Abstract/Summary

Construction sites are often multilingual spaces as high numbers of migrants are employed in the industry. Bilingual workers are used as informal interpreters to enable people to work together. However, little is known about who these workers are and why they take on this language work. This paper presents the stories of three informal interpreters who help facilitate communication on international construction projects. These stories, that come from a wider ethnographic research project, demonstrate how the individual’s identity is significant for why they take on this unpaid labour and how identity shapes how they perform it. This study suggests that some workers invest in their language skills, driven by their imagined communities as permanent or transnational migrants. Consequently, they are more engaged with the informal interpretation tasks than bilinguals who do not invest in their language skills and intend to return to their country of origin. This research suggests that formalising language work would help retain communication skills in the industry and may encourage investment in the informal interpreter function. This paper contributes to the theoretical discussion on investment and imagined communities by demonstrating how applying these terms generates new insights in research on migrants at work.