Mayan Languages in the United States: Identity and Survival

This presentation examines the role of Mayan languages in Maya migrant communities in the United States. Focusing on K'iche' and Ixil, I analyse the ways in which Mayan languages are used both to preserve a sense of community both locally and with the various Guatemalan highland towns from which migrants originally came. I focus on the challenges faced by migrants to engage American law enforcement, courts and civil institutions and the ways in which the discourse resources offered by Mayan languages are used to make sense and develop effective coping strategies. My work is based on interviews with migrants and their families in Guatemala. I seek to develop an ethnography of language in migration contexts and seeks to understand an emerging deterritorialisation of Mayan languages, which until recently were highly localised linguistic codes, tightly embedded in Maya communities in the Guatemalan and Mexican highlands, and the Yucatan. I consider also the inconsistent strategies used by American stakeholders to assimilate Maya migrants into the American institutional landscape managing recent migrant arrivals. I consider Maya communities in Texas, New York and Florida.