Immigration and bureaucratic control. Language practices in public administration

摘要

This is a very valuable monograph on language practices in a Spanish immigration office sited in Barcelona. The book makes an important contribution to the study of institutional talk while, at the same time, shows how institutional procedures are bound up with political strategies to manage immigration in ways that reproduce social inequalities. Eva Codo gathered her data in a Ministry of Interior department that handled applications for residence and work permits. She builds on recent attempts by Sarangi and Roberts (1999) and others to characterize institutional talk, particularly to broaden the analytical work done by conversational analysts (CA) through ethnographic contextualization.