate that memories do indeed often underpin micro-level, reified self-representations of symbolic, communal island identity and belonging. Importantly, in line with my earlier discussion of socio-psychological boundaries, they also highlight how this agency often underlines how membership of a communal group of Islanders allows individuals to mentally position others outside the group based on whether they or their family members experienced or did not experience the Occupation. For example, during group discussions and in observed informal conversations, older participants very often selectively categorised themselves and their family members as ‘Local Islanders’ and self-identify as belonging to an ingroup with epithets akin to that of being ‘Jerseyfolk’, with one criterion articulated as first- or second-hand involvement with the Occupation, worn as a badge of honour, a way of defining an important trope of communal, authentic island identity:

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P1: My parents were proud of being an island.proud of being Jerseyfolk […] err.I guess they felt detached from what was going on elsewhere.they said they were all in it together and the experience marked them all […] the invasion hit them all hard// (DDLI) P2: Yeah.sometimes my grandchildren moan about school trips to war monuments […] but (the Occupation) was a huge part of our history. of who we are as local islanders […] that’s why it’s remembered.relived almost.the media.schools.err everywhere really// (CCLI) P3: That’s why I say other people can live and work here.but they are not locals.they have no family history here.no idea what the Occupation means to us// (KKLI)

Interestingly however, micro-level ideologies of authenticity rarely referenced Norman heritage. Identification with such an ethnic allegiance appeared to be more a feature of the top-down institutional branding exercises we saw above than of local, collective imaginings and avowed mental representations of what it means to be a ‘true, local islander’. It would appear, for example, that for at least some local people, the portrayal of an imagined community of Norman French speakers by the Fête Nouormande may be problematic. In line with successful heritage events worldwide, the Fête requires Jersey’s residents to want to become involved or at least to recognise its nation branding value. Yet my own research reinforces the notion that younger local people in particular seemed to consider Jèrriais to be ‘a quaint symbol of Jersey’s past’ (Riddell 2007: 14) and exercised a degree of reflexivity and agency in rejecting its relevance to their own self-identification as Local Islanders. Thus, Jérriais no longer carries the cachet of being exotic, of offering a glamorous association with France, even when compared to what speakers may have articulated as the relative banality of English spoken with an accent familiar to that of Southern British English. The following quote, whilst extremely candid, is nonetheless representative of many of the comments made about Jérriais, particularly by participants under the age of forty: P: Nah.Jersey French.it’s dead.not relevant to us// I: Tell me about its associations to the history of local islanders// P: We’re told it’s part of our heritage.but.well.what use is it […] English. that’s our language.we sound like everyone else on the mainland //(JJLI)

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Strong historical ties to France and in particular to Normandy are still in evidence in the many French and Jèrriais surnames found on Jersey, such as Le Sueur, Coutanche, de Carteret, Syvret, de la Haye, Le Herissier, Le Cornu, etc. (Ford 1995: 5), although some were brought over by Breton and other French agricultural workers in the nineteenth century rather than being the name of a long-standing local family (Lempriere 1985: 54). Emigrants from Jersey who went to English-speaking nations, discussed briefly in Chapter 4, often modified such surnames to better suit the English phonetic system, hence Le Caudey became Cody and Langlois became English (ibid.: 69). Typically, on Jersey itself many French names have been retained but have also acquired an English pronunciation. As my data attest, when this practice was reflected on, certain participants questioned the origin of their surnames in particular, but end up rejecting the French/Jèrriais pronunciation: I: What about your surname// P: Well I guess I should pay attention to the pronunciation but I have always been a Syvret [sɪvret] [pause] what would a French person say// I: Most likely Syvret [sivʁɛ]// P: Ha/well that just sounds odd// (MMLI)

This practice of Anglicisation, superimposing the English phonetic system on such surnames, is commonly heard (see Hillsdon 2004: 152 for comparisons) and is a well-research phenomenon found in and explained by, theories of language contact, borrowing and transference (see in particular Thomason and Kaufman 1988). Place names in French or Jèrriais rarely retain the original phonology, as the following French examples demonstrate: I: So.what do you do in your lunch hour// P1: we go down Voisins [vɔizɪnz] most days// P2: yeah.I like Voisins [vɔizɪnz].easy to get to// I: do you mean Voisins [vwa.zɛ]̃ // (laughter all round) P1: no-one calls it that.I ain’t French […] I: what about the place on the far west of the Island with the surf beach// P1: you mean St. Ouen [seɪnwʌn]// (FFLI)

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I: is it not St. Ouen [sɛt̃ wɛ]̃  [...] or something like that// P2: nah.that sounds naff//12 (AALI)

Other participants who reflected on this practice and recognised the etymology of such place names and surnames rejected the French phonology even though they claimed to often hear it in the spoken media, mostly articulated by politicians and newscasters. Some thought that these were Jèrriais words, and considered this to be an institutional, ideological attempt to establish a status-enhancing, hierarchical societal position of Jèrriais as a core value of island heritage. So it appears that the Norman legacy is at most an antediluvian trope: my data reinforce the premise that for some participants at least, the idea of a unifying Norman legacy is often not embedded within their own ­self-conceptualisations as Local Islanders. Representations of Jersey as  a predominantly English-speaking island emphasise of course, the Island’s relationship with mainland Britain. Institutional legislation thus establishes the hierarchical, societal status of L1 English speakers as well as of non-L1 English speakers such as migrants (see, for example, Nohl et al. 2006), often ascribing a variety of indexical values such as an ‘authentic language’ or ‘authentic speaker’ (Hornsby 2019: 393). At the micro-level, participants of my research who self-identify as Local Islanders also articulate the use of English as a speaker’s first language as at least one significant and authentic core value of local island identity. In doing so, they underline their own credentials for authentic ingroup membership in contrast to others on the Island, who, through a process of othering, they often categorise as an outgroup in this way through epithets such as ‘immigrants’, ‘immigrant visitors,’ ‘Non-Islanders,’ ‘non-English speakers’, ‘foreign language speakers’ or, in line with Hornsby’s research on minority languages (ibid.: 393–403), ‘new English speakers’ and ‘English learners’ who are often seen to fail to reach a level of ‘authentic speakerhood’ in English. Of course, whilst these categorisations and the stance adopted take no account of the multicultural and multilingual complexities of Jersey, from a socio-psychological perspective the important point is that they exist in the minds of speakers as a way of delineating an interface between people who on the one hand share membership and on the other, do not. Based on these assertions then, the authentic Islander would appear to be framed at least

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partially by reference to their own categorisation as an authentic first language speaker of English. However, the issue is inevitably more complex, as other epithets categorising the outgroup appear to indicate. As a corollary to the native English speaker example, and in line with Andreouli and Howarth (2012), we could perhaps expect that mainland British individuals who have migrated to Jersey in the past few decades feel very much at home among a predominantly English-speaking society. Yet being from mainland Britain and a first language English speaker does not imply automatic acceptance by the Local Islanders into this ingroup of local English speakers. I observed, for example, that even recent retirees to the Island are labelled ‘residents’ by some of my Island gatekeepers, a term with long-standing and somewhat satirical connotations linked to the arrival of the retired British gentry I discussed earlier in this chapter. A few comments even echoed those of Le Dain, himself a local, as he pejoratively describes even recent arrivals from mainland Britain as ‘incomers who do not have to work but are here to evade tax and to enjoy the other advantages Jersey has to offer’ (1997: 93). Other participants placed more of an emphasis on how English speakers living on the Island for many years were not necessarily accepted as a Local Islander in their own conceptualisations of ingroup/outgroup belonging: P: Well.it isn’t always down to time I guess.I know of plenty of British people who have been here for many.many years.over twenty sometimes. but they are never referred to as locals […] yes they speak English.yes we’re part of the same British nation.but a real local knows what it is like to be from a small island// (OOLI)

In group discussions with individuals originally from the mainland, local participants referred to the English language as an important marker of belonging, but they also regularly referred to generational lineage, based however, on a common, island ancestry rather than a Norman one: P: Indigenous people can trace their island ancestry for at least three.four generations in my opinion […] oh.and yes they must speak English// (BBLI)

Two middle-aged male participants, one Jersey born and the other born on the British mainland, engaged in a somewhat protracted and at

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times, heated debate about belonging and acceptance during my observational research: P1: You simply have to be a part of the Island to be able to call yourself a local.an Islander// (EELI) P2: What do you mean.I have been here for over thirty years.I feel like this is home.I have a house here and want to stay// (AABIM) P1: No not just that.a house is irrelevant [xxx] so is residency/(it) doesn’t matter// (EELI) P2: So what do we do// (AABIM) P1: You have to be accepted.by us […] it just happens.one day we feel like you belong […] dunno really I guess we just get to like.accept you more// (EELI)

From a socio-psychological perspective, AABIM may well have felt that he was being conceptualised as part of an outgroup across a constructed social boundary that highlights his difference to an idealised, ingroup island identity, based on somewhat primordial, local heritage and customs. What EELI implied is that such boundaries cannot be traversed if members of the ingroup do not feel disposed to grant access. Such ideologies of belonging echo comments on the Sociétè Jersiaise website regarding two language officers: Tony was born at Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, over sixty years ago! He thinks he may now be considered an honorary Jerseyman. Colin was born in Jersey, in Saint Helier! His father came from London so he is not exactly a true Jerseyman, but good enough to be a Jèrriais teacher in Jersey’s schools and adult evening classes.13

To an extent, these responses could potentially be construed as ingroup humorous anecdotes. Nonetheless, they also highlight stereotypical, ascribed and ideological representations of collective identity similar to those discussed earlier. Here then, island identity is based not only on one’s first language, but also on place of birth as well as familial heritage, small island experience etc., thus creating even more barriers to membership and in line with Bucholtz and Hall’s (2010) ‘the social positioning of self and other’. Such narratives are often disseminated

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via accessible, mainstream channels of communication and may translate into micro-level beliefs and judgements, attitudes and ultimately, behaviour, including stancetaking, towards those not considered part of this ingroup (see for example, Kircher 2016; Bohner 2001; Tajfel and Turner 1986). Thus, in my fieldwork  data example above, EELI used the clichéd and often overused trope of ‘Islander’ like that of ‘local’ to demarcate someone he for one, perceived able to legitimately claim to be from Jersey. Moreover, in line with earlier reflections (Olwig 2007a: 262; Le Feuvre 2005: 32), even some of the younger participants viewed this as a way of differentiating their local, islanded self-identities from an overarching one associated with being British: P: I have always lived here.been an Islander […] I dunno. being from an island makes us different I suppose.yes British yes English.but not entirely// (JJLI)

Later, this particular participant attempted to excuse his comments by proclaiming that his attitude is ‘just the Jersey way’, but in doing so he once again demarcated the boundary between his ingroup of fellow Islanders and ‘all the other nationalities’, who for him, constitute a generic outgroup: P: […] we’re kinda cosmopolitan of course.we get on well with the mainland Brits.the French.with all the other nationalities here too […] it’s just the Jersey way.we feel.we are different// (JJLI)

Indeed, other younger participants of my fieldwork referenced the multicultural infrastructure of the Island as important to their sense of belonging and identity, and their comments and attitudes are considered in more detail in Chapter 6.

Identities of Belonging: Being a Migrant, Becoming a Local This manifestation of reductionist but seemingly pivotal features to demarcate the boundary between Non-Islander outgroups and a Local Islander ingroup helps to maintain an ideology of distinctiveness and ingroup

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belonging, in line with Barth (1969, 1994), as well as that of othering and outgroup exclusion. In doing so, the reification of an imagined community based on such tropes also serves to reinforce negatively viewed shared social characteristics of other groups (Garrett 2010: 32) and in turn, may isolate and alienate them. We have seen, for example, that institutional legislation regarding employment, housing rights and allocation, as well as residency rights, shore up the ideology of looking after the interests of the nation and its local population, and by being contingent once again on factors such as a candidate’s place of birth, places restrictions on who can migrate to the Island on a permanent basis. Access to channels of discourse such as the print media often reveals that this ‘local’/‘immigrant’ dichotomy is both controversial and highly complex. The Jersey Evening Post, for example, has often published articles about the escalating growth of the Island population, the most vehemently discussed issue to this day on Jersey. For the most part, these articles present an objective and unbiased perspective of the bald facts and figures. However, other media representations of and comments about the plight of disadvantaged migrants play on historical tropes and evoke a contested and negative image of the Island as a constant space of refuge (Baker et al. 2008). Indeed, over the past few years some editorial content in JEP as well as in various independent publications, has  fuelled a vociferous public outcry from a small group of readers regarding what has often been labelled the insidious rise in immigration, akin to a ‘they come here, they take our jobs’ attitude in line with what is often termed the lump of labour fallacy (Boleat 2015: 53), as the population total edged towards and then above the 100,000 mark. Indeed, certain communications to the Letters to the Editor Section of JEP have assiduously tracked this increase, with comments ranging from realistic concerns to emotionally driven diatribe and even jingoistic invectives that simply serve to underline beliefs and attitudes towards migrants held by some Islanders, even if they are in a minority. For example, after the 2011 Census findings were revealed, and under the heading ‘Population Surge Is Fuelling Housing Demand’, one reader wrote: We have recently found out that the population of Jersey has risen to 98,000. Surprise, surprise! Given that there is a time lag before those immigrants bear children, bring in their mothers, aunts and distant

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relatives etc. it is highly probable that the result figure will be well in excess of 100,000. Much as though we welcome this cultural vibrant melange [….] is currently fuelling the demand for housing […]. (JEP 17/12/11:11)

By 2015, official estimates showed that the Island’s population had indeed risen to over 100,000, provoking a further flurry of letters. However, unlike certain journalistic articles such as the succinctly titled ‘100,800 - That’s How Many People Now Live In Jersey’ (JEP 24/06/15), much correspondence still fails to consider legitimate and eminently practical concerns about balancing the availability of affordable housing with the economic necessity on Jersey for immigrant workers. Of course, to claim such tirades are linked to the notions of islandness I explored earlier is not entirely justified. However, they do reveal somewhat biased attitudes towards certain migrant groups at least, which are entrenched in stereotypical perceptions about social and cultural conventions and behaviour. My own research on the Portuguese-speaking migrant population in particular also demonstrates that the presence of certain economic migrants on Jersey may sometimes be articulated in a ‘problematic’ way within the local, Islander community, in line with earlier research in Bournemouth (Beswick and Pozo-Gutiérrez 2010: 57). One gatekeeper recalled a series of incidents in the former Jersey branch of Safeway, located some 5 miles from St. Helier in St. Brelade. The supermarket stocked the best range of Portuguese foodstuffs, beers and wines outside the Madeiran Quarter of St. Helier and was extremely popular even though few Portuguese lived in the vicinity and had to travel there, often by bus: P: Well.the problems began when local customers.English speakers.started to complain about Portuguese speakers blocking the aisles to look at the produce […] crowding stopped them getting their trolleys around.so they complained that it was their shop.the Portuguese had St Helier.and the supermarket listened and got rid of the products// (PPLI)

Here, the frame of reference employed to demarcate identity and membership of the local ingroup once again used ethnicity and language, and in doing so, emphasised the othering of the outgroup. The socioeconomic and sociocultural activities of the Portuguese witnessed within the physical space of the supermarket were articulated as problematic and divergent,

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reflected as such in the attitudes of the locals, the ‘English speakers’ of the citation. Indeed, their allegiance to the supermarket as a perceptual space of belonging was highlighted in the way they claimed ownership of the shop and its products. The stance taken here highlights then, how social identity and ingroup/outgroup designation may be rooted in language choices (Ochs 1993: 288; see also Bassiouney 2012). For the Local Islanders, St. Helier is the bounded space of daily practice for these ‘Portuguese speakers’, where they can enact their ‘otherness’, and crossing into the English speakers’ local space is seen as unacceptable. Such negative micro-level attitudes and encounters are in a minority of course, nor are they consistent with recent institutional, ­macro-level portrayals of the relationship between Madeira and Jersey. Over the past two decades, the local authorities have become more aware of and responsive to the settlement of Portuguese speakers on Jersey and have extended help and support to them through all facets of community service. In May 1998, a Memorandum of Understanding and Friendship was signed by the Bailiff of Jersey and President of the States’ Assembly, Sir Philip Bailhache, and the President of Madeira, Dr. Alberto João Cardoso Gonçalves Jardim. Known as the Jersey-Madeira Friendship Agreement, it marked one of the first times that the presence of a ‘substantial Madeiran community’ on the Island had been formally and consistently recognised in official, public domain documentation. Interestingly, it focused on the close links and co-operation between the two communities as mutually, economically and socially advantageous, and it emphasised the collaborative nature of attempts to ‘promote mutual respect for the different cultural traditions of the two islands and their peoples’.14 The media response was to focus on emblematic, shared, favourable if somewhat idyllic representations based on their island configuration, Islander identities, and parallel histories linked to the sea: Two islands and two maritime nations […] In some ways, Madeira is a larger, more exuberantly landscaped version of Jersey while Jersey offers Madeirans much of what they enjoy about life as an island people […]. (Hanning 1998: 4–5)

The general portrayal of the rationale for Madeiran migrants on Jersey at least is thus articulated at the macro-level as a positive phenomenon

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for the Island and the prejudiced type of response at the ­micro-leve l outlined above in the supermarket encounter, is uncommon in my data. However, older, local participants in particular often articulated strongly-held beliefs about the status of economic migrants and their non-membership of an island dynamic: P: look.we are a small island.we can only take so many needy people.and then only temporarily […] yes we have a reputation for this type of thing. but they shouldn’t expect to stay forever […] sorry but they don’t belong here// (DDLI)

In a later discussion, this participant’s friend (OOLI) admitted that part of the issue was to do with competencies—or rather, a lack of them— in English. Thus, these participants once again referenced language as an indexical trope of local identity and belonging. In my earlier publication on the relationship between language, ideology and economic participation in transnational workspaces within the Knowledge Economy, (Beswick 2013) I found that overriding stakeholder ideologies and language policies determine that speaking and comprehension skills in the status language of English are core requirements of both full-time and seasonal job vacancies, but that such requirements regarding competency levels are not often enshrined in company legislation. Employers also encouraged individuals to use English as a lingua franca in situated, multilingual interactions; in the construction industry, this is seen for health and safety reasons as an instrumental necessity: P: we think it’s safer to deal with you know.people who properly speak English […] simply because on building sites where there is a Polish (xx) Portuguese element.instructions initially come out in English.be it verbal or written.same in the warehouse.and to send someone who doesn’t speak or understand any English onto a building site or into a warehouse we think is probably not ideal// (QQLI)

The Islander owner of a local café also highlighted in eminently practical terms the significance of English language skills for his business:

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P: Well.I will say that if I have the choice.I will err.will go for a native English speaker.a local if possible.if not.someone from the mainland […] failing that.a Pole.they speak good English// I: Can you explain why this is necessary// P: Local people get tired of talking to someone with poor English […] it puts them off going somewhere and I don’t want that// (NNLI)

My observational data suggested that this type of scenario may engender a somewhat asymmetric power relationship between, on the one hand, English L1 speakers and Migrant Islanders with good linguistic and communicative competencies in English as their second language, and on the other, those Migrant Islanders whose English second language skills are minimal at best. Although Local Islander participants are often sympathetic to the situation of economic migrants and their families irrespective of their ethnicity, with many recognising their valuable contribution to the Island’s economy, they often criticised those who have been on Jersey for many years and have not acquired, linguistic and communicative competencies in English. Some commented further that outside the workspace, the use of minority languages such as Portuguese and Polish in communal spaces such as bars, cafes, shops and the street indexed an older speaker in particular as an ‘immigrant’. Once again then, Language thus becomes a powerful tool with which to highlight group or individual ‘otherness’, the ‘they’ of the citation: P: You know.I hear Portuguese everywhere in St Helier.I guess they can use it if they speak English if needed.but it marks them as foreigners […] the tourists get really confused// (DDLI)

Yet inevitably, the situation is rather more complex. Although English language competencies are considered to be pivotal to some form of social acceptance, we saw earlier that even non-English L1 speakers who develop good linguistic and communicative competencies may find that they are othered on the basis of being ‘English learners’ who have not attained a level of authentic speakerhood. Furthermore, English L1 speakers born outside the Island may still be regarded as peripheral to, but not completely part of, the Island ingroup. Even though

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there seems to be an acceptable middle space defined by an individual’s English language knowledge, place of birth and familial heritage also seem to be important in determining whether membership of the Local Islander ingroup is recognised. The following discussion between two Local Islanders and a taxi driver from England, who had lived on Jersey for eleven years, revealed the potential for inherent tensions. The role of time and social boundaries was also problematised, as in my earlier example, and once again it became clear that for these participants, acceptance into the ingroup implied a ‘de-othering’ of these tropes: P1: How can an immigrant expect to be treated like.be considered a local if they don’t even try to speak English// (HHLI) P2: Yeah.it’s a shame but how can they belong if they can’t communicate// (IILI) P1: I would say that the first step has to be trying to blend in.speak English// (HHLI) P3: So am I a local.my first language is English// (FFBIM) P2: Ha.no.not yet.but at least you have a head start// (IILI) P3: How long do I need to be here then […] how do I get to be called a local// (FFBIM) P1: As long as it takes for us to forgot (sic) where you came from// (HHLI)

The youngest participants in the category ‘Local Islander’ (LI) were all under 21 years of age when the fieldwork was carried out. On numerous occasions, they were privy to the discussions of Islander belonging by older respondents, and although they themselves were all born on Jersey to parents whose L1 is English and who can trace their family history at least three generations, they insisted that these criteria were largely peripheral to their own lives and as such, somewhat outmoded. More relevant appears to be the characterisation of an alternative local, ingroup identity based on social networks comprising friends, classmates and workmates and centred on shared interactions, experiences and beliefs: P1: being a local.well.may be simply to do with being here.living here. studying.working together.seeing things the same way.nothing to do with where your parents are from// (SSLI)

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P2: yeah me I relate to my friends.identify with them as locals […] and my parents.the man in the shop.anyone really who lives here.shares the same things really.like living on an island […] it doesn’t matter how long you have lived here I guess.where you’re from// (RRLI)

To an extent, these alternative perspectives of local identity contest earlier definitions of belonging insofar as they challenge the existence of symbolic boundaries between different groups based on what they saw as outmoded criteria and allow for a multitude of diverse influences and global interconnections, with language once again being foregrounded as key to ingroup identification and membership, as I explore further in the next chapter: P1: Our friends at school.we were the same man// (AALI) P2: Yeah.(we) speak the same.don’t (sic) matter where you come from.our language is what made us friends// (FFLI)

Chapter Summary My discussion in this chapter has centred on institutional representations of Jersey and Jersey island identity and the symbolic boundaries established by individuals between the ‘Local Islander’ and ­‘Non-Islander’. Often central to top-down institutional and media portrayals and interpretations of Jersey’s internal and external image are the commodification and dissemination of a multifaceted identity comprising locally bound, stereotypical epithets based on primordial characterisations of insularity and independence associated with language, place of birth and familial heritage. Despite their somewhat clichéd use, such epithets may be well entrenched within parts of Jersey society as shared knowledge, often functioning as a relevant and meaningful category for ingroup members, a way of indexing social acceptance and belonging even if they are not necessarily observable in situated communal behaviour. Ultimately, the ways in which such core values are expressed demonstrate the potential for social and cultural stereotyping even in contexts of ‘multiplicity’, and influence locally held attitudes, stances and ideologies towards immigrant

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populations. Furthermore, the diglossic relationships, pragmatic and symbolic roles of Jèrriais, French and English on Jersey highlight institutional and locally held language ideologies and their relevance too, to the articulation and practice of distinctive, Islander identification strategies. In this way, language often finds expression in intra- and inter-group interactions, highlighting how such groups interact across symbolic borders and how the local ingroup frames conceptualisations of ‘immigrant’, particularly in terms of linguistic visibility. In Chapter 6, I take this discussion forward by examining in detail one of the most significant diasporas on the Island, the Madeiran Portuguese.

