Abstract
AbstractThis study contributes with minority‐centred perspectives to the policy trend of imposing majority language requirements on immigrants. With the aim to identify and explore (dis)connections and value conflicts between policies of national minority recognition and immigrant integration, it develops and applies four ideal types of minority‐linguistic integration regimes to a mapping of integration and minority language policies in 27 European Union (EU) member states. Most states with recognized minorities are found to exclude national minorities from integration policies. The finding is connected to a discussion that identifies normative tensions between the promotion of national minority languages, the linguistic barriers faced by non‐citizen migrants and the asymmetries in how identity and instrumental values are assigned to minority, migrant and majority languages. The study challenges the imposition of language requirements on immigrants and calls for contextually sensitive ways to jointly consider the position of national minorities, majorities, and immigrants in language policies.
Highlights
Acquiring and demonstrating civic and linguistic knowledge has become a widely employed requirement in immigrant integration policies in Europe
The reasoning behind language requirements for immigrants is in research on linguistic justice often normatively connected to non-identity, or instrumental, values, such as economic opportunities, democratic participation or societal unity, whereas the protection of national minority languages is generally motivated through the identity interests of the national minority
In Europe, such contexts have been characterized as nations without states rather than national minorities (Sasse & Thielemann, 2005)—most national minorities and migrants in Europe live in states where integration policies reproduce majority nationhood, where minority languages are portrayed as having low instrumental value, and where integration policies do not acknowledge multilingualism
Summary
States encourage and require immigrants to acquire proficiency only in a dominant language, thereby excluding recognized national minority languages1 from integration policies. A mapping of integration and minority policies in the 27 member states of the European Union is carried out in relation to these ideal types, showing that most of the recognized national minorities in Europe are excluded from integration policies that instead promote and require knowledge in majority civics and languages.
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