Education and migration: languages foregrounded

When these [refugee] children reach their final asylum and enter new schools, their turbulent histories are often hidden by ‘language barriers, privacy concerns, cultural misunderstandings, and stereotypes’.  …  Unless their experiences as migrants – sporadic schooling, language confusion, poor instruction, and discrimination, for instance – are understood, refugee children in the United States and elsewhere may continue to feel rootless. (Sarah Dryden-Peterson, cited in Walsh, 2015)

The eight articles comprising this special issue ‘Education and migration: languages foregrounded’ provide an international, research-led perspective on how languages are foregrounded in education in different countries, in different educational sectors, and among different groups of people in contexts of migration. Together, the findings and conclusions emerging from these studies open up a timely space for interdisciplinary, inter-practitioner, and comparative researcher dialogue concerning languages and intercultural education in times of migration.

The research papers were originally presented at the international conference of the same title hosted in the School of Education at Durham University in the United Kingdom, 21–23 October 2016. The conference was embedded within the research project ‘Researching multilingually at the borders of language, the body, law and the state’,¹ led by Professor Alison Phipps, and on which we, as editors, were co-investigators. The interdisciplinary project, with its focus on migration and border crossings, provided a natural impetus for exploring how languages, and the people speaking them, create new imaginaries, new possibilities, in educational contexts and communities as people engage with one another in and through these languages. As the title of the conference and project suggests, our concern is with the movement of people and their languages as they migrate across borders, and as languages – and their speakers – are under threat, pressure, and pain, silenced even. The articles presented in this special issue seek to explore the multilingual possibilities and opportunities that this situation presents in education, whether in mainstream contexts or the borderlands: for example, where children’s education is neglected because of displacement or exclusion, and in classrooms where teachers and educational leaders seek to meet the needs of all learners, including those who are new citizens, refugees, or asylum seekers.

Internationally, communities are fed stories from the media on how some governments and politicians view immigration as a cause for concern. In England alone, according to Department for Education statistics, classrooms at primary and secondary levels have seen more than a 1% increase in ethnic group composition in the past year (DfE, 2017). The articles in this special issue, with their international and comparative approaches, enable us (as editors) to present an opposite viewpoint: the diversity emerging from immigration creates affordances and opportunities for language and intercultural communication which can enrich communities and schools internationally, adding cultural and linguistic layers to traditional curricula.² That is, we view the language resources that individuals bring to the learning environment as an opportunity for celebrating multilingualism and diversity, both in the classroom and community more broadly, and for opening up understanding and dialogue as children and adults encounter one another. This special issue aims to shed light on the phenomenon of education and migration by foregrounding languages.

The authors presented in the special issue bring international and comparative perspectives on these matters. They responded to our following call for papers:

Ongoing and forced migration – resulting from protracted civil war, unremitting poverty and economic hardship, and political unrest and ecological instability – often results in the termination of education for some, or entry into new learning contexts for others. This situation of heightened mobility in recent times, although not new, opens up opportunities and challenges for educators and policy makers in considering how languages, too, may be under pain and pressure. What possibilities and complexities emerge as new arrivals bring their multiple languages into schools and education centres in new communities such as refugee camps, or in established communities in civil society? What opportunities emerge with the arrival of children and adults who bring multiple languages and mobile experiences into the classroom? How can and do teachers and students learn and benefit from the multiple languages present? What opportunities arise for educational practitioners, leaders, and policy makers in building on the presence of multiple languages and their users? How can all people involved support and embrace the multilingual affordances created by these situations and contexts, bearing in mind that the migrants themselves inevitably endure high levels of trauma, psychological distress, and acculturative needs as they travel through and settle in new places? What are the implications for languages in research, education in teaching and related areas such as assessment, counselling, curricula development, educational psychology, health, intercultural education, and policy?

We invited our authors to explore the implications concerning the language pedagogies, policies, practices, and possibilities in schools and other educational institutions where there are increasing levels of migration and amplified multilingualism. Underpinning this research perspective is the need to recognise the legitimacy of any speaker of any language. The presence of new arrivals in classrooms does not ‘make’ curricula more diverse unless teachers take the opportunity to do things differently. Therefore, educators and policy-makers must respond to the subtle and implicit forms and practices that promote the domination, segregation, legitimation, and even silencing of one language over others – whether home languages or the multiple languages present in learning spaces (in the classroom and community). These processes are typically present in institutional forms and practices: as evidenced in schools and in government policies (e.g. most notably in England towards English as an additional language (EAL) and other forms of language provision in the wake of ‘Brexit’).

