ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an overview of key concepts in relation to language, migration, and mobility. It reviews concepts and terms in relation to the mobility of communicative practices. Recently, a number of terms have emerged, as scholars have sought to describe and analyze linguistic practices in which meaning is made using signs flexibly. The chapter develops an understanding of translanguaging which views mobility in relation to trajectories of human emergence, or ideological becoming, or, put more simply, as a dimension of communicative repertoire and voice. In interactions in the library everyday translation and translanguaging were emblematic of a positive orientation to superdiversity, as linguistic, cultural, ethnic, and national differences were acknowledged, and deployed as resources for communication. The chapter expands the study of language/mobility nexus beyond the traditional settings such as schools, reviewed earlier, to other everyday encounters. The implications of translanguaging and mobility extend to other public spaces in the superdiverse city.