Bilingual Education: English and the life projects of youth in contemporary Spain

This chapter explores the language biographies of secondary school students who attend CLIL-type programs in two regions of Spain, Catalonia and Castilla-La Mancha, in order to understand the role of English in their daily lives as well as the subjectivities that emerge in relation to their engagement with the English language. Data were collected in a multi-sited, critical sociolinguistic team ethnography and we center on group activities and group interviews with adolescents. Through an examination of students’ discourses, reported practices and life-projects connected to English we aim to give an account of the ways in which youngsters with differential access to material resources and different aspirations, navigate social relations and imagine future plans. Even though we collected complex language biographies and life projects, we will focus on two distinct discursive formations around English. Some students, who are not academically orientated, present English as a difficult school subject, which they sometimes struggle to master but still see as relevant for blue-collar and public service-oriented work projects. Middle-class and upper-middle class students describe their English language in more positive terms, seeing themselves as emergent bilinguals and connecting this identity to cosmopolitan and international professional life and work projects. Independently from their socioeconomic background and aspirations, the roles that youngsters give to English in their future lives epitomize processes of being socialized into late capitalism and neoliberalism