Journal of Sociolinguistics - 2017 - Lawson - Negotiating An Agentive Identity in A British Lifestyle Migration Context A

Journal of Sociolinguistics 21/5, 2017: 650–671
Negotiating an agentive identity in a British

lifestyle migration context:
A narrative positioning analysis
Michelle Lawson
Open University, United Kingdom
This paper presents an analysis of agency and positioning in a context of

British migration in the Ariege departement of south-west France. A
narrative positioning framework is used to explore the relationship between
local discursive positioning and broader social obligations, specifically by
integrating data from an online forum for British residents with an
interview carried out with two forum users. Although there is thematic
coherence across the datasets, particularly in relation to the social
obligation to be the ‘right kind’ of migrant, the two speakers in the joint
interview represent their actions using conflicting approaches. The analysis
of agentive positioning shows the strategic use of both agentive and
inagentive language where the narrated actions did not align with those of
the ‘right kind’ of migrant constructed by forum members. The study
shows how attempts at positive self-representation can reflect awareness of
the ideological context but can nevertheless be interpreted in very different
ways. The paper concludes that we should not restrict ourselves to seeking
recurrent and stable patterns when exploring indexical links between micro
contexts and wider social reality, particularly when the interactional
context is overshadowed by a broader moral landscape.
Dans un contexte de migration culturelle autour des Britanniques installes
dans le departement de l’Ariege en France, cet article apporte une attention
aux aspects d’agence et de positionnement. Je montre comment un forum
en ligne pour les residents Britanniques en Ariege et une entrevue realisee
avec deux utilisateurs du forum peuvent ^etre analyses ensemble. Un cadre
de positionnement est utilise pour explorer la facßon dont les migrants se
representent, et evaluent leurs choix et leurs actions, face aux ideologies
imposees. L’etude montre une coherence thematique entre les donnees du
forum et celles de l’entrevue; neanmoins, le conflit entre les intervenants
dans l’entrevue conjointe reflete une variation dans la facßon dont chaque
s’aligner sur l’obligation sociale d’^etre le
locuteur interprete leur capacite a
«bon type» de migrant construit par les membres du forum. Je soutiens que
des rapports d’agence active et inactive sont des strategies interactionnelles
pour construire les representations intersubjectives positives. L’etude
propose de ne pas se limiter a la recherche des representations
recurrentes lors de l’exploration des liens entre les contextes micro et
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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NEGOTIATING AN AGENTIVE IDENTITY 651
macro, en particulier dans un contexte interactionnel eclipse par un

paysage moral. [French]
KEYWORDS: Agency, ideology, lifestyle migration, narrative

positioning, identity, online discourse
INTRODUCTION
There is growing research into relatively privileged forms of migration, such as
that termed lifestyle migration: a concept that frames such movements in terms
of choice and possibility rather than necessity, and which acknowledges the
role played by structural and economic conditions (Benson 2016). Such
studies have utilised migrant narratives to understand how the speakers make
sense of their lives within that particular sociocultural context. While other
forms of migration, such as labour movements, have undergone analysis of
positioning in interaction (De Fina 2006), there has been little attention paid
towards interactive positioning in lifestyle migration contexts. By integrating
two datasets of discourse – one online and one face to face – this paper presents
a grounded interpretation of how a British migrant couple in France jointly
construct a narrative world that is both framed and disrupted by prevailing
ideologies.
To date, lifestyle migration researchers are at work in a range of global
contexts and migrant nationalities, including studies of British migration to
destinations such as Spain (O’Reilly 2012), Portugal (Torkington 2015) and
France (Benson 2011). Within the British contexts there is some coherence
across common themes of a search for a better life abroad, conceptualising a
postmodern escape to a simpler life that nevertheless perceives such migration
as a purchasable, consumption-driven commodity. Yet we should be wary of
viewing such migration unproblematically as privileged; some migrants
articulate the move in terms of constraint, particularly when the region has
been selected due to lower property prices (Lawson 2016). Migrants can also
be vulnerable to economic and political developments, such as the uncertainty
following the 2016 Brexit vote for the U.K. to leave the European Union (EU).
This intersection of lifestyle and economic factors has led to criticism of the
term lifestyle migration as imprecise (Huete, Mantec on and Estevez 2013),
since it hinders consistent definitions. Yet with such a varied array of lifestyle
migration contexts, we might question whether precision is an essential
component of the overall concept. More clarity and theoretical consistency
has been afforded by the recent trend to include choice and possibilities
(Croucher 2012) as key aspects within the term lifestyle migration. This
acknowledges the role of economic capital as an available resource and allows
lifestyle migration to be viewed through a broad analytical lens that accounts
for variation in the ways that people take up the available resources. The paper
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therefore takes the perspective of lifestyle migration as an ability to move

elsewhere using resources that offer a choice of possibilities for a different,
often better, lifestyle.
Further critiques have focused on the idea of lifestyle migration as an
unproblematic form of independently chosen self-realisation. Researchers such
as Benson (2011) argue that the everyday realities of the new life can generate
ambivalence between former imaginings and lived experiences, commonly
seen alongside a desire to self-identify as distinct from one’s (British)
compatriots, who are often presented along stereotypical lines. This paper
shows what a focus on language in interaction can reveal, particularly
concerning the ways that such processes of distinction develop linguistically as
dynamic aspects of self-representation. While the concept of stance has usefully
identified indexicality in language, for example Stockburger’s (2015: 237)
exploration of stances against ‘stereotypical social types’, recent developments
in positioning theory are more specifically tailored towards relations between
the roles negotiated in interaction and prevailing social and moral themes.
Analysing positioning as a social action at three levels of the interaction offers
scope for revealing more complex and dynamic identity representations at the
level of the story (tale), the interaction (telling) and the wider ideological level.
The framework has already been tested in migration contexts, as seen in De
Fina’s (2013) analysis of migrant orientations to ideologies about migration.
Yet the common dyad of interviewer-interviewee can miss the rich elasticity of
identity representations that might emerge within joint interviews. For
example, Damari’s (2010) interview with a binational couple revealed
variance in positioning between speakers with cultural and demographic
differences. Nonetheless, it is also possible for participants to share a culture
and ideological stance, but to differ in their interpretations of how to represent
their actions. In this paper, I demonstrate what a positioning analysis can
reveal about such variance, in the context of a British couple who positioned
themselves in contrasting ways when their lived experiences aligned them with
prevailing and negative cultural stereotypes.
This paper forms part of a larger study of British migrants living in the
Ariege departement of France, with an overarching research question: how do
British migrants in Ariege, France, construct and define their identities in
discourse? This paper firstly examines data from a digital British support forum
to show how an ideological landscape is visible in the online interactions of
members. This is followed by analysis of extracts from an interview with a
British couple – both users of the forum – to explore how interactants differ in
their negotiation around these ideologies. The results add a new perception to
our understanding of the dynamic and contextually emergent nature of the
reporting of agency. Speakers who share an overall perspective on the
prevailing ideologies can nevertheless be at variance in how their
representations of their actual lived experience match the idealised version of
the ‘right’ kind of migrant.
THE SELF AND THE ‘OTHER’ IN BRITISH MIGRATION

