Migrant ESOL Learners: a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

Abstract This study aims to contribute uniquely to both the debate and the literature on diversity and difference within the college sector in Scotland. It investigated how migrant ESOL learners are supported within one large college in Glasgow, and adopted a qualitative approach underpinned by a previously under-used strand of Foucault’s theory of practices of the self to interpret the language and practices of both ESOL learners and their lecturers. It analysed how the college situates the migrant learners’ experience by examining the discourses of two focus groups of learners and staff, as well as seven individual members of staff and selected learners at both Intermediate and Advanced levels. The research found that both the learners and their lecturers have to negotiate quite different manifestations of power as they work towards their individual goals. The learners’ practices illustrate their sophistication as they assimilate behaviours and language which help to ease their progression through and beyond the college, while the lecturers work within the challenges of their role to enable, with evident care, the goals of the learners which are entangled with their own. The findings raise issues for practitioners working within the field of ESOL learning and teaching, specifically how to support students in negotiating the learning process, and the associated layers of power embedded within the practices of the college. The key beneficiaries of this study are the lecturers but, ultimately, the migrant ESOL learners and the potential is identified for Foucault’s framework of practices of the self to be used to support lecturers in developing more culturally sensitive practices