ABSTRACT
In this chapter, collaborative autoethnography was used as a multivocal approach, to narrate, compare and interpret the negotiation and construction of the identities of Mauritian academics from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and low socio-economic social classes. The two academics who shared their stories speak Kreole as their first language and English and French as their additional languages in a country in which English is the official language but French the most widely spoken language. Firstly, the tensions that exist between their lived historical, social and cultural experiences of negotiating language and power in Mauritius are explored. Then their experiences as early career academics working in a professional university setting which covertly reinforces academia as a ‘closed’ group to those who do not fit the elite criteria, either linguistically, culturally, or socially, are considered. Secondly, their narratives explore the (re)construction of their translingual repertoires to gain entry to a system which does not favour female academics with certain linguistic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Finally, the stories unravel how language diversity is negotiated through teaching practices, while simultaneously resisting the mostly dominant Global North discourse of academia which is a legacy of colonialism.
