The impact of the European migration crisis on adult migrants’ language education. A discourse analysis of the Toolkit: “Language Support for Refugees” provided by the Council of Europe

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the influence that Adult Migrant Language Education (AMLE) has received during the past decades in Europe, especially under the impact of the recent migration crisis. The research question focuses on the political and social factors that are open to investigation in Europe today, and has been developed into three sub-questions that deal with: a. language ideologies that are found in public discourses, b. language policies applied by nation-states and international institutions and c. the challenges that AMLE faces in this framework. After a brief description of the historical context and the political responses to the migration crisis, the literature review examines the themes of the research question. In considering language ideologies, as one perspective, it becomes clear that monolingualism and its nationalistic connotations is the dominant tendency now in Europe, even in discourses promoting plurilingualism, while the linguistic reality of the western superdiverse societies is multilingualism. In considering language policies as another perspective, it becomes apparent that they increasingly aim at the linguistic integration of migrants while linguistic thresholds are being used in various gatekeeping practices. Finally, cuts in funding, promotion of monolingualism and a “surviving” orientation to the curriculum are the dominant features of AMLE in Europe today. A discourse analysis of the Toolkit “Language support for adult refugees” produced by the Council of Europe as a case study, focuses on the relationships between the participants and the way language and linguistic integration are perceived. Despite the claims of the opposite, the analysis reveals that even this initiative is underpinned by the monolingual imperative which ignores linguistic superdiversity and promotes hierarchical top-down policies that do not take learner’s need for meaningful learning into account.