This study uses three different chronotopes (cfr. Bakhtin), to examine the language and identity accounts of Castilian-speaking teenagers of working-class immigrant descent, who either positively or negatively adapted to Catalan over the years in the Barcelona region of the 1980s. The former frame their linguistic development within biographical and cosmopolitan chronotopes, underscoring individual growth and experience. The latter adopt language politicization and an authenticity ideology relating language choice to origins.