A thematic thread that runs through the literature on British lifestyle migration
is that of intra-group distinction and stereotyping. A report on global British
emigration by Sriskandarajah and Drew (2006: 30) referred to a tendency for
expatriate Britons to ‘distinguish themselves’ from stereotypical British
communities who are seen as unwilling or unable to integrate. Benson’s
ethnographic studies in France drew attention to a similar theme of distinction
that revolved around a particular ‘moral position’ among British migrants in
the Lot departement of France (Benson 2011: 30), where ‘other’ Britons were
described as unprepared, lacking cultural (especially linguistic) capital and
showing dependence on each other. Drake and Collard’s (2007: 28) research in
Normandy similarly identified an ‘appropriate model of behaviour’ whereby
respondents were keen to be seen as making an effort to speak the local
language and integrate. Such observations are not confined to local contexts,
and O’Reilly (2001) acknowledged the media’s role in constructing stereotypes
of the British in Spain. In a recent corpus analysis of British press articles that
referenced British migration to France, Lawson (2015) identified a pattern of
negative representations that included frequent associations of the British with
a difficulty or reluctance to speak French, a continuing reliance on British items
and English speaking services, and references to British ‘ghetto’ communities.
Benson and Osbaldiston (2014) noted how these kinds of categorisations and
distinctions against the ‘other’ are widespread within studies of lifestyle
migration, not just British, with migrants seemingly conscious of how their
chosen lifestyle and related activities represent social or cultural value within
the search for a new life. As symbolic value is applied to social actions, often in
terms of being integrated (Lawson 2016), so an opportunity emerges for
ideologies – opinions, explanations, norms or values of a ‘group-based, shared
framework’ (van Dijk 1990: 177) – to develop into a recognised value system
relating to (in)appropriate forms of migrant behaviour. As speakers orient
towards a particular evaluative stance, they contribute towards the
construction and maintenance of the value system.
It has been acknowledged that lifestyle migration owes as much to structural
opportunities as to agency (O’Reilly 2012), yet choice and agency are
nevertheless intrinsic to lifestyle migration. People make decisions of where
and how to live, explaining and justifying their actions and choices when
pursuing a new life. There is therefore potential for reflexivity in how they
interpret these actions and tell a particular version of themselves in narrative
discourse. For the British living in the rural Lot departement of France, Benson
(2011: 40) concluded that migration was perceived as a ‘risky act’ through
which the British were able to augment their sense of individual agency and
achievement, self-presenting as ‘pioneers’ with ‘get up and go’. Benson argued
that the frequent assertion of their agency worked to keep any uncertainty and
ambivalence, such as their continuing outsider status, at bay.

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The notion of an ideal migrant against the stereotypical ‘other’ therefore

presents a resource for positive self-identification, and one that is of particular
interest when the discursive representation of choice and agency is problematic.
For example, limited language skills and less than full knowledge of the new
way of life can present barriers to living the ‘appropriate’ model of behaviour,
resulting in a struggle to reconcile the ideal and imagined life with how it is
actually experienced. As Torkington (2015: 227) noted in the Algarve, this can
lead to identity dilemmas within discourse, such as where an admission of not
speaking Portuguese conflicted with a stated moral obligation for the British to
learn it. Using a focus on linguistic representations, Torkington identified a
range of both internal (‘I’m too busy’) and external agency repertoires (‘everyone
here speaks English’) used to negotiate around these dilemmas.
The concept of agency – a way to identify the ‘capacity by which individuals
perceive themselves to be able to act in meaningful ways’ (Miller 2014: 142) –
is therefore particularly useful for theorising and analysing the complexities
within self-identification in lifestyle migration, where it is negotiated in the face
of prevailing ideologies about appropriate behaviour. Going beyond a focus on
what respondents say they do, analysis of speaker positioning can explore more
dynamic interactional aspects as migrants represent the control they have over
their choices and actions. While members of the online forum make binary
representations of the ideal migrant self and the ‘other’, the discourse analysis
of interviews demonstrates how negotiation around the prevailing ideologies
results in more fluidity. The aim of this paper, then, is to take a relatively novel
approach by pairing local data with that from the wider context, in order to
analyse how migrants negotiate inconsistencies where their actions do not
align with those of a socially imposed value system.
THE CURRENT STUDY: CONTEXT, DATA AND METHOD

The research context of the Ariege
The Ariege is one of 13 departements (administrative divisions) in the recently
created Occitanie region of south-west France (it previously lay within the Midi-
Pyrenees region). It is relatively rural and one of the least populated
departments in France. Despite a continuing loss of local inhabitants to seek
employment elsewhere, it is also one of the fastest growing departements, with
sufficient incoming migration in recent years to result in an annual net
increase of around +1400 (Insee 2009). It is difficult to obtain precise numbers
of Britons residing in France as there has been no requirement for EU citizens to
register, whether one resides permanently in France or buys a holiday home
there. However, figures suggest that during the period 2001–2006, more than
a third of the 16,600 foreigners to settle in rural areas of the Midi-Pyrenees
were British (Touret, Bourniquel and Poisson 2010). Nevertheless, the
estimated number of Britons in the Ariege specifically is relatively low at 30

percent of foreigners, compared with ‘more than 45%’ for the Lot, for example
(Touret, Bourniquel and Poisson 2010: 29).
An integrated approach to data analysis

