R9 EXTRA YAGMUR Emerging multilingualism in urban Europe.pdf

18 G. Extra and K. Yagmurproblems. Politicians and media might opt for the easy way out by simplyblaming ‘‘newcomers’’ as the cause of all social ‘‘problems’’, but such unfoundedsimple actions lead to growing anti-immigrant feelings and antagonismsin mainstream society, which turn out to be a serious threat tosocial cohesion.Migration is taking new forms as diverse cultural, ethnic, racial, religious,and language groups move between borders much more freely. Itis particularly in the EU that people are moving across national borders.Not only indigenous populations but also immigrant populations seekemployment beyond national borders within the EU, which leads to increasingtransnationalism. As the immigrant-receiving societies becomemore and more diverse, nation states need to find adequate ways of dealingwith this increasing diversity. Public and educational institutions arechallenged by this. Most nation states in the EU are reluctant to considerthemselves multicultural societies. In some EU countries, the explicit goalis the assimilation of newcomers. In France, for instance, if immigrantswant to be full citizens, they need to assimilate into mainstream society.They are required to surrender their languages and cultures in order tobecome full citizens (Castles 2004; Archibald 2002). In Germany, on theother hand, Aussiedler (ethnic Germans from Eastern European and formerSoviet Union countries) are treated as a privileged group on the basisof their blood bond, compared to other immigrants (Bühler-Otten andFürstenau 2004). The issues of democratic citizenship, the language rightsof regional versus IM groups, and social cohesion versus linguistic diversityare unresolved issues facing immigrant receiving societies (see Extraand Yagmur 2004 for a detailed discussion). However, the gap betweenthe democratic ideals of European nation states and the daily educationalexperiences of IM groups in schools continue to challenge nation stateideologies. Policy makers still persistently ignore the bottom-up pushfor pluralism. Present language regimes in European schools mostly ignoreIM languages. As indicated by Coulmas (2004), ‘‘Schools are wherelanguage regimes and their social e¤ects are most in evidence and where itis most obvious that a language regime bears on both structure and use.For it is here that the seemingly e¤ortlessly and naturally acquired languageis forged into a recognized form legitimated by custom or o‰ciallysanctioned norm.’’ The act of abolishing home language instruction inprimary schools in some EU countries shows that some languages arenot yet admissible in the classroom and in the schoolyard. On the basisof the demographic and sociolinguistic evidence derived from this study,we agree with Coulmas (2004) that proscribing the use of IM languageswill gradually become more di‰cult because pluralist language regimeswill gradually take over national language regimes.