Workshop Abstracts

Workshop 1

Asking the wrong questions (Jan Blommaert)

In the Belgian asylum procedure (and that of other countries), language testing is as a rule used for establishing 'origins' of people: M speaks language X, language X is spoken in Country C, so if M speaks X that means that he is from C. In this presentation, I will examine the ideological imagery that underlies this particular reasoning and argue that it is founded on utterly unrealistic assumptions about language, society, and relations between both.

Do we need language testing for citizenship? (Adrian Blackledge)

Language testing in various forms has been used for some time as a gatekeeping mechanism to determine whether applications for citizenship are successful. In several world contexts recently, and notably in Europe, language requirements for citizenship applicants have been introduced or strengthened. There is broad consensus in the academic world that current language testing for citizenship processes are predicated on ideological assumptions which are discriminatory. However, the question of whether language testing for citizenship per se is appropriate or not is more widely contested. This presentation focuses on recent legislation to extend language testing for citizenship in Britain, and argues that such requirements amount to a racialisation of language which contributes to a monolingual and monocultural ideology in multilingual Britain. I conclude by asking what is the purpose of using language tests to determine whether applicants are granted citizenship status, and whether such a policy can be justified.

Workshop 2

European perspectives on language, migration and citizenship (Guus Extra and Massimiliano Spotti)

A strong historical match is present across Europe between nation-states, the so-called 'national' languages and the existence of a national identity. The equalisation of language and national identity, however, is based on a denial of the co-existence of majority and minority groups - together with their immigrant minority languages - within the borders of any nation-state. Along the same line of thought, the equalisation of ethnic and national identity is problematic in any society where different ethnic groups brought together by migration movements have ended up sharing the national space.

Against this background, the rationale of this contribution derives from presenting the plethora of national majority languages and regional plus immigrant minority languages as constituent properties of the European landscape. First, the focus will be on the changes that have taken place in the EU arenas in terms of local and global striving towards a transnational identity and its relation to the migration flux of non-territorial minorities. Second, it will deal with the common practice, throughout the EU, of presenting data on regional minority groups on the basis of (home) language and/or ethnicity, and data on immigrant minority groups on the basis of nationality and/or country of birth. However, for both the regional minority and the immigrant minority groups, convergence between these criteria appears over time due to the increasing period of migration and minorisation. Given the decreasing significance of nationality and birth-country criteria in the European context, the combined criteria of self-categorisation (ethnicity) and home language use are potentially promising alternatives for obtaining basic information on the increasingly multicultural and multilingual composition of European nation-states. The added value of home language statistics is that they offer valuable insights into the distribution and vitality of home languages across different population groups and thus raise the awareness of multilingualism.

Ethical issues in language policy regimes in relation to immigration and citizenship (Piet Van Avermaet)

For some years a shift can be observed in many European countries towards stricter conditions for people who want to apply for immigration and citizenship. One of the new (or renewed) conditions for obtaining citizenship is language proficiency. In some countries people applying for citizenship have to prove they have a certain level of proficiency in the official language (or one of the official languages) of the country. More and more language tests are being used for this purpose. Because of the diversity in Europe, the social-political context in which these conditions have been set up and language tests developed differs considerably. The motivation for having language as a condition for obtaining citizenship in, for example, Slovenia or Latvia, differs from the motivation in the Netherlands or Germany. At the same time it is interesting to analyse the motivations in other countries (like Belgium) for not having language and a language test as one of the conditions for obtaining citizenship. In this presentation we would like to discuss the ethical aspects of language assessment as a condition for obtaining citizenship.

Amongst others the following questions will be addressed:

How can it be explained that language is a new (or renewed) condition for obtaining citizenship?
To what extent is knowing the language of a country a token of integration?
Should language be a condition for obtaining citizenship?
Is a language test the best instrument to measure someone's 'degree of integration' in a given society?
How should language be measured? Is this feasible?
Which level? What is the rationale behind determining a level?

These and other questions will be discussed from a political and theoretical perspective as well as from a pragmatic and functional perspective.

Language testing citizenship regime: why language? why tests? why citizenship? why immigrants? what are the consequences? (Elana Shohamy)

This paper will critique the 'language testing citizenship regime' in terms of its rationale, purposes and consequences. It will specifically address the mechanisms of 'tests' as a covert strategy for creating and perpetuating de facto language policies that result in exclusion and differentiations among human beings. It will show how tests, and especially language tests, are used by governments as weapons for manipulation purposes and for creating de facto policies that are based on unrealistic notions of nation states and for controlling strategic policies and population 'purity'. The paper will show how the combination of the three powerful mechanisms - tests, language and citizenship - create a most powerful instrument with no possibility for resistance. It will then show how tests deliver intended and unintended messages about the prestige and status of certain languages, standardizing languages and perpetuating notions of correctness and suppressing diversity.

The questions for the discussion will include issues such as:

What is 'citizenship'?
What is 'good citizenship'?
What is the role of language?
What is 'correct language' for immigrants?
Are tests needed? Can they provide valid tools?
How are tests used to legitimize actions?
What are the unintended consequences?
And finally, how can linguists and testers and the public get engaged in activism to resist misuses of language, tests and citizenship and stereotypes about immigrants and 'others'?

Where life and policy intersects: language testing in the life of a multiple migrant (Ingrid Piller)

In my paper, I will shift the perspective away from the macro-level of policy to the micro-level of the individual life course. Specifically, I want to ask how the citizenship and language policies in one European state, Germany, and in an immigration country, the USA, have played out in the life of one single migrant. On the basis of the case study of Iran-born Shabnaz, I will then formulate and offer for discussion implications for language policy as well as academic practice in relation to language testing, migration and citizenship. These are the following:

Language proficiency in the language/s of communication in the wider society is a democratic responsibility and a democratic right.
The residence requirement is the best and most valid test of linguistic proficiency for the purposes of citizenship, and any other form of language testing should be avoided.
National citizenship by its very nature is exclusionary, and in advocating for global citizenship, including contributing to making illegal migrants visible, we need to be prepared for the consequence that the boundaries between (linguistic) scholarship and political activism will become blurred.

Workshop 3

Democratic Inclusion and Language Governance (Colin H. Williams)

This contribution will discuss four issues which have a bearing on the contemporary nature of language and citizenship in selected societies:

The principle of equal recognition in liberal democracies;
Technological developments and the deterretorialization of society and space;
The limits of language planning intervention;
Resistance, responsibility and the delivery of public policy in multilingual societies.

Key questions:

How do formally marginalised language groups cope with the exercise of responsible governance which recent political reforms in parts of the EU have ushered in?
How have such reforms re-configured the nature of inclusive democracy, especially in relation to so-called ‘indigenous’ and ‘immigrant’ language groups?

Local Actors in Promoting Multilingualism (Brigitta Busch)

Although language policy formally remains a nation state domain, in the process of glocalisation other actors gain in importance. In my contribution I will focus on grass root initiatives as well as on local institutions and bodies that promote a policy of linguistic diversity. Confronted with the multilingual realities of urban everyday life, language policies in cities cannot ignore the challenges of the heterophonia and heteroglossia of urban societies. Such language policies tend to consider multilingualism as a potential (e.g. for the development of cultural industries or for transurban economic and cultural relations). This presentation will be based on data empirical data collected within the framework of the EU research project "Changing city spaces: new challenges to cultural policies in Europe".