Language policies in the context of migration have been in place across Europe for almost two decades. The official discourses underlying these policies are committed to strengthening and facilitating participation in civil society, including access to the labour market and/or further education. A salient feature of most of these policies is the conditional nature of language. In many countries people have to prove they have reached/acquired a certain level of proficiency in the ‘official language’ (or one of the official languages) of the ‘host country’. Increasingly language tests are being used for this purpose.
Impact studies reveal that for some of these policies the overt or covert aim is to reduce/control migration flows, with language tests functioning as gatekeepers.
More and more studies also stress that, while language tests do result in entry tickets to the labour market and thus function as levers for social participation, the policies benefit some migrants more than others. For many migrants the policies, which focus on language as a condition for social participation, hardly enhance opportunity. There is also hardly any proof that these policies improve access to the labour market. This seems to indicate that those migrants who can be labeled as ‘insiders’ or ‘les initiés’, as Draelants calls them (2014), are in a privileged position to take advantage of the ways these integration policies have been shaped. Others are not. Hence, one can argue that being an ‘insider’ of the structural features of current integration policies contributes to the reproduction of social inequality on arrival.
In this presentation – taking up Draelants’ metaphor of ‘les initiés’ – I will critically reflect on the current European language and integration policies and advocate for alternative structures which allow for more social equity and lend migrants more agency.