Notes 1. Democratic rights became a reality in the USA with the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s. With the end of empire, by the late 1970s democratic doctrine spread from its Western European epicentre through to the Southern European states such as the former dictatorship of Portugal, and thence by the late 1980s to the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Although many former colonies were democratised by the mid-1960s, political upheaval in Africa and parts of Asia meant that it was often tenuous and ­short-lived, and at present it is by no means well established. However, with the expansion of its doctrine in the 1990s and 2000s, liberal democracy has also started to spread to significant parts of Latin America and the Middle East. 2. To an extent, these latter scenarios invoke McLaren’s notion of oppositional agency (1995), which Jensen (2011) in particular employs to critique what he sees as the binary nature of othering. 3. Bunting’s book (1995) has been somewhat criticised on Jersey and elsewhere, particularly for what are seen as inflammatory comments regarding the character of the local population. 4. See, for example, Grydehøj (2008), who explores heritage production in Shetland (Scotland), Åland (Finland) and Svalbard (Norway). 5. In Holmes’ research on Portuguese speakers in London, participants shared access to Portuguese and the global Lusophone cultural space even though they had different migratory trajectories (2017: 51).

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6. Although a relatively new area of research, the study of linguistic landscape has been extremely productive over the last few years: see in particular Gorter (2006), Shohamy and Gorter (2009), Jaworski and Thurlow (2010), Shohamy et al. (2010), Gorter et al. (2012). 7. See online at: https://www.gov.je/Government/PlanningPerformance/ Pa g e s / M i n i s t e r i a l D e c i s i o n s . a s p x ? s h o w r e p o r t = n o & d o cid=E165F853-C8C6-4C68-83CC-D2E12BE3A775 (accessed 24/09/19). 8. In this vein, see online at: https://www.itv.com/news/channel/201902-11/calls-for-jerriais-to-be-the-main-language-on-publicsigns/;  https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2019-02-12/jerriais-toappear-on-jersey-signs/ (accessed 23/09/19). 9. There are certain caveats however; for example, updates to signs will be made only when they need replacing and official website materials will not be translated to keep down the cost of the exercise; road signs, other complex information signage and social media platforms will remain solely in English in the interests of public safety. See States of Jersey (2019) ‘Guidance on the Use of Jèrriais by the Government of Jersey’, online at: https://statesassembly.gov.je/assemblyreports/2019/r.120-2019.pdf (accessed 19/11/19). 10. Interestingly, recent attempts by the St. Helier parish assembly to rename a street in the centre of the Madeiran Quarter after Funchal, Madeira’s capital, engendered a heated debate in the press (Fleury and Johnson 2013: 211). Local participants argued that using Portuguese officially this way would afford it a degree of status akin to that of Jèrriais, adding that whilst Jèrriais is an important identity marker, Portuguese has no historical significance to Jersey and therefore should not be promoted by official institutions. 11. See, for example, online at: https://www.jerseyheritage.org/places-tovisit/jersey-archive (accessed 29/11/18). 12. Voisins is a local department store in the centre of St. Helier. For a couple of my elderly participants, the pronunciation varies according to whether they are conversing in Jèrriais (but with a standard French pronunciation) or English (as above). 13. Tony Scott Warren and Colin Ireson, online at: http://www.jerriais.org. je/about.html (accessed 17/05/18).

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14. It would appear that over the past few years, collaboration between Jersey and Portugal, including Madeira, has increased substantially with the aim of strengthening primarily economic bilateral links. See online at: https://www.gov.je/Freedom%20of%20Information%20library/ID% 20FOI%20Jersey-Madeira%20Agreement%2020190322.pdf (accessed 15/10/19).

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Padilla, Amado. 1999. Psychology. In Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, ed. Joshua Fishman, 109–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Panayi, Panikos. 2014. An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism Since 1800. London: Routledge. Pantos, Andrew J., and Andrew W. Perkins. 2012. Measuring Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Foreign Accented Speech. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 32 (1): 3–20. Payn, P. 1844. A Week’s Visit to Jersey. Printed at British Press Office. Prior, Matthew T. 2011. “I’m Two Pieces Inside of Me”: Negotiating Belonging Through Narratives of Linguistic and Ethnic Hybridity. In Identity Formation in Globalizing Contexts: Language Learning in the New Millennium, ed. Christina Higgins, 27–48. Berlin: De Gruyter. Pérez-Milans, Miguel. 2016. Language and Identity in Linguistic Ethnography. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity, ed. Siân Preece, 83–97. New York: Routledge. Riddell, Adam. 2005. Living in Limbo: To What Extent Does a “Small Island Status” Inform a “Small Island Cultural Policy”? Unpublished MA thesis, University of Warwick. Riddell, Adam. 2007. Jersey: The Development of an Island Cultural Strategy. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 1 (1): 72–87. Sanders, Paul. 2005. The British Channel Islands Under German Occupation 1940–1945. Jersey: Jersey Heritage Trust/Sociétè Jersiaise. Schwalbe, Michael, Daphne Holden, and Douglas Schrock. 2000. Generic Processes in the Reproduction of Inequality: An Interactionist Analysis. Social Forces 79 (2): 419–452. Shohamy, Elana, and Durk Gorter (eds.). 2009. Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London: Routledge. Shohamy, Elana, Elieze Ben-Rafael, and Monica Barni (eds.). 2010. Linguistic Landscape in the City. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 2000. Linguistic Genocide in Education—Or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Smolicz, Jersey. 1981. Core Values and Cultural Identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 4 (1): 75–90; ibid. 1991. Language Core Values in a Multicultural Setting. International Review of Education 37 (1): 35–52. Smolicz, Jersey. 1997. In Search of a Multicultural Nation: The Case of Australia from an International Perspective. In Cultural Democracy and

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Ethnic Pluralism: Multicultural and Multilingual Policies in Education, ed. Richard J. Watts and Jerzy J. Smolicz, 52–76. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1985. The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives. History and Theory 24 (3): 247–272. States of Jersey. 2007. Framework for Developing the International Identity of Jersey. See online at: https://www.gov.je/Government/Pages/StatesReports. aspx?ReportID=329. Last accessed 22/05/18. States of Jersey. 2019. Guidance on the use of Jèrriais by the Government of Jersey. Online at https://statesassembly.gov.je/assemblyreports/2019/r.120-2019.pdf. Last accessed 19/11/19. States of Jersey Statistics Unit. 2012. Jersey Annual Social Survey. Online at https://www.gov.je/SiteCollectionDocuments/Government%20and%20 administration/R%20JASS2012%2020121204%20SU.pdf. Last accessed 30/11/19. Stead, John. 1809. A Picture of Jersey, or Stranger’s Companion Through That Island. London: Longman. Syvret, Marguerite. 2011. Balleine’s History of Jersey. Stroud: The History Press. Tajfel, Henri. 1978. Social Categorization, Social Identity and Social Comparison. In Differentiation Between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. Henri Tajfel, 61–76. London: Academic Press. Tajfel, Henri. 1981. Social Stereotypes and Social Groups. In Intergroup Behavior, ed. John C. Turner and Howard Giles, 144–167. Oxford: Blackwell. Tajfel, Henri, and John Turner. 1986. The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior. In Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. S. Wochel and W.G. Austin, 7–24. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Thomason, Sarah, and Terence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tunbridge, John E., and Gregory John Ashworth. 1996. Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Wagner, Wolfgang, Peter Holtz, and Yoshi Kashima. 2009. Construction and Deconstruction of Essence in Representing Social Groups: Identity Projects, Stereotyping, and Racism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 39 (3): 363–383. Ward Rutherford, John. 1976. Jersey. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. Watt, Dominic, and Carmen Llamas. 2017. Identifying Places: The Role of Borders. In Language and a Sense of Place: Studies in Language and

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Region, ed. Chris Montgomery and Emma Moore, 191–214. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Max. 1978. Ethnic Groups. In New Tribalisms: Main Trends of the Modern World, ed. Michael W. Hughey. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Williams, Glyn. 2005. Multimedia, Minority Languages and the New Economy. Noves SL. Revista De Sociolingüística, Winter. See online at: http://www.gencat.cat/llengua/noves/noves/hm05hivern/docs/williams.pdf. Last accessed 24/10/19. Woods, Anya. 2006. The Role of Language in Some Ethnic Churches in Melbourne. In Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion, ed. Tope Omoniyi and Joshua A. Fishman, 197–212. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

6 Contemporary Migrations: The Madeiran Portuguese

In the last chapter, we saw that preconceived, stereotypical categorisations centred on ethnicity, heritage and language and linked to notions of space and place reinforce macro-level portrayals and micro-level affirmations of Jersey and Jersey ‘local’ and ‘Islander’ identity. Particularly significant was how such characterisations influence attitudes and ideologies of othering, the establishment of symbolic boundaries of ingroup belonging and the use of labels such as ‘immigrant’, ‘migrant’ and ‘Non-Islander’. In order to explore how individuals engage with these emergent themes, I now consider one of the most significant migratory movements to Jersey over the past fifty years, that of the Madeiran Portuguese, using generational analysis as my key tool of enquiry. Throughout, I am particularly interested in how contributors’ ideologies of, and attitudes towards, migration, belonging, home, integration and return, intersect with their avowed self-portrayals and experiential identities, irrespective of whether they are based (or not) on situated social, cultural and linguistic practices. I begin with a brief examination of the concept of a h ­ omogeneous Portuguese national identity, the role of language in its reification and its relevance to the Madeiran diaspora, as a regional Portuguese group, on Jersey. Recent migratory trajectories from Madeira to Jersey are discussed © The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8_6

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through a pertinent selection of older participants’ autobiographical narratives, personal stories and testimonies in order to illustrate the sociopolitical and socioeconomic reasons for migration, its often cyclical nature as well as the relevance of the roots and routes proposition in the context of island-to-island movement. Central to this discussion, therefore, is the oft-cited theme of return migration; movement may be seen as a temporary but necessary interruption to older people’s lives, but younger individuals may consider their circumstances on Jersey as definitive. These differing perceptions have implications for belonging, settlement, social embeddedness and situated language use on Jersey. Ideologies of home become paramount to the underlying principles behind platforms of visible migrant presence within the spatially bordered, alternative community space of the Madeiran Quarter, as do the attitudes of and stances taken by people living outside this space in social interactions. To this end I also consider participants’ intergroup integrative linguistic and social practices within, and relationships with, the Island’s social networks. As we saw in Chapter 5, institutional epithets used to categorise individuals and index social acceptance across symbolic boundaries are largely based on primordial tropes. Nonetheless, they are explored in this chapter from the perspective of those often categorised as ‘immigrants’ or ‘Non-Islanders’ even when they were born on Jersey. Very often, language is a topos around which people talk about their lives, their experiences, their attitudes and their identities, and language use in intra- and inter-interactions of the youngest participants in particular, becomes the focus of the final part of this chapter, highlighting the presence of innovative linguistic repertoires employed as situated language practices to index group identity.

National and Regional Identity: Portugal and Madeira In Chapter 1, I explored the pivotal role of the sea in conceptualisations of islands and island identities. In historical discourse about Portugal’s emergence in the Middle Ages as a trailblazing, global maritime nation (Leutzsch 2014; Morier-Genoud and Cahen 2013; Birmingham 2013), the sea also plays a fundamental role in the conceptualisation of a Portuguese national identity. Overseas expansion and the colonisation of

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new lands offered adventure, exploration, derring-do and discovery for some (Sidaway and Power 2005: 528–529) as well as opportunities for many to escape the harsh realities of life in Portugal. Thus began the nation’s long-standing ‘tradition’ of migration and diaspora. In the twentieth century, Salazar’s Estado Novo dictatorship attempted to strengthen the perception of a Portuguese national character based on unification across its multicultural, multiracial and multispatial territories, foregrounding once again historical and imperial tropes and highlighting in particular a single linguistic identity. More recently, the global Portuguese-speaking diaspora has often been depicted as a modern-day, post-colonial continuation of this historical legacy (Ribeiro 2002), replacing ‘the former overseas colonies in the spatial (re)imagining of the Empire’ (Feldman-Bianco 2007: 44). Notwithstanding the strong, ideological connotations embedded within the term Lusophony,1 the common language came to serve as ‘a metaphor for unification’ in the same way that francophonie does in the French-speaking world (Vanspauwen 2013: 71) and to represent an ‘authentic’ identity of Portuguese-speaking diaspora, irrespective of the speaker’s provenance, culture, ethnicity or nationality (Lemos Martins 2004: 12; see also Pimenta et al. 2011): Language became the main symbol, resource and fetish in this reconstruction of identity, and the Portuguese state […] branded the term Lusophony to define a transnational community of Portuguese speakers. (Vale de Almeida 2008: 8)

Since entering the European Community in the 1980s, ideological articulations of Portugal’s national identity based on historical tropes of heritage and tradition, often termed Portugalidade, may well have been reworked into a Europeanised legacy, as Madureira claims: With its ‘specificity’ (its differance ) (sic) erased, Portugal’s colonizing project accrues to itself a European identity. Its uncommon colonial history is ultimately exchanged for a common historiographic currency. The different becomes the same, and the Portuguese ‘discoveries’ become part and parcel of an integral (or integrated) European ‘heritage’ (emphases in original). (Madureira 1995: 19–20)

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Nonetheless, reductionist tropes based on this Portugalidade have not been entirely subsumed from contemporary ideological articulations of national identity. Portugal has, for example, recently referred to its own legacy of discovery by commemorating its presidency of the EU with the slogan Capital da Europa para seis meses, Capital do Atlântico para sempre! [Capital of Europe for six months, Capital of the Atlantic for ever] (Sidaway and Power 2005: 548) and nation branding initiatives are well embedded in universally shared reductionist representations of national character (Nikitina 2016).2 Whilst it is tempting to dismiss such initiatives as formulaic underpinnings of the official rhetoric on national consciousness and ‘being Portuguese’, it is somewhat premature to treat this as merely tokenist, since as we have seen in our earlier discussions of national identity, for some individuals or groups such tropes may be extremely evocative, powerfully articulated and deeply ingrained in the psyche. Thus far, I have talked about the notion of an overarching, top-down Portuguese identity without considering the relevance of such tropes to Madeira and indeed, to what is predominantly a migrant presence connected to Madeira on Jersey. Indeed, in the literature, Portuguese identity and its characterisations are often treated as all-encompassing, fixed and invariable, with little written that deconstructs the macro, homogeneous portrayal of ‘being Portuguese’ into identifications based on locality or region. De Pina-Cabral’s early study of Portuguese regional identity (1989), for example, makes no mention of any of the Portuguese islands, and neither does Baganha’s later examination of global migratory trajectories (1999). Recent literature on Portuguese-speaking diaspora tends to differentiate between Portuguese and Brazilian, Angolan, Cabo Verde and even Azorean migrations, particularly to France, the USA and Canada (Da Silva 2015; Leal 2014; Sardinha 2011),3 but research on migration to the UK and Europe, in particular, often uses ‘Portuguese’ and Portugalidade as blanket terms (Marques and Góis 2013; Gonçalves 2012; Almeida 2010; Jelen 2007; Koven 2007; Klimt 2003, 2005, 2006; Neto et al. 2005; Noivo 2002). When migrants from Madeira are conceptualised as a separate group, any kind of sociocultural specificity regarding heritage or identity is seldom seen as pertinent to the central argument (Glaser 2012, 2013), or if it is, the focus tends to be on how communities enact and maintain regional ceremonies, such as feast days (Ferreira 2007).

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Yet if we acknowledge the claim in Chapter 1 that island populations possess, or at least perceive that they possess, what Weale terms a ‘sense of psychological distinctiveness and specific identity’ (1992: 81–82) based on spatial island location (Baldacchino 2007: 169), then we may suppose that representations of Madeira’s cultural specificity (Baldacchino 2006: 4) at least, will highlight this perceived islanded distinctiveness. As we saw earlier, tourism often offers an enlightening perspective of how islanded identities may be constructed and promoted as part of the collective psyche, albeit once again through the use of clichéd tropes, representations and stereotypes pervasive throughout the linguistic landscape. Over the past few decades, Madeira has developed a successful tourist industry, and unsurprisingly, ‘brand Madeira’ relies primarily on visual portrayals of the island’s lush landscapes, its biodiversity, its amenable climate, its traditions, its wine and its Madeira cake. Interestingly, however, branding exercises do not place significant emphasis on an idiosyncratic regional identification stemming from the Island’s spatial isolation from mainland Portugal, nor do they highlight its social and cultural characteristics based on the specificities of Madeiran heritage or indeed on its legacy as a significant global exporter of migrant labour within and beyond Europe’s borders.4 The intricacies behind why this should be so are beyond the remit of this book. Nonetheless, it is worth remembering that the unification of Portugal’s territories under the dictatorship was based on the ethos of a homogeneous national identity. Indeed, Portugal has only recently been able to overtly acknowledge and celebrate its social, cultural and regional diversity. Expo 98, the World Trade Fair held in Lisbon in 1998, was one of the first public platforms since the dictatorship where Madeira was showcased as a distinct, self-governing region of Portugal. Yet its island identity may be complex; the continuous and well-established economic migratory patterns away from the Island have forged long-standing connections and relationships with other countries as we see below, lessening the feeling of ‘spatial separateness’ (Baldacchino 2005: 273). So too is its relationship with mainland Portugal, and these factors may well impact on characterisations of local identity.

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In Chapter 4, we saw that migrants are often categorised by top-down institutions according to their origin. National identity designations such as ‘Portuguese’—and by extension, all Portuguese-speaking diaspora for example—are often treated in official discourse as collective, fixed and invariable, based on what Leutzsch terms ‘the authority of a shared past and future’ (2014: 177) embedded within an assumed sense of national consciousness, as I have outlined above. Yet for many of my first-generation participants on Jersey, alternative types of attachment based on regional affiliation to their conceptualisations of ‘home’ seemed to be more relevant than any expression of overarching, national affiliation. This appears to be in line with Leal’s research (2014) on multiple layers of migrant identities in relation to the commemorations of Portugal Day in Toronto, Canada, in which he considers Levitt’s proposal of transnational villagers simultaneously rooted in two worlds (2001, 2009), connecting specific localities that are summarised by Fitzgerald and Lambkin as long-distance localism (2008: 237). He concludes that what he terms the Azorean community in Toronto in particular manifest a long-distance regionalist attachment to this ‘home’ (Leal 2014: 213–214). In the present research, both in group discussions and in observable socio-psychological behaviour, participants often positioned Madeira as a literal as well as a figurative peripheral outpost of the nation: P: A Madeira fica afastada do continente.na realidade a Lisboa não tem nada a ver com a minha vida// (AA1GM) ‘Madeira is a long way from the mainland.in reality Lisbon has nothing to do with my life//’ P: O Portugal e a sua identidade nacional.é pá.não é a nossa identidade na ilha// (JJ1GM) ‘Portugal and its national identity.well.it’s not our island identity//’

As I discuss in more detail below, affiliations to an ‘actual place of lived experience and a metaphorical space of personal attachment and identification’ (Armbruster 2002: 20) reified through romanticised recollections, or reconstructed for specific reasons (Stock 2010: 24), may nurture a sense of inclusion across time and space that is articulated

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with little reference to the national. All first-generation, some 1.5 generation and some second-generation participants often articulated and displayed disaffection with the macro, umbrella portrayal of ‘being Portuguese’ or of belonging to a nationally defined Portuguese community. Instead, a collective sense of symbolic belonging within the participant’s social network on Jersey was often foregrounded through reference to a shared, regional identity—in the form of Madeiran—or even a local identity—in the form of towns and villages on Madeira: P: Somos portugueses sim.mas por acima de tudo somos madeirenses.[…] compartilhamos uma identidade local.somos todos de São Vicente// (HH1GM) ‘We are Portuguese yes.but above all we are Madeiran […] we share a local identity.we are all from São. Vicente//’ P: Muitos de nós pertecemos ao Curral (das Freiras).nos conhecemos bem (EE1GM) ‘Lots of us belong to Curral (das Freiras).we know each other well//’

Festivals such as o Dia de Portugal (‘Portugal Day’) and the Portuguese Food Fair on Jersey have generally enjoyed local institutional support. Although the role of the national in multispatial representations of an imagined ‘Portuguese’ diasporic community is clearly articulated, an emphasis is also placed on the inclusive nature of such events for those with connections to Madeiran and Mainland Portugal alike (see, for example, JEP 10/06/06 and 13/06/06). Moreover, contrary to Leal’s research (2014: 204–205), such celebrations have been extremely well attended, with older participants insisting that they provide an opportunity to enhance and reinforce familial emotional attachments and allegiances to Madeira, through what may be termed associative transnational practices, discussed in more detail below.5

Madeira to Jersey: Island-to-Island Migration Interesting data to emerge from my fieldwork on Jersey came from the personal testimonies about their own migration experiences of older, typically first-generation participants working in Jersey in the latter

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part of the twentieth century. Their narratives articulate these migrations as largely enforced, engendered by, and symptomatic of, the pervading socioeconomic climate on Madeira. The paternalist, conservative philosophical doctrine of the Estado Novo fostered draconian legislative measures, resulting in decades of social, political and economic hardship throughout Portugal (Beswick and Pozo-Gutiérrez 2010: 41–42). Worst affected were workers from the impoverished rural areas of mainland Portugal and from the Azores and Madeira, where the use of antiquated, agricultural methods, poor education standards and the lack of viable alternative employment opportunities were rife.6 Emigration offered escape, and attracted by the potential for better paid jobs and improved working conditions, many young men in particular left for the Caribbean, South America, the USA and South Africa (Ferreira 2007: 65–66; Glaser 2010: 66), either individually or in small groups (Beswick and Pozo-Gutiérrez 2010: 45). In accordance with well-established practices (Conway and Potter 2016: 2), in the late 1950s and early 1960s the first official seasonal workers were invited to take up work on Jersey by visiting recruitment delegations to Madeira (Hilmarsson-Dunn et al. 2010; Syvret 2011: 285–286). These delegations offered the migrants themselves positive portrayals as welcome visitors to the Island and reinforced the financial and social advantages of working on Jersey (International Finance Corporation 2009).7 Furthermore, Madeira offered a more dependable—and less expensive—source of largely unskilled and unqualified labour than the alternative groups of Spaniards and Italians to replace the Bretons, as the hotelier and managing director of a migrant trade organisation explains: P: The situation was proving very difficult […] it was a case of finding a reliable source of seasonal workers to replace the French and to be honest. they needed to be cheap// (LLLI) (Beswick 2013: 136)

