In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast Ingrid Piller speaks with Professor Sandra Issel-Dombert. Sandra is Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Universität Duisburg-Essen in Germany. Her research focus is on everyday multilingualism, in the workplace, in healthcare, and in the family.

We talk about Sandra’s new book Multilingualism, Migration, and Domestic Work: On the Sociolinguistic Situation of Filipina Domestic Migrant Workers in Madrid. The book was published by de Gruyter in 2025 and is available open access through UPL Open.

The book explores the intersection of multilingualism and transnational migration in the global sector of domestic work in Spain, the second largest labor market in the EU. Over the course of three years, a corpus of field notes, narrative interviews, focus groups, language portraits and language maps was built with 25 Filipina domestic workers (FDWs) in Madrid, partly collected through participatory approaches. The analysis focuses on three main aspects: first, spatial repertoires; second, the multilingual everyday life and lived experiences of languages; and third, the agency of FDWs. The aim of this study is to better understand the dynamics that emerge from inequalities of multilingualism in the feminized sector of transnational domestic work.

The book expands our understanding of multilingualism and transnational migration in the feminized sector of paid domestic work. It is a pioneering contribution to the growing field of language and migration, offering new insights into the sociolinguistic aspects of migration from Spain’s only former colony in Asia to Spain. Theoretically, the study adds a postcolonial and critical approach to language and migration, using a variety of methodological techniques.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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