Diversity in patterns of migration requires a nuanced understanding and adoption of educational practices, pedagogies, and policies to meet the needs of the diverse groups in communities. Individuals’ personal histories of migration, provenance, cultural and religious backgrounds, age, gender, and languages create opportunities for language and intercultural learning, and enrichment of the curriculum in educational contexts. However, these affordances and opportunities are challenged by state educational regimes that often prioritise and legitimise monolingual attitudes among teachers and learners (see Welply 2017): what Gogolin (1997) has defined as a monolingual habitus, which often leads to linguistic discrimination. In this context of unequal (linguistic) power relations, state education risks losing the hearts and minds of ‘othered’ learners who fall outside of the (linguistic) structures and curriculum of mainstream education (Bourdieu, 1991; Cummins, 2001; Giroux, 2004). The result is the legitimation of some discourses – and languages – while others are silenced (Creese, 2005). In the UK context (where education is devolved across four governing bodies in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland), there has been an attempt to respond to the concerns in education about a lack of recognition of diversity in languages in the classroom and in the broader environment (e.g. Blommaert, 2011; Conteh & Meier, 2014; Leung, 2016; Murphy & Unthiah, 2015; Rampton & Charalambous, 2016; Ryan, D’Angelo, Sales, & Rodriguez, 2010). Phipps and Fassetta (2015) have critiqued the legislative environment regarding language planning in the Scottish context, offering theoretically informed new directions. This special issue responds to these policy and legislative tensions by showcasing research grounded in critical inclusive pedagogies that accommodate learners’ multilingual repertoires with the aim of nurturing and valuing (and thus promoting) multiple languages of all learners in diverse classrooms and learning contexts.

The special issue articles

The studies present international and comparative perspectives. A particular strength lies in their shared but also diverse theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches. A shared foundation within all the articles is the recognition of the role of learners’ multiple linguistic resources, including their first or home language, and the mobilisation of these resources in the multilingual realities of the learning environment, whether in the classroom, school, or community. For example, the articles foreground dialogic learning spaces: through group work, peer-to-peer and peer–teacher interaction to optimise intercultural communication, and the mobilisation and integration of languages for learning, and where language learning is often constructed as a sociocultural process (Vygotsky, 1978) (see Liu et al.). Critical theories, such as Bourdieu’s (1991) concept of ‘symbolic domination’ – of how one language can prevail over another – offers a powerful theoretical lens for exposing and questioning forms of domination and othering concerning language diversities and recognition (e.g. see the articles by Anderson & Macleroy (2017), Court (2017), Dakin (2017), Footitt (2017), and Welply (2017)).

Methodologically, the studies are guided by critical participatory approaches that seek to redress teacher/learner power imbalances through learner-centred methods, e.g. seeking participants’ perceptions and experiences via semi-structured interviews (with teachers in Liu et al.’s article and with primary school children in Welply, 2017). Many of the studies also draw on critical (linguistic) ethnographic approaches (e.g. Blommaert & Jie, 2010; Copland & Creese, 2015) which are important in highlighting the power relations in these learning contexts (e.g. see the articles by Court (2017), Dakin (2017), Kalocsányiová (2017), Mary, and Young (2017) and Welply (2017)).

Pedagogically, the articles illustrate inclusive and participatory practices typically grounded in the theoretical concepts of translanguaging and translingual practice (Canagarajah, 2013; García & Wei, 2014), receptive and flexible multilingualism, and linguistic repertoire building. In all cases, the articles aim to build migrants’ and refugees’ linguistic repertoires, confidence, and competence, which ultimately can support integration and settlement. Liu et al.’s article is prescient in that it offers a theoretical professional base for education in linguistically diverse classrooms.

