Jurisdictional decentralisation in favour of minority languages

Abstract

Abstract This article sets out to explore what effects administrative and jurisdictional decentralisation might have on minority languages and the communities that use them, with special regard to those fragile language groups that are in a status which can be best described as a minority within a minority. Decentralisation often takes the form of regionalisation, which entails the division of a state’s territory into regions, not only in geographical and economic sense, but also by attributing certain administrative and jurisdictional powers to these newly formed units. Most of the time regional boundaries are drawn in such a way that the new intra-state borders respect the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural specificities of the population living there. If this is the case, it is possible for certain decision-making mechanisms and governance models to place jurisdiction over minority language issues among the competences granted to sub-national entities. The article sets out to explore the effects of jurisdictional decentralisation on three regional languages: the Aranese in Spain, the Ladin in Italy, and the Catalan in France. These communities are examined in detail in this paper, which proposes to shed light on some good practices available in Europe, but at the same time also draws attention to areas where there is still room for improvement along the lines discussed above.