Seediscussions,stats,andauthorprofilesforthispublicationat:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289547940

Migrations,multilingualismandlanguagepoliciesinPortugalandtheUnitedKingdom:Apolycentric...

Article·January2014

CITATIONS

0

READS

6

3authors:

Someoftheauthorsofthispublicationarealsoworkingontheserelatedprojects:

PublishdonotPerish:SurvivetheStampedeViewproject

ILOCALAPP--IncidentallyLearningOtherCulturesandLanguagesthroughanAppViewproject

ClaraKeating

UniversityofCoimbra

3PUBLICATIONS5CITATIONS

SEEPROFILE

OlgaSolovova

UniversityofCoimbra

10PUBLICATIONS4CITATIONS

SEEPROFILE

OlgaBarradas

3PUBLICATIONS2CITATIONS

SEEPROFILE

AllcontentfollowingthispagewasuploadedbyOlgaSolovovaon02June2016.

Theuserhasrequestedenhancementofthedownloadedfile.Allin-textreferencesunderlinedinblueareaddedtotheoriginaldocumentandarelinkedtopublicationsonResearchGate,lettingyouaccessandreadthemimmediately.

Language Policies, Multilingualism and Migrations:

Towards a Polycentric Approach to the Values of Portuguese in European Space

Clara Keating, Olga Solovova, Olga Barradas

I. Introductioni

This chapter represents our collaborative attempt to develop a polycentric understanding

of the values of Portuguese in Europe by framing its use in the migration processes, the resulting

multilingual contexts, and the language policies in our local contexts of action and observation.

Departing from the ethnographic insights on the lived experiences of socialization in multilingual

literacy practices of Portuguese migrant women in London by a Portuguese national in the UK

(Keating, 2005, 2009), we also draw on two other projects: a linguistic ethnography among

children of Eastern European migrants from a city in central Portugal by a Russian national in

Portugal (Solovova, 2013); and an ethnography among second generation Portuguese migrants

on the role of complementary schools in London situated within the education policies in the UK

and Portugal (Barradas, 2004, 2007).

When juxtaposed, our different insights point to coexisting distinct linguistic hegemonies,

cultural imperial narratives and opposing national projects in the same space. This prompted us

to explore spaces and speakers’ positions as eminently polycentric (Blommaert et al., 2005a;

Zentella, 2007; Keating & Solovova, 2011)ii. The focus on Portuguese illustrated the workings of

this language in the European geopolitical space, not only as a language of structure and action

(national, official, institutional vs. migrant minorities, lingua franca, community activism) but,

beyond this duality, as a language of diasporic mobility throughout non-formal niches in and

outside of Europe. These dynamics were best identified in our comparative work, deriving from

multi-sited in-depth focuses on radically local contexts. Three needs emerged from this

reflection: 1) to identify regimes of multilingualism where Portuguese acted as a resource; 2) to

recognize that the configurations of contexts of language use by overlapping spatialities and

temporalities - due to distinct traditions of migration and mobility; and, 3) to focus on the

workings of language policies and linguistic hegemonies at multiple scales (e.g., formal and

informal, micro and macro, families, schools or individual investments in language learning).

In this chapter, we focus on how the values of European Portuguese are being negotiated

across two distinct scales and geopolitical contexts within Europe. At the scale of public policies,

we follow the textual trajectories over time of two sets of official documents by a) speakers of

European Portuguese living abroad; b) speakers of other languages living in Portugal. At the

scale broadly defined here as community (migrant communities coming to terms with their

survival in host societies), we trace the timeline of two complementary schools as these align

their educational responses within the scopes of institutional action afforded by the dominant

policies. Following these trajectories allows us to identify how Portuguese is being constructed

as a prestigious world and modern language, subject to public assessment and accountability.

Nevertheless, the discursive transition towards modernization goes hand in hand with a process

of monolingualization, through institutional discourses drawing boundaries between different

domains of language use rather than constructing flexible pedagogies on the lived experiences of

multilingual socialization.

