Paper short abstract:

This presentation highlights the regulatory processes of language supply and demand in the Swiss healthcare industry. By tracing the trajectories of care workers, we examine the role of language in the production and reproduction of social inequalities within the current political economy.

Paper long abstract:

Using the healthcare industry in Switzerland as our terrain, we aim to uncover the conditions in which particular configurations of language proficiency and speakers become desired commodities, as the demands of globally mobile patients are managed, the needs of migrant patients are accommodated and the linguistic, symbolic and cultural capitals of healthcare workers are regulated and exchanged. This is based on the assumption that the transnational movement of patients and workers fundamentally changes the role and value of languages in healthcare, raising new questions about the management of language in the current political economy. Our research examines the conditions in which language skills are used to characterize the desirable personal qualities, job scopes and specific tasks of healthcare workers, making linguistic resources serve as gatekeepers of labor as well as instrumental tools necessary in the care for diverse patients. By tracing the trajectories of healthcare workers who rely and capitalize on their linguistic resources, our research intends to highlight the role of language in the production and reproduction of social inequalities in 1) international offices that serve medical tourists, 2) migrant-friendly care units that cater to immigrant patients and 3) human resources departments responsible for sourcing multilingual workers. In doing so, we aim to contribute to our understanding of fine-grain processes that define the organization of linguistic resources, regulate the demand and supply of workers, and determine that value of certain languages and forms of language practice. In turn, this also has implications for the co-constitution of language and healthcare ideologies.