Reconceptualising language tests for citizenship as raciolinguistic border regimes

ABSTRACT

This contribution to the Special Issues situates citizenship tests, which satisfy language requirements, as ‘raciolinguistic borders’. This is because such tests cannot be confined to education but function as tools within a wider socio-political apparatus. They have an impact on racialising language so that those with the most proximity to the national linguistic community encounter the tests at lower stakes or closer to their own language(s). Thus, tests are bordering techniques which can be retracted to exclude or expanded to externalise legal and linguistic borders. They are both fluid in their remit and hard in their materiality in the lives of migrants. At the heart of the rationale behind these borders is the fundamental question about whether they are unjust or not.

KEYWORDS:

• Naturalisation
• citizenship tests
• language tests
• borders
• race

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kamran Khan

Kamran Khan is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow leading the CVELANG project at the University of Copenhagen on counter-extremism and adult language education. He has worked on project related to language testing for naturalisation spanning over 10 years in the UK and Spain. He is the author of ‘Becoming a Citizen: Linguistic Trials and Negotiations’ (Bloomsbury, 2019).