There has been criticism (Benwell and Stokoe 2006, cited in De Fina 2013: 44)
of studies that attempt to link macro and micro contexts without providing an
empirical basis for such links. While the interview data of Benson and others
have provided an ethnographic entry point into the lives of British migrants in
France and patterns of repertoires, there is potential for circularity of
arguments if they emerge from analysis of interviews alone. As Antaki et al.
(2003) argue, we should be wary of using interview data to not only identify
and justify the existence of an ideology, but at the same time explain the
discourse in terms of such ideologies. Deppermann (2013) raised this as a key
methodological question within narrative work that aims to relate local
positioning acts to more macro structures, reviewing ethnographic approaches
as well as those that seek recurrent, broad patterns, or iterativity, across larger
samples of data (Georgakopoulou 2013). De Fina (2013: 54), for example,
presented ‘important similarities’ across a repertoire that included local
migrant narratives and broadcasts on American radio. Nevertheless, a detailed
integration of data to investigate the relationship between macro and micro
positioning, using different data contexts but within the same community, is
relatively novel within narrative analysis.
The current study shows how a mixed methods approach can provide a
robust foundation to any interpretations of how ideologies are actually
constructed and maintained within and beyond a local interview context. The
study developed via two research sub-questions that show how the first – an
exploration of how lifestyle migration is mediated and identity represented within an
online forum – can give valuable insights to a second question that asks what
does local migrant discourse reveal about the expression of identity and agency within
a lifestyle migration context? The digital forum offered naturally occurring data
from a discernible and mutually-engaged community, some of whom were
approached for interview. In this way, the data from the online forum for
British migrants provided an empirical basis with which to examine local
orientations to wider ideologies.
This forum belonged to a website that catered for English-speaking residents
in the Ariege, offering information on many topics. The forum had a number of
categories where members could post and ask for advice, offer information or
announce that they were moving to the area. Members needed to be registered
in order to post, but the posts themselves could be read by anyone. The website
had an English owner who maintained an active presence as forum moderator.
The site became subject to frequent hacking attacks and it closed in 2011.
After introducing the project on the forum in 2011, I invited members to fill
out a questionnaire, which led to twelve interviews. At the same time, after

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obtaining permission from the site owners I began a qualitative selection of

data. Threads were selected from a variety of interactions across a range of post
types in order to gain a range of perspectives, including the forum’s support
mechanisms as well as the type of conflict that sometimes developed. As the
research questions related to identity representation, some threads were
selected as they showed positioning strategies that indexed social
categorisations of Britons in France. The total dataset consists of nine topic
threads that were posted between 2004 and 2008. Threads vary from the
shortest, consisting of four posts (726 words) by four members, to the longest
thread that had 43 contributions (5557 words) by 14 members. I have
preserved anonymity by changing all online names and taking care to remove
any identifying material.
The interview extracts within this paper are from one of twelve interviews
carried out with forum members during October 2011 in the Ariege. All
respondents were British, heterosexual, owners of their property and only one
did not live full time in France. The interviews were semi-structured in that
questions loosely followed the list of issues to be explored, such as probing how
participants felt in relation to other migrants, stereotypes of the British, and
their use of the forum. Free association questions were included to introduce
concepts without preconceptions: ‘Do you feel part of a British community in the
Ariege?’ Some questions used the online forum as a lens through which to
study identity representation; for example, asking ‘Have you asked questions on
the forum? Have you answered them?’ explored how members represented
themselves as established or newcomer forum members. Some questions
elicited responses that related to positioning members of the community
according to what kinds of questions they ask, such as ‘How much can you tell
about someone from what they write on the forum?’
Of the twelve interviews, five were joint interviews with a couple, including
the interview with Emma and Mitch that is featured within this paper. Joint
interviews have potential for disadvantages; as Arksey (1996) outlines, women
are often inhibited when interviewed as a couple compared with an individual
interview. There may also be friction between views, yet this can be an
advantage, since disagreement can lead to more depth of understanding of an
issue compared with the interviewer-interviewee dyad. As this paper
demonstrates, the variation and disagreement across responses seen within
the interview with Emma and Mitch offers a rich resource for exploring the
underlying influence of a value system in narrative discourse.
THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF ONLINE DATA

Digital technology offers many affordances for lifestyle migrants to take
advantage of low-density online support networks. In the Ariege, the digital
forum provided a valuable bridge between members who might live anywhere
within the departement; even if members do not physically meet, they act as
resources to access information. As part of the main study, the nine topic threads
underwent thematic analysis that identified themes relevant to the research
aims, such as positioning of members and their related traits. Using
co-occurrence tools in Atlas-ti, it was possible to highlight relationships such
as where identity codes (for example, POSITIVE SELF-IDENTIFICATION; POSITIONING OF
OTHERS AS OUT-GROUP) occurred with those relating to evaluated migrant behaviour
(for example, BRITS WHO DON’T INTEGRATE; NOT SPEAKING FRENCH). Members who
positioned themselves as experienced often oriented to moral obligations as they
advised, warned or reproached other members to speak French and socialise with
the French community. The next section discusses some of these themes for what
they indicated about the forum’s supportive function and the recurrent
evaluations about British migration and the ‘right kind’ of behaviour.
The forum: Support versus dependence

