ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to the south-north dialogue on southern multilingualisms through exploring the strategic role women of refugee backgrounds play with ideologies of language through the assumption of identities, shifting balances of power, and increasing physical and social mobilities. Drawing on narratives from three women of South Sudanese heritage now settled in Australia, the focus falls on their use of their multilingualisms to facilitate movement during displacement in the Global South and settlement in the Global North. Due account is taken of both colonial and decolonial methodologies and of the ambiguities of south/north geographies and marginalities. It seems that the women portray themselves as agents, intentionally using their linguistic repertoires throughout their migration and in their current lives. Their framing of experiences points to calculated choices to use aspects of language and appearance to manipulate sociolinguistic situations. It suggests that the women rely on language ideologies, which manifest themselves in language regimes at both institutional and community levels, to protect and project identities and assume linguistic capital, often in risky situations. Thus ideologies such as ‘named’ languages and their assumed links to ethnicity enable the women to tailor their identities to redistribute power dynamics in both southern and northern spaces.