We begin by giving an overview of our ethnographic work. Drawing on the insights on

Portuguese-based mobility and migration studies, and on a sociolinguistics of scales, we

illustrate how we went about identifying policy texts and complementary school contexts as

distinct analytical scales. Transitions in public policies and complementary schools indicate how

sociolinguistic spaces are being constructed in both sites and how some possibilities are afforded

while others discarded. We end this chapter by reflecting on our methodological positioning, i.e.

the attempt to engage in a multi-sited understanding of the values of Portuguese in Europe based

on our local voices, and propose lines for future research, both from the perspective of theory,

action and practice.

II. The ethnographies

II.1. Portuguese in the UK

Keating’s study focused on the dynamic routes through informal multilingual language

and literacy practices experienced by Portuguese migrant women in their processes of relocation

from Portugal to London, and in London over a considerable period of time. These routes

through literacy were seen as dynamic semiotic processes, situated both in their intimate and

biographical experiences and in the subjectivities afforded by the hybrid, bilingual literacies

narrated or documented through observation. Insights from Vygotskian activity theory, a focus

on the life cycles of these women, as well as on actual discursive activity in situated events,

allowed Keating to develop a discursive understanding of the ‘person in the doing’, in close

dialogue with the concept of ‘person in history’(cf. Holland & Lave, 2001). This helped her

explore the historical constraints configuring the overlapping subjectivities of these women – as

traditional migrants and/or European citizens – and the corresponding language and literacy

investments sustained by public official practices, events and texts in the changing cosmopolitan

and multilingual space of the city of London at the end of the 20th century. From her work, we

draw the attempt to explore the discursive dynamics involved in the juxtaposition of multilingual

practices and identities in migrant and transnational space.

Barradas’s work was particularly relevant for our purposes in the sense that this chapter

focuses on language policies acting in local and community contexts. Barradas followed the

educational dynamics of Portuguese-speaking pupils in complementary schools in London, both

as a teacher and as a language researcher based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Much

work on educational policies for Portuguese nationals in London derives from her published

research, in particular what concerns school success, access/exclusion of Portuguese students in

the British educational system and the role of complementary schools in this process. Besides

this, Barradas traced the development of educational policies of both Portuguese and British

governments for the past decades (Barradas, 2004, 2007, 2010).

II.2. Slavic languages in Portugal

Slavic languages were practically invisible on the Portuguese linguistic landscape until

the 1990s, when patterns of migration and mobility drastically changed across the European

Union. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and of the USSR, as well as the Portuguese

membership in the Schengen agreement, was partly responsible for the existing migration from

Eastern Europe to Portugal. In 2002, Ukrainian migration briefly overcame the traditionally

numerous Cape Verdean in Portuguese statistics (Baganha et al. 2004: 98). In 2004, Portuguese

schools registered unprecedented linguistic diversity (54 different languages spoken by students,

cf. Mateus, 2011: 16), where Russian and Ukrainian were considered “languages of significant

minorities in education” (Feytor-Pinto, 2008: 82-83). According to official statistics in 2009, up

to 20 per cent of the foreign population in Portugal came from post-Soviet states (Ataíde&Dias,

2011). Such linguistic diversity needed language policies. Two periods are usually distinguished

in the Portuguese language policy of the recent decades (Feytor-Pinto, 2008): the “African

period” (1990-1999) indicates the growing presence of speakers of African languages and

Portuguese-based creoles in Portugal; while the “Slavic period” (2000-2004)iii

alludes to the

presence of Slavic languages in the country and coincides with both the construction of language

educational policies on “Português Língua Não Materna” [Portuguese as a Non-Native

Language] and the intensive legislation and regulation on migration and access to citizenship.

Solovova’s study of Eastern European immigrants in a city in central Portugal, over a

period of 8 years, changed its initial focus on the individual cognition of bilingual and biliterate

experiences of immigrant children to an ethnography of the complementary school setting and

the language policies that sustained it. In the process of developing an institutional identity as

complementary school within an immigrant association, and as languages spoken in the

community interacted with Portuguese at various scales (interpersonal, local, institutional etc.),

Russian reinforced its symbolic power and pushed other languages like Ukrainian and Belarusian

to the margins. The idea of one language as a central tool of integration not only validated the

linguistic hegemonies that were implicit in the Portuguese as a Non-Native Language policy.