The practices of the forum illustrate its generally supportive function for members
negotiating a new life in France. For some, the ability to ask questions in English
would undoubtedly have offered an easier way to get a response compared with
using offline community networks that were physically closer but likely to be
French. A common practice was for newcomers to ask for specific information or
advice, such as where to find a good school, an English-speaking doctor or vet, or
where to buy specific items. There was anticipation that newcomers would be
continuously supplied with information; one member gave thanks for the advice
so far and requested ‘please keep any advice coming’. Another started a new thread
with a general request for advice: ‘Just wanting to introduce myself really and then
get LOADS of advice!!!!!’ Although the very act of choosing to take on a new life
demonstrates a degree of agency, there is an obligation within these requests for
the existing migrants to help to smooth the journey for the newcomers. This may
have been interpreted as an undesirable dependency. One resident advised a
newcomer: ‘Do not be too dependant on British people’, prompting the response: ‘We
are not going to become dependant on anybody’. The idea of reliance was not confined
to newcomers, although the longer-standing members articulated it more in
terms of ‘comfort’: it was ‘of some comfort, especially in the middle of winter to
sometimes hear other English speaking people and have a conversation with them’, and
another spoke of being able to buy British foods as ‘comforting to those of [us] here
year round’. The inherent contradiction with the frequent advice given to
integrate was acknowledged by one member who conceded ‘that it is easier and
more comforting to mix with the rest of the expat residents’, advising newcomers to
‘try to get a balance between the two’. The interview analysis demonstrates the
complexity of working through such a balance within narrative interaction.
The ‘other’ British

Themes relating to identity and migration ideologies revealed some explicit
associations with particular actions, activities and traits. The likelihood of
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Britons arriving without speaking French was often assumed, with advice
commonly given that newcomers should ‘learn French’ or speak ‘even bad
French’. Some constructed a symbolic boundary against those who did not
attempt to speak the local language; one member referred to compatriots who
lived in the same village using vague language – ‘some other Brits’ – to imply
avoidance of communication with these undesirable ‘others’:
Some other Brits moved in to our village & were not well received as they spoke “no”
French. They left after 3 months.
Assumptions about not speaking French often co-occurred with references to

dependence: after a discussion on where to buy furniture that referred to the
Toulouse branch of Ikea, Chris appeared to take this as reflecting a tendency to
use English-speaking businesses (despite Ikea being Swedish):
You lot will never learn. If they dont speek [don’t speak] English you are all lost sheep
in a huge field
By describing the British as ‘lost sheep’, he categorises them as a generalised

mass entity with an associated trait of helplessness and failing in their duty to
learn the local language. The theme of SOCIALISING WITH THE FRENCH indicated the
perceived importance of not isolating oneself; this same member listed what he
‘put back into’ the French community and invited others to do the same, and
‘leave the UKers behind’. Others repeated advice to ‘invite your French neighbours
around for a drink’.
One member used repeated structures to negate agency, railing at ‘so many’
arrivals who ‘have not done any homework, they do not know how to survive and
they do not know anything about the country or language’, reinforcing a lack of
capacity to prepare and integrate. One member even ascribed traits to a named
individual, attacking a new member who had been asking a lot of questions on
the forum as someone
who wants help with everything because his mind set tells him he can’t. . . He has come
to a new country for a new adventure, not to be coddled by the people who have come
before him. He must go out and make mistakes like the rest of us and therefore benefit.
These social actions also construct a boundary between the established

members and the needy arrivals; this writer self-positions as among ‘the rest of
us’ who came to France for an adventure. As symbolic boundaries are
constructed against the less desirable ‘other’, they reinforce the distinction
between one with capacity to act, against one who perceives no such capacity
because ‘his mind set tells he can’t’, and who is ‘coddled’ (over-protected) by the
experienced migrants.
These ideological positionings and assumptions represent British migration
as a system of binary opposites and as they become reified into an ideology,

they offer a powerful resource for affirming social identity within a community
where experienced residents have the right to admonish newcomers. As I will
now demonstrate, these themes were present in the joint interview, but they
generated some resourceful negotiating where what speakers ‘should’ do, and
what they actually did, did not always align.
ANALYSING POSITIONING IN INTERACTION