With the rise of the package holiday, Madeira could also provide a reliable supply of trained, semi-skilled staff in the hospitality and service sectors, sourced by owners of Jersey establishments who visited the Island to recruit new people for the coming season. These were what the International Finance Corporation term ‘true’ migrants, genuinely

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mobile in their search for economic opportunities (2009: 8); however, perhaps more than for any other migrant group, this particular migratory trajectory also engendered the forceful, public dialectic regarding population control on Jersey I outlined in Chapter 5. Subsequent legislation regarding Non-Qualified employees prevented the majority of early migrants to Jersey from settling on the Island, but it had a more beneficial, if unforeseen, outcome. Older participants from Madeira remember the positive and uplifting stories about the working opportunities and superior standard of living on Jersey retold by returning migrant workers, which encouraged other Madeirans to make the same journey (Beswick 2013). Indeed, many found work through family contacts and other established social networks on the Island, as one middle-aged female participant explained: P: My family has been coming here since the ‘70 s […] there has always been a link.my dad already left the island in.‘65 to ’70.maybe ‘70 to ’75. he worked for 5 years […] my sister and her friends found me work// (GG1.5GM)

From the start of my ethnographic fieldwork, my participants themselves were able to establish which themes pertaining to their migrant trajectories, island encounters and settlement on Jersey were the most relevant to them. Psychological studies have demonstrated that between ten and thirty years of age is the period of one’s life from which individuals tend to recall a disproportionate number of autobiographical memories, termed the reminiscence bump (see, for example, Holmes and Conway 1999; Rubin et al. 1998). Typically, events remembered from this period—here, the act of migration itself—play a pivotal role in an individual’s conceptualisation of their self-identity, as well as in their attitudes and beliefs about the world (Conway et al. 2005). What is particularly significant in my ensuing discussion, however, is that whilst traditional boundaries of group identification may rely on largely homogeneous, essentialised, ascribed portrayals (Joseph 2016: 19) that constrain the identities that individuals inhabit (Blommaert 2005), nonetheless, the articulation of intrinsic and shared characteristics as a collective ‘thick, proto-ethnic identity’ (Baldacchino 2005: 248)

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may invoke a sense of place, of being from, and belonging to, a distant, remembered home. Thus, individuals may maintain similar identification markers as others of their generation and may also acknowledge membership of this ingroup by reference to shared experiences, etc., in their recollections of particular events (Holmes and Conway 1999). Few people are still around who can talk personally about life on Jersey at the time of the initial Madeiran economic migrations. Nonetheless, KK1GM and LL1GM, two elderly Portuguese-speaking participants who have lived there since the early 1960s, spent some considerable time regaling me with their own migration histories, which parallel what many participants articulate as ‘typical’ trajectories from Madeira to Jersey. Both remembered that when they were teenagers, flyers were often posted around Madeira announcing meetings about overseas work on Jersey. At one of these meetings, an English-speaking man described the opportunities on Jersey for agricultural and service sector work, the details of which were relayed to the crowd in Portuguese via a local interpreter, who they were told worked for an employment agency in Funchal. LL1GM’s main interest in going to Jersey was as an escape from his poor living conditions at home, with six younger siblings to support and a disabled father. KK1GM was struck by the offer of decent accommodation and by the fact that he could return to Madeira every year for up to three months to visit his family and his girlfriend. Importantly, both men were also excited by the prospect of an adventure, a chance to see the world and perhaps even return home with lots of money, and they recalled that many others felt the same way. They were told that they would be working with other Portuguese speakers, but that there would always be someone who would have rudimentary English in order to communicate with employers and with other locals they may come into contact with. Both boys waited until they turned eighteen to take up offers of employment on Jersey. Initially, they both worked on a farm, being housed with six other young labourers in a rudimentary converted shed on the owner’s land. Although they described it as cramped and noisy, with no running water and basic sanitation, they regarded the whole experience as an amusing escapade. KK1GM recalled the thrill of being away from home, the anticipation of new experiences. LL1GM added that as they worked

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ten hours a day around harvest time, not being able to speak English was simply not an issue, since they were too tired most evenings to do anything other than eat and sleep. On their day off, however, generally Sunday, they would hitch a lift on trucks taking migrants to one of the Catholic Churches in St. Helier. Although they did not understand Mass, being with what LL1GM termed os meus compatriotas, os meus companheiros ‘my fellow countrymen, my companions’ afforded them an opportunity to spend a few hours a week chatting and socialising in a shared social network. KK1GM added that as he picked up a few phrases in English from the Irish fruit pickers he met in the first few months, he started to act as an informal interpreter for his peer group, ordering beer and food as they wandered the harbour area and dealing with transactions and lifts. Sundays, however, offered the only opportunity for such outings, so the majority of wages were saved and sent back to their families in Madeira. After a few seasons, neither man wanted to return to Jersey; both missed their families and friends and found the picking and harvesting work back-breaking. As with some of the later migrants, KK1GM characterised their lives at this time as exilio ‘exile’, in line with my earlier conceptualisations. However, Madeira was still undergoing a severe economic crisis, so the two men felt they had little choice but to return to Jersey, and this time both found alternative employment in a hotel in St. Helier. With his albeit rudimentary English language skills, KK1GM was employed as a waiter but like many other Madeirans, LL1GM became part of the backroom staff, being employed as a porter. Again, lodgings were shared rooms in the hotel, but there was running water and food from the kitchens. The hours were long but certainly for KK1GM, not as tiring as farm labouring, and as his work put him in contact with tourists of many nationalities, he made a concerted effort to improve his English. He was able to spend some time exploring the town most mornings and started to feel more confident: P: Tinha a confiança para falar inglês fora do hotel.o que me ajudou bastante// (KK1GM) ‘I had the confidence to speak English outside the hotel.which helped me a lot’//

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After a couple of years, he was promoted to head waiter and given separate accommodation, which allowed him to marry his Madeiran girlfriend and take her over to Jersey where she too found work, in the hotel kitchens. LL1GM left his job as porter because of severe back problems. He also admitted that he found it difficult to converse with anyone other than other Madeiran backroom staff, having learnt hardly any English. The frustration he felt at not having the confidence to be able to leave the confines of the hotel on his own to carry out simply daily routines exacerbated his feelings of isolation, so he returned to Madeira, where he too got married and found work in a local hotel. In line with recent perspectives of such returns as ‘failed migrations’ (Conway and Potter 2016: 2–4; 7), LL1GM articulated his initial time on Jersey as a futile attempt to achieve a decent standard of living, but returned there once again when his wife’s immediate family all found hospitality and service sector work on the Island. This was a pivotal moment for him. Unwilling to go back to fulltime portering, he took part-time employment and persuaded the hotel to let him to do bar work in his free time. Within six months, he had learned enough English to be able to work full-time in the bar, a position he retained for six years until he was appointed head barman at another hotel, where he and his family were given a small apartment to live in. During the 1970s, KK1GM’s two children were born on Madeira out of the harvest season and stayed there with extended family until Portugal’s entry into the EU in 1986, when they relocated to Jersey for secondary school. These then are what I term 1.5 generation migrants in line with Mar-Molinero (2010) and others. LL1GM’s wife became pregnant just before they arrived on Jersey and gave birth to a girl in the Island’s hospital. Once the daughter was of school age, LL1GM and his wife were able to remain on the Island. As the situation of restricted work permits started to ease, both men secured permanent positions in catering and cleaning and both families still live in the outskirts of St. Helier. The migrant trajectory of KK1GM in particular is largely indicative of the stories of many families on Jersey. As happens in other parts of the world with stringent residency legislation (International Finance Corporation 2009: 15), kinship ties to the initial migrant have been an effective way of claiming the right to reside on the Island. Furthermore, housing restrictions outlined in Chapter 3 did not initially affect many

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migrants from Madeira, since farms and hotels often provided tied accommodation, and others lived in rented rooms or boarding houses (Boleat 2015: 34). Indeed, as we see below, this suited many who never intended to stay on the Island. Despite this, over the past half a century many migrant workers have been joined by extended family, including the 1.5 generation of children born on Madeira. In recent years, Madeirans have also been joined by migrants from the northern Portugal textile factories, although over 90% of those with Portuguese-speaking backgrounds on the Island still have links to Madeira. Latter migrations were facilitated by the start of Portugal’s accession to the EU, which made migrants’ legal position regarding employment law more tenable. By the 1980s, around half the population were not classed as seasonal, as many settled semi-permanently on Jersey with their families and started to run hotels and guest houses rather than work in them as staff (ibid.: 33). According to the latest available census, the percentage of those designated as being born on Madeira or mainland Portugal increased from 0.2% of the population in 1961 to 7.2% in 2011 (States of Jersey Census 2011), and although this figure may now be even higher, immigration from Madeira in particular, has slowed down in recent years as the tourist industry on the Island has created more employment opportunities there. During my research encounters with other, first-generation, male participants who migrated to Jersey throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the notion of a shared migration experience was often articulated as a familial duty (OO1GM; HH1GM; KK1GM for example) as well as a pecuniary necessity: P: Inevitável dada a falta de oportunidade na Madeira.nós tínhamos pouco dinheiro e sem boas oportunidades de trabalho.então fizemos o que tínhamos de fazer.partimos// (CC1GM) ‘Inevitable given the lack of opportunity on Madeira.we had little money and no good work opportunities.so we did what we had to do.left//’

Others saw the physical act of migration as performative, particularly for older, first-generation male individuals. During my observations of group conversations, it became clear that reference to both national and regional identities was based on a shared hierarchical and essentially primordial

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sense of self-understanding and self-consciousness (see, for example, Leutzsch 2014: 174), leading these participants to continually justify their migrations by reference to deep-seated tropes of custom and heritage: P1: É o nosso destino.a migração faz parte de nós// (MM1GM) ‘It is our destiny.migration is part of us//’ P2: É verdade.A viagem é importante para quem somos.tanto madeirenses quanto portugueses. estamos constantemente desenraizados da nossa terra (CC1GM) ‘It’s true.the journey is important to who we are.Madeirans as well as Portuguese.We are constantly uprooted from our land//’

These participants thus saw islands as much points of departure as of arrival; recollections of life on Madeira were also centred on the reification of the expectation of movement away and of the journey as a ritual act or rite of passage. Participants sometimes subscribed to the idea of a formulaic Madeiran trajectory by reference to a rather mythicised MadeiranJersey migrant, in what initially appeared to be an apocryphal tale about a waiter from Madeira who first went to Jersey in the 1930s and who returned there after World War II to work in a hotel in St. Helier. Initially, it was difficult to confirm the veracity of this story; however, Jersey Heritage has recently uncovered information about an Eduardo Alho from Câmara de Lobos on Madeira, who arrived on Jersey in 1934 for the first time and returned there in 1948. In accordance with seasonal work restrictions, Edouardo had a limited work permit, which allowed him to work at the Merton Hotel during the holiday period but required him to return to Madeira out of season.8 What is striking about Eduardo’s story is the way in which older Portuguese-speaking participants sometimes conflated their own emotional experiences in leaving Madeira and arriving on Jersey with those they assumed to be his: P: E pá.Eduardo deve ter se sentido realmente sozinho no início.ninguém falou português onde trabalhou […] aposto que o gago queria voltar logo para a Madeira// (AA1GM)

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‘  Well.Eduardo must have felt really lonely at the beginning.no-one spoke Portuguese where he worked […] I bet the bloke wanted to go straight back to Madeira’//

Eduardo was mythicised to the extent that participants themselves started to use him as a symbol of their own migration experiences based on the overriding belief that at the time of the initial migrations, all Madeiran males at least belonged to an imagined community that shared motivations, experiences and desires, which were articulated in discussion through generic representations: P: Vimos aqui para encontrar trabalho.eu não tinha mais hipótese.não havia nada na Madeira na época […] como o Eduardo e muitos outros homens madeirenses.sentimo-nos desesperados.mas para todos nós foi bem no final// (BB1GM) ‘We came over here to find work.I had no choice.there was nothing on Madeira at the time […] like Eduardo and lots of other Madeiran men.we were desperate.but for all of us it came good in the end’//

Older female participants, however, often insisted that the bounded nature of their destination, rather than the journey itself, was central to their migratory trajectories. An important recurring theme in their recollections was once again the salience of island-to-island crossing. Consistent with traditional approaches we saw earlier, their comments underline the importance of a bounded space enclosed and framed by the sea, which may assuage feelings of dislocation engendered by the act of leaving the place designated as home, a motif I return to later on. Thus, what compelled their migrations was still economic hardship, but what facilitated the trajectories was the participants’ ability to reconcile their migrations by focusing on the conceptualisation of islandness and the notion of a safe haven: P1: Ir para outra ilha ajudou-me a me sentir segura.fez-me sentir mais em casa// (EE1GM) ‘Going to another island helped me feel safe.made me feel more at home//’

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P2: Concordo com você.eu costumava pensar que a migração era como o exilio.mas a Jersey é uma ilha.todos os dias vejo o mar.o que me faz sentir segura// (FF1GM) ‘I agree with you.I used to think migration was like being exiled.but Jersey is an island.I can see the sea everyday.which makes me feel safe//’ P3: Sim.sente-se protegido aqui.tal como na Madeira// (NN1GM) ‘Yes.you feel protected here.just like in Madeira’//

So even though migration is still instrumental, it is often articulated not just as a physical but also as a psychological and emotional act. Karen Fog Olwig’s statement that ‘for an islander, the sea may be perceived instead as the body of water that clearly demarcates a place and, at the same time, links it to the rest of the world’ (2007: 262) is thus somewhat opportune: P: A Jersey me parecia tão familiar.chegamos de avião e podia ver toda a ilha contida pelo mar[…]era tão reconfortante// (NN1GM) ‘Jersey felt so familiar.we arrived by plane and I could see the whole island contained by the sea […] it was so reassuring//’

These women’s lives often involved a regular stroll to the beach or the shoreline near St. Helier. Comments as to the importance of such outings and the role of the periphery were rare, but one woman’s description of the shore as a liminal space recalls my earlier discussion of islands as emotional and physical anchors (Olwig 2007: 260): P: Odiava ter de deixar a Madeira.cá não me sinto em casa ainda.mas nos dias de folga.sentada na praia perto do mar […] às vezes finjo que estou no Funchal.através da água// (JJ1GM) ‘I hated leaving Madeira.I still don’t feel at home here.but on my days off. sat on the beach near the sea […] sometimes I pretend I am in Funchal. across the water//’

We saw in Chapter 2 that hard-edged boundaries such as the shoreline (Hay 2006: 20) may exacerbate ‘the allegedly insulating function of the sea with respect to an island’ (Baldacchino 2005: 273) and thus, may sometimes be conceptualised as a border that intensifies

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Islanders’ feelings of solitude, geographic isolation or ‘spatial separateness’, what Baldacchino has termed their psychological malaise (ibid.: 248). Although this is apparent to an extent in the discussions of life on Madeira, the above examples suggest that in the case of the migratory end point, such boundaries are not necessarily articulated at a metaphysical level. Rather, engagement with the shoreline, as above, may ease feelings of solitude, with the edge becoming ‘the portal to roads and seatrails fanning out to other (is)lands, a natural bridge to the world beyond’ (Hay 2006: 23) or here, a bridge to what is remembered as home. In a similar way, the sea embraces a significant role as a facilitator of departure from Madeira, with some of the comments of older, male participants echoing once again essentialised tropes of Portuguese maritime tradition and heritage: P: Bem.sim voei para a Jersey.mas veja bem.o que o tornou possível foi a viagem através do mar […] reforçou a sensação de que estava cumprindo o meu destino// (DD1GM) ‘Well.yes I flew to Jersey.but look.what made it possible was the journey across the sea […] it reinforced the feeling that I was fulfilling my destiny//’ P: O mar sempre nos protegeu.fez parte de nós […] mas também permite-nos atravessá-lo.não é uma barreira para nós// (PP1GM) ‘The sea has always protected us.has always been part of us […] but it also allows us to cross it.it is no barrier to us//’

This orientation to what Karen Fog Olwig has termed ‘open horizons’ (2007: 262) thus reinforces the discussion of how island spaces are often experienced and articulated by Islanders themselves. Such themes were also apparent in the discourse of more recent migrants, who left Madeira after 2005. Although pecuniary security is still pivotal, they highlight a further rationale for trajectories. In line with my earlier discussion of the conceptualisation of economically successful islands as exotic destinations that promise adventure and excitement, the expansion of Jersey’s tourist industry smoothed the way for many to leave what they often referred to as confinement on Madeira,

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somewhat contrary to my earlier argument that such generic definitions of islandness based on insularity are generally the constructs of NonIslanders. Here, the notion of finite space and distance from elsewhere makes Madeira the bounded space, as one participant neatly summarised: P: Migration.just something you do I guess.(it’s) normal on Madeira […] well.we don’t like.eh.sentirnos presos// I: Imprisoned// P: Yes.like in the prison.feeling held in by the Island.we need to leave […] travel.get out and away from the Island// (CCRM)

However, echoing the earlier homilies of Polish participants, spatial confinement on Jersey evoked a more positive sense of boundedness, one that encapsulates to a degree my earlier examination of Festa et al.’s fantasy island (2009), an idyll of indulgence through which the realities of life on Madeira can be left behind, counterbalanced nonetheless, by the economic need to work: P1: We thought Jersey.its nightlife.its clubs.bars.well.it was easy for us […] we get work and accommodation.then the party begins// (BBRM) P2: Both islands are tourist places.but here I relax.yes I work but also I play.it is always easy to have lots of fun.freedom// (EERM)

What this discussion also starts to make clear is that similarities between Madeira and Jersey were often articulated by these participants based on their configuration and status as islands, even though in terms of physical dimensions, location, topography and population size, they are quite dissimilar.9

Neither Here Nor There: Return Migration and Home As a precursor to my later discussion of participants’ precepts regarding settlement on Jersey, I now turn to whether island-to-island associations influence how transitory migratory movement and return are experienced.

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First-generation return migration in particular has been well researched in academic scholarship, often conceptualised as the prerogative of the retired (see, for example, Conway and Potter 2016: 2). This is still an important consideration in studies of Portuguese-speaking diaspora (see, for example, Pereira and Azevedo 2019; Koven 2013; Sardinha 2011; Klimt 2000; Neto 1986; Brettell 1979), and the remarks discussed in the preceding section suggest that Madeira is rarely if ever conceptualised by older individuals at least simply as a place of birth, to escape and to cast off through migration to elsewhere. As my participants and their friends became used to my presence at cultural events and daily gatherings in delicatessens, cafes and bars, I was privy to various group conversations centred on the shared meanings of Madeira, homesickness and saudade. In line with Sardinha’s identificatory category, first-generation individuals in particular very often described Madeira as having an emotional hold on them and their families from afar.10 Comments such as é a nossa terra (‘it’s our land’) (FF1GM); sempre será o meu hogar (‘it will always my home’) (EE1GM); moro cá na Jersey mas pertenço aí.na Madeira (‘I live here on Jersey but I belong there.on Madeira’) (NN1GM) invoke a sense of belonging often shaped by utopian or idyllic images or ‘memories’ of the homeland articulated elsewhere in the discourse. As with the physical act of migration, repeated reference to the ‘Portuguese tradition’ of return migration in participants’ narratives reinforced how for some, this too underlined the learnt nature of such conventions as part of an envisioned collective heritage. I regularly observed, for example, how first-generation participants rarely conceptualised their own migrations as definitive, despite having lived and worked on Jersey for decades. Rather, the migration experience was described as a temporary but necessary interruption to their and their families’ lives and identities as part of the ingroup network of friends and extended family on Madeira. Many also highlighted a type of spiritual attachment to place when talking among themselves about the day they would go back for good. Once again, some articulations would appear to invoke their sense of up-rootedness and their desire to escape from Jersey through a shift of collective, social space, invoking Sardinha’s category of emancipation (2011): P1: Muita gente quer voltar para a Madeira.sente-se muita falta e nunca esperamos ficar aqui […] é hora de voltar// (GG1GM)

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‘Many people want to go back to Madeira.they miss it very much and we never expected to stay here […] it is time to return//’ P2: Eu.estou ansioso para voltar para as minhas raízes// (JJ1GM) ‘Me.I am anxious to go back to my roots//’

Over the past few decades, many older participants have travelled every year to Madeira to construct a house to retire to, what one of my second-generation participants describes as: P: A status symbol.a sign of monetary success.that you have “made it”// (NN2GM)

This need to be acknowledged based on financial success appears to be fundamental to whether participants actually undergo this process of instrumental return or not. As we saw earlier, those who returned to Madeira before retirement age are still often labelled as ‘failures’ who have been unable to adjust to living and working away from the Island. Indeed, often for purely pragmatic reasons, some of my participants have waited so long into their dotage that the longed-for return is no longer a viable option. As an example, one lady in her seventies who ran a boarding house in St. Helier explained that she would only return when she had amassed enough saving to buy a car on Madeira, para demostrar o meu sucesso cá na ilha (‘to show off my success here on the Island’). However, a few years later ill health intervened and she resigned herself to staying on Jersey because of the good health service provision, in line with many retiree migrants elsewhere. Of those who did return, not all ended up staying permanently back on Madeira, evoking conceptualisations of the ‘myth of return’ and dream chasing, in line with Sardinha (2011; see also Safran’s early work 1991). Some individuals in their sixties had found the whole experience isolating and alienating: P: bem.para dizer a verdade.não funcionou bem.esperávamos sentirnos em casa.não era assim […] eu queria ficar feliz aí […] mas na realidade.ficávamos muito sozinhos.isolados.a minha esposa queria voltar para a Jersey.então ficamos lá apenas oito meses// (DD1GM)

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‘Well.to tell the truth.it didn’t work out well.we hoped to feel at home. but it didn’t turn out that way […] I wanted to be happy there […] but in reality.we were very much alone.isolated.my wife wanted to go back to Jersey.so we only stayed there eight months//’ P: É incrível.a memória não funciona bem.lembrei-me de uma ilha sossegada. verde.linda.cheia de flores […] a realidade era tráfego […].turistas.barulho. tão diferente […] os nossos tempos de férias.bem não eram a mesma coisa //. (OO1GM) ‘It’s amazing when your memory doesn’t work well.I remembered a quiet. green.beautiful island full of flowers […] the reality was cars […] tourists. noise.it was so different […] our holiday times there.well they weren’t the same thing//’

These recollections as well as situations I observed throughout my contact with such participants suggest that for these first-generation speakers, reintegration was problematic. As they continued to appraise their reasons for return, they admitted that they had pieced together an idealised and largely idyllic image of ‘home’ not only from culture-defining memories and recollections of their own lives and experiences there as children and young adults, but also from the snapshot, romanticised images they had formulated during their holiday stays. As MarMolinero observes in her own research, once these individuals realised that Madeira had changed and that they no longer had many friends there, they ‘worked through’ their nostalgia and, ultimately, recognised something akin to a sense of belonging on Jersey. These recurrent themes of belonging and social embeddedness in generational migration experiences are examined further in the next section from the perspective of transnational practices within the diaspora.