The first research article, by Liu et al., ‘The knowledge base of teaching in linguistically diverse contexts: Ten grounded principles of multilingual classroom pedagogy for EAL’, foregrounds the special issue theme by providing an overview of pedagogical principles that can guide teaching practice in linguistically diverse classrooms and across the curriculum. Although focused on the context of EAL education in England, Liu et al.’s article offers a theoretical basis for a multilingual classroom pedagogy. The authors argue that Shulman’s (1987) teacher knowledge framework, developed 30 years ago in an era when technology and migration were not prevalent issues in the classroom, did not include a clear language diversity dimension. Using the focus of EAL provision, Liu et al. attempt to ‘discover, redefine, and reinvent’ Shulman’s (1987, cited in Liu et al., p. 380–381.) knowledge base in order to raise the profile and importance of EAL provision in the teaching profession in English schools, an educational context characterised by extreme complexity and superdiversity. Methodologically, the study, which is part of a larger study of the language development, social integration, and school achievement of EAL students across England (Evans et al., 2016), draws on inductive (grounded) analysis of semi-structured interviews with teachers across the curriculum to explore their perceptions of good practice, and the knowledge underpinning it, in the multilingual classroom. Liu et al. conclude that the recent neo-liberal governmental agenda and school reforms prioritise accountability and performativity over autonomy and flexibility. The latter are crucial to effective language provision in schools, and in meeting the professional, humanistic, and moral values of education: equal opportunities and social inclusion. The development of these 10 principles offers good practices, and ‘core competences for teaching in linguistically diverse contexts’ (Liu et al., 2017, p. 391). Policy-wise, the article argues for the strategic recognition of this knowledge base of EAL and the fact that ‘every teacher is a language teacher’ (Liu et al., 2017 p. 392).

The second article, by Court, ‘“I feel integrated when I help myself”: ESOL learners’ views and experiences of language learning and integration’ provides a backdrop for implementing the principles of linguistic diversity education introduced in the preceding paper. The study, focused on adult learners in England, was conducted in an English as a second language (ESOL) class in an education college (post-secondary school). It aimed to explore three migrant women’s experiences of what constitutes successful integration and how learning English relates to their integration experiences. The study, grounded in social constructionism, and more specifically, Kramsch’s (2009) theory of subject positioning and individual agency, used participatory methods that allowed co-construction in the interaction between the participants and researcher/teacher. The analysis revealed that self-confidence and feelings of being accepted, ‘identities of competence’ (p. 413), are mutually reinforced by processes of language learning, thus highlighting the important role of ESOL classes, supported by the crucial role of participatory pedagogy. Court ends with policy implications concerning the importance of EAL funding within the broader UK context, and the need to promulgate discourses in the media and society that promote positive public attitudes towards immigrants.

The third article, by Dakin, ‘Incorporating cultural and linguistic diversity into policy and practice: case studies from an English primary school’ shifts the focus to EAL learners in a primary school. The study, a critical ethnography, explores the learning experiences of the children of newly arrived asylum seekers and migrants and teachers’ perceptions about how these children’s cultural and linguistic diversity is incorporated into the primary school environment. Dakin draws on Cummins’ (2001) conceptualisation of cultural/linguistic incorporation in school contexts to theorise how these children learn and acculturate to primary classrooms in England. The data, part of a larger study, are drawn from two EAL pupils’ experiences of fictionalised vignettes and the perspectives of three teachers. Dakin concluded that these EAL learners are more likely to be successful when teachers implement ‘a curriculum that builds on pupils’ cultural experiences … coupled with a curriculum specifically tailored to meet pupils’ language learning needs’ (p. 433). The study has implications for the teaching and learning of EAL pupils and the application of Cummins’ theory of cultural and linguistic incorporation.

Welply’s study between two primary schools – one in France and the other in England – brings a distinctive and valuable perspective to the collection in her comparative approach. In ‘“My language … I don’t know how to talk about it”: children’s views on language diversity in primary schools in France and England’, Welply shifts the focus away from EAL to offer a comparative study of language diversity and inclusion in schools where the philosophies towards diversity are quite different: in France which promotes inclusion by ignoring difference through the philosophy of ‘indifference to differences’, and in England where inclusion is understood as ‘the recognition and celebration of ethnic, religious and linguistic differences’ (Welply, p. 442). Through semi-structured group interviews with 10- to 11-year-old immigrant children in two primary schools (in England and France, respectively), Welply highlights their views on the place and use of their home and (their) other languages in formal school spaces. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1991) notion of symbolic domination that there is only one legitimate language and culture, Welply offers a counterpoint, through the children’s voices, to the dominant ideology of monolingualism in schools and the unequal power relations this ideology embodies. Welply found that the children experienced school as ‘monocultural and monolingual spaces in which their home languages did not have a legitimate status’: in France as ‘a formal and institutionalised principle’, and in England as ‘an implicit expectation without formally defined rules’ (p. 442). The children also acknowledged the existence of a hierarchy of languages which had an exclusionary effect and caused discomfort as they discussed their home and other languages. Welply concludes by advocating the need for multiple literacies and oracies in the classroom that recognise the multiple languages of the children concerned, which, in turn, impacts on their sense of identity and belonging.

