Linguistic Enclaves at the Border: Skou Language Resilience Among a Minority of Skou Speakers in a Migrant-Dominated Market

Abstract

Border markets are highly multilingual spaces in which indigenous languages encounter national languages, regional lingua francas, migrant languages, and languages associated with cross-border trade. This article examines the resilience of the Skou language in the Skouw border market on the IndonesiaPapua New Guinea (PNG) border. The study asks how Indigenous Skou marketeers maintain their heritage language while operating within a multilingual and increasingly migrant-dominated commercial environment. A qualitative approach was employed through interviews with four Skou informants in Abepura and Skou Mabo, Jayapura, in May 2026. The participants included three individuals connected to the Skouw Market and one elder identified by the researcher as having particularly fluent and clear command of Skou. The findings indicate that Skou remains an important resource for family interaction, intra-community communication, cross-border relationships, privacy, identity construction, and social cohesion. The market therefore functions not only as an economic space but also as a social domain in which Skou speakers reproduce their linguistic identity. The study further identifies emerging revitalization practices, including the teaching of basic Skou expressions in Skouw Mabo Elementary School, Bible translation, dictionary development, and intergenerational teaching. However, these efforts coexist with substantial language shift among younger generations. The article argues that the Skou case illustrates a form of linguistic enclave resilience, in which a numerically marginalized indigenous group uses concentrated social networks and selected communicative domains to maintain its heritage language within a linguistically dominant environment. The study contributes to discussions of language maintenance by demonstrating that border markets can simultaneously accelerate language shift and provide spaces for minority-language reproduction.