Dr Wardah Hakimah Haji Sumardi

Transforming the lives of immigrants in the UK: The case of ESOL programme

Politicians and media in the United Kingdom have increasingly highlighted the link between the immigrants’ ability to speak English language and immigrants’ integration into society and wellbeing. Adult education programs such as English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) which provides English language learning service classes to immigrants play a crucial role in helping them to integrate into the British society and improving their wellbeing. Utilising a transformative service research (TSR) agenda, this study examines how service design and the role and activities of actors within ESOL programme impact the wellbeing of ESOL learners. This qualitative study consists of 28 semi-structured interviews with ESOL students comprised of immigrants from different parts of the world to the UK and 5 ESOL tutors. The findings reveal the significance of the element of service design beyond the ESOL programme as well as the role and activities of actors’ (i.e. service users, service provider and other actors) in the user sphere of the value co-creation process in contributing to the ESOL learners’ wellbeing. The findings further demonstrate the dynamism and idiosyncratic nature of the elements of wellbeing that arise at multiple points of interactions between ESOL learners and other actors throughout the transformative service experience. Congruency of goals between actors and supportive linkages between actors in the service system are found to be the enablers of ESOL learners’ transformative service experience and vice versa. Theoretically, the study identifies the need to widen the lens of study beyond the service logic approach commonly used in the literature when studying transformative service. This entails putting emphasis on activities and interactions in both the joint sphere and user sphere of the value co-creation process, as promoted by customer dominant logic as well as emphasis on other actors in the network who may co-create with others stakeholders, as promoted by the service ecosystem perspective.