Becoming/being a care worker: personality in a language training for migrant job seekers in Flanders

Abstract

In this article I will describe how personality was mobilized during a Dutch language course that prepared job seekers for the care sector. I show how more than language competences, what was valued was who someone was as a person. While the emphasis on job seekers’ personality in the context of a language course that prepared for an education and subsequent job in the care sector, is, on the one hand, in line with the general attention for the worker as a person and more specifically for what is generally referred to as soft skills, I show that the understanding of personality in the course also differs from how soft skills is generally understood: personality was seen as a stable essence, where potential for improvement was deemed to be limited. This view on personality can be associated with the history of care work and the morality attached to it, for which selection of workers is deemed necessary. Moreover, as I have shown, while personality is thought of as an abstract term that can be applied to categorize individuals separately from the specific context or from cultural or political influences, the type of personality that was required for a care worker was coded as feminine and associated with certain types of people along racialized lines. As such, there is an unequal distribution among which people are deemed suitable for care work. By demonstrating the effects of this specific understanding of personality, I also argue that it is important for language scholars to pay attention to such notions themselves, rather than to focus merely on their communication.