They reinforced the asphyxiating impact of Russian on other immigrant community languages,

and helped ressurect the USSR linguistic hierarchies, where the symbolic value of Russian was

associated with scientific progress and culture (Alpatov, 1997). Now, in the diaspora, as before

in history, Russian was seen as a rational and practical solution to the multilingual

communication. Situated in immigrant parents’ individual teaching and learning trajectories,

language ideologies often associated normativity and purity with the written and oral register in

different languages. This resulted in constructing multilingualism as a sum of discrete, fixed and

separate languages, still implicit in any approach based on the duality ‘structure vs. agency’. The

data collected within the ‘Russian’ complementary school spoke in favor of a more mobile,

flexible and dynamic model that would recognize multilingual resources of speakers, similar to

the one argued in Barradas’ and Keating’s analysis of the two other spaces.

III. Migrations in Europe being spoken in Portuguese: structure, action, mobility

III.1. Migrations, Portuguese and polycentricity

The idea of Portugal’s intermediate position and it being a portal for migratory fluxes,

both importing and exporting labor force for overlapping institutional structures in the European

context (Baganha, 2001: 147; Santos, 1995), helps recognize the use of Portuguese in plural

institutional positions, sometimes operating in contradictory ways in the same sociolinguistic

spaces. Portuguese was thus our first analytic node, even though we recognize that the

intersection of histories and geopolitical networks would be of a distinct nature, had we been to

approach them with a focus on English, creoles, other lusophone varieties in London, or on a

Slavic language in Portugal.

Portuguese language has been a creative resource of contact and creolization and a

language of migration and diaspora since the early modern period. In the 21st century, it still

remains a useful resource in many niches of social life throughout the world. It has been part of

European multilingualism as an official nation-state language. It acts as an international working

language in the worldwide and regional organizations (e.g. the United Nations) in Europe, Africa

and Latin America, linked to national and transnational cultural, political and economic projects.

Simultaneously, Portuguese is considered minor, subordinate, associated to displacement and

relocation of speakers who lead lives of resistance and survival alongside more prestigious

languages (even as a “lesser used European language” alongside Hungarian, Bulgarian, Polish

and Latvian). Portuguese can be found acting in the rhizomatic lines of flight from dominant

positions, collaborating in the construction of alternative or counter-hegemonical cosmopolitisms

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Santos, 1994, 1995; Capinha & Galano, 1996), reproducing

alternative prestige among diasporic rationalities associated to exiles or lusophone communities.

We posit that a diasporic perspective on Portuguese cannot be dissociated from its

postcolonial condition, since Portuguese as a world language represents a result of multiple

historical processes associated with different colonial temporalities that had deep traumatic

effects on the postcolonial condition in all actors involved (Ribeiro et al, 2010)iv

. We should,

thus, be able to identify historicity, i.e., the co-habitation of developing historical projects acting

in the microscopic moment of language use. As part of multilingual repertoires configured by

plural perceptions of time, space and history, values of Portuguese are negotiated in strategic acts

of recognition of the dominant forces at play by speakers. This recognition is partial, and what is

dominant on one scale may be subaltern on another. Therefore, a notion of a diatopic

hermeneutics (cf. Santos, 2004), i.e. the idea of the impossible whole and, hence, the need for a

dialogue, comparison, co-habitation of other historical-cultural configurations of knowledge,

may speak well with the exploration of polycentricity, a term that we draw from the work on the

sociolinguistics of migration and globalization. By polycentricity we align to the discursive

exploration of situated places of production and management of speech and writing material,

permeated by constraints of various orders and instigating multiple centers (Blommaert et al.,

2005a; Keating & Solovova, 2011). It allows us to understand the use of short-term multilingual

resources yet situated in long-term configurations of power, acting locally and narrated in

distinct ways by the participants involved. Although we focus on public texts rather than

interactions, we articulate our understandings with a critical and discursive focus on language as

languaging, i.e., the performative construction, reinforcement and reinvention of semiotic

resources as if language (Garcia, 2009; Wei, 2011), as it best foregrounds the linguistic

hegemonies at play in the multiscalar process of construction of linguistic value. In the

Portuguese language, it also entails a process of revaluing, celebrating and legitimizing, in the

performative sense proposed by Judith Butler (1997), the derogatory term of ‘linguajar’, i.e.,

speech activity prone to error, distortion and malformation.

