The situated nature of investment in language learning: The case of two new speakers of Faroese

This chapter focuses on the lived experiences of adult migrants in acquiring, using and becoming speakers of Faroese, the official language in the Faroe Islands, a North Atlantic archipelago in the West Nordic Region. In particular, it focuses on the situated nature of investment in language learning, which includes the reasons that adult migrants give for learning Faroese, the challenges involved in learning a small and historically minoritised language in a bilingual sub-state context with two globally small languages (Faroese and Danish), and the workplace conditions and institutional practices that support or hinder their learning. The chapter argues that adult migrant language learning is a highly situated type of social practice that is contingent on personal circumstances, on workplace conditions and on settings of an institutional and structural nature. This is illustrated through the cases of two new speakers of Faroese who are employed in a blue-collar workplace. Both of them have university education.