Social Embeddedness and Belonging: Transnational Practices and Translocal Spaces ‘Diaspora’ has often been used in top-down discourse as a somewhat overarching construct that has had subsequent implications for the ways in which some of my participants at least perceived their own groupings. Initial

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academic theorisations often summarised the concept as involving three key strands: dispersion in space; crossing state borders; homeland orientation to a real or imagined ‘homeland’ as a source of value, identity and loyalty; and boundary maintenance, the preservation of a community identity distinct from that of the receptor society (Brubaker 2005). Recently, some of these components have undergone substantial reworkings, as we saw in Chapter 2. An increase in global human mobility and the multilocality of transnational contexts engendered by the ‘cycles and circuits’ migrations of family members (Conway and Potter 2016: 2) both challenge the notion of a static, bounded and distant homeland and reinforce the premise that lives may be acted out in more than one place (Cahen 2013) or locality (Appadurai 1996). Translocal connections and practices allow for multiple homes (Blunt and Dowling 2006: 199) across both perceptual and physical borders, and in this way interrogate the validity of ‘home and away’. As I outlined earlier, these connections are forged through mutual migratory experiences and practices, such as regular phone calls and visits and the sending of money, as well as through daily, situated practices within migrant families, such as the use of a particular language. However, the translocal space comprises established, long-term, diasporic social networks and communities of practice through which migrants’ habitus (food, language, customs, migration experiences, etc.) are shared (Peth et al. 2018: 470). To some extent, their everyday mobilities or practices transcend the ingroup/outgroup border, meaning certain individuals and groups become socially embedded and even anchored within the receptor society and are often subject to macro-level structures pertaining to labour, housing, etc. (ibid.: 459–460; see also Brickell and Datta 2011), as we saw in Chapter 4. Importantly, this conceptualisation reinforces the premise that despite often being portrayed as such, diaspora are not static and homogeneous entities, even though as I now discuss in the case of the Madeiran Quarter, by living, socialising and sometimes working within a demarcated, physical, communal space, certain individuals rarely engage with the receptor society. The spatially demarcated St. Helier urban space referred to locally as the Madeiran Quarter mirrors similar areas in Bournemouth (‘the Triangle’) (Beswick and Pozo-Gutierrez 2010) and in south-west

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Toronto (Leal 2014), in that a degree of textual and physical visibility and material traceability (Beswick and Pozo-Gutierrez 2010: 46) is in evidence in the linguistic landscape, in the form of the Portuguese and Madeiran flags and the use of Portuguese names and cultural references on Madeiran-owned commercial outlets such as cafes, bars, restaurants, market stalls, travel agents, hairdressers and dentists. Gatekeepers and cultural brokers articulated the development of ethnic resources as representative of a community, to reinforce what we earlier termed ‘visible platforms of migrant presence’ (ibid.: 46) on Jersey, through sociocultural associations and religious and social gatherings that highlight translocal connections. Thus, it could be argued that the wearing of Portuguese and Madeiran football shirts on match days and the display of team and country flags on cars for example, create an alternative, transnational or translocal space in the landscape, in which ideologies of a distant ‘home’ and attachments to social, cultural and even linguistic practices and networks are conceptualised, experienced and acted out (see, for example, Cahen 2013; Fenton 2003) as part of a process of what I term dislocation. Although these platforms may not be exclusively Madeiran and indeed, may also reference the relevance of the larger community (see Fig. 6.1), above all, activities and representations are articulated and manifest as a series of recognised attachments and bonds to a claimed, bordered Madeiran space. Focus group discussions between different generations often occurred at mealtimes, still an important social event for migrants (see, for example, Watson and Klein 2015) within the private sphere of the home (see also Mar-Molinero 2010: 96). In line with Abbots (2015: 115–116), individuals often talked about the food served in cafes, bars and restaurants, prepared for local festivals and sold in shops in the Madeiran Quarter as an important signifier of translocal identification and family values within the diaspora. Irrespective of whether dishes were Madeiran regional delicacies or from mainland Portugal, such as the eponymous sardinhas grelhadas ‘grilled sardines’; whether beer was Portuguese or Brazilian in provenance; and whether the consumers had connections to Madeira or mainland Portugal, within the shared discursive space of these establishments or homes in or near to the Madeiran Quarter, they were alluded to as produtos autênticos ‘authentic

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Fig. 6.1  Representations of the Madeiran, Portuguese and English flags alongside the Union Jack, Alfonso Bakery & Coffee Shop, St. Helier, Jersey

products’ by first-generation participants. Together with some of the 1.5 and second-generation individuals, they also described the preparation and consumption of such foodstuffs as an important ritual to commemorate particular events or traditional celebrations such as birthdays, the 10th June the Dia de Portugal ‘Portugal Day’, saint’s days, Easter and Christmas. The comments of some participants of these latter two groups indicated that for them, this behaviour reified the impression of an imagined community spanning the two islands, as well as nostalgia for the familial homeland: P1: For me.for my parents.Portuguese.Madeiran food reminds us of Madeira.family who live there […] Food is the last thing people lose when they integrate […] for my family.for me too.it gives memories of home. the taste.the smell// (AA1.5GM) P2: Yeah.I Iove my mum’s cooking.it’s so good.you’re right […] the smell makes me think about being Portuguese.Madeiran// (FF2GM)11

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1.5 and second-generation individuals living outside the Madeiran Quarter claimed to rarely cook traditional Madeiran and Portuguese food at home, calling it a somewhat formulaic and clichéd practice that, although they ate such food with their parents and older family members, did not always sit well alongside their locally grounded sense of belonging. Importantly, however, along with third-generation participants who cooked for themselves, many actually prepared and consumed a fusion version of Portuguese food, substituting certain ethnically labelled ingredients for more freely available or Anglicised ones. This is partially because individuals were often loathe to engage in conversations with older Portuguese speakers in so-called ethnic shops and complained that traditional ingredients were often difficult to find elsewhere, as I discussed in Chapter 5. Yet perhaps more significantly, they appeared to want to change recipes, to play around with the tastes, smells and appearance of such dishes, whilst at the same time insisting that in doing so they were not in any way compromising the authenticity of the food in question. Indeed, they often saw the addition of local ingredients as a way of enhancing the situated relevance of the dish being served and consumed on Jersey. Portuguese food practices are thus perhaps an excellent example of how migration trajectories transcend generations as a living, shifting phenomenon, subject to change and modification but representative nonetheless, of the ways in which the consumers themselves reference what they perceive as authenticity in terms of identity at least (Fig. 6.2). The notion of return to Madeira explored above was a fairly regular feature of dinner conversation and social events, particularly by those who lived in or near to the Madeiran Quarter. Older participants often reminisced about members of the extended family on Madeira, producing photographs and retelling stories to reinforce memories of Madeira as an idyllic, beautiful homeland, and evoking ideologies of the island homeland as a nostalgic space of familial return, a place of roots for their children and grandchildren (see also Mar-Molinero 2010: 100). Indeed, somewhat in line with Levitt’s observations regarding the validity of a transnational, ‘roots and routes’ approach to migrants’ children (2009), my observational data demonstrated that family and community are still the foci of transmission of many markers of identity such as language, and all 1.5 and most second-generation participants were

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Fig. 6.2  A selection of Portuguese cakes, Alfonso Bakery & Coffee Shop, St. Helier, Jersey

raised in households surrounded both physically and symbolically by such sociocultural anchors: people, practices, customs, norms, memories and artefacts. Their involvement in practices such as regular visits, calling home and sending remittances to family members, necessitated crossing the spatial boundary in St. Helier and also reinforced transnational and translocal connections and networks with Madeira carried through into adulthood. To an extent, this phase can be seen as one of flux in line with earlier research (Beswick and Pozo-Gutierrez 2010: 53), since contact and relationships between localities are part of an ongoing process maintaining references to the familial place of origin. Return (or even initial) migration of children and grandchildren has received relatively little academic attention to date (see however, Peixoto et al. 2016). Nonetheless, Peth et al. observe (2018: 457) that the practices highlighted above, for example, may also influence an individual’s degree of social embeddedness within the receptor society as well as their decisions about return.

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This is an important point, since in line with recent research on transnational migratory movement (see, for example, Conway and Potter 2016), nearly all 1.5 and second-generation participants in this research stated that return was in no way their ultimate goal. Those who live, socialise and sometimes work in or near to the spatially demarcated zone locally referred to as the Madeiran Quarter in St. Helier offered an interesting perspective regarding dislocation and maintenance of a group identity and its markers, summarised succinctly in one exchange: P1: Não é preciso voltar para a Madeira.temos tudo aqui.na comunidade.a lingua.a comida […] sentimo-nos em casa.na verdade. cá estamos em casa// ‘There is no need to return to Madeira.we have it all here in the community.language.food […] we feel at home.the reality is.here we are at home’// (LL1.5GM) P2: Sim.é verdade.aqui lembro-me muito da Madeira.quase esqueço a gente fora da zona.não presto atenção no que faz// (AA1.5GM) ‘Yes.it’s true.it reminds me a lot of Madeira here.I can almost forget the people outside our quarter.I don’t pay any attention to what they are up to’//

Once again then, the Madeiran Quarter functions as a bordered space, a ‘bedrock of commonality’ (Holmes 2017: 38) that offers a viable alternative to the imagined space of Madeira itself. These participants also discussed ethnicity, motivated in part by one bringing along the findings of the 2011 Census (States of Jersey Census 2011: 13).12 By moving away from the category of nationality, based on the premise that place of residence, parental status or cultural heritage may influence definitions of self-reported identities, the census highlights how ethnicity can also be essentialised in multicultural contexts. Around a thousand more people than those registered as born in Portugal or on Madeira, as we saw earlier, self-ascribed to the category of Portuguese/ Madeiran ethnicity (8049 individuals or 8.2% of the overall population). Comments often centred on the right to proactively claim Madeiran Portuguese ethnic identity, but also reflected the earlier identificatory categorisations discussed by Sardinha (2011), thus highlighting the

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duality of belonging and home transmitted through families. However, ‘home’ in the sense of Jersey was still articulated as within the spatially defined Madeiran Quarter: P1: We have lived our lives between two homes.here and there.yes I am Portuguese I think.because of my parents.but I am also from here […] not Jersey but our zone// (BB1.5GM) P2: We are proud of.err.a nossa herança (our heritage) […] we live here but.well yes.we belong here (points around him).and there […] does that make sense// (EE1.5GM) P3: Well I feel special.’cos of my Madeiran side […] but I never lived there.I was born here.I live here in the Madeiran Quarter.that means I am from here too.I guess// (DD2GM) P4: The ethnicity survey.well finally I could claim my Madeiran side […] (I’m) not just another person living here.I belong to the Madeiran community// (KK2GM)

Even third-generation participants who lived in the Madeiran Quarter and who knew Madeira solely as a regular holiday destination often constructed a discourse around the notions of ethnicity and belonging to an imagined Madeiran community on Jersey: P1: We go there every year to see family […] it’s feels a bit odd to be honest.I don’t belong there but I feel so part of that community here on the island// (CC3GM) P2: Yeah.I don’t normally shout out about my parents’ background.but I like being part of the community here// (GG3GM)

Of course, these examples should be seen as situated responses; nonetheless, they demonstrate how discourses of identities, ideologies of distinctiveness and ingroup belonging may be reified through evocative, mutual points of reference such as ethnicity. As a situated practice, an ‘authentic’ familial heritage is often perceived as a core value of membership of and belonging to the Madeiran diaspora. Importantly, echoing comments in Chapter 5 by Local Islander participants in the Safeway example, participants from the Madeiran Quarter articulated it as a

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bounded space of communal activity and practice. Thus, the Madeiran Quarter, rather than Jersey or even St. Helier, was their local identifier.13 Consistent with Hall’s influential essay on cultural identity and diaspora and his modelling of ‘being’ (2003: 236–240), we see that representations of a clearly defined, homogeneous Madeiran identity based on shared culture, heritage and practices tended to use what Holmes terms ‘ethnically essentialist language’ (2017: 38) to depict the evocative and familiar but were, nonetheless, often still important for some individuals as a way to rationalise dislocations from the Madeira island space and to maintain an ideology of distinctiveness and ingroup belonging, as I discuss further below. However, other participants challenged and revised their relationship with such an overarching group identity. Indeed, perspectives regarding identities and belonging of those participants who live and work away from the Madeiran Quarter create an interesting comparison. These individuals regularly discussed the tensions they experienced as part of what they describe as the multicultural environment of Jersey and in particular, St. Helier. For many, the anonymous nature of the 2011 Census afforded them a way of acknowledging a link to a Madeiran Portuguese ethnic categorisation, even though in their situated daily practices outside the home, they rarely drew attention to this aspect of their self-identification: P: I speak English.I mix with other English speakers.I eat English food […] at home.like a lot of us I guess.I tend to give in and revert to Portuguese things with my family […] although I did like being able to recognise my family’s ethnicity on paper// (LL2GM)

In more general interactions, some regularly referenced the multifaceted and situated nature of their self-identifications based on such ethnic categorisations: P: Erm/when I was growing up I felt quite Portu-more Portuguese than I feel now but now.but as I became older I became more British.it depends on where I am I suppose […] So for me and a lot of my peers it was very very difficult ‘cos we were stuck in the middle so you’re not quite Jersey if you like and you’re not quite Portuguese because you don’t have the same cultural background as either of those people […]// (FF1.5GM)

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P: When I go to Portugal I am Madeiran.when I am here I am Madeiran. in the UK I am the Jersey girl.it depends where you are.what you want to be.Sou Madeirense.embora pertenço em esta ilha (‘I am Madeiran.although I belong on this island’)// (JJ1.5GM)

These participants talked about their willingness to proactively integrate into shared, local, situated practices such as those that happen in the workplace by avoiding overt reference to what they saw as an ‘othered’ identity: P: I don’t mind showing I am Madeiran too but not in real life […] only on paper.fact is.I want to fit in at work and there we all speak English and I never talk about my family.my other side if you want// (II1.5GM) P: It’s simple.I am both Portuguese and British on the inside.but there is no place for my ethnicity on a daily basis […] at work.with colleagues// (HH1.5GM) P: Madeira is home when I talk about my parents and where I was brought up.but I am not part of their identity and culture.not an authentic Madeiran […] initially I am British […] I became anglicised// (DD1.5GM)

In line with Hall’s conceptualisation of ‘becoming’ (2003: 240–244) then, the space occupied by these participants is becoming ‘a site of innovation’, in which diverse narratives of collective and individual attachments and heterogeneous identities are at play, and thus, relationships with a ‘Madeiran identity’ are challenged and revised. Some second-generation individuals even foregrounded the multifaceted, global nature of their identities as a situated practice in order to distance themselves from being seen as part of the ingroup: P: I am a citizen of the cosmos […] I have no national identity.legally I am Portuguese yes.but I don’t feel Portuguese // (JJ2GM) P: My friends.well.I am from all over […] doesn’t really matter ‘cos Jersey society is very multicultural.so I guess I am very much part of a global society.not a Portuguese one// (BB2GM)

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The relevance to these participants’ lives of what they saw as a bounded space of identification is manifest in particular by their rejection of diasporic, social practices acted out and practised in the public sphere. JJ1.5GM in particular was scathing of certain behaviours she considers to be stereotypically Portuguese: P: I don’t hang around in cafes for 3 hours […] I’ve got a life […] I don’t really fit in with those people.they never try to be part of the Jersey community// (JJ1.5GM)

Some participants, however, still acknowledged the relevance to their parents’ generation of the enactment of such social practices in familiar settings such as cafés and bars: P: I don’t get involved with the café culture there.hang out outside bars/ buy consumables in ethnic shops even though my parents do.to keep in touch I guess//(JJ2GM) P: Yes.I know a lot of Madeiran Portuguese […] to speak to.but do I hang around in coffee shops with them.no […] I don’t buy Portuguese food in ethnic shops.but my parents do// (FF1.5GM)

As with translocal connections and practices, an integrative aspect of social mobility was often in evidence when symbolic boundaries between the local ingroup and these particular participants were blurred, challenged and ultimately broken down, in line with my earlier discussion (see also Block 2016; Blommaert 2005). At the same time, these participants appeared to be constructing a different symbolic boundary based on spatial demarcation. This is not to do with social class (Levitt 2009) but rather, to do with social aspirations. Throughout their discussions, these participants highlighted their affiliation with, and participation in, what was conceptualised as the overriding receptor society of Local Islanders. Importantly, they did not consider themselves to be part of the ‘other’ Madeiran Portuguese grouping, justifying such assertions by pointing out their distinct educational and professional accomplishments, such as getting university degrees and securing specialised careers, ranging from accountancy, sound engineering, solicitor and clerk of the law court:

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P: We’re a new generation.we’re a new set of individuals on the Island.not part of the St.Helier community.with new (sic) ambitions than before.so we’re not going to pretend.but we have different expectations […] in our careers// (FF1.5GM) P: We rarely work with other Portuguese speakers.we like to feel part of the overall Jersey community because that is what we are after all.part and parcel of it// (CC2GM)

For these respondents, any reference to ethnic associations and transnational ties in their interactions tended to be purely emblematic and linked to their discussions of parents’ activities, for example. Indeed, categorisations such as ethnicity clearly fail to describe how for these participants, selfhood identities and ideologies of belonging were layered, being embedded within, and affected by, the complexity of social network allegiances, shared practices and friendships. My recent participants were all young, single migrant workers who lived within the spatial zone of St. Helier but tended to work and socialise in multilingual and multicultural spaces elsewhere, like the 1.5 and second-generation participants above. To a large extent, they corresponded to Conway and Potter’s description of ‘prolonged sojourners’ (2016), since as I highlighted earlier, they often went to Jersey in search of a temporary but relatively well-paid job in a fun and exciting atmosphere. My observations of their everyday, situated routines and practices at work and in social contexts revealed regular engagement and social exchange with their own peer groups across the diasporic borders, creating a ‘translocal’ discursive space (Heller 2010) comprising visible, shared, situated practices and affiliations, such as predominantly engaging in English. Sometimes, this behaviour even led to a type of contested space (Holmes 2017: 31) based broadly on variable generational ideologies, attitudes and social practices, as I have seen in some of my fieldwork examples. Let us now consider how participants conceptualised the embedded nature of their integration into these local spaces. In Chapter 5, I explored situated ideologies about how labels such as ‘local’, ‘Islander’, ­‘immigrant’, ‘non-local’ and ‘visitor’ are conceptualised on Jersey. I established that these labels as well as characteristics and features such as ancestry, language and residency may be employed to positively highlight local ingroup

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belonging, but conversely may also be employed to negatively reinforce the otherness of outgroups such as the Madeiran Portuguese. Yet in the present chapter we have seen that even individuals with Madeiran Portuguese heritage often described themselves and their families as ‘migrants’ or ‘immigrants’ and the degree of translocal social embeddedness within the receptor community may never be high for some. This appeared particularly to be the case when participants lived in or near to the Madeiran Quarter. Older participants in particular articulated their movement away from Madeira as a temporary rather than a definitive dislocation, living in what Boersma (2019: 273), Collins (2011: 322) and others, have termed a state of ‘permanent temporariness’ and at least tacitly accepting the macro-level designations of ‘migrant’ or ‘immigrant’ even though such terms may be used somewhat pejoratively by others. Indeed, from a socio-psychological perspective, the ‘myth of return’ discussed earlier reinforces this impression of transience, the desire to maintain links with Madeira as well as some form of ingroup/outgroup border with those seen as Local Islanders, perhaps explaining why some participants were happy to accept designations that implied impermanence. Indeed, First- and second-generation participants from the Madeiran Quarter often used epithets associated with migration to describe what they articulated as their and their families’ spatially and psychologically distanced sojourns on Jersey: P: A minha família é uma família de emigrantes.e assim ficamos afastados da comunidade local// (MM1GM) ‘My family is a family of emigrants.and so we are separate from the local community//’ P: Bem.eu diria que não.não somos gente local.somos emigrants.imigrantes […] ficamos à margem.assim temos a opção de sair um dia e voltar para a Madeira// (GG1GM) ‘Well.I would say no.we are not locals.we are emigrants.immigrants […] we keep on the sidelines.assim we have the choice of leaving one day to go back to Madeira//’

However, other participants who were living and working outside the Madeiran Quarter often reacted against the use of epithets such as ‘migrant’ or ‘non-local’. Whilst they often referred to their parents as

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‘Migrant Islanders’, they themselves negotiated and even challenged ideologies of legitimacy and authenticity by delineating a further set of identifiable characteristics with which to associate, linked in particular with their accessibility to what they themselves termed the Island’s receptor community. For example, in a conversation about being subjected to racist and derogatory comments about their parentage, appearance, accent, etc., particularly at school, two participants equated social acceptance with success in the workplace: P1: When I encountered.this.you know.you’re a porco (‘pig’).your mum’s a cleaner.you know that sort of thing.you’re working poor […] well.I studied.became a solicitor.no-one even comments on my name now// (JJ2GM) P2: Yeah me too.I came here as a Madeiran kid.and that was an issue.in school I got bullied ’cos of my accent.my poor English […] I worked hard. got a good job.and now no-one bullies me.comments on my accent […] I guess you could say I’m accepted [...] ’cos I’m a success// (KK1.5GM)

Observations also revealed that by regularly enacting translocal practices of social embeddedness, these participants have forged strong relationships with Local Islanders. However, othering still appears to often be associated with Local perceptions of belonging, particularly for second- and third-generation participants living away from the Madeiran Quarter, with language often being highlighted as a key concept in their comments: P: We get called immigrants.at best migrant Islanders.not real locals.but I don’t see why not.we were born here.I’ve lived here all my life.gone to school here.speak English perfectly […] There are lots of people here from England. Ireland.who came here in the twentieth century […] I ask my Island friends here.are they locals.and they say.well.no.but their kids are.so I say am I.and they say no.’cos your parents aren’t native English speakers// (AA2GM) P: Why does everyone at school think I want to go ‘home’ at school.my home is here.I belong here.I speak English just like everyone else// (AA3GM) P: I was born here.go to school here.lived here all my life […] I speak perfect English.I am a local.a local Islander.not a local Migrant.this is my home// (BB3GM)

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Of course, from an interactional perspective, casting yourself or someone else as Portuguese, Madeiran, a migrant, a local, etc., is largely indexical and occasioned, and as with the use of home or integration, carries import in a particular situated context but not necessarily in another. In order to consider the importance of language to such issues, I now turn to a more in-depth examination of ideologies of language use, situated sociolinguistic practices and ingroup membership.