Once structure, action and mobility are acknowledged as three factors acting upon the

symbolic value of Portuguese, we can move on to identify obstacles to creativity as well as

opportunities formed by the voids that emerged from the meeting of distinct linguistic

hegemonies (Keating, 2009; Keating & Solovova, 2011). These gaps may help us to observe

possible lines of movement and creativity made explicit when adopting multi-sited and

longitudinal approaches from non-dominant or subaltern positions such as our own. As we

proceed with an informal everyday observation of multilingual contexts, identifying the

discursive processes involved in the appropriation of resources in actual encounters and

narratives, tracking down the legitimation and institutionalization processes of language

negotiation through scales of space and time, we ask the following questions: What experiences

have been discarded in the process? Are they being re-appropriated elsewhere and if so, under

what alternative conditions?

III.2. Contexts as scales: complementary school contexts and official texts

Taking into account the dynamics mentioned in the previous sections, we shall now

consider the negotiable value of Portuguese in complementary schools and public policy texts.

The trajectories and strategies of action of complementary schools:Portuguese-speaking

complementary schools in London and a Russian-speaking complementary school in Portugal

have been observed for over a decade by Barradas and Solovova, respectively.The discursive

trajectories that emerged from legal texts and official documents were gathered in the last

decades.

III.2.1. Complementary schools

Barradas and Solovova’s focus on complementary schools illustrates well the dynamics

of structure and action in the role of Portuguese in distinct multilingual repertoires.

Complementary schools are organized by communities with linguistic, cultural, or religious

affinities with the aim of maintaining cultural identities in the face of language erosion or

extinction (Lytra & Martin, 2010). They are ‘complementary’ because they complement formal

education in host societies, yet they assume an identity and heritage that resists formal education,

normally seen as insufficient or unsatisfactory, both by children and adult speakers of minority

languages (which also points at language policies acting at the home or family scale and in need

of further research). Complementary schools, if they assume the existence of multilingualism

from the start, adopt flexible pedagogies to complement formal education. As they operate on the

interface between distinct language policies, complementary schools have a potential to create

spaces that allow the development of aspects of multilingual repertoires and identities usually

lacking recognition by official schools, academic communities or educational policies of

dominant societies.

By looking at complementary schools, we can analyze the direct or indirect intervention

of nation states outside national borders, as well as the scope for legitimacy that some languages

have in certain multilingual distributions. This depends on the perceived symbolic capital as well

as on the support and investment that their ‘home’ nation-states assign to the provision of mother

tongue, both inside and outside the national territories. Public recognition of complementary

schools was connected, not only to the perceived prestige and status of their community

languages in the mainstream system (whether those languages were seen as European or not, as

modern languages recognized within the national educational system, or as heritage, second or

foreign languages), but also to the institutional policies of the countries of origin. Processes of

legitimation depended on the historically situated disciplinary and academic traditions. One can

add here the timespan of the language presence in the mainstream society and the corresponding

short-term or long-durational struggles and practices of language maintenance by minority

communities, which could not necessarily be oriented to linguistic or social integration as

envisaged by official policies.

Textual analyses of official documents that bear impact on the scope of action of

complementary schools allowed us to see how public policies deal with the multilingual

Portuguese society at times of economic and financial crisis by aligning not only to European

discourses but drawing also on postcolonial and diasporic discourses.

III.2.2. Official texts

The first set of texts, aimed at Portuguese nationals abroad, regulates the provision of

Portuguese language classes. We compared two official texts: Decree-Law 165/2006, August

11th

and Decree-Law 165-C/2009, July 28th

. The latter generates substantial changes in the

management of Portuguese language and culture education abroad by moving it from the

Ministry of Education to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We further

contextualize these texts in the light of the policies affecting complementary schools in London

over time and considering the actual consequences in the field.

