Linguistic Variation, Integration & Identity Construction in Contexts of Migration: An Assessment of Current Approaches 1

International audienceResearch in sociolinguistics has to date predominantly dealt with (so-called) monolingual contexts and spatially fixed populations. However, with the growing focus on globalization, hybridity, identity construction and authenticity in the humanities and social sciences, there is renewed interest in what bilingual and multilingual populations do with their linguistic resources in contexts characterized by processes of mobility. The aim of the paper is to give a critical overview of the research in linguistics that deals with language and mobility. I show that there are a variety of research strands that have partially different research foci and apply different approaches (of data collection and analysis). While there is some cross-fertilization between research strands, I argue that greater integration of both quantitative and qualitative approaches on the one hand and attention to complementary research in the social sciences on the other would much enhance our understanding of how mobility and language phenomena mutually impact each other