ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the language biographies of secondary school students who attend CLIL-type programmes in two regions of Spain to understand the role of English in their daily lives as well as emergent subjectivities in relation to their engagement with the language. Data were collected in a multi-sited, critical sociolinguistic team ethnography. Through an examination of students’ discourses, reported practices and life projects connected to English, we 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. We 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. The academically engaged students in both schools 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. We argue that, independently from their socio-economic background and aspirations, the roles that youngsters give to English in their future lives epitomise processes of socialisation into late capitalism.
