What Makes English Valuable as Traveling Capital? A Perspective from Two Forced Migrants with South-South-North Trajectories

This article reports findings from autobiographic interviews on the value of English resources as traveling capital. The participants in this study are two refugees of war from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have had long transits in Uganda before being resettled to Norway by the United Nations. These refugees attribute value to English as linguistic capital due to its potential to provide help for oneself and others, inside and outside one’s community of experience. Consequently, these findings may challenge central foundations in Bourdieu’s framework of capital and exchange, foundations that assume individualism and competition for limited status to be important underlying factors in why social actors exchange linguistic capital for other forms of capital. The findings further complement research on language and migration with more emic perspectives from speakers with forced South-South-North trajectories, as well as research on the value of English resources globally that often focus on more macro-level perspectives.