This paper takes an approach that is closely aligned to a social constructionist
approach to discourse analysis, where language is viewed as ‘the prime site of
the construction of the person’ (Burr 2003: 53), performing social actions,
including representations of identity. The approach does not view reality as
wholly constructed in discourse, but it does align with the Discourse Analysis
tradition in its examination of how language helps to represent a version of
reality. There is no assumption that respondents are consciously representing
the world in this way, or even that the attitudes expressed reflect coherence in
terms of their positions as individuals or groups within the migration context.
Instead, I explore the complex relationship between self-identification and the
prevailing ideological beliefs relating to migrant behaviour.
There is no single definition of narrative, although De Fina and
Georgakopoulou (2012) draw some basic distinctions between a focus on
temporal ordering, on structural properties and on interactional aspects that
view narrative as a situated social practice. This paper takes the latter
perspective, seeing narrative as a way of giving meaning to social experience.
From the starting point of a teller’s representation of actions or events, the
analysis looks beyond the narrated event – the story – to a wider view of the
story world, where the telling event itself is situated within the interactional
context of the interview, as well as the wider sociocultural context. In the
interview extracts of this study, the tellers’ characters are aligned to events in
time and space as they describe their use of an online forum and their
socialising with locals, but a wider view of the story world invites us to look at
the way in which the representation is influenced by experiences, reactions and
the immediate interactive context. This might include negotiating and
supporting a particular positioning, to provide ‘evidence’ for how the teller
wants to be understood. As the paper will demonstrate, this can include
character positioning within a possible world, whereby hypothetical events are
brought in to justify actions and support the teller’s positioning. Such
justification and evidence can also involve the use of argumentation strategies;
as Carranza (2015) notes, these are sometimes intertwined with narration as
they develop the story world. This is particularly relevant when supporting a
position that could be ambiguous or contested if the narrated events contradict
the ideal positions. In the extracts below, both narration and argumentation
intersect in the construction of a wider story world. Speakers raise claims of
truth and normative rightness (Reisigl and Wodak 2009) to justify their actions
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within the story itself, which is also situated within a wider story world of
British lifestyle migration. The analysis of truth claims looks for where speakers
make statements of epistemic knowledge, presenting evidence of fact (what is,
what they are) to support a position: ‘it’s not through lack of choice’. Analysis of
claims to normative rightness project a common understanding relating to moral
standards and obligations, often seen in deontic modality: ‘you should still
integrate’.
An initial coding of the expression of attitudes, values and beliefs was made
across the interviews. A value is an importance attributed to something or
someone, whereas an attitude is a participant’s expressed way of thinking or
feeling about something or someone. Attitudes and values relating to
migration have been seen to contradict each other, such as where Benson’s
(2011) participants dismissed the British community in France yet at the same
time took comfort from it. Beliefs reflect more than an expressed attitude, being
how our lived experiences and interpretations contribute to what we believe to
be true; a belief may be presented as less questionable than an attitude. The
excerpts analysed within this paper were selected for how these attitudes,
values and beliefs were seen to be in conflict when two speakers oriented to
them in quite different ways.
Positioning Theory encompasses a range of tools for analysing language as
social practice, particularly where local representations may be motivated by
prevailing ideologies of the wider context. The three-level positioning
framework developed for identity work in narration by Bamberg and others
(Bamberg 1997; Bamberg and Georgakopoulou 2008; De Fina 2006) has been
selected as it provides an overarching framework for analysing the
mechanisms whereby migrants construct identity at three levels of
relationship:
1. between characters within the told world of the narrative;
2. between speakers within the interactive telling; and
3. between speakers/characters and prevailing ideologies as speakers
negotiate identity in the face of prevailing ideologies.
Level 1 is the story world of the narrative where I analyse the positioning of
characters within reported events by means of two linguistic features.
Membership categorisation, a concept originating within Conversation
Analysis, has recently been utilised within narrative positioning analysis as
a label to classify the ascription of actions, activities and traits that are ‘core
practices of positioning’ (Deppermann 2013: 10) that link to social categories
and stereotyping (for example, see Wilkinson and Kitzinger 2003).
Analysis of actions or agentive selves (Schiffrin 1996) examines the linguistic
items that convey a perception of ability to act or not act in a meaningful way.
Particular types of actions attributed to characters can reflect both agentive
and inagentive aspects. Agency is not something that we possess in an
essentialist way, nor is it only discursive; that is, having no essence beyond
linguistic construction. The concept of agency lies between these two

extremes: as something expressed within discourse with which we can
identify how individuals perceive their (in)ability to act in a way that is
meaningful to them in a particular sociocultural context. The micro-analysis
of selected interview excerpts examines the linguistic encoding of (in)agentive
positioning by identifying the use of actions attributed to characters, including
the speaker as agent of the (in)action, such as ‘we can’t speak the language’.
Another agentive construction is the modal construct of obligation, whereby
an action is represented as a social obligation that speakers align themselves
with, such as ‘should’ or ‘have to’. Despite this being represented as an
obligation, it can nevertheless be related to agency if it suggests a perceived
responsibility relating to one’s (in)capacity to act on an internalised belief
(Miller 2014).
At the level of the narrative itself (level 2), the interview extracts are
analysed for how the narrative is accomplished interactionally. This explores
the available positionings offered to interactants, both interviewer and
interviewee, whether these are taken up, how respondents negotiate
difficulties in taking up particular positions, and any foreshadowing or
evaluation of the content that frames its interpretation.
Bamberg’s third level of meaning takes a step further by examining the link
between local interaction and the construction of identity at a wider,
ideological level. Referred to as the ‘Who am I?’ question (Bamberg and
Georgakopoulou 2008), level 3 positioning concerns a sense of self in terms of
how people want to be understood in a particular sociocultural world. Such
representations may be visible in the features described above, as well as in
indexicality – or symbolically associated meaning – where language ‘points to’
external social meanings, such as the prevailing ideologies identified in the
forum data (the necessity to speak French, socialise with the French
community and avoid dependency on the British). After transcribing the
twelve interviews, each was scrutinised to identify examples of the narration of
social experience that indexed such beliefs.
ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEW DATA

The data extracts analysed below are from an interview carried out in 2011
with Emma and Mitch, a couple who moved to the Ariege in 2008 (see the
Appendix for transcription symbols). Mitch was in early retirement, but Emma
was in her 40s and the move had been dependent on her continuing to work in
a virtual capacity for a British company. This employment had recently been
terminated, and at the time of interview they were facing the possibility of an
unwelcome return to the U.K. They had studied the language at school and
also attended French lessons before the move, but it was clearly a limitation for
them; Emma referred to them ‘not speaking or being able to write the language’,
having to use Google Translate if they needed to write in French, and that she
662 LAWSON
‘hadn’t got enough French to hold a conversation’. They were regular users of the
British forum.
Emma and Mitch were well aware of the negative stereotypes of Britons in
France, with Mitch using the word ‘ghettoes’ with reference to ethnic clustering
to imply that Britons (and other nationalities) were taking over certain areas:
it shouldn’t be in England and it shouldn’t be out here with all the Brits living in (0.5)
the Tarn (.) Great Britarn
The repeated deontic modality of ‘it shouldn’t’ reinforces what he sees as a

moral obligation for the British to avoid ethnic isolation, linking back to the
warnings of forum members to socialise with their ‘French neighbours’ and
avoid dependency on the British.
Unusual among the interviews was Mitch’s detailed construction of a
membership category of what he called ‘part-timers’, who were ‘most of the
English people we know’ who ‘really want(s) to pretend they’re still English and live
in England but stop all the 12 months out here’. Resentment was rooted in the
idea that less committed migrants had it too easy, as they ‘don’t have to suffer
the bureaucracy, they don’t have taxes to sort out and all that sort of stuff’. One
specific behavioural trait that he ascribed to these ‘others’ (and claimed to
‘hate’) was of continuing to drive a British registered car, as seen at
Carcassonne airport where ‘every other car is a British registration car’:
what are they doing (.) for a start why have they still got British registrations on the
car (.) obviously means they’ve still got a base in England to get it registered (1) one of
the first things we did was put the car on French plates
This categorisation was evaluated in strong binary terms: ‘it’s the wrong way to
do it (.) to me you either live here or you don’t’, and the actions represented as
problematic (‘what are they doing . . . why’). He also contrasted and
distinguished his own behaviour (‘one of the first things we did’) from this
‘other’ member category. This suggests that a motivation for the categorisation
was that of positive identity negotiation, as such practical matters of dealing
with the French system offered an accessible route of positive identity
negotiation for this couple. Despite being well aware of the monolingual British
stereotype and the advice given by forum members, they could not draw upon
‘language’ as a resource with which to claim a positive, integrated migrant
identity. However, constructing a symbolic boundary against the part-timer
strengthened the corresponding situational identity of the self and helped to
counteract the potential for alignment to the negative stereotype.
The forum as ‘comfort zone’