Language in Interaction: Ideological Precepts of Belonging My fieldwork encounters often raised the question of the role language plays as a topos around which people talk about their lives. We have seen earlier that the perception and implementation of symbolic borders and boundaries of ingroup identity are often reinforced by the legitimisation of the use of a given language, and in my research at least, this seemed to hold true for both English and Portuguese insofar as the way they were conceptualised by Local Islanders and Madeiran Quarter residents, respectively. Within the bounded communities of practice and social networks of the Madeiran Quarter for example, Portuguese continued to be seen as the language of ingroup communications during the timeframe of my fieldwork observations. Older participants in particular adopted a monolingual ideology to define authentic membership of the Madeiran Quarter community, flagging the use of Portuguese by their families as a solidarity reinforcer and ingroup identity marker. 1.5 and second generation participants often commented on this: P: My mum is so pleased when friends tell her that they have heard me talking in Portuguese.she says it keeps me part of the community// (EE2GM) I: Tell me about speaking Portuguese/ P: Well on the phone with my parents.my mother.she wants me to remain Portuguese.to remember who I am// (OO2GM)

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A few older respondents also talked about the retention of Portuguese as a means of safeguarding and facilitating future reintegration on Madeira, which enhanced the perceived temporary nature of being on Jersey and the assumption that return was the natural end result of their migration trajectories, even if this never becomes a social reality. Indeed, the lack of English linguistic competence was almost seen as a badge of honour: P: por que eu aprenderia inglês.tenho um emprego.posso viver aqui a minha vida sem falar inglês e o que é mais importante.não perco o meu português. para a volta// (EE1GM) ‘Why would I learn English.I have a job.I can live my life here without speaking English and what is more important.I don’t lose my Portuguese. for the return’// P: I have an aunt here and she’s been living here for 30 odd years and she does not know how to speak English […] and she is so proud of it [...] she says she is going back to Madeira in the next few years.I doubt it// (OO2GM)

1.5 and second-generation participants living in the Madeiran Quarter recollected that as children, they rarely conversed exclusively in English outside school, although some of their parents saw their children’s acquisition of English as a pragmatic resource with which to negotiate local spaces. As in my Bournemouth research (Beswick and Pozo-Gutiérrez 2010: 55), such children had often acted as interpreters and mediators for their families outside the unofficial, spatially demarcated Portuguesespeaking zone, at least until a number of Portuguese language professionals were employed in state institutions such as the hospital, schools and the benefits’ office, and since then, further provision has been made to facilitate communication between such speakers and the receptor community. So for some, there is still relatively little need to use English on a daily basis; thus, the Madeiran Quarter has flourished as an islandto-island imagined community space, a microcosm of life on Madeira in which the complex infrastructure facilitates the maintenance of Portuguese, enhanced in local spaces by the States' official response to the numbers of Portuguese speakers on the Island. Through their sociolinguistic practices, some participants may thus position themselves within the community of Portuguese speakers bound to this discursive

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space, emphasising sense of communal belonging and also facilitating dynamic engagement between interlocutors (see, for example, Beswick 2007) even across different generations.The use of Portuguese in St. Helier often transcended the spatial boundaries of the Madeiran Quarter, as we saw in Chapter 5, yet although it could be argued that such a situated use may underline a desire on behalf of the speakers to evoke a portrayal of psycholinguistic distinctiveness and inclusiveness, extremely few comments indicated this. Instead, some participants explained why they thought that members of the Island outgroup tolerate its use by evoking generic traits associated with the identity of an island of migration: P: E pá.afinal das contas.a ilha tem uma longa tradição de imigração.de multilinguismo […] eh.então não há problema se a gente falar em Português entre nós mesmos […] mesmo em outras partes da cidade// (HH2GM) ‘Well.at the end of the day.the Island has a long tradition of immigration. of multilingualism […] err.so there’s no problem if we speak Portuguese between ourselves […] even in other parts of the city//

Until fairly recently, few individuals voluntarily took up the States’ provision of adult English language lessons that are open to complete beginners as well as to those wanting to improve their linguistic skills, even if they lived outside the Madeiran Quarter. However, one second-generation participant recounted how, in contrast to his father, his mother had started to learn English formally in order to converse with people she met outside her normal, Portuguese-speaking social networks: P: Well.my mum has managed to learn some English and now she has friends outside the Portuguese community.she often goes shopping with other women and has to talk English […] she reads English she watches English tv […] my dad hardly speaks any even after all these years.and he has no friends other than Portuguese speakers// (EE2GM)

EE2GM believes that his mother’s determination to stay on the Island in retirement is linked to her desire to learn English and to be more involved in local, island spaces, whereas his father’s lack of English reinforces his determination to return to Madeira:

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P: They argue about this.my mum sees the value of English.the opportunities it has given her.she feels at home here now she has friends who aren’t just Portuguese speakers.she complains that on Madeira she would feel isolated […] my father will end up going of course.but he won’t stay there for long.ultimately he will come back and rely on my mum to make friends for him and teach him a little English// (EE2GM)

Much of my later fieldwork focused on the daily lives and experiences of 1.5 and second-generation participants living in other parts of St. Helier and elsewhere and who, unlike their peers living in or near to the Madeiran Quarter, maintained close relationships with friends, classmates and workmates they themselves typified as Local Islanders. Earlier in this chapter, we saw how many chose to distance themselves from the diasporic space, and language has often been the powerful tool allowing them to index their self-ascribed ‘local’ identities and belonging based on shared social networks. Over the years I have known him, DD1.5GM, for example, has constantly challenged ingroup ideologies of authenticity based on language, customs and behaviour. He still never shops, socialises or even visits the Madeiran Quarter, even with his parents. Echoing to an extent FF1.5GM’s earlier comments, his discourse regularly attempted to establish an ‘us’ and ‘them’ opposition as he distanced himself physically and psychologically from the Madeiran Quarter ingroup: P: The constant use of Portuguese around Malet Street is just ridiculous […] it leads to their ghettoization.they are effectively cut off from the rest of our society […] in fact you hear it everywhere in St Helier.I understand that it makes them feel at home but it just makes them very visible.not a good thing// (DD1.5GM)

Again, although he conceded that the use of Portuguese may be a solidarity tool for some, he himself vociferously denied using unless it was absolutely necessary, since he believed that it indexes the speaker as different to the receptor group, something which he clearly wanted to avoid at all costs: P: I became anglicised because I never voiced my Portugueseness or used Portuguese […] I wanted to become invisible// (DD1.5GM)

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This particular participant’s desire to fit in, to become indistinguishable from the receptor population of St. Helier, as well as his perception that the Portuguese-speaking population stand out in some way as distinct, are important points. Many of the professional, second-generation individuals I worked with made a conscious decision to live outside the Madeiran Quarter. As we saw in our Bournemouth research (Beswick and PozoGutiérrez 2010), the act of spatial dislocation from this neighbourhood coincides with individual’s desires for upward mobility but it also demonstrates a socio-psychological need to put distance between themselves and the visibility of the Madeiran Portuguese community in the linguistic landscape, since their linguistic behaviour marks and identifies Portuguese speakers as non-locals. Whereas English language competencies and uses are seen as a resource of accessibility, from the perspective of 1.5 and second-generation participants such as DD1.5GM, this use of Portuguese by their peers and their elders simply becomes a means of exclusion.

Language in the Workplace Macro-level policies and ideological precepts on Jersey somewhat unsurprisingly ascribe English as the official language of the workspace and the international language of commerce within the Knowledge-Based Economy (Dahlman and Andersson 2000; Williams 2005), as we have seen. In an earlier paper (Beswick 2013), the focus of my fieldwork was language encounters in multicultural workspaces on the Island, such as those found in the service and hospitality sectors as well as in professional quarters. My observations in the former indicated that individuals often knew a few phatic expressions such as ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘how are you’ etc. used as cues in everyday situated exchanges in English to establish rudimentary social affiliations with communities of practice comprising Polish, Kenyan and Rumanian colleagues on building sites and in hotels, for example (see also Osborne 2020). However, they would also respond to simple yes-no questions as a function of basic communication. Outside the spatial zone of the Madeiran Quarter, Portuguese still predominates in certain workspaces involving unskilled labour, and it thus helps to maintain ingroup affiliation.

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However, my observational data demonstrated that formal acquisition of English is still low amongst these older speakers, even though they may use a few English loanwords in their Portuguese interactions. One local employer attested: P: I had a kitchen porter in my hotel who had been with me for 20–25 years and he could not speak English.he only spoke Portuguese// (QQLI)

This type of scenario may well engender an asymmetric power relationship between L1 speakers of English and Migrant Islanders with good communicative competencies in English as their L2 on the one hand, and those whose L2 knowledge is either minimal on the other. In turn, this may influence an individual’s degree of economic participation within the Knowledge-Based Economy and ultimately, their economic success. As with the differing trajectories of KK1GM and LL1GM we saw earlier, in migration contexts, learning the dominant, ideologically and state-sponsored language of empowerment, particularly in a structured way, is very often a valuable resource of symbolic capital, a way of enhancing job prospects as knowledge of the language becomes explicit (Williams 2005: 9). Recent migrants in particular have appeared to selectively and voluntarily engage with English. AARM, for example, was quickly promoted from working in hotel kitchens to front of house waiting on tables because he could, and would, interact in English with suppliers and other staff, albeit at a basic level. After starting night classes, his English competencies improved greatly and he was promoted once again to bar manager. He explains the reasoning behind his desire to learn English: P: Oh you know.to improve-to improve my chances.I had a kid on the way and I needed to provide.having English speaking skills in a hotel.well. it makes sense.it was difficult at first.I could not understand all English accents.and when a foreigner spoke English.whew.but I learnt all the drink names and continued to study// (AARM)

Yet in other, situated, workspace practices, Portuguese does still have a role to play. In the mid-1990s, GG1.5GM went to stay on Jersey with her sister, who as we saw in Chapter 5 found her catering work. After studying computing skills at night school, she secured employment at a

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doctor’s surgery and at the time of my fieldwork, had recently been promoted. Although her initial priority was simply to earn some money and have a good time, her English language skills quickly improved. I observed, however, that in a similar way to the States’ endorsement of professional Portuguese language practitioners outlined earlier, one of her principal roles at work was as a mediator between Portuguese-speaking patients and doctors, facilitating appointments, and writing and reading clients’ hospital and clinic letters. This participant’s employer appeared to regard her Portuguese language skills in particular as a type of non-formalised, tacit knowledge (Williams 2005: 1), of much value to the practice as a source of enhanced business opportunities: P: I am now assistant manager.accounts manager […] of the surgery […] we have.we have banter at work.it’s a different level of work than we used to have in the catering.it’s er.the social level is slightly different […] I have always used my Portuguese at work and I do translations.at the practice. for the practice […] we don’t charge so are available for help.with the Portuguese speakers.lots of them come here now// (GG1.5GM)

GG1.5GM’s multilingual competencies are thus a form of linguistic capital (Bourdieu 1992) and her experience, skills and improved knowledge have recently inspired her to enrol on the rota of police liaison interpreters. Yet other migrants’ linguistic behaviour did not conform to the well-established social hierarchy of language within Jersey’s Knowledge Economy (Bourdieu 1992: 23–24). One of my key gatekeepers pointed out for example, that many older Portuguese speakers with little proficiency in English also managed to improve their employment careers and even start their own businesses, such as cleaning agencies, shops, restaurants and cafés (see Beswick 2013): P: While the Portuguese.when they came here.you had very many enterprising Portuguese that started off in the farms then became taxi drivers then (xxxx) everything.hardworking an-and astute guys.then they opened a little café and before you know it.you’ve got some very significant Portuguese entrepreneurs.very significant […] without good English// (AAPG)

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What is noteworthy about such achievements however, is that in nearly every case the businesses were located spatially within the ingroup dynamic of the Madeiran Quarter or generally only employed people from the zone. 1.5 and second-generation participants who worked in the skilled sector often commented that multilingual competencies were rarely ascribed any positive values of empowerment by employers. DD1.5GM, for example, worked in the finance sector. Although his Portuguese language proficiency was useful to his first employer, a local bank, with him acting as an interpreter for other Portuguese speakers training front of house staff, they became largely irrelevant to his subsequent promotion opportunities in the job market: P: I never got paid more for this work.they said that speaking Portuguese was useful but not worth paying me more for […] basically they told me that I could use it if I wanted but they didn’t see it as a skill they valued […] so I don’t bother anymore// (DD1.5GM)

Moreover, some local employers appeared to view the potential for linguistic competencies in any language other than English as somewhat of a problem to be resolved, often as a source of conflict, rather than as a benefit to be exploited. This attitude was mirrored to some extent by a few participants living outside the Madeiran Quarter. Whilst extolling the benefits of speaking English on the Island, JJ1.5GM explained how for her, the presence of Portuguese language support services simply limited the necessity for people such as her parents to acquire any English, and in turn, this appears to have prevented them from transcending the spatial and economic limits of their rural workplace: P: When I came over.I would argue continuously for them to learn English.for twenty odd years my parents.their English was very limited. extremely limited […] they didn’t know a wo-there was no world outside the farm […] their boss.their manager spoke to them.speaks to them in Portuguese.at the doctor’s at the hospital you’ve got translators you go the shops and you’ve got someone speaking Portuguese […] there is always somebody around.so with them they don’t need to learn English.it’s not as argued continuously for them to like.to learn English.to go to classes […] I will argue that definitely there is-there is no excuse for you not to go and learn the language […]// (JJ1.5GM)

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In other workspaces, even when both interlocutors were L1 Portuguese speakers, a power and status dimension often pervaded in which one or both of the speaker’s ideological precepts regarding investment in English as the hierarchical, high status language engendered a bilingual conversation. MM1.5GM, the deputy manageress of a hotel in St. Helier explained that the Portuguese-speaking manager always addressed her in English even when they were alone and even if she had initiated or responded in Portuguese. For the manager then, English was the language of empowerment, implying seniority and social position in the workspace at all times. Other comments manifested an appreciation of general commercial principles regarding hierarchical language use with and in front of customers and clients. AAPG, for example, explained why he tried not to speak Portuguese to any of his staff: P: um the question is.sometimes they go oh we should talk Portuguese more and stuff but.number one I don’t.if I have any one that is English who doesn’t understand Portuguese in here.it’s a little bit. what are they saying are they talking about me […] the customers always think what they are actually saying// (AAPG)

Echoing officially sanctioned precepts regarding language use in the workplace, 1.5 and second-generation participants who worked in the skilled sector also considered their English language proficiency as a prerequisite for economic success: P1: Without a good command of English we would not have secured the jobs we have.we would not have gone to university and made the choices we did// (EE2GM) P2: Yeah agreed.without English I wouldn’t be where I am now.’cos if you don’t improve your English something is wrong// (OO2GM) P3: Me.I always use English at work.even with other Portuguese speakers […] it’s necessary to get on in life// (FF1.5GM)

English was thus a way for these participants to assert and reinforce their employment value to the receptor society. Its authoritative, status-enhancing function as the language of the social group with the greater economic and cultural capital was also commented on by employers and recruitment specialists in monetary terms:

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P: The reality of the situation is that well qualified jobs […] middle management.finance companies […] there is a correlation between how good your languages are.the better you are paid […] the more you are paid the better your English is generally// (NNLI)

The Third Generation: Ideologies of Language and Authenticity Recently, research on discourse and identity in contexts of diaspora, migration and transnational/translocal mobility has started to establish the multiplicity of situated interactions in different contexts between the families of migrants and members of communities and groups considered to be local to a particular space. Importantly, however, we have seen in this chapter that on Jersey, the Madeiran Quarter still comprises a fundamentally self-sufficient diasporic group, with many older and middle-aged individuals in particular being largely detached from regular contact with the receptor society. Indeed, their everyday encounters continue to be spatially delimited within this imagined community and enacted mostly in Portuguese, which from their perspective at least, is a discrete language that signifies and reinforces an overarching identification with belonging to another place. Nonetheless, for those participants living and working outside the Madeiran Quarter, their experiences, encounters and strong network ties with Local Islanders, in particular, have fostered alternative social, cultural and linguistic practices. Indeed, their conscious use of English with interlocutors with linguistic and communicative competencies in Portuguese thus became marked for example, and also highlighted a situated positioning of non-identification with the Madeiran community in St. Helier. These attitudes towards identity may thus imply that speakers question and even contest definitions of ethnic belonging and in doing so, challenge the existence of symbolic boundaries between different groups based on what they appear to consider as outmoded, essentialised criteria. I now turn to the youngest group of participants, aged between eighteen and twenty three at the time my fieldwork was coming to an end. Nearly all of these third-generation participants, irrespective of

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their place of residence, foregrounded language as a key aspect of their own ingroup identification and membership. Although some individuals who live in the Madeiran Quarter sometimes constructed a discourse around ethnicity and belonging to this imagined community, their own everyday encounters were in no way delimited by the spatial boundaries of the zone, and neither were their linguistic repertoires. Indeed, whilst these individuals still tended to engage with their families and local social networks predominantly in Portuguese, alternative linguistic performative behaviour was always prevalent outside this space, and this was confirmed as having formerly been the case at school both in the classroom or playground, nowadays at college and at work as well as in their regular outings with friends. Third-generation individuals living outside the Madeiran Quarter tended to emphasise their social embeddedness within the receptor community and thus reinforced a strong sense of belonging by foregrounding English as the language of their daily interactions. However, and to a degree in line with my Bournemouth research (Beswick and Pozo-Gutiérrez 2010: 52–53), some were starting to demonstrate an interest in their own heritage and elements of Portuguese were becoming apparent in their situated conversations with each other. It is to this specific type of linguistic behaviour that I now turn. Code-switching and code-mixing as instances of multilingual performance have been extremely well-researched phenomena over the past few decades. The general theoretical stance adopted from a structural perspective has tended to conceptualise the language varieties involved as clearly distinct systems, and so in constraint-based models at least (see Poplack 1980 for the influential prototype), inter-, intra-sentential or tag switches may occur in the discourse of the conversational turn (see also Myers-Scotton 2017; Otheguy et al. 2015; Gardner-Chloros 2009; Muysken 2000).14 Despite the degree of criticism leveled at the original model, such phenomena were in evidence during my own research in the linguistic repertoires of participants. We saw above that older individuals would often use English phatic expressions to establish workspace group allegiances and would be able respond to simple yes-no questions in basic communications with colleagues. These however, were simply pragmatic choices based on the situated use of English in a community of practice,

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since Portuguese was otherwise retained as the ingroup identifier. In an earlier paper on my Jersey fieldwork (Beswick 2007) I focused on some of who I now call the 1.5 and second-generation participants, most of whom have always lived away from the Madeiran Quarter, and I found that nearly all of them often consciously switched between Portuguese and English in conversations with their families and friends. My fieldwork consistently revealed examples of inter-sentential switches but this research paper focused specifically on intra-sentential switches, particularly of single morphemes such as common nouns. Interestingly, some participants saw such strategies as indicative of their own linguistic incompetency when English was the target language, or as sheer laziness when Portuguese was the target language, comments largely consistent with the findings of ethnographic studies such as Lopez-Trigal (2001). Yet despite their overt linguistic insecurities switching strategies into Portuguese were often clearly carried out for extralinguistic reasons, such as emphasis, irony and humour, as individuals demonstrated an extremely high degree of linguistic and communicative competence in both languages. Idiomatic expressions such as ‘oh my God’ and ‘bless’ (Beswick 2007: 101) and sometimes nouns denoting a physical object found in the location or recalled in a story were introduced into Portuguese and subject to its phonology: P: eu gosto de comer o meu breakfast [brɛkfəʃ] as 7 horas da manha// (JJ1.5GM) ‘I like to eat my breakfast at 7 in the morning’// P: eu vou ao shop [ʃˈɔp]// (GG1.5GM) I’m going to the shop// P: tenho aqui um knife [nɪf ]// (HH2GM) I have a knife// (ibid.: 102)

The above examples of code-switching as a social phenomenon demonstrate to an extent how research has moved away from the essentially structural perspective of code-switching to a more sociolinguistic focus on the actual linguistic behaviour of speakers in situated contexts, as they draw on elements of their idiolect in the form of what is considered

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to be one integrated linguistic system rather than two (or more) monolingualisms (García and Lin 2016)15 Indeed, speakers may often creatively go beyond the grammatical rules of the languages in question, (Li 2017: 9) an issue I now turn to. Translanguaging, which developed originally as a pedagogical strategy arising from bilingual contexts in Welsh schools (Lewis et al. 2012), is able to situate code-switching squarely in its social context by focusing on the speaker, not the language(s) per se. García’s definition is apposite: ‘translanguaging is the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages, in order to maximize communicative potential’ (2009: 140). As social actors (Van Leeuwen 1996), speakers thus manipulate these features or resources in situated social interactions, through their idiosyncratic linguistic repertoires. However, such dynamic and complex sociolinguistic practices thus move beyond socially and politically defined language labels or boundaries (Otheguy et al. 2015; Wei Li 2011: 1223) to include new attitudes, new beliefs and ultimately, new identities (Li and Zhu 2013: 519), somewhat in line with a speaker’s own crossing of boundaries to engage and identify with diverse social networks and communities of practice, as we saw earlier. Translanguaging thus recognises the relevance of new linguistic practices to a person’s ‘belonging, position and identity’ (Wei Li 2014: 173). Furthermore, such linguistic repertoires do not imply that linguistic competencies in both sets of features need to be absolute (see, for example, Busch 2006) for communication in situated practices to be possible (see the work on borderland varieties in southern Galicia/northern Portugal [Beswick 2014], and on the USA/Mexico border [Zentella 2013]). Perhaps inevitably, such a dialectic has also necessitated a further revision of terms such as multilingualism, applicable too in migration contexts. In his interrogation of the term, Blommaert argues that multilingualism ‘should not be seen as a collection of ‘languages’ that a speaker controls, but rather as a complex of specific semiotic resources, some of which belong to a conventionally defined “language”, while others belong to another “language” […] we see very fragmented and ‘incomplete’ – ‘truncated’—language repertoires, most of which consist of spoken, vernacular, and non-native varieties of different languages, with an overlay of