The fifth article, a longitudinal study of emergent bi/plurilingual pre-primary school children during their first year of formal schooling in France, explores in greater depth the French context established in Welply’s article. Mary and Young, in their study ‘Engaging with emergent bilinguals and their families in the pre-primary classroom to foster well-being, learning and inclusion’, illustrate how co-educational practices in the area of literacy can establish trusting relationships and safe spaces for these children and their families, resulting in feelings of well-being, positive learning experiences, and inclusion among the learners. The 9-month ethnographic/participatory study (alongside an experienced teacher in the classroom) elicited multiple data – video recordings of interactions and activities involving the teacher, teaching assistant, pupils and their families, field notes, and interviews – from children of Turkish, Balkan, and Arabic speaking backgrounds. The researchers’ analysis revealed how the teacher’s ‘practiced language policies allowed her to create safe spaces for the children and their families in which they could draw on their funds of knowledge to foster learning and facilitate transition from the home context to school’, (p. 463) and thus promote bilingual competencies and biliteracy. Mary and Young’s study, echoing that of Welply’s, points to the dangers of a monolingual habitus in schools, and in educational systems, often reinforced by politicians. The study offers useful pedagogies (through video footage) that can enhance multilingual classroom practices and illustrate ‘equitable learning environments for emergent bilingual pupils’ (p. 470).

Maintaining the focus on the diverse language resources teachers and learners bring to the classroom, this time in Luxembourg, Kalocsányiová, in ‘Towards a repertoire-building approach: multilingualism in language classes for refugees in Luxembourg’, investigates how processes of translation, translanguaging, and receptive multilingualism provide opportunities for language learning and development, and meaning making, in a language course attended mostly by Syrian and Iraqi refugees. The ethnographic study, part of a larger 3-year doctorate, was undertaken by Kalocsányiová, herself a multilingual Hungarian researcher at the University of Luxembourg. The research involved a collaboration with two teachers, themselves speakers of ‘Jordanian and Moroccan Arabic, respectively’, as well as speakers of French. The data derive from a linguistic ethnography of the researcher’s observations during structured language learning tasks, broader social interactions beyond the classroom, and interviews with the two teachers and three refugees. The methodology includes a detailed discussion of the complexities of Kalocsányiová’s own processes of researching multilingually, that is, of how she drew on her multilingual resources in the research processes and the impact this had for the research (Holmes, Fay, Andrews, & Attia, 2013). This researcher perspective adds an important methodological contribution to researching multilingualism in multilingual educational contexts. The learners and teachers brought these multiple languages into the learning space, augmented by the existing triglossic (French, German, and Luxembourgish) and multilingual context of Luxembourg. Kalocsányiová concluded that this multilingual pedagogical orientation ‘created a learning space that helped the group to see the local languages as new functional resources in their growing repertoires’, a necessary and important resource for navigating local life (p. 489).

The seventh article, by Anderson and Macleroy, opens up a different language learning space by exploring the virtual learning environment beyond the horizons of the physical school setting and its potential for international linguistic border crossings and intercultural communication. Their study, ‘Connecting worlds: interculturality, identity and multilingual digital stories in the making’, provides an integrated framework for language learning in the context of multilingual digital storytelling. The study is located within a larger 5-year research project, Critical Connections, which explores young people’s (from 6 to 18 years) identities in the context of international border crossings. Again, the study is grounded in critical ethnography and draws on multilingual digital storytelling – in the form of vignettes, supplemented by photography, dance, and film – to create powerful multilingual narratives that open up international spaces for intercultural understanding, identity negotiation, and social justice. The findings indicate that learners resisted essentialised, monocultural views of citizenship and identity through the construction of multilingual digital texts which were shared with students in classrooms in other countries. One example is the case of Taiwan, among children of the indigenous Taiwanese tribe, Pingpu, and those outside the tribe in the local community. In this way, the stories allowed for the removal of exclusionary linguistic barriers, but also political barriers (in the case of the Pingpu tribe, whose indigenous rights are not recognised by the Taiwanese government). The pedagogy created a collaborative space for children to explore and draw on linguistic, cultural, and aesthetic resources, opening up a pathway to learning not normally seen in school settings and empowering learners as part of an international online community of storytellers.