Analysis of the forum data showed how resentment had surfaced against the
perceived over-dependence of newcomers on the existing members. Emma and
Mitch acknowledged that they used this forum and two others (for the British
in France) ‘quite a bit’ and that ‘life would be more difficult without these little sites
to go on’. Emma echoed the forum theme of comfort in familiarity, remarking
that ‘it’s nice to know I suppose that there’s somebody out there that’s been through
the same situation’ and describing the forum as ‘like a little cushion (.) like a little
comfort zone’. My next question, designed to probe this sense of ease, led to a
response that positioned the couple uncomfortably close to the dependency
perceived by some forum members. The couple negotiate a way around this by
justifying their actions within a developed, wider story world, constructing
hypothetical events and argumentation strategies.
Agency and dependency: ‘We won’t have a CLUE’
Excerpt 1a
1 Int: do you think (.) would you feel that it was easier to ask a
2 question on the forum than say asking your French neighbour?
3 Emma: yes (.) for us yes
4 Mitch: well I think forgetting the fact that you can’t speak very good
5 French I think anyone who could speak good French would still
6 find it easier to ask the question on the forum
Although Emma speaks for them (‘for us yes’), Mitch makes the point that the
forum is a mode that is easier (line 6) for anyone to use, not merely due to the
English language medium. He hypothetically aligns them with a high-status
category of migrant (with linguistic skills), since it matters little whether one
does or does not speak French (lines 4–5); the forum is the easiest way. Then
Emma raises a contradiction:
Excerpt 1b
7 Emma: you see I still think word of mouth (0.5) and I think it builds up
8 [communication
9 Mitch: [yes I agree but the internet has taken [over so much
10 Emma: [yes I know but I still
11 think you come to France and you should still integrate and I
12 still think (.) cause to me the forums are very good but we we’ll
13 be honest Mitch we haven’t gone on the French forums to sell
14 stuff because we can’t speak the language have we so we use the
15 local network purely for that reason (.) whereas everyone says
16 why don’t you use (.) can’t even remember what it’s called this
17 other one (.) and we say yes but if somebody rings in French we
18 won’t have a CLUE what they’re saying
19 Int: oh there’s a French one?
20 Emma: apparently there’s one a bit like eBay (.) something coin (.)
21 apparently it’s very good but yes you

664 LAWSON
22 Int: yes (.) you’re out of your comfort zone

23 Mitch: yes you are (.) you’re selling a dishwasher and a French person
24 phones you up and he wants to know (.) how many spin speeds
25 has it (.) what’s the maximum spin speed it’s gone (.) struggle
26 with that in English (.) yes but having said that we may have
27 used the English forums to ask questions but we (.) we’ve never
28 used an English tradesman while we’ve been here have we (0.5)
29 only Reg who came up and cut the grass before we came (.)
30 we’ve not used an English tradesman (.) everything we’ve had
31 has been through French tradesmen
This extract shows the difficulty of maintaining a position as people who do

things the right way when their lived experiences reflect dependence on the
British. The actual narrated events are sparse – ‘use the local network’ and using
‘French tradesmen’ – and it is the wider context of the story world that supports
their positions. While Emma argues the importance of local interaction as it
‘builds up communication’ (lines 7–8), Mitch continues his pro-forum stance
with a claim that the internet has ‘taken over’ (line 9). Emma’s next utterance,
a deontic obligation that ‘you should still integrate’ (lines 10–11), acknowledges
a social duty with a claim of rightness that explicitly orients to the wider value
system, yet it also undermines their use of the forum. This contradiction is
explained in terms of cause and effect: they ‘can’t speak the language’ (line 13).
Even a French online site for buying/selling is unfeasible for them, as
illustrated by a truth claim applied to a hypothetical situation: if a French
buyer called, they wouldn’t ‘have a CLUE what they’re saying’ (lines 17–18).
Although this opposes Emma’s previous claim of what one ‘should’ do (line 11),
the incapacity to act is significant since it indexes a lessening of responsibility;
using the English speaking forum is not the right way, but it is out of their
control. The interviewer is positioned to look no further than the language
difficulty.
My recycling of Emma’s reference to a comfort zone (line 22) is an
interactional (level 2) positioning of the couple’s behaviour as understandable,
and Mitch takes up the point by drawing on the hypothetical washing machine
anecdote (lines 23–25). This not only evidences the logic of Emma’s point
about not having a clue (line 18), but it deflects the problem away from the
language deficiency; it is something that would be complex even in one’s
native language (‘struggle with that in English’, lines 25–26). Mitch then shifts
across to a broader level 3 positioning that weakens the sense of incapacity
conveyed by the negative modality of Emma’s ‘can’t’ and ‘wouldn’t’. By
inserting the truth claim that they have never resorted to using actual English
tradespeople (lines 27–31), he orients to the right kind of migrant behaviour,
conveying a sense of having some agency in their behaviour; they do
not totally depend (‘never used’) on the English speaking community for
services.

