Bio

Swagata Basu is a language teacher and a researcher. She teaches Spanish language, literature and culture at Doon University, Dehradun while she is pursuing PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She holds an M.Phil, BA and MA in Spanish Philology from JNU. Her M.Phil thesis (2011) was on ‘Multiculturalism in Spanish Immigration Cinema between 1990-2010’. Her PhD topic is “Language and Integration in Spain: a Case Study of Catalonia”.  She has been studying Contemporary Spain, Questions of Migration, Identity, Integration and Nationalisms in Spain for the past several years. In her PhD she is studying Spain’s linguistic diversity and its language policy. She seeks to understand the relationship between language policy and integration of diverse groups in linguistically diverse societies by taking Catalonia as a case study. She believes language policy should be at the heart of any integration policy, and that linguistic diversity should be protected across the world including in India. She conducted fieldwork within the South Asian community in Barcelona in 2018. She speaks Spanish, English, Hindi and Bengali fluently and understands Portuguese, Catalan and Punjabi.

Project

I have been lucky to be in Barcelona in 2018 where I conducted my fieldwork and tried to understand the dynamics between integration of people from diverse backgrounds such as the South Asian community and the two local languages, Spanish and Catalan. Many of my respondents told me that the dynamics change as we move towards Northern parts of Catalonia. Being in Olot will give me an opportunity to see the other side of the language landscape of Catalonia. I will continue to work on my research question in Faber which is “How does Languages (used by people) and Language Policy (decided by States) impact integration and interaction of people from different background in a diverse society?”. I would like to share what I know so far based on my research and know the point of view of others.