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differentially developed literacy skills’ (2010: 102). In his description of polylingualism and languaging, some of the alternative yet similar concepts to translanguaging, Jørgensen highlights that what is crucial to communication is the employment of language itself rather than specific languages per se, emphasising that ‘language users employ whatever linguistic features are at their disposal to achieve their communicative aims as best they can, regardless of how well they know the involved languages’ (2008: 163). This may well be the case of the third-generation participants in my study. Educational environments of learning and engagement were both multicultural and multilingual for all these individuals, since English was the language of instruction but Portuguese and English were used in the playground. Importantly however, these participants did not voice conventional attitudes of diglossic language use, and their linguistic performances suggested that many have adopted a type of peer-enhanced use of language. A pertinent example of the situated ways in which my third-generation participants use language was demonstrated when three of them recounted a classroom incident to me: P1: E então o professor disse para o gajo what is the story about xxxx.can you tell us.o gajo ficou assustado like fuck/ (HH3GM) (‘And then the teacher said to the kid what’s the story about xxxx.can you tell us.the kid was scared like fuck’)/ P2: Então começa a contar a história em português.shit fine for us.but of course.in the classroom we should speak in English and some students were confused.fucking hell.então o prof o parou e disse para a turma don’t worry.xxxx will translate for you/ (JJ3GM) (‘Then he starts to tell the story in Portuguese.shit fine for us.but of course.in the classroom we should speak in English and some students were confused.fucking hell.so the teacher stopped him and said to the class don’t worry.xxxx will translate for you’)/ I:E funcionou bem/ (‘And did it work well’)/ P3: Yeah.I guess. (turning to his colleagues) shit.funcionou bem.não é/ (CC3GM) (‘Yeah.I guess.shit.it worked well didn’t it’)/

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P1: Não importa.you prick.and fuck.afinal ainda temos de escrever as nossas próprias versões em inglês/ (‘It doesn’t matter.you prick.and fuck.at the end of the day we still have to write our own versions in English’)/ P3: Ha.twat.como vai conseguir fazer isso/ (‘Ha.twat.how will he be able to do that’)/ P1: A gente nunca faria uma coisa dessas.shit it’s wrong.we just use English/ (‘We would never do that.shit it’s wrong.we just use English’)/ P2: Yeah you perv.tens razão// (‘Yeah you perv.you’re right’)//

This example can be analysed on a few, different levels. In terms of topic, these participants were talking about a boy who, unlike them, lives in the Madeiran Quarter and struggled with speaking English in the classroom. Although the student was a good friend, P2 questioned the teacher’s decision to allow him to summarise the story in Portuguese. By foregrounding and referring to the ideological presence of a monolingual norm in the classroom, he underlined his need to be recognised as someone who would never flout this rule, a good student, as opposed to a bad one who gets into trouble for using the ‘wrong’ language, something P3 reiterated with his last comment. Furthermore, from a practical perspective, P1’s observation that allowing the boy to retell the story in Portuguese would not help him with his written piece of work also questions the use of translanguaging itself in the classroom. My participants’ own, non-arbitrary and skilful use of linguistic features is also worthy of attention. Firstly, these students were aware of each other’s as well as my own linguistic repertoires, and their shared conversation in my presence evidenced sound knowledge of both Portuguese and English linguistic features and effective, communicative competencies. However, although this concurrent use of resources from both languages crossed code boundaries, for these participants there was a shared and situated negotiation of use. Hence, students always cited the teacher in English but narrated the story in Portuguese, such as P1’s first utterance, and this also happened in conversations not

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involving me as a co-respondent. In one respect, this is not particularly surprising since the participants were simply reporting what was said by the teacher in English. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that they all also used English swearwords as interjections, often signalling a codeswitched phrase or clause at equivalence sites, such as at the point where P1 contests what P3 says about the translanguaging example, and where P2 responds to P1’s observation regarding the use of English. Swearing is a complex sociolinguistic practice, and much research with both monolinguals and bilinguals on the relationship of swearing to code-switching has focused on the emotive reasons behind the use of profanity, particularly when used to express anger (Mohammadi 2020: 1), what Kim and Starks have termed ‘emotion-related language choice’ (2008). However, perhaps more relevant in the context of my own examples is swearing as a cross-linguistic and socio-communicative situated practice, employed as a solidarity enhancing tool within a social network and through which members can signal their close, interpersonal relationships (Baruch and Jenkins 2007: 95–6) and construct group identity (Mohammadi 2020: 1). Initial work with highly proficient multilinguals such as the speakers discussed here, pointed to a preference for the use of a swearword from the dominant language to be used to convey the weight of the utterance (see, for example, Dewaele 2004a). Even if speakers believe they are equally proficient in both languages (see, for example, Dewaele 2010a) their L1 carries greater emotional force, and research on extralinguistic factors such as the setting, context and cultural norms (Gawinkowska et al. 2013; see also Lantto 2012) appears to have reinforced this premise. In my own examples, all the participants were raised predominantly in Portuguese, but were exposed to English from a very early age both in naturalistic and educational contexts. For them, swearing appeared to be a situated if largely unconscious practice, determined by the informal context and therefore, the style and register of the utterance as well as the intended referential use which was not to express anger but to convey humour and deploy it for their own ends. As social actors (Van Leeuwen 1996), using swearwords from English as playful or emphatic signifiers to poke fun at each other is a positive, groupaffirming linguistic act (Mohammadi 2020: 2), a way of establishing

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and reinforcing their insider rapport and social cohesion as a friendship group of streetwise, urban young people, and a way of negotiating their shared, identity through direct references to the interlocutor, rather than a contravention of social or cultural norms.16 Interestingly, on the few occasions these participants chose to talk to me solely in English, they adopted positive linguistic politeness strategies (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 61) as a face saving exercise, and thus, no swearword tokens were in evidence. As we have seen above, the environment of learning and engagement at school and college for these third-generation participants was multicultural and multilingual, and many of their friendship groups forged there have crossed the educational boundary and are still maintained in other spaces of social interaction. Yet even when engaging with so-called Local Islanders, for whom English is the L1, a peer-enhanced, translanguaged variety appeared to have often been used. The following is an extract from a conversation in the street between two third-generation Madeiran Portuguese participants and two young Local Islanders, all in their late teens: P1: Hey.cabrão.how goes it/ (laughs) (FF3GM)       [kɐbɾˈɐw ̃ ̃]       (‘bastard’) P2: Cool.have you seen (SSLI) […] filho da puta.he’s here/ (LLLI)                                                                     [fiʎudəputə]                              ‘                                        son of a bitch’) P3:Yeah.puxa he’s not late for once.ha (to SSLI) cabrão/ (EE3GM) ..………[puʃɐ]                           [kɐbɾˈɐ̃w̃]          (‘wow’)                                 (‘bastard’) P1: You going out tonight.us porcos are off to the pub (snorts)/                                              [poɾkuʃ]                                              (‘pigs’) P4: Ok.what time you pigs meeting.porcos/ (SSLI)                                  [pʰɔ:kus]                                  (‘pigs’)

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P3: Troughing first.ha ha (laughs)/ P2: Foda-se.just remembered.can’t/     [fodas]     (‘fuck’) P4: Porra.shame//     [poɾə]     (‘shit’)

Again, participants did not appear to be limited or bound by conventional norms; the swearwords are in Portuguese and are used by all involved in the conversation, irrespective of their L1. Dewaele (2004a) and others have established that non-native speakers tend to quickly acquire other language swearwords and very often they are the only known foreign lexis. As such, these speakers do not in any way conform to the definition of bilinguals with communicative competence. Nonetheless, it could be argued that the use of such lexis corresponds to some extent to L2 bilingual use as the language of ‘distance and detachment’ (Dewaele 2004b: 220). For these Local Islanders, using swearwords from Portuguese did  not  flout  any social constraints or norms (Dewaele 2010b) as using them in English would do, since they carry less emotive power (Pavlenko 2008; see also Pavlenko 2012). However, irrespective of their pragmatic knowledge, certain lexis symbolised pejorative reference to the Portuguese on Jersey. Thus, when the Local Islanders used the derogatory term porcos, it could have been interpreted as a highly audacious act, but their interlocutors allowed them to use without prejudice. Thus, once again, even profanities that are offensive in other contexts appear to be acceptable to describe friends within this peer group. These interactions then, represent distinctive forms of insider vernacular functioning as signifiers very much in line with how their translated equivalents would be variably used as indexical markers of specific, friendship group identity strategies. Here, These code-switched lexical tokens in Local Islanders’ utterances, appear to be targeting the original phonology,

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but speakers substitute, however, certain allophonic representations for approximations in English phonology: closed /a/ in porra and puta [ɐ] > [ə], plural marker in porcos [ʃ] > [s], and /r/ in porra [ʁ] > [r]. In terms of positionings of local belonging, my tentative findings suggest that this ingroup vernacular resonates with Holmes’ Local Multiethnic Vernacular (2017: 172–174). Both vernaculars enjoy general status and prestige among the young people deemed communicatively competent at least to use them, even if linguistic competence, as in the case of my L1 English speakers, is not high, and both are acquired seemingly without difficulty. Both involve situated use in what are considered to be legitimate spaces of interaction, and both seem to involve humorous and even pejorative references that, however, entail no conflict or tension in their deployment.17 In line with Gilroy (2004), Holmes employs the term ‘multiethnic conviviality’ to describe the use of such reified, emblematic and reductionist representations as indexical markers of identification (ibid.: 173) within a given discursive space of local belonging. In my own research of course, such linguistic and communicative competencies vary both across generations and across spatial boundaries, and there internal Portuguese-speaking superdiversity Vertovec (2007) is rare.18 This does not mean, however, that older participants living and working entirely in the Madeiran Quarter never inserted English loanwords into their conversations, in line with my earlier comments regarding older speakers working in multicultural environments, but again this was nearly always for an eminently practical function rather than for humour. Inherent to third-generation participants’ situated linguistic practices appears to be the complex and vibrant nature of self-identification (see, for example, Blommaert 2013; Arnaut et al. 2015). For these participants and their interlocutors, this type of mixed or switched vernacular is an authentic form of language that they own and use in order to signal and legitimise their right to assume an alternative identity across the boundaries of what have hitherto been seen as insider and outsider groupings. Language then, negotiates affiliations beyond those of what may be seen as bounded Portuguese- or English-speaking communities of practice within particular discursive spaces.

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Chapter Summary This chapter has examined a group of individuals from or connected to the Madeiran Portuguese diaspora on Jersey, one of the most significant migratory movements to Jersey in the past fifty years. Fundamental to my analysis has been how different generations articulate ideologies of belonging and of home, how they characterise their own ingroup and outgroup identities, often using institutionally endorsed epithets, and whether such behaviour is based (or not) on situated social, cultural and linguistic practices and as such, potentially variable. It has become clear that overarching identity affiliations are not grounded in the national, but in the regional, establishing a strong sense of group cohesiveness manifest not only in social and cultural practices, but also in the spatial clustering of many families within the Madeiran Quarter. Stories of early migration from Madeira to Jersey may have acquired a folkloric status; nonetheless, the testimonies I collected not only demonstrate the sociopolitical and socioeconomic reasons for them, but importantly, highlight this island-to-island migration as a cyclical phenomenon. Return, therefore, is still a key concept for many of my participants, whether such movement is reified as a temporary but necessary interruption to lives at ‘home’, as is the case of older individuals, or whether it is contested by younger ones for whom ‘home’ is very much on Jersey. It is apparent, therefore, that such differing perceptions have implications for belonging, settlement, social embeddedness and language use. The visible migrant spatial presence within the Madeiran Quarter plays an important role in maintaining a sense of community identity and cohesiveness, and the retention, use and transmission of Portuguese to younger generations thus become paramount to ideologies not only of return but also of belonging to this space. Yet some of my 1.5 and second-generation participants live outside the Madeiran Quarter, and at the same time as they foreground their integration and relationships with, as well as embeddedness within the Island’s local social networks, they often dismiss associations with a Madeiran Portuguese heritage identity. Portuguese thus becomes emblematic and only instrumentally functional in family contexts, but this does not prevent it being an important theme around which all

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participants talk about their lives, their experiences, their attitudes and their identities. Legitimate and authentic ideologies of identity thus tend to differ; whereas generally older participants tend to reference essentialised epithets to underpin their shared membership of the diaspora, younger participants, and certainly those living and working outside the Madeiran Quarter actively reject the relevance of such stereotypes to themselves and their lives. Theirs then is not a cooperative orientation, since ideologies of legitimacy and authenticity are negotiated and challenged by delineating a further set of personal and social identifiable characteristics based on alternative representations of home and belonging and reinforced by their stances towards competencies in English. To an extent, similar behaviour is seen with third-generation participants. However, they evidence distinctive linguistic repertoires and use and own innovative switching features, potentially in order reference affiliations to an alternative, cross-group identity. The ways in which they and their local friends use Portuguese swearwords in particular, could be seen as an emblematic, reinforcing and unifying symbol of this peer group identity.

Notes 1. Lusophony (Port. lusofonia) describes ‘a community of language and shared colonial history’ (Dias 2009: 9), with luso emphasising the Portuguese connection and o mundo lusófono denoting global Portuguese-speaking communities. However, the universal import of a term that places a focus on Portugal and its legacy is often contested; Dias thus defines its use as an ‘identity conundrum’ (2009: 8; see also Cahen 2013). 2. A striking example often used as social and cultural capital is that of fado, a musical genre traditionally characterised by tales of the sea, of loss, of fate and with the emotion of saudade, describing feelings of longing or sorrow, of nostalgia shared by migrants with friends and families who have been left behind. The championing of fado in official, nation branding exercises has resulted in its international reputation as an emblematic, if largely reductionist, identifier of an ‘authentic’ Portuguese character.

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3. For a brief summary of the global history of Portuguese-speaking migration, see Beswick (2007). For more on specific migrations, also see the following edited volumes; Da Costa Holton and Klimt (2009), Kenedy et al. (2013), Teixeira and Pereira da Rosa (2009), Morier-Genoud and Cahen (2012). For a recent edited volume on new Portuguese contemporary  economic emigration patterns, including return and identity, see Pereira and Azevedo (2019). 4. In recent years, the focus of the Regional Secretariat for Economy, Tourism and Culture has been the visual redesign of Madeira’s museum network; see online at http://cultura.madeira-edu.pt/agendacultural/ AgendaCultural/tabid/781/language/pt-PT/Default.aspx (accessed 21/03/18). 5. Significant initiatives have been implemented over the past decade to reinforce the social and cultural importance of the Mainland Portuguese and especially Madeirans on Jersey. In 1998, for example, the President of Madeira and the Bailiff of Jersey signed a memorandum of understanding and friendship between the two islands. Delegations paid official visits and the enterprise was celebrated in a 16-page commemorative supplement (JEP 13/05/98), and other reports. Subsequent issues of JEP turned to multicultural and multilingual diversity on Jersey (1620/01/2012) in which articles offered informative accounts of the history, society and culture of various migrant groups but once again did not include British mainlanders.Recently, Jersey Heritage has started to look at contemporary migrations to the Island. The Pathfinders’ exhibition explores Portuguese emigration to Jersey in particular and includes documentation of Portuguese speakers’ life stories. See online at: http:// www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/voices/pathfinders.shtml (last accessed 29/10/19). 6. In a study conducted by the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD), in 2001 cited in the Portuguese-American Journal (no author 2014), only 11% of Portuguese migrants to the USA and UK held a college degree and 41% were unskilled workers in manufacturing and transportation. 7. The International Finance Corporation offers investment, advisory and asset-management services to encourage private-sector development in developing countries: see in particular Part Two of their online document, Understanding Project-induced In-migration (International Finance Corporation 2009: 13–50). 8. Edouardo then married a Jersey girl and when he retired in 1984, he and his family remained on the Island. See online at: https://www.

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jerseyheritage.org/migrant-stories/european-connections---eduardo-alho (last accessed 20/05/18). 9. At around 800 km2, Madeira is four times the size of Jersey, and the Madeiran archipelago sits in the Atlantic Ocean off Africa, whereas Jersey is located in the English Channel off France. Although both islands have extensive coastlines, sea cliffs and agricultural landscapes, Madeira has a rugged mountainous terrain, subtropical rainforest and arid desert terrain, whereas Jersey is an island of valleys and fields, rarely exceeding 140 m above sea level. In 2016, Madeira’s population was 254,876, two and half times the estimates for Jersey. See online at: https://estatistica.madeira.gov.pt/en/ (last accessed 20/05/18). 10. Sardinha’s categories are: socio-professional; emancipatory; utopian; identificatory; pragmatic; and dream-chasing (2011), aligning to an extent with the conceptualisation of island identities explored in earlier chapters. 11. Other participants talked about their pride in knowing how significant certain products are as transnational and global commodities: P: Wines are our identities now in the world […] we should be proud of our heritage and culture// (BBPG) P: Bem.a nossa comida vem de vários lugares e agora está espalhada pelo globo.caril.vinhos.caldo verde.pastéis de nata.prego de bife.bolo da Madeira […] são produtos madeirenses.portugueses// (CC1.5GM) ‘Well our food comes from various places and now it is spread around the globe.curry. wines.caldo verde soup.custard tarts.steak sandwiches.Madeira cake.they are Madeiran.Portuguese products//’. 12. The States’ website offers various examples: ‘Someone born outside Jersey who has lived in the Island for many years, might consider themselves of ‘Jersey’ ethnicity’; ‘Someone born on Jersey but with parents from outside the Island may consider their parental or cultural heritage to be the key influence in defining their ethnicity’ (States of Jersey Census 2011: 13). 13. In the latter part of my fieldwork, the question of changes in Portuguese citizenship laws from jus soli to jus sanguinis was also raised by certain third-generation participants, some of whom were interested in the fact that they might be able to secure nationality rights even though they had been born on Jersey. See in this vein Kostakopoulou (2008: 26–27). 14. In recent years, theorists have also explored the long-term effects of this type of behaviour on the language structures themselves (see, for example, Jarvis and Pavlenko 2008).

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15. This notion of a linguistic repertoire as an integrated system is reinforced by other authors; see, for example, MacSwan (2017), Cenoz and Gorter (2015), Cenoz and Gorter (2017), García and Li (2014), Canagarajah (2011). 16. As a precursor to my research, Santarita and Martin-Jones’ early research on Portuguese speakers in London (1991) established that younger individuals evolved a characteristic, code-switching discourse pattern that allowed them to emphasise a bilingual and bicultural identity. 18. A detailed discussion of form is beyond the remit of this book and the use of such a vernacular is the focus of a later article (Beswick, forthcoming). 19. Superdiversity is arguably one of the most important theories to have arisen as a result of globalisation. Its premise is based primarily on the assumption of more diverse patterns of migration, comprising ‘an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants’ (Vertovec 2006: i). It has been subject to a degree of criticism, however, primarily for its somewhat limited geographical scope.

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7 Concluding Remarks

We have seen that Jersey’s island configuration has played a pivotal role in the cyclical nature of historical and contemporary migratory trajectories and in the way its story has unfolded as a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual space. The liminality of the Island as a bounded, separate space of islandness, has often reinforced somewhat stereotypical and widespread portrayals of the population as insular, independent and hard-working, underpinning banal characterisations of ‘Jerseyness’. At times the Island has been vulnerable to invasion and occupation, becoming an ‘island prison’, at others it has managed to repel outside forces, but importantly, on Jersey the border also functions as a site of recurrent migration movement, traversed both from the outside and from within as determined by the Island’s requirements and situation. Jersey’s historical connections with France and Britain have also been key to its population development. The Island’s economic needs have been met by the influx of seasonal migrant workers from Northern France, Madeira, Poland and elsewhere, and many migrants have ended up staying on the Island despite the often somewhat exacting institutional legislation. For years, long-standing allegiances to the English Crown have facilitated the settlement of huge numbers of British mainland migrants and © The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8_7

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retirees, some wealthy, others less so. The ensuing linguistic conflict between French, Jersey French and English was tempered to a degree by the use of Jérriais, the local language variety, as a tool of shared, Local Islander identity under the German Occupation. Although it could perhaps be argued that this was a token gesture, physical confinement by the bounded space of the Island limited opportunities for resistance and underlines the importance of the Occupation—and subsequent Liberation by the British armed forces—in the creation of a communal, local memory that still appears to resonate in some quarters. Indeed, the Occupation also reinforced and reified a group consciousness of and allegiance to Britishness more than any other historical event in the past few hundred years. Yet such close connections to mainland Britain are not always so straightforward in ideologies about and attitudes towards belonging. Macro-level orders of discourse as well as representations of Jersey, its history and its people circulated through the media, tourism and marketing in particular, often promulgate social, cultural and linguistic stereotypical characterisations of a communal, historically embedded island identity, of ‘Jerseyness’, and also reference it as an Island of wealth and prestige. My fieldwork enquiry has analysed how such ideological precepts are often reflected in micro-level attitudes embedded within the othering strategies aimed at incomers. Indeed, on Jersey the perception of and identification with group epithets such as Local Islander by my own participants, as well as their use of Immigrant, Non-Islander and other epithets to designate ‘others’, may be somewhat uncompromising, but such a stance also demonstrates how symbolic boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are fostered and reinforced based on static characterisations of belonging and social embeddedness that take no account of the fluidity of identity. Thus, even mainland British migrants who have been on the Island for many years are not necessarily accepted as locals, despite the official status of English and the situated ways in which the language functions for them and for the Island as symbolic, economic and cultural capital. Speaking English may be a prerequisite of contemporary, authentic, Islander status but in my research at least, it is bound up in a complex dialectic that also seems to comprise requisite heritage attributes and the appropriate place of birth, namely Jersey.