Overall, Emma and Mitch show how sensitivity to an issue – the stereotype
of dependent Britons – can be achieved by both agentive and inagentive
language depending on their perspectives: Mitch represents their actions as
deliberate and logical, whereas Emma orients to a lack of capacity to act. Her
understanding that this is not the right way is evidenced by the modality of
what ‘should’ be, showing awareness of the moral obligation. They
demonstrate resourcefulness as they deploy a variety of discursive strategies
to lessen any ambiguity in the way that their positions are interpreted.
Representations of agency: ‘It’s not through lack of choice’

As previously demonstrated, one theme from the forum data was the perceived
importance of socialising with one’s French neighbours. For this couple, the
relationship between agency (choice) and incapacity became even more
complex when discussing their socialising activities. Mitch remarked how ‘we
don’t make a point of going to try and mix with the Brits so similarly we don’t mix
with the French’. He described how they are becoming known and ‘accepted’
locally, but that is all.
Excerpt 2a
1 Mitch: so many of the stallholders know us by now and we stop and
2 have a word on the veggie stall and that (0.5) so yeah you’re
3 accepted in that respect (.) we’re not er not standoffish with the
4 people but
5 Emma: well I think it’s the communication (0.5) it would be (0.5) if we
6 could speak fluently (.) and get by we’d have a whale of a time
7 [wouldn’t you really
8 Mitch: [yeah if we’d got better French we’d be
9 Emma: you wouldn’t get further than the front door you’d be ((gestures
10 and makes quick back and forth noise))
11 Mitch: yeah I don’t think it would be going out for meals with them and
12 visiting each other’s house type of thing (.) it would be seeing
13 them in the street and probably for five minutes and have a chat
14 and seeing as you’re walking and people (.) always want to be
15 friendly (.) stop and talk to the dog and whatever (.) ok we miss
16 out to an extent in that respect because the French isn’t good
17 enough (1) but if it was very good we still wouldn’t be going
18 sort of (.) visiting French people
Once again, Emma brings in an alternative perspective in relation to

communication; she argues that if they had fluent French (lines 5–6), they
would do things differently. She voices the alternative in positive terms – ‘a
whale of a time’ (line 6) – which is strengthened by gesture that represents busy
actions. Although Mitch does align with this as a possibility, agreeing ‘if we’d
got better French’ (line 8), and admitting that they miss out as ‘the French isn’t

666 LAWSON
good enough’ (line 16–17), he once again counters the potential for dependency
with an argumentation claim of truth: this is not what they would actually
choose to do. Even if they did have good French, they ‘wouldn’t’ actively
socialise with the locals (line 17–18). As in the previous excerpt, he makes a
hypothetical alignment with more competent migrant speakers of French, this
time to position them as having choice in the matter; they may be poor at
French, but this is not the cause of their social isolation. This is probed by my
next question:
Excerpt 2b
19 Int: mmm so that’s not what you’ve really come for, you haven’t
20 come with a vision of suddenly having loads of French social
21 life and so on?
22 Mitch: I don’t think we did because we didn’t come to have a a great
23 social life with the Brits either (.) we left England where we had
24 a very good social life with various motor clubs and we were out
25 most weekends doing things (0.5) and we just accepted that we
26 were coming and that was going to change (.) we knew it was
27 going to change and we’re quite happy with that change
28 Emma: yeah I don’t kno::w
29 Mitch: so it’s not through lack of choice that we don’t go and socialise
30 more and go out for meals with people
Looking more closely at the actions in lines 22–27, we see how Mitch explains
their current position by moving back and forth between the past and the present
and integrating a number of truth claims. He raises a claim that socialising was
never anticipated with either the French or ‘with the Brits’, despite describing
their former ‘very good social life’ (lines 23–24). The next part of the utterance uses
past tense verbs (shown below in bold) to claim anticipation and acceptance of
the future (underlined) situation before the move:
we just accepted that we were coming and that was going to change (.) we knew it
was going to change and we’re quite happy with that change.
While this presents them rather passively as people who just accepted that they
would not socialise much in France, it also negates any implication that they
were uninformed or unprepared about what the new life would offer them. The
coda portrays them as ‘quite happy’ with this, although the use of ‘quite’
qualifies it somewhat. Despite Emma’s subsequent disalignment on line 28,
Mitch reinforces the idea of agency (‘not through lack of choice’) on line 29, to
strengthen the previous claim that even if their French was good, they ‘still
wouldn’t be’ visiting French people.
Yet a degree of ambiguity is generated by the contradiction of ‘choice’ with
the more passive ‘accepted’. One possible interpretation is that ‘choice’ related
back to the mention of not socialising with the ‘Brits’. As I have demonstrated,

