NEGOTIATING LINGUISTIC IDENTITY IN MULTILINGUAL URBAN SPACES THROUGH YOUTH LANGUAGE PRACTICES IN POST-MIGRATION COMMUNITIES

Abstract

Understanding how young people negotiate identity through language in superdiverse urban environments remains a critical gap in sociolinguistic research. This study examines how youth in post-migration communities in Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria, utilise multilingual repertoires to construct identities, navigate social contexts and generate new linguistic varieties. Despite growing recognition of urban superdiversity, traditional sociolinguistic frameworks inadequately capture the fluid, creative nature of youth multilingual practices that transcend ethnic and national categories. This qualitative ethnographic study, conducted between February and June 2024 across three multilingual neighbourhoods in Ibadan, engages 24 purposively selected participants aged 16–25 through participant observation, semi-structured interviews and six focus group discussions. Thematic analysis using NVivo 12 software is applied to verbatim transcriptions across multiple coding rounds. Findings reveal that participants deploy distinct contextual linguistic personas across urban spaces, with English dominating formal educational settings (66.7%) and mixed codes most prevalent in peer interactions (37.5%). Interlocutor linguistic background (91.7%) and topic sensitivity (79.2%) emerge as the strongest determinants of language choice. Systematic linguistic innovations including lexical borrowing (34.4%) and code-switched phrases (27.3%) evidence the emergence of new urban varieties. These findings challenge deficit models of multilingualism and carry significant implications for inclusive educational language policy in Nigeria, while advancing theoretical frameworks better suited to African multilingual contexts and supporting additive approaches to linguistic diversity.