Governing complex linguistic diversity in Barcelona, Luxembourg and Riga

Peter A Kraus,Núria Garcia,Melanie Frank,Vicent Climent‐Ferrando

doi:10.1111/nana.12662

Peter A Kraus, Núria Garcia + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12662

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Abstract

AbstractContemporary migration has entailed the emergence of new forms of multilingualism in many European cities. The article uses the concept of complex diversity to analyse this dynamic. The concept points at settings where historical forms of multilingualism and more recent patterns of linguistic heterogeneity interact in ways that lead to particularly rich cultural configurations. The authors assess how local authorities deal with multilingualism in three cities that represent ‘most complex’ cases of diversity politics: Barcelona, Luxembourg and Riga. The focus is on policies related to public communication and on the approaches adopted to promote social and political inclusion in ever more multilingual urban environments. In normative terms, the article concludes that political responses to complex diversity should aim both at overcoming linguistic status inequalities based on historical structures of domination and at creating common spaces of communication for diverse citizens.

Highlights

Research on nationalism has widely shown that the historical dynamics driving the formation of modern states triggered a massive wave of cultural homogenisation (Anderson, 2016; Mann, 2004; Rokkan, 1999)
Manifestations of complex diversity have become most salient in urban settings where historical forms of multilingualism and new elements of linguistic heterogeneity intertwine
The three cities analysed are all confronted with the challenge of dealing with complex linguistic diversity: they share a history of language conflict and endogenous multilingualism and are confronting new forms of linguistic differentiation, brought about by immigration and the growing importance of English

Summary

Introduction

Research on nationalism has widely shown that the historical dynamics driving the formation of modern states triggered a massive wave of cultural homogenisation (Anderson, 2016; Mann, 2004; Rokkan, 1999). The trend was powerful in the context of Europe, whose contemporary political map shows a number of territorial units generally conceived of as nation-states. The clearest symptom of this representation of internal uniformity is the fact that— with only very few exceptions, and in sharp contrast with other regions of the world—the official denominations of most European states refer to one dominant language. Did this way of representing uniformity match sociolinguistic reality, and up to the present, several European nation-states contain substantial portions of linguistically not fully assimilated citizens, so-called ‘linguistic minorities’. There is a clear historical affinity between the standard version of the nation-state in Europe and a notorious—and often enough oppressive— monolingualism (Kraus, 2018)

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