both Mitch and Emma acknowledged the undesirability of British expat

clusters, with references to the British in the Dordogne and the Tarn as ‘that’s
not what we wanted’. Although they spoke freely about their ‘very good social life’
back in Britain, this could not be transferred to a British network in France
without potential for alignment to the dependent stereotype. So although the
representation of having a ‘choice’ might appear unsupported in the case of
socialising with the French, it could relate to a strategic decision to avoid the
British.
Positioning at the level of the interaction itself appears to support this. My
own comment on lines 19–21, intended to probe this anticipated lack of
socialising, is taken up by Mitch to avoid alignment with British networks and
present himself to the interviewer as one who has actively made the ‘choice’.
As with the reference to not using English tradesmen, it affords them a degree
of control in the way their behaviour is represented.
Once again, the lack of alignment between Mitch and Emma suggests that
one function of the discourse is that of positive self-representation, and as
forum users they would have been familiar with the perceived duty to speak
French and socialise with one’s neighbours. Emma’s comment that they would
‘have a whale of a time’ if they were fluent, and her questioning on line 28,
undermine his positionings of them as acting through choice. The initial
agreement of ‘yeah’ is cancelled out by the epistemic uncertainty in the drawn
out ‘I don’t know’, an opposition to Mitch’s claim that they anticipated an end
to their socialising. As with the previous excerpt, where Emma evaluated their
use of the British forum as an unavoidable consequence of poor language skills,
it is possible to make a similar interpretation. For Emma, the claim made by
Mitch that they wouldn’t be actively socialising with the French if they could
speak their language (lines 17–18) positions them as avoiding more than a
superficial integration, and uncomfortably close to the dependent UKers
criticised on the forum. Therefore, while level 3 positioning is not explicit in
any orientation to the wider value system in this extract, it seems likely that it
was an underlying motivation for how the discourse developed, particularly
the different ways in which they resisted alignment.
CONCLUSION
This paper has explored the phenomenon of agentive positioning in a British
migration context, using two different datasets from the same community. On
a practical level, the paper demonstrates how it is possible to analyse the
recycling and maintenance of a value system by evidencing its local and wider
manifestations. When considered in the light of the forum data, the complex
positionings made by Emma and Mitch show the difficulties of identity
negotiation when accounts of their lived experiences do not align with familiar
ideologies espoused within the British community online, such as the need to
speak French, mix with the French community and avoid dependency. The
668 LAWSON
two excerpts notably follow similar patterns; Emma justifies their behaviour in
cause and effect terms, rationalising both their continued use of the British
forum and their lack of socialising with the French as a result of poor language
skills. They cannot deny their lack of competence in the French language, but
by framing this incapacity as ‘purely’ the reason behind their behaviour, it
helps to absolve responsibility for their actions (or lack of them). While Mitch
uses more agentive language and argumentation claims that at times appear
contradictory, I would argue that the sense of choice and logic is also a
strategic positioning aimed to counteract the potential for alignment with the
‘coddled’ Brits, who ‘do not know anything about the country or language’.
In this way, the paper addresses the call for more studies to present a clear
empirical or evidential basis when presenting indexical links between the micro
context of the narrator and the wider (macro) social reality (De Fina 2013). At
the same time, the study adds another dimension to the debates around elicited
versus spontaneous interaction, and the perceived limitations of research
interviews for developing our understanding of social phenomena beyond the
interview itself (De Fina and Perrino 2011). The studies discussed by De Fina
and Perrino show how related positionings can be compared across multiple
communities, but they nevertheless rarely address contexts beyond interviews.
This paper’s combination of online and interview interaction is a relatively
novel approach within sociolinguistic studies, especially as the mode itself – a
support network for the British – became an object of discussion during the
interview.
On a more theoretical level, the study adds another dimension to the recent
focus on narrative positioning. It is certainly useful to identify positioning that
is relatively stable and continuous across contexts (Georgakopoulou 2013),
showing how ‘taken for granted structures’ can ‘provide a backdrop’ for
displays of identity (Deppermann 2013: 11). However, we should not assume
that agentive positioning will follow anticipated routes or recurrent patterns,
even where prevailing ideologies present a system of binary opposites.
Although the present study identified coherence across the themes in the
data, the joint interview was valuable in demonstrating the complexities and
contradictions among speakers who share a common sociocultural
background and experiences but nevertheless represent their actions in
contrasting ways. This also has some bearing on the use of membership
categorisation as a tool within positioning analysis, and it supports
Deppermann’s (2013) argument that categorisation alone is insufficient to
account for the complexities of indexical positioning processes. For Mitch and
Emma, the ‘right kind of migrant’ was a more individually negotiated and
interactionally situated construct, as their identity representations did not
always fit, unproblematically, into the clearly delineated binary categories of
migrant that were constructed by forum members.
One final point relates to the paper’s contribution to the lifestyle migration
literature. The latter has made much of the ambivalence and contradictions
inherent within British contexts, and a theme analysis might lead us to

interpret such contradictions as incoherence when faced with difficulty in
aligning oneself with the default ideal migrant. However, a focus on language
in interaction reveals the truly dynamic nature of agency representations in
interaction. Such inconsistencies and contradictions can be very enlightening
towards our understanding of the functions of the discourse (Potter and
Wetherell 1987), which in this case includes a positive negotiation of identity
as a British migrant in France. As speakers make strategic, turn-by-turn
representations, they do so according to how they see potential for a less
negative alignment. The positioning strategies of this particular couple seem
more indicative of a high level of adaptive resourcefulness than a lack of
coherence. Any future studies of stereotyping, ambivalence and inconsistencies
in lifestyle migration narratives could bear this in mind.
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APPENDIX: Transcription conventions

Int: Interviewer.
(0.5) Length of silence in tenths of a second.
(.) Micro-pause, less than 0.2 of a second.
underline Emphasis or stress.
[ Where one speaker overlaps the utterance of another.
UPPERCASE A marked rise in volume.
Address correspondence to:

Michelle Lawson
Open University – Applied Linguistics and English Language
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
United Kingdom
michelle.lawson3@btinternet.com

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Journal of Sociolinguistics 21/5, 2017: 650–671

Negotiating an agentive identity in a British

This paper presents an analysis of agency and positioning in a context of

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

macro, en particulier dans un contexte interactionnel eclipse par un

KEYWORDS: Agency, ideology, lifestyle migration, narrative

therefore takes the perspective of lifestyle migration as an ability to move

THE SELF AND THE ‘OTHER’ IN BRITISH MIGRATION

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

The notion of an ideal migrant against the stereotypical ‘other’ therefore

THE CURRENT STUDY: CONTEXT, DATA AND METHOD

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

An integrated approach to data analysis

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

obtaining permission from the site owners I began a qualitative selection of

THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF ONLINE DATA

The forum: Support versus dependence

The ‘other’ British

Assumptions about not speaking French often co-occurred with references to

By describing the British as ‘lost sheep’, he categorises them as a generalised

These social actions also construct a boundary between the established

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

ANALYSING POSITIONING IN INTERACTION

linguistic construction. The concept of agency lies between these two

ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEW DATA

The repeated deontic modality of ‘it shouldn’t’ reinforces what he sees as a

The forum as ‘comfort zone’

Agency and dependency: ‘We won’t have a CLUE’

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

22 Int: yes (.) you’re out of your comfort zone

This extract shows the difficulty of maintaining a position as people who do

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Representations of agency: ‘It’s not through lack of choice’

Once again, Emma brings in an alternative perspective in relation to

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

both Mitch and Emma acknowledged the undesirability of British expat

inherent within British contexts, and a theme analysis might lead us to

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

APPENDIX: Transcription conventions

Address correspondence to:

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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