7  Concluding Remarks     245

Over generations of course, this sense of difference may dissipate, particularly as far as the acceptance of individuals is concerned, but this frame of reference for local recognition is still not straightforward. Nor is this a recent issue, a fact borne out by the way that historical migrant communities have been portrayed through primordial epithets of ‘the other’ even decades after their initial arrivals. Importantly, integrative practices do help to enhance social embeddedness, a fact that was key for the Breton workers on Jersey, who abandoned sociocultural traditions and customs in order to fully integrate with the local population. In contrast, many of the Madeiran Portuguese on Jersey have long maintained their visible platforms of ethnicity and transnational/translocal practices, particularly in the spatially demarcated zone of the Madeiran Quarter. We have seen then, that micro-level attitudes towards such migrant island communities may well become more vociferous as a response to their prominence within the local landscape, and this includes the daily use of languages other than English. Indeed, in my research, language often finds expression in intraand inter-group discussions of authentic identity and authentic speakerhood. For Local Islanders, use of a language other than English indexes the ‘Immigrant’; for older Portuguese speakers, it indexes the ‘Migrant’ who can simultaneously belong temporarily at least to the local Madeiran Portuguese diaspora as well as to the spatially distanced community on Madeira itself, and who can aspire therefore to notions of return. Island-to-island migration from Madeira to Jersey is by no means a unique scenario, but many individuals who live in the Madeiran Quarter appear to have consciously created a bounded space of reference on Jersey in which they can reify an imagined community of home in Madeira. Perhaps what this part of my research highlights in particular, is the way in which such spatial boundaries help to reinforce the retention and use of sociocultural and sociolinguistic markers, and that both the physical and psychological crossing of these boundaries involves at least a degree of integration with local social networks and their practices, as is the case for some of my middle-aged and many of my younger participants. The use as a fieldwork practice of biographical narratives that revolve around life events and experiences contributes to our fuller understanding of collective identities through the situated positioning and even overplaying of certain markers as well as the understating of others. Moreover, it does

246     J. Beswick

seem that the ways in which certain individuals engage with overriding social, cultural and linguistic ideologies of belonging are linked at least partially to their age and to where they live and work on the Island. Identity in migrant communities is often seen as fluid, emerging from culturally and linguistically diverse practices and situated interactions across increasingly blurred and symbolic network boundaries. For those outside the Madeiran Quarter, this appears to indeed be the case, but within the zone such practices and interactions are not common. Rather than being challenged and rejected then, to some extent borders with the local community continue to be reinforced by differing sociocultural and sociolinguistic practices. However, we are perhaps starting to see a change in progress that revolves around how languages are being used innovatively in multilingual contexts. Whilst many older individuals may only use English expressions for situated, pragmatic reasons, most of the youngest participants of my research are highly reflexive and regularly use code-switching practices agentively to index peer group identities, often irrespective of where they live, whether they are functionally competent in both English and Portuguese, or whether in the case of L1 English speakers in particular, they only know a few words and phrases of the other language. Typically of course, these are swearwords, but the fact that they are employed appropriately in context suggests perhaps, that their linguistic repertoires do not necessarily completely classify languages as bounded objects or discrete entities. Rather, such repertoires comprise a set of constructs with which speakers can index allegiances to their peer group networks in superdiverse contexts. Naturally, I cannot make any far-reaching inferences as to the impact of these findings, since to do so would require further, longitudinal investigation. However, my interdisciplinary approach engages throughout with sociolinguistic and island studies models, thus offering a valuable contribution to the ever-increasing bank of research on migration as well as extremely interesting perspectives on attitudes and identities, including the complexity surrounding the notion of an authentic Islander and indeed, authentic speaker of a language such as English. Navigating the different linguistic demands made in particular on the youngest participants of my research also underlines the role of  translanguaging and superdiversity in transnational contexts and to a degree

7  Concluding Remarks     247

challenges claims that third-generation individuals living integrated lifestyles within the receptor society are often generally monolingual English speakers (see, for example, Milroy and Muysken 1995: 2). Future research will perhaps determine whether these patterns of linguistic innovation are linked to context and to the complexities of island migration, to the constant presence of Portuguese in certain, situated practices and to the transnational and translocal nature of many individuals’ lives on Jersey.

Reference Milroy, Lesley, and Pieter Muysken (eds.). 1995. Introduction: CodeSwitching and Bilingualism Research. In One Speaker, Two Languages: Crossdisciplinary Perspectives on Code-Switching, ed. Lesley Milroy and Pieter Muysken, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Appendices

Appendix A: Residential Status on Jersey Residential status

Definition

Housing

Work

Entitled

Someone who has lived in Jersey for 10 years (more details below) Someone who is an ‘essential employee’

Can buy, sell or lease any property

Can work anywhere and doesn’t need a licence to be employed Employer needs a licence to employ a ‘licensed’ person

Licensed

Can buy, sell or lease any property, apart from first time buyer restricted or social rented housing, in their own name if they keep their ‘licensed’ status

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8

249

250     Appendices Residential status

Definition

Entitled for work

Can work anywhere Can buy property Someone who has and doesn’t need jointly with an lived in Jersey for a licence to be ‘entitled’ spouse / five consecutive employed civil partner. Can years immediately lease ‘registered’ before the date (previously ‘unqualthe card is issued, ified’) property as or is married to a main place of someone who residence. is ‘entitled’, ‘licensed’ or ‘entitled for work’ Can lease ‘registered’ Employer needs a Someone who licence to employ property as a main does not qualify a ‘registered’ place of residence under the other person categories

Registered

Housing

Work

Qualifying for or losing your ‘entitled’ status Gaining ‘entitled’ status I was born in Jersey

I wasn't born in Jersey

Losing ‘entitled’ status

Once you gain your staYou must live in Jersey tus, it’s permanent for a combined period of 10 years You’ll keep your status You must live in Jersey as long as the total for a continuous period amount of time you of 10 years spend living away from Jersey doesn’t exceed five years You’ll gain permanent status if you’ve lived in Jersey continuously for 30 years up to the date that you make an application for a registration card

Appendices     251

Gaining ‘entitled’ status I wasn't born in Jersey, but moved here before I was 20 and have an 'entitled' parent I wasn't born in Jersey but moved here before I was 16

Losing ‘entitled’ status

Once you gain your staYou must live in Jersey tus, it’s permanent for a combined period of 10 years before you’re 40 Once you gain your staYou must live in Jersey tus, it’s permanent for a continuous period of 10 years

Taken from https://www.gov.je/Working/Contributions/RegistrationCards/Pages/ ResidentialStatus.aspx (accessed 22/05/18)

Appendix B: Respondent Categories 1GM = First-Generation Madeirans (17) • AA1GM • BB1GM • CC1GM • DD1GM • EE1GM • FF1GM • GG1GM • HH1GM • II1GM • JJ1GM • KK1GM • LL1GM • MM1GM • NN1GM • OO1GM • PP1GM • QQ1GM

252     Appendices

1.5GM = 1.5-Generation Madeirans (13) • AA1.5GM • BB1.5GM • CC1.5GM • DD1.5GM • EE1.5GM • FF1.5GM • GG1.5GM • HH1.5GM • II1.5GM • JJ1.5GM • KK1.5GM • LL1.5GM • MM1.5GM 2GM = Second-Generation Madeirans (12) • AA2GM • BB2GM • CC2GM • DD2GM • EE2GM • FF2GM • GG2GM • HH2GM • II2GM • JJ2GM • KK2GM • LL2GM 3GM = Third-Generation Madeirans (12) • AA3GM • BB3GM • CC3GM

Appendices     253

• DD3GM • EE3GM • FF3GM • GG3GM • HH3GM • II3GM • JJ3GM • KK3GM • LL3GM RP = Recent Polish Migrants (7) • AARP • BBRP • CCRP • DDRP • EERP • FFRP • GGRP RM = Recent Madeirans (7) • AARM • BBRM • CCRM • DDRM • EERM • FFRM • GGRM PG = Portuguese Gatekeepers (5) • AAPG • BBPG • CCPG • DDPG

254     Appendices

• EEPG BI = British/Irish Mainlanders (12) • AABIM • BBBIM • CCBIM • DDBIM • EEBIM • FFBIM • GGBIM • HHBIM • IIBIM • JJBIM • KKBIM • LLBIM LI = Local Islanders (19) • AALI • BBLI • CCLI • DDLI • EELI • FFLI • GGLI • HHLI • IILI • JJLI • KKLI • LLLI • MMLI • NNLI • OOLI • PPLI

Appendices     255

• QQLI • RRLI • SSLI RI = Return Islanders (3) • AARI • BBRI • CCRI

Index

A

Affiliation(s) group 5, 213, 227–229 language 100, 227 Agriculture. See Industry, agricultural Alho, Eduardo 188 Alien Registration Cards. See UNESCO German Occupation Registration Cards Aliens Restriction Act 56, 57. See also Migrant registration Allegiance, ethnic 113, 120 Americas 54, 69, 71, 73. See also Emigration Andersen, Benedict 31, 61, 115 Anglicisation 53, 140, 150 Appropriation. See Industry, tourist; Marketing, niche Archives, Jersey Heritage 57, 66, 148

Assimilation; assimilationist model 96, 109, 126. See also Integration Attitude(s) 2–4, 6, 13, 14, 25, 30, 80, 84, 94, 107, 113, 114, 117, 123–125, 128, 132, 133, 136, 137, 143, 144, 146, 148, 154–157, 175, 176, 183, 206, 216, 218, 222, 229, 244, 245. See also Ideology(ies), generational; Language Australia 54, 71, 92, 93, 105, 135. See also Emigration Authenticity 129, 134, 136, 149, 199, 208, 212, 229. See also Branding, nation; Islander(s), Jersey Azores 182

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 J. Beswick, Identity, Language and Belonging on Jersey, Language and Globalization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97565-8

257

258     Index B

Bailiff 9, 49, 157, 230 Bailiwick 8, 9 Baker, Thomas 3, 50, 117, 136, 137, 221 Baldacchino, Godfrey 24–28, 30–33, 35, 107, 134, 179, 183, 190, 191 Barbour, Stephen 61, 116 Bard, Robert 65, 127, 132 Barth, Frederik 118, 134, 155 Becoming, being 115. See also Diaspora(s); Hall, Stuart; Identity(ies), cultural Belonging communal 126, 148 ideologies of 36, 153, 155, 175, 202, 203, 206, 228, 244, 246 ingroup 113, 124, 148, 152, 153, 155, 175, 202, 203, 207, 228 outgroup 113, 152, 154, 228 Beswick, Jaine 7, 8, 29, 56, 85, 92, 95, 100, 109, 118, 126, 133, 136, 140, 144, 146, 156, 158, 182, 183, 196, 200, 213, 215, 219–221, 230, 232 Bilingualism. See Multilingualism Blommaert, Jan 37, 119, 120, 133, 183, 205, 221, 227 Boleat, Mark 45, 48, 50–57, 68–71, 74, 85, 86, 90, 92, 107, 187 Border(s) constructed 119 fluid 246 geographical 28 hard-edged 11, 24, 25, 87, 96, 190 linguistic 11, 14, 15, 29, 113, 246

mobile 25 permeable 25, 119 physical 21, 30, 36, 119, 124, 129, 196 psychic 31 social 14, 29, 113, 196, 206 symbolic 14, 15, 30, 36, 119, 124, 209 territorial 31, 32, 133 Borrowing 150. See also Contact, language; Transference Boundary(ies) 4, 24, 25, 29–32, 36, 87, 96, 116–120, 129, 131, 133, 148, 153, 154, 160, 161, 175, 176, 183, 190, 191, 196, 200, 205, 209, 218, 219, 221, 223, 225, 227, 244–246. See also Border(s) Boundedness 11, 93, 104, 192 Boundedness, spatial 119, 129. See also Border(s), liminal; Islandness; Space(s), liminal Bourdieu, Pierre 92, 100, 103, 133, 148, 215. See also Capital Bourhis, Richard 117, 143, 144 Brah, Avtar 29–31, 93 Branding 35, 36, 99, 107, 129, 130, 136, 142, 145, 146, 149, 179. See also Marketing; Market(s); niche nation 129, 130, 134, 149, 178, 229 place 130, 134 Breton 14, 45, 47, 55, 56, 114, 120, 125, 126, 137, 138, 150, 182, 245 Britain 1, 3, 9–12, 27, 29, 43, 45–48, 51–54, 61–63, 65,

Index     259

67, 72, 86, 94, 105, 122, 123, 128, 130, 139, 140, 147, 151, 152, 243, 244 British 2, 9, 10, 12, 14, 34, 44, 45, 47–49, 52–59, 61–64, 66–68, 70–73, 83, 86, 87, 90, 93, 98–100, 105, 107, 114, 117, 120, 122–125, 130–132, 136, 144, 147, 149, 152, 154, 230, 243, 244 Britishness authentic 131 Jersey 14, 131 mainland 130 British, nineteen and twentieth century migrants 57 Brittany 8, 46–48, 55, 59, 85, 137 Brokers, cultural. See Gatekeepers Bump, reminiscence. See Holmes, Sam; Conway, Dennis; Memory(ies) C

Cahen, Michel 176, 196, 197, 230 Calvinism. See Huguenot(s) Canagarajah, Suresh 119, 129, 232 Capital 14, 27, 53, 54, 83, 106, 133, 134, 142, 144, 163, 178. See also Bourdieu, Pierre; Knowledge Economy cultural 14, 103, 130, 148, 217, 229, 244 economic 8, 14, 92, 100, 103, 145, 217, 244 linguistic 92, 100, 215 symbolic 8, 14, 83, 92, 100, 148, 214, 244

Categorisations 5, 109, 116, 119, 175, 201, 203, 206. See also Essentialism; Identity(ies), ethnic ancestral 116 bounded 115 common 115 cultural 5, 113, 115, 116 fixed 115 inherited 115 invariable 180 predetermined 115 racial 116 unifying 115 Catholicism 51, 73 Cattle, Jersey 70. See also Industry, agricultural Census 1841 56 1851 54, 56, 90 1871 57, 69 1901–2011 54, 90, 105, 155, 201, 203 Channel Islands 1, 8–10, 12, 34, 44, 46–48, 50, 52, 60, 61, 63–66, 68, 69, 71, 90, 122, 136 Churchill, Winston 62 Cider 70, 75. See also Industry, agricultural Coastline. See Boundednes; sIslandness Code-mixing 219 Code-switching 219–221, 226, 232, 246 Collaboration. See Resistance Colonisation 176 Commodification. See Branding, nation

260     Index

Community(ies) diasporic 181, 196 island 1, 13, 14, 25, 34, 71, 80, 84, 106, 121, 122, 156, 157, 198, 208, 245, 246 local 13, 25, 107, 138, 156, 218, 245 migrant 1–3, 13, 14, 80, 84, 94, 107, 134, 159, 176, 196, 197, 199, 218, 245, 246 of practice 29, 98, 119, 121, 122, 124, 129, 147, 196, 209, 221, 227 receptor 2, 3, 80, 97, 107, 118, 119, 207, 208, 219, 247 Community, imagined 31, 122, 149, 155, 189, 198, 202, 218, 219, 245 Competence, communicative 101, 220, 226 Competencies 100, 158, 159, 213, 214, 216, 220, 221, 227, 229 multi-language 8 multilingual 158 Consciousness, national 178, 180 Constructivism, social etc 30 Contact, language 4, 150 Contact zone(s) linguistic 7 sociocultural 7 Control, population. See Legislation Conway, Dennis 85, 88, 94, 182–184, 186, 193, 196, 201, 206 Cotentin Peninsula 8, 48 Cruickshank, Charles 62, 63, 74, 126

D

De Fina, Anna 5, 37, 117, 135 Demilitarisation 61, 72, 131 Dependency(ies), British Crown 9, 90 Deportation. See Occupation, German Dialect 27, 136, 183, 221, 244. See also Language; Variety(ies), language Diaspora(s) 2, 3, 15, 28, 31, 96, 135, 175, 177, 178, 180, 193, 195– 197, 202, 203, 218, 228, 229, 245. See also Community(ies), diasporic Diglossia 14, 139 Discourse discursive practice(s) 6 discursive repertoire(s) 219 discursive space(s) 5 Discrimination 116, 118, 125 Dislocation 2, 28, 73, 103, 189, 197, 201, 203. See also Separateness; spatial definitive 207 spatial 2, 130, 213 temporary 207 Distinctiveness, psychological 24, 179 Diversity, linguistic 4, 65, 115, 126 E

Economic participation; success 158, 214 Economy 85, 92, 145, 159, 213, 214 market 100 mixed 35, 89

Index     261

Economy, Knowledge-Based. See Knowledge Economy Embeddedness 228 local 13, 15, 208, 228 social 2, 13, 15, 200, 207, 208, 219, 228, 244, 245 Emigration 69–72, 74, 89, 92, 182, 230. See also Immigration; Migration Employee(s) Entitled for Work 91 essential 90, 91, 95 J Category 90 Non-Qualified 91, 183 England 8, 9, 34, 47–51, 68–72, 89, 125, 138, 139, 160 English 1, 8, 9, 12–14, 43, 44, 48–50, 53, 54, 61, 72, 79, 87–89, 92, 93, 99–101, 103, 105, 107, 114, 120, 122, 131, 137–141, 144, 145, 149–152, 157–160, 163, 184–186, 206, 209, 211, 213–220, 222–225, 227, 229, 231, 243–246 English, Channel 8, 45, 46 English, global 92 Essentialism 30, 31, 50, 61, 115, 119, 120, 128, 134, 138, 183, 191, 201, 218, 229 Ethnicity. See Group, ethnic; Identity(ies), ethnic Ethnography; ethnographic practice(s) 5, 183, 220 Europe EU 10, 90, 102, 178 European Community 10, 177 Evacuation. See Occupation, German Exercises, institutional branding. See Branding Exotic familiar 87, 99

F

Factors, extralinguistic 224. See also Sociolinguistics Farming 49, 69, 121. See also Industry, agricultural; farming smallholder 70 subsistence 70 Farming: techniques, traditional, small-scale 85, 121. See also Farming, subsistence Finance. See Industry, finance Fishing. See Industry, fishing Fleury, Christian 140, 141 Food 185, 196, 197, 199 Ford, Doug 46, 54, 85, 150 Foreigner. See Othering; otherness France 1, 3, 8–10, 12, 43, 45, 47–51, 54, 55, 69–72, 74, 85, 105, 125, 130, 139, 149, 150, 178, 231, 243 France, Northern. See Brittany; Normandy French 1, 3, 9, 12, 14, 43, 46–52, 55–57, 59, 60, 65, 68, 69, 74, 85, 100, 105, 114, 120, 125, 134, 136–138, 140, 144, 150, 244. See also Jersey French Norman 9, 12, 14, 43, 50, 53, 114, 120, 135, 136, 138, 144, 149 Standard 3, 9, 114, 137, 138, 163 G

García, Ofelia 219, 221, 232 Garrett, Peter 117, 118, 155 Gatekeepers 8, 152, 156, 197, 215 Gatekeeper(s), Portuguese; PG 81 Gellner, Ernest 61, 116

262     Index

Generation, 1.5; 1.5GM 80, 186, 187, 198, 199, 201, 206, 212, 213, 216, 217, 220, 228 Generation, first; 1GM 80, 180, 181, 187, 193, 195, 198, 207 Generation(s) 4, 121, 137, 160, 184, 197, 199, 205, 218, 220, 225, 227–229, 231, 245, 247 Generation, second; 2GM 80, 181, 194, 198, 199, 201, 204, 206–208, 211–213, 216, 217, 220, 228 Generation, third; 3GM 80, 199, 202, 208, 218, 219, 222, 225, 227, 229, 231, 247 Gentrification 35 Gillis, John 33–36, 102 Globalisation 10, 25, 35, 79, 95, 107, 140, 232 global infrastructure 28, 96 Great Britain. See Britain Group ethnic 65, 116, 119, 135 membership of 30, 109, 119, 148, 151 Guernsey 1, 9, 46, 48, 52, 71, 136

linguistic 135, 219 maritime 191 primordial 122, 128, 147, 153 shared etc 203 Hillsdon, Sonia 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 74, 75, 128, 139, 147, 150 Hitler, Adolf. See Occupation, German Holmes, Sam 6, 116, 135, 162, 183, 184, 201, 203, 206, 227 Home conceptualisations of 14, 99, 128, 180 fluidity of 100 images of 130, 195 multiplicity of 30, 96, 196 notions of 29, 94 Homeland(s) 4, 5, 29–31, 63, 85, 93, 94, 96, 123, 135, 193, 196, 199 imagined 196, 198 real 196 Hopkins, Mark 141, 142, 145, 146 Huguenot(s) 50, 53, 69, 73, 75. See also Refugee(s), religious Human geography 3 Hunt, Peter 9, 45, 47–49, 52, 54, 56, 67, 70, 71, 99, 107

H

Habitus 196 Hall, Stuart 30, 31, 100, 115, 119, 153, 203, 204 Hay, Pete 24–27, 31–33, 35, 52, 87, 94, 96, 99, 100, 190, 191 Heller, Monica 133, 134, 148, 206 Heritage collective 4, 126, 143, 193 familial 68, 135, 141, 153, 160, 202

I

Identity(ies) 1–3, 24, 27, 28, 31, 36, 44, 45, 74, 96, 115, 120, 126, 130, 131, 134, 140, 142, 148, 163, 196, 232. See also ­Self-representations; Portrayal(s) British 12, 120, 132

Index     263

collective 27, 115, 116, 117, 127, 153, 204, 245 communal 14, 113, 126, 134, 138, 148, 244 complex 113, 115, 147, 179 corporate 145 cultural 2, 14, 73, 113, 116, 126, 135, 138, 203 ethnic 5, 7, 44, 114–116, 119, 134, 218 experiential 5, 175 fluid 30, 31, 100, 115, 244, 246 formation of 100 group 80, 116, 117, 119, 122, 127, 135, 144, 147, 178, 187, 201, 203, 226, 229, 245, 246 homogeneous 30, 62, 116, 145, 175, 179, 203 hybrid 115 identification 44, 178, 183, 184 idiosyncratic 145 immigrant 13, 14, 50 individual 30, 118, 183, 201, 204 ingroup 12, 61, 139, 146, 153, 160, 193, 209, 228 islanded 13, 79, 83, 154, 179 island-to-island 228 Jersey 1, 10, 14, 61, 66, 73, 93, 113, 114, 121, 122, 128, 135, 138, 142, 146, 178, 181, 244 language 1, 2, 4, 5, 14, 44, 62, 80, 99, 113, 135, 136, 151, 153, 158, 175–177, 199, 209, 212, 227, 245 linguistic 2, 5, 7, 44, 115, 116, 126, 135, 177 local 120, 121, 136, 142, 161, 179, 181

Madeiran 203, 204 markers of 122, 125, 138, 199, 226 migrant 6, 30, 31, 113, 117, 119, 179, 180, 246 multi-dimensional 115 multiple 31, 115, 180 national 15, 25, 62, 116, 125, 133, 175–180 outgroup 12, 99, 153, 156, 207, 228 Portuguese 15, 176–178, 228, 229 proto-ethnic 27, 183 regional 178, 179, 181, 187 self 6, 114, 154, 183, 201 social 117, 144 thick 27, 183 Ideology(ies) generational 175, 206 linguistic 7, 8, 73, 136, 137, 143, 147, 197, 246 of belonging 36, 153, 155, 175, 203, 206, 228, 246 of distinctiveness 134, 154, 202, 203 of language 2, 4, 7, 8, 14, 15, 84, 101, 114, 116, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 143, 146, 158, 176, 209, 212–214 Idiolect(s) 220 Imagery. See Stereotype(s) Immigrants 13–15, 27, 35, 45, 51, 54, 57, 71, 79, 80, 91, 95, 114, 120, 129, 151, 155, 159, 175, 176, 206, 244, 245. See also Migrant(s) Immigrant visitor(s) 129, 151, 206