The final contribution by Hilary Footitt, ‘International aid and development: hearing multilingualism, learning from intercultural encounters in the history of OxfamGB’ broadens the discussion on multiple languages to a related field: multilingualism in nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). Her article, delivered initially as a keynote address at the ‘Education and migration: foregrounding languages’ conference, uses historical document analysis to scrutinise the intercultural and linguistic learning within the NGO Oxfam. She argues for the need for ‘hearing multilingualism’, rather than ignoring multilingual complexities, which as her analysis shows, has been the case in this NGO in its 75-year history. With a focus on contact zones between Oxfam’s UK base and the countries in its outreach and who are the recipients of its aid, Footitt reveals the pitfalls of assumptions that foreground English as a lingua franca in international aid and development. In doing so, she illustrates the ‘searching and doubtless painful examination of internal patterns of power and prejudice’ (Green, 2015, cited in Footitt, p. 519) as NGOs based in the UK undergo multilingual and intercultural learning and exploration.

The implications and challenges

Footitt’s theoretical analysis of Oxfam’s intercultural engagement aligns with the arguments we wish to promulgate here. Footitt draws on Ricoeur’s concepts of translation and linguistic hospitality: ‘“Translation” for Ricoeur is not just a means of communication, but also, and above all, an ethic of exchange  …  to engage with the other and, through this engagement, to obtain a broader understanding of oneself – “the patient, hospitable work” of translation’ (Taylor, 2010, p. 8, cited in Footitt, p. 5); and ‘linguistic hospitality … the act of inhabiting the word of the Other paralleled by the act of receiving the word of the Other into one’s own home, one’s own dwelling’ (Ricoeur, 2006, pp. 19–20, cited in Footitt, p. 521). In her conclusion, she transfers the need for this linguistic and intercultural ethic to educational contact zones:

Ensuring there are institutional bridges between the local and global, and prizing personal contacts as a means of promoting new thinking and organisational change could arguably stimulate educational perspectives which are imaginative and flexible. …  “contact zones” reimagined in this way as multilingual and intercultural may help to reposition the spaces of education. (p. 530)

We hope that the contact zones described in this collection of articles, and the linguistic and intercultural spaces that they engender, offer linguistic and intercultural opportunities and affordances for children and adult learners, parents, teachers and educators, policy-makers, researchers, and people more generally in the wider community to encounter one another, cooperate, and learn and dwell together.

The implications for the legitimation and inclusion of the languages of their various speakers in education and the community are stark: as long as multiple languages and their speakers are silenced, over majority, dominant, and/or hierarchical forms of language recognition, representation, and inclusion, their speakers will continue to experience discrimination, marginalisation, and an associated sense of identity loss and societal rejection – that is, the basis for the anger and violence evidenced in many communities and between established citizens and those newly and more recently arrived. Therefore, much remains to be done in the development of critical and intercultural language pedagogies, teacher education, policy development, and implementation, including further research of a critical nature that challenges the structures of power which disregard non-mainstream languages and their speakers. With their focus on languages, including the speakers of those languages, the articles in this special issue constitute a part of this important and expanding continuum of research and debate.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

All three authors are co-investigators on the project ‘Researching multilingually at the borders of language, the body, law and the state’ (AH/L006936/1) (http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/) and are leading the development of a researcher methodology “researching multilingually” that addresses the presence of multiple languages in the research process.

Prue Holmes is Associate Professor (Reader) and Director of Postgraduate Research in the School of Education, Durham University. She is also Co-investigator on the Jean Monnet network project ‘European Identity, Culture, Exchanges and Multilingualism’ (EUROMEC) http://www.euromec.eu/. She convenes the annual Cultnet conference at Durham University. Her research and publications are in languages education, and intercultural and international education.

Richard Fay is Senior Lecturer (TESOL and Intercultural Communication) at The University of Manchester where he coordinates the LANTERN doctoral community and jointly directs the MA Intercultural Communication programme and the Manchester Global Challenge. He is also Co-investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘Idioms of Distress, Resilience and Well-Being: Enhancing understanding about mental health in multilingual contexts’. He researches and publishes in the areas of language, identity and interculturality; TESOL paradigms and English as a lingua franca; and researcher praxis and researcher education.

Jane Andrews is Associate Professor of Education at the University of the West of England, where she is also Co-director of the Ed.D programme. Her research and teaching are in the areas of young children’s multilingualism and learning, parental involvement in education, and qualitative research methods in education.

Notes

1 The large-grant project ‘Researching multilingually at the borders of language, the body, law and the state’ was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/L006936/1) under the ‘translating cultures’ theme.

2 See, for example, the KOINOS project, an Eramus+-funded project which aims to train educational professionals to innovate and thereby improve the quality of education related to developing plurilingual skills in a multicultural context, http://plurilingual.eu/en; a paper by Hans-Jürgen Krumm (2017) on supporting volunteers in the community to give language support to refugees; and the Council of Europe’s toolkit for language support for refugees, https://rm.coe.int/1680709271.