Indexing the ‘included’ migrant? Social categorization and interpersonal digital interaction between labor migrants, teachers and employers in Norway

Abstract

This paper investigates the co-construction of identities of inclusion and exclusion in digitally mediated migrant-host community interaction. Through both interview and digital interactional data, we look at the discursive social categorization of and by Lithuanian labour migrants and their majority population interlocutors and analyze the semiotic practices by which identity categories are talked and written into being in home-school collaboration and workplace interaction. To capture the negotiation of power, (in)equality and authority, we apply the concepts orders of indexicality (Blommaert, 2007), and adequation and distinction (Bucholtz & Hall 2005). Our analysis shows how participants draw on various semiotic resources to interactionally construct identities as included, such as media choice, punctuation, text composition and multimodality.