Unintended effects of the language policy on the transition of immigrant students to upper secondary education in Catalonia

Abstract

This article analyses the effects of the language policy in Catalonia on the transition of immigrant students to upper secondary education in Barcelona by focusing on the language learning experiences and academic trajectories of two case-studies of Pakistani students whose communicative resources remain invisible despite the official celebration of linguistic diversity and which are not properly fostered to ensure their successful incorporation into post-compulsory education, despite their initial success and high aspirations. Although indicators of educational inequality show how young people born outside the EU experience an alarming disadvantage in comparison to their Spanish-born peers, little attention has been paid to factors related to the complex bilingual context of Catalonia. This article aims to shed light on the factors involved in the early school leaving of students from immigrant backgrounds, especially critical in the periods of transition, and the role played by the language policies,beliefs and ideology that they are exposed to.

Language and Social Integration in Times of Increasing Anti-Immigration Discourses

“…In a bilingual receiving context like Catalonia, the discourses around the endangered language further complicate the understanding of linguistic integration as a matter of access to resources and participation as full citizens (Reyes & Carrasco, 2018). After many years excluded from all official institutions during Franco's regime, the Catalan language managed to become an institutionalized language after the democratic restoration.…”

“…Furthermore, the jobs which migrants mostly access are carried out in a linguistic context of Spanish and that is also the only language spoken by the nationals in the working-class neighbourhoods they settle in. In sum, Spanish is the "local" language migrants and their children pick up naturally in everyday out-of-school interactions, but is not the language of tuition in schools, although school-age children also partly pick up other languages spoken by their classmates from all over the world (Reyes & Carrasco, 2018).…”

“…At the end of the day, although the existence and benefits of linguistic diversity are widely accepted, at least in principle, the acquisition of the language is still considered sufficient to remove the barriers to participation as full citizens, just as assimilationist policies have always argued (Martín-Rojo & Mijares, 2007). The idea that mastering the language or languages of the receiving country, in general, but even more when they are constructed by nationalist hierarchies, guarantees equitable access to the country's resources as suggested by promising messages directed to the migrant population has been largely proved to be mistaken (García, 2015;Reyes & Carrasco, 2018). But this naïve position can also feed anti-immigration discourses by making other factors of inequality invisible, in addition to naturalizing linguistic discrimination (Piller, 2016).…”

“…A similar linguistic decapitalisation has also been observed among the younger migrant population transferring from the Pakistani education system, where English is the language of tuition from secondary school onwards, to the Catalan education system. Students like Parveen's son, for example, need to put their efforts into learning a language of tuition they can hardly practice with anyone outside the school but will condition their access to higher education, where English is again highly valued and even official (Reyes & Carrasco, 2018). Their multilingual knowledge is not recognized as valid cultural capital in this local/national context as Erel (2010) has also pointed out.…”

“…However, most pluralist perspectives not only have to face the monolingual discourses of those who link the nation-state with a single language, but also find it difficult to be accepted within progressive perspectives in bilingual contexts, where, as in Catalonia, some voices warn that linguistic policies that advocate linguistic diversity can undermine the status of minority languages (Erdocia, 2018;Jaspers, 2015). At the same time, recent works show how linguistic policies oriented towards protecting endangered languages can echo hegemonic language political agendas with dramatic effects on, for example, second generation education trajectories (Reyes & Carrasco, 2018).…”