R9 EXTRA YAGMUR Emerging multilingualism in urban Europe.pdf

More documents

Recommendations

Info

24 G. Extra and K. Yagmurof assimilation focuses on unilateral tasks of newcomers, the concept ofmulticulturalism focuses on multilateral tasks for all inhabitants in changingsocieties. In practice, established majority groups often make strongdemands on IM groups to assimilate and are commonly very reluctantto promote or even accept the notion of cultural diversity as a determiningcharacteristic of an increasingly multicultural environment.It is interesting to compare the underlying assumptions of ‘‘integration’’in the European public discourse on IM groups at the national levelwith assumptions at the level of crossnational cooperation and legislation.In the latter context, European politicians are eager to stress the importanceof a proper balance between the loss and the maintenance of‘‘national’’ norms and values. A prime concern in the public debate onsuch norms and values is cultural and linguistic diversity, mainly in termsof the national languages of the EU. National languages are often referredto as core values of cultural identity. Paradoxically, in the samepublic discourse, IM languages and cultures are commonly conceived ofas sources of problems and deficits and as obstacles to integration, whilenational languages and cultures in an expanding EU are regarded assources of enrichment and as prerequisites for integration.The public discourse on the integration of IM groups in terms of assimilationversus multiculturalism can also be noticed in the domain of education.Due to a growing influx of IM pupils, schools are faced with thechallenge of adapting their curricula to this trend. The pattern of modificationmay be inspired by a strong and unilateral emphasis on learning(in) the language of the majority of society, given the significance of thislanguage for success in school and on the labor market, or by the awarenessthat the response to emerging multicultural school populations cannotbe reduced to monolingual education programming (Gogolin 1994).In the former case, the focus is on learning (in) the national language asa second language only, in the latter case, on o¤ering more languages inthe school curriculum.4. The need for empirical data on multilingualismGiven the overwhelming focus on mainstream language acquisition byIM groups, there is much less evidence of the status and use of IM languagesacross Europe. In contrast to RM languages, IM languages haveno established status in terms of period and area of residence. Obviously,typological di¤erences between IM languages across EU member statesdo exist, e.g., in terms of the status of IM languages as EU languages ornon-EU languages, or as languages of formerly colonialized source
Emerging multilingualism in urban Europe 25countries. Taken from the latter perspective, Indian languages are prominentin the United Kingdom, Arabic languages in France, Congolese languagesin Belgium, and Surinamese languages in the Netherlands. Moststudies of IM languages in Europe have focused on a spectrum of IM languagesat the level of one particular multilingual city (Baker and Eversley2000), one particular nation state (Linguistic Minorities Project 1985; Alladinaand Edwards 1991; Extra and Verhoeven 1993a; Extra et al. 2002)or on one particular IM language at the national or European level (Tilmatine[1997] and Obdeijn and De Ruiter [1998] on Arabic in Europe; orJørgensen [2003] on Turkish in Europe).Few studies have taken both a crossnational and a crosslinguistic perspectiveon the status and use of IM languages in Europe (Jaspaert andKroon 1991; Extra and Verhoeven 1993b, 1998). In sections 5–8, we presentthe rationale, methodology, and some outcomes of the MultilingualCities Project (henceforth MCP), carried out as a multiple case study insix major multicultural cities in di¤erent EU member states. The aims ofthe MCP were to gather, analyze, and compare multiple data on the statusof IM languages at home and at school. In the participating cities,ranging from Northern to Southern Europe, Germanic and/or Romancelanguages have a dominant status in public life. These cities are Göteborg,Hamburg, The Hague, Brussels, Lyon, and Madrid. The criteriafor selecting a city to participate in this multinational study were primarilythat it should be a major urban centre and have a great variety of IMgroups, as well as a university based research facility that would be ableto handle the local data gathering, the secondary analysis, and the finalreporting of the local results. Given the increasing role of municipalitiesas educational authorities in all partner cities, the project was carried outin close cooperation between researchers at local universities and local educationalauthorities.Given the decreasing significance of nationality and birth country criteriain the European context, the combined criterion of self-categorizationand home language use is a potentially promising longterm alternative forobtaining basic information on the multicultural composition of Europeancities. The added value of home language statistics is that they cano¤er valuable insights into the distribution and vitality of home languagesacross cultures, and can thus raise the awareness of multilingualism. Empiricallycollected data on home language use can also play a crucial rolein the context of education. Such data will not only raise the awareness ofmultilingualism in multicultural schools; they are in fact indispensabletools for educational policies on the teaching of both the national majoritylanguage as a first or second language and the teaching of IM languages.In sum, the rationale for collecting, analyzing and comparing
Page 1 and 2: Sociolinguistic perspectives on eme
Page 3 and 4: Emerging multilingualism in urban E
Page 7: Emerging multilingualism in urban E

R9 EXTRA YAGMUR Emerging multilingualism in urban Europe.pdf

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?