264     Index

Immigration 6, 10, 12, 13, 44, 52, 56, 57, 65, 71, 72, 74, 89, 90, 107, 120, 125, 155. See also Emigration; Migration Immigration, retirement 52 Industrialisation 84, 123 Industrial Revolution 54, 70 Industry agricultural 54, 83, 84, 86, 95 banking 83, 95 construction 54, 69, 158 cottage 69, 123 farming 70 finance 83, 95 fishing 69 hospitality 35, 83, 86 service 10, 35, 83, 86, 95 tourist 10, 13, 35, 80, 83, 106, 130, 131, 142, 146, 179, 191 Insider 117, 225, 227 Insularity, island 11, 25, 31, 36, 63, 192. See also Boundedness, spatial Integration cultural 97 economic 49, 89, 97 linguistic 50, 71, 92 non- 3 social 3, 97, 245 Inter and intra group(s) 14, 245 Interconnectedness, transnational 28, 37 Invasion, German. See Occupation, German Ireland; Irish 46, 54, 71 Island fortress 65, 75, 128 geographical 8, 24, 47, 48, 87, 113, 120

island idyll 86, 102, 131 metaphorical 12, 27, 36, 102 paradise 31, 34, 55, 62, 63, 130 physical 24–26, 62, 190 prison 12, 33, 72, 243 small island 2 Islander(s) 10, 12, 24–26, 31, 35, 45, 61, 62, 64, 65, 72, 91, 119, 123, 127, 128, 130, 137, 140, 148, 151, 152, 154, 156–160, 175, 190, 191, 206, 208, 209, 212, 218, 225, 226, 244, 245. See also Local Islander(s), Jersey 54, 65, 89, 94, 114, 120, 121, 129, 149, 152, 154, 159, 160, 244 Islander(s), Local; LI 14, 54, 81, 114, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154, 160, 202, 205, 207–209, 212, 218, 225, 226, 244, 245 Islander(s), migrant 65, 72, 89, 94, 96, 119, 140, 156, 159, 214. See also Non-Islander(s) Islander(s), Return; RI 81, 92 Islandness 11, 26, 31, 36, 44, 63, 72, 73, 131, 156, 189, 192, 243 Island Studies 2, 3, 11, 24, 25, 36 Isle centrality. See Boundedness Isolation. See Insularity, island Italy 85, 86, 105 J

Jèrriais 9, 72, 134–136, 138–145, 149–151, 163 Jersey Annual Social Survey (JASS) 105, 108 Jersey Archives 57, 66, 148

Index     265

Jersey Census 57, 69, 90, 105, 201, 203 Jersey Evening Post. See Media Jerseyfolk. See Jerseymen Jersey French 3, 14, 114, 135, 137, 244 Jersey Heritage 57, 66, 73, 99, 148, 188, 230. See also Jersey Heritage Museum Jersey Heritage Museum 73, 148 Jerseymen 129, 139 Jerseyness 11, 114, 131, 243, 244 Jersey Norman French 9, 50. See also Jèrriais Jew(s) 67, 123. See also Refugee(s), religious Johnson, Henry 130, 132, 140–142, 148 Jones, Mari 136, 138, 139, 144, 221 Jurat 49, 128 K

Knitting. See Industry, cottage Knowledge 27, 31, 35, 45, 63, 69, 89, 92, 101, 105, 134, 146, 160, 214, 223, 226. See also Williams, Glyn bottom-up 92 non-formalized 215 tacit 215 top-down 92, 95 Knowledge Economy 8, 84, 95, 100, 101, 103, 133, 134, 142, 158, 213–215. See also Bourdieu, Pierre

L

Labels, ethnic. See Categorisations Labour, seasonal 13, 43, 54, 55. See also Migration, seasonal Land ownership 68, 123 Landry, Rodrigue 143, 144 Landscape, linguistic 8, 53, 54, 73, 143–145, 147, 163, 179, 197, 213. See also Space(s), social; Visibility Language 1, 2, 6, 44, 48, 92, 113, 115, 120, 133, 134, 145, 146, 150, 161, 175, 221–224, 226, 246. See also Breton; English; French, Norman, Standard; Jersey Norman French; Madeiran Portuguese; Polish; Portuguese autochthonous 4, 136, 139 community 87, 134, 141, 199 dominant 100, 101, 116, 214 English 1, 3, 9, 13, 14, 49, 87, 100, 107, 114, 138–141, 144, 151, 152, 158–160, 185, 209, 211, 213, 215–217, 225, 244, 245 island 2, 9, 13, 14, 43, 62, 80, 83, 84, 99, 101, 103, 107, 113, 126, 136, 138–140, 142–145, 151, 159, 213, 216, 244 living 1, 141, 208 local 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 49, 113, 114, 136, 138, 151, 152, 158, 159, 206, 212, 216 Madeiran Portuguese 1, 6, 13, 80, 207, 245 majority 142

266     Index

migrant 3, 4, 6, 8, 14, 80, 84, 134, 135, 137, 159, 196, 209, 228, 245, 247 minority 3, 140, 159 of empowerment 214, 216, 217 official 4, 9, 14, 100, 103, 107, 134, 138–140, 143, 144, 213, 217, 244 Portuguese 3, 7, 8, 15, 135, 159, 175, 177, 209, 211, 213, 215–217, 220, 245 receptor 3, 4, 80, 100, 217 standard 3, 9, 114 Language ideology(ies) 2, 7, 8, 14, 15, 101, 109, 114, 116, 132, 135, 136, 138, 146, 153, 158, 209, 212, 214. See also Attitude(s); Authenticity; Identity(ies) Language, regimes of. SeeBlommaert, Jan Language use, situated 133, 134, 138, 141, 209, 244 Leal, João 178, 180, 181, 197 Le Caudey, Jeff 48, 51, 52, 69, 86, 90, 127, 147, 150 Le Feuvre, David 36, 48–50, 55, 56, 68–71, 85, 121–124, 136, 138, 154 Legal system, Jersey 49 Legislation bottom-up 125 citizenship 13, 89, 107 employment 11, 13, 89, 90, 102, 104, 107, 155 institutional 13, 94, 151, 155, 243 J Cat 91 local 53, 90 population control 89 property ownership 89

residency 11, 13, 89, 104, 186 top-down 4, 89, 125 Legislation, Regulations of Undertakings 90 Levitt, Penny 119, 180, 199, 205 Liberation, Island 132. See also Occupation, German Licence, J Category. See Employee(s), J Category Lingua franca 87, 103, 158. See also English; Language, English Load, symbolic 135 Local articulation(s) 114 attitude(s) 13, 14, 107, 245 perception(s) 12, 14, 114, 129, 244 representation(s) of 14, 61, 120, 128, 149 Locality(ies). See Place(s) Lowenthal, David 33, 34, 36, 102 Lusophony 177 M

Macro versus micro levels 2, 6, 79, 129, 133, 135, 140, 151, 154, 157, 158, 175, 196, 207, 244 ideologies etc 13, 142, 148, 213 perspectives 29 Madeira 6–8, 15, 80, 157, 163, 164, 175, 178–188, 191–195, 197, 199–203, 207, 210, 211, 228, 230, 231, 243, 245 Madeiran Portuguese 1, 6, 13, 15, 16, 79, 80, 101, 107, 125, 175, 201, 203, 205, 207, 225, 228, 245. See also Language, Madeiran Portuguese

Index     267

Madeiran Quarter 6, 7, 16, 80, 156, 163, 176, 196, 197, 199, 201–203, 207–209, 211–213, 216, 218–220, 223, 228, 229, 245, 246 Madeirans, recent; RM 81, 187 Mainland Britain and Irish-born (BI) 81 Marker(s), indexical 113, 226, 227. See also Code-switching; Insider; Translanguaging; Vernacular(s) Marketing 14, 35, 114, 129, 131, 132, 134, 142, 145, 146, 244. See also Branding, niche; Tourism, heritage niche 142 Market(s) niche 134 Maugham, Reginald Charles Fulke 53, 124 May, Stephen 115, 116, 118, 122, 133, 136 Media 3, 14, 80, 86, 89, 114, 129, 134, 142, 148, 151, 155, 157, 163, 244 Memory(ies) autobiographical 183 collective 126, 127, 132, 148 Middle East 28, 162 Migrant(s) 1–6, 13–16, 28–31, 35, 51, 53–55, 57, 59, 64, 71, 73, 75, 80, 83, 86, 88–92, 94–98, 100, 102, 105, 107, 109, 113, 118, 119, 123, 125, 126, 131, 135, 137, 147, 151, 155–157, 159, 175, 178, 180, 182, 183, 185–188, 191, 194, 206, 207,

214, 218, 229, 230, 243–245. See also Migration resident 91, 94, 100 Migrant registration 2, 56. See also Aliens Restriction Act Migration 1–4, 8, 12–15, 21, 28, 29, 43–45, 52, 55, 56, 66, 74, 114, 115, 118, 119, 129, 175–178, 183, 187–189, 195, 196, 218, 221, 230, 232, 245, 247. See also Emigration; Immigration; Movement; Transnationalism aspirational 97, 99 contemporary 2, 5, 13, 28, 73, 79, 96, 230, 243 cross-border 29, 97 cyclical 4, 57, 85, 176, 228 definitive 176, 193 economic 8, 44, 69, 83, 101, 107, 184, 189 failed 186 global 2–4 historical 2, 13, 72, 79, 184 in- 13, 79, 84 instrumental 55, 86, 190 island-to-island 8, 176, 192, 228 mobile 95, 183 multidirectional 4 myth of return 194, 207 opportunistic 4, 6, 14, 74, 177 out- 8, 13, 14, 72, 84 performative 187 permanent 67 as a psychological and emotional act 190 push factors 71 return 72, 80, 92, 93, 96, 176, 186, 193, 200, 210

268     Index

ritual 45 seasonal 13, 87, 96, 97, 243 temporary 107, 176, 193, 210 transitory 84, 192 Migratory trajectory(ies). See Migration Mobility(ies) 28–30, 96, 101, 119, 196, 205, 213, 218. See also Migration cross-border 100 everyday 196 Mobility studies 3 Monteil, Michel 53, 55–57, 74, 125, 126, 137–139, 147 Movement 2–4, 8, 10–13, 21, 28, 29, 35, 36, 43–46, 56, 57, 61, 64, 66, 68, 70, 72, 75, 83, 84, 89, 90, 96, 105, 106, 113, 115, 119, 142, 175, 176, 188, 192, 201, 207, 228, 243. See also Migration Multiculturalism 2, 4, 5, 11, 12, 14, 29, 36, 60, 73, 84, 103, 113, 123, 146, 151, 154, 177, 201, 203, 206, 213, 222, 225, 230, 243 Multiethnicity 2, 14, 29, 227, 243 Multilingualism 4, 36, 221. See also Translanguaging environments 3, 4 repertoires 115 societies 133, 143 Multilocationality. See Place(s) N

Napoleonic Wars 51, 53

Nation 27, 47, 48, 61–63, 115, 117, 129, 130, 134, 149, 155, 176–178, 180, 229 Nationalism 61, 114–116. See also Consciousness, national regional 140 Nationhood. See Nation Nation state. See Nation Network(s), social 2, 14, 29, 53, 97, 99, 114, 119, 129, 135, 141, 147, 160, 176, 181, 183, 185, 196, 206, 209, 211, 212, 219, 221, 228, 245 New Zealand 71, 92 Non-Islander(s) 15, 24, 25, 31, 99, 114, 129, 139, 151, 154, 175, 176, 192, 244. See also Immigrants; Immigrant visitor(s) Non-local(s) 206, 207, 213. See also Immigrants; Immigrant visitor(s) Normandy Duchy of 44, 48 Dukedom of 9 Lower 48 O

Occupation, German 3, 12, 60, 72, 127, 147, 244. See also World War II (WWII) Olwig, Karen Fog 36, 154, 190, 191 Olwig, Kenneth R. 25, 31, 93, 99 Othering; otherness 15, 109, 117, 151, 155–157, 159, 162, 175, 207, 208, 244

Index     269 P

Patriotism 61, 72, 138 Place(s) 2, 4, 8, 11, 12, 14, 21, 27–32, 54, 55, 62, 66, 87, 90, 94, 96, 98–100, 103, 104, 113, 119, 120, 124, 128, 129, 136, 144, 145, 150–153, 155, 160, 175, 179, 180, 184, 189, 190, 193, 196, 199–201, 219, 231, 244 Place(s), multiplicity of 14. See also Boundedness; Representation(s), symbolic Pluralism, linguistic 4, 115. See also Diversity, linguistic Policy and planning 4, 13, 79, 84, 89. See also Legislation Polish 8, 52, 101–103, 109, 159, 192, 213 Polish migrants, recent; RP 81, 104 Population 2, 3, 11–13, 21, 27, 43–45, 47, 48, 51–53, 55–57, 59, 61, 64–67, 71, 72, 79, 84, 85, 90–92, 98, 105, 108, 120, 124, 127, 128, 133, 141, 156, 179, 183, 187, 192, 201, 231, 243. See also Community(ies) diasporic 3 growth 52, 90, 92, 155 local 12, 35, 47, 49, 50, 64, 65, 72, 75, 88, 127, 155, 162 receptor 2, 3, 124, 213 rural 68, 69, 123, 124 urban 53 Portrayal(s) 3, 6, 14, 15, 28, 34, 35, 62, 99, 102, 113–115, 117, 120–123, 129, 131, 143, 145, 148, 149, 157, 175, 178, 179, 181, 183, 243. See also Representation(s)

homogeneous 178 Portugalidade 177, 178 Portuguese 1, 3, 6, 8, 13, 15, 16, 79, 80, 101, 102, 105, 107, 156, 157, 159, 162, 163, 175–178, 180, 181, 184, 188, 191, 193, 197, 199, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211–220, 223, 224, 227–232, 245–247. See also Language, Portuguese Portuguese tradition 191, 193, 199 Post-colonialism 177 Post-industrialism 84, 86, 95 Potato, Jersey Royal 70. See also Industry, agricultural Potter, Robert 85, 88, 94, 182, 186, 193, 196, 201, 206 Power 10, 47, 49, 68, 95, 100, 101, 117, 133, 139, 143, 217. See also Status asymmetric 101, 159, 214 linguistic 101 symbolic etc 100, 133 Pozo-Gutiérrez, Alicia 85, 126, 182 Practice, community of 122, 124 Practice(s) agrarian; agricultural. See Industry, agricultural cultural 2, 11, 21, 175, 197, 218, 228, 246 integrative 8, 100, 109, 176, 205, 245 linguistic 2, 11, 14, 21, 135, 175, 197, 218, 227, 228, 246 non-integrative 8 situated 89, 118, 120, 129, 134, 138, 142, 196, 202–204, 206, 209, 214, 221, 227, 228, 246

270     Index

social 2, 5, 11, 13, 14, 21, 118, 119, 175, 205, 206, 218, 228 translocal. See Translocalism transnational. See Transnationalism Prejudice(s) 25, 73, 118, 158, 226 Primordialism. See Essentialism Protestantism. See Huguenot(s) R

Reductionism. See Essentialism Refugee(s) 28, 50–52, 73, 123 religious 50, 51 Registration and Identification of Persons (Jersey) Order, 1940 66 Registration card(s) 13, 44, 57–60, 67, 72, 74, 91, 118, 148. See also Aliens Restriction Act Reintegration 195. See also Migration, return; myth of return Rememberers 8, 31, 93, 148, 183, 184, 191 Repertoire (s), linguistic 219, 221, 223, 229, 232, 246 Representation(s) 3, 4, 9, 13, 27, 30, 44, 61, 62, 94, 107, 113, 118, 120–123, 126, 127, 129, 131, 133, 134, 143, 151, 153, 178, 179, 189, 197, 203, 229, 244. See also Stereotype(s); Symbolism clichéd 99, 117, 122, 179 emblematic 79, 157, 227 imagined 12, 36, 99, 181 homogeneous 30, 203 metaphorical 12, 36

physical 12 stereotypical 4, 79, 116, 118, 130, 153 symbolic 3, 30, 136, 148 Reputation 83, 94, 107, 130, 135, 139, 145, 229 external 14, 131 global 131 Resident(s) 10, 35, 54, 87, 90–92, 94, 100, 105, 124, 125, 127, 129, 142, 149, 152, 209. See also Migrant(s), resident Resistance 74, 126–128, 132, 139, 244. See also Occupation, German; World War II (WWII) Retirees 36, 54, 94, 98–100, 147, 152, 194, 244. See also British, nineteen and twentieth century migrants Return 4, 14, 31–34, 44, 48–51, 53–55, 64, 92, 94, 100, 128, 139, 184, 185, 188, 192, 194, 195, 199–201, 211, 228, 245 attitudes towards 175 ideologies of 175, 199, 228 Revitalisation 140 language 138, 139, 142, 143, 146 linguistic 143, 146 Riddell, Adam 103, 131, 140–142, 149 Rights 3, 9, 10, 48, 57, 64, 90, 91, 102, 116, 124, 126, 146, 162, 186, 201, 227, 231 constitutional 9, 90 employment etc 89, 90, 102, 155 Rite of passage. See Migration, ritual Roots and Routes 30, 176, 199. See also Levitt, Penny; Transnationalism Rural exodus 54, 55

Index     271 S

Sanders, Paul 61–65, 67, 74, 126, 128, 147 Sardinha, João 178, 193, 194, 201, 231 Saudade 193, 229 Sea. See Islandness; Boundedness Sector(s) 13, 35, 72, 86, 89, 91, 95–97, 108, 109, 123, 139, 140, 145, 216, 217. See also Industry agricultural 84, 85, 91, 102, 184 hospitality 13, 35, 83, 86, 89, 91, 96, 102, 108, 109, 182, 186, 213 service 13, 35, 83, 84, 86, 89, 91, 96, 102, 182, 184, 186, 213 tourist 83, 86 Seigneur(s) 48, 68 Self-identification strategy(ies) 14, 114, 119, 141, 145, 147 Self-representations 5, 148 Separateness; spatial 11, 25, 36, 179, 191, 243. See also Baldacchino, Godfrey; Migration Settlement. See Embeddedness, social Situated linguistic behaviour, language use 5, 7 Situationism. See Constructivism, social etc Smolicz, Jersey 135 Social practice(s) 2, 5, 118, 205, 206 Social psychology 3, 5, 99, 113, 118, 148, 151, 207, 213 Society, receptor. See Community(ies), receptor Sociolinguistics 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 29, 80, 97, 113, 114, 120,

139, 142, 144, 209, 220, 245, 246 Sojourner(s), prolonged 88, 206. See also Conway, Dennis; Potter, Robert; Migration Space(s) bounded 11, 12, 21, 27, 44, 63, 65, 72, 130, 157, 189, 192, 203, 205, 243–245 community 176 contested 4, 206 demarcated 65, 196 diasporic 29, 30, 196, 205, 212 finite 31, 192 liminal 190, 243 local 113, 157, 175, 206, 211, 212, 218, 227 perceptual 29, 157 physical 12, 29, 30, 130, 156, 196, 244 shared 89, 197, 206 social 28, 29, 97, 98, 119, 143, 193 symbolic 12, 72, 120, 143 translocal 30, 196, 197, 206 transnational 28–30, 96–98, 158, 197 Spain 85, 86, 146 Stakeholder(s) 158 States of Jersey 9, 10, 84, 86, 89–91, 95, 96, 105, 108, 131, 145, 201, 231 Status economic 91, 107, 158 hierarchical 101, 151, 217 language 14, 84, 100, 101, 133, 138, 140, 142–144, 158, 217, 244

272     Index

linguistic 100, 101 negative 139 positive 144 societal 142, 151 Stereotype(s) 3, 5, 6, 114, 126, 129, 139, 179, 229. See also Representation(s) cultural 5, 114, 229 linguistic 179 social 5, 14, 114, 156, 244 St Helier 1, 6, 16, 29, 53, 56, 80, 99, 101, 108, 125, 131, 138, 144, 156, 157, 163, 185, 186, 188, 190, 194, 196, 200, 201, 203, 206, 212, 213, 217, 218 Studies, transnational. See Transnationalism Superdiversity 96, 227, 232, 246. See also Vertovec, Steven Symbolism 3, 8, 12, 14, 15, 30, 36, 63, 72, 83, 92, 100, 114, 118, 119, 124, 129, 133, 135, 136, 143, 144, 147, 148, 161, 175, 176, 181, 200, 205, 209, 214, 218, 226, 244, 246. See also Representation(s) Syvret, Marguerite 67, 68, 75, 86, 95, 99, 150, 182

Ties, kinship. See Generation(s) Tomato, Jersey 70. See also Industry, agricultural Tourism, heritage 12, 134. See also Industry, tourist Tourist(s) 13, 35, 36, 44, 52, 64, 86, 107, 108, 128, 130, 136, 143, 144, 185. See also British Traits 116–118 emblematic 134, 138 essentialised 120 ethnic 115, 116 tokenist 134 Trajectory(ies), migratory 2, 6, 14, 15, 72, 83, 86, 102, 125, 135, 162, 175, 178, 183, 184, 186, 188, 189, 199, 210, 214, 243. See also Migration; Movement Transference 150. See also Borrowing Translanguaging 221–225, 246. See also García, Ofelia Translocalism 2, 37, 80, 196, 197, 200, 205, 207, 208, 218, 245, 247 Transmission, familial 141, 199. See also Generation(s) Transnationalism 2, 3, 37, 83, 96 Transnational practice(s), associative 181 Transnational Studies 28, 30, 96

T

Tajfel, Henri 118, 119, 154 Tax haven 94, 131 income 10, 87 taxation 10, 52, 98 Theory, social identity. See Tajfel, Henri

U

UNESCO German Occupation Registration Cards 13, 44 United Kingdom (UK) 9, 10, 90, 92, 95, 97–100, 109, 140, 178, 230

Index     273 V

Value(s), core 62, 135, 141, 142, 146, 151, 202. See also Load, symbolic; Smolicz, Jersey Variable(s), sociolinguistic 228 Variety(ies), language 9, 14, 113, 134, 136, 140, 143, 221, 222. See also Dialect; Language Vernacular(s) 72, 137, 221, 226, 227, 232. See also Translanguaging insider 226 mixed 227 switched 227 Vertovec, Steven 37, 96–98, 227, 232 Visibility 8, 13–15, 84, 107, 114, 144–146, 197, 213. See also Landscape, linguistic Visitor(s) 27, 52, 64, 86, 107, 108, 123, 129, 131, 136, 151, 182, 206. See also Occupation, German; Immigrant visitor(s); Non-Islander(s); Non-Local(s) Vitality 135, 143, 146. See also Landscape, linguistic

ethnocultural 135 ethnolinguistic 135, 143, 146 Von Aufsess, Baron Hans Max 65, 66. See also Occupation, German Vraic 68, 70 W

Ward Rutherford, John 50, 70, 138 Williams, Glyn 84, 95, 101, 117, 133, 213–215 Workforce 10, 13, 71, 85, 86, 90, 106. See also Migrant(s) professional 100 semi-professional 83 semi-skilled 54, 92, 108, 182 unskilled 74, 85, 102, 108, 182, 230 Workplace(s) 92, 204, 208, 216, 217 Workspace(s) 8, 100, 101, 103, 107, 158, 159, 213, 214, 217 World War II (WWII) 3, 10, 12, 13, 36, 43, 44, 56, 61, 67, 72, 85, 86, 94, 116, 118, 126, 128, 131, 132, 188