The second set of texts regards immigrants and speakers of other languages in Portugal.

They present the perspective of linguistic integration as described by the European Union and

produced by the High Level Group of Multilingualism (European Commission, 2006). These

documents assert the kind of integration support provided to migrants (including provision of

Portuguese language classes) and the degree of recognition of ‘migrant languages’ as legitimate

resources in this process.

The first text, ‘Plan for Immigrant Integration’ (Plano de Integração de Imigrantes –PII,

Conselho de Ministros, 2007) emerged in the process of a number of inter-ministerial agreements

and is presented as measures towards social, cultural and economic migrant integration for three

year periods (2007-2009; 2010-2012). We analyze the first edition of the Plan, as the Portuguese

government considered its aims to have been practically accomplished. The second text is

produced by the Ministry of Education in Portugal and contains the guidelines that regulate the

provision of Portuguese as a non-nativelanguage (DGIDC, 2005) in the national curriculum.

III.3. Texts, contexts, discursive representations: the analysis

Our joint focus was articulated around a shared commitment to dismantle hegemonic

discourses from the local perspective of migrants. For this purpose, we consider our studies as

instances of multi-sited approaches to the same policies by acknowledging the multiplicity of

sites of observation and participation. By testing the limits of ethnography and adopting a focus

on trajectories, multi-sited approaches assume transdisciplinary and plural positions of

observation and self-identification from which contradictory subjectivities and personal

commitments may result. Researchers are construed as “ethnographer-activists, renegotiating

identities in different sites as one learns more about a slice of the world system” (Marcus, 1995:

113).

As we gathered the data in our roles of ‘circumstantial activists’ (Marcus, 1995: 114), we

also assumed the eclectic and exploratory nature of our joint project. Hence, we adopted a

rationale of bricolage, much in the tradition of cultural studies (cf. Alasuutari, 1995), which

challenged us to rearticulate our own scopes of understanding into a collaborative focus on the

movements of both discursive representations and local practices over space and time.

As far as language and literacy policies are concerned, critical approaches to discourse

were relevant in a sense that they focus on the various layers of contexts of production and

interpretation of texts. In our case,they helped understand how policies were shaping discourses

about what counted as literacy and languages in the three sites. By recognizing the power of

these linguistic hegemonies at a macro scale across time, they helped us identify how they

interacted and counteracted with other kinds of hegemonic representations of language, literacy

and multilingualism (Johnson, 2009; Keating et al., 2013). In the light of the historical

trajectories, we explored defining metaphors of language, literacy, multilingualism,

representations of social actors, presuppositions and other inferences, as well as the effects of re-

textualization in documents produced at different times (Blommaert, 2005). Our method thus

represents a linguistic ethnography informed by a critical approach to discourse analysis;

inJohnson’s words, “a methodological heuristic” that “[…] help[s] guide ethnography of

language policy data collection: one must consider the (1) agents, (2) goals, (3) processes, and

(4) discourses which engender and perpetuate the policy, and (5) the dynamic social and

historical contexts in which the policy exists, keeping in mind that these categories are neither

static nor mutually exclusive” (Johnson, 2009: 151). In the sections that follow, we start by

articulating analyses of texts with ethnographic narratives of contexts. We then focus on the

discursive and textual mechanisms involved in the representation of actors and spaces considered

legitimate for the use of Portuguese and other languages. In a final section, we identify the

common themes that emerged across both textual trajectories in official documents and

contextual trajectories manifested in the ethnographic narratives, illustrating how they helped us

identify the possibilities of action. From a methodological perspective, we aim to show how

critical comparative approaches and multi-sited ethnographic understandings of the trajectories

of language policies may help operationalize the perspective of diatopic hermeneutics.

III.3.1. Texts and contexts: provision of Portuguese language for residents abroad

The 2006 Decree-Law of the Portuguese government recognizes the provision of

Portuguese language education abroad as a constitutional right of its citizens and their

descendants, as well as an intrinsic component of the governmental mission and national project.

This document is one of many others that regulate the support provided to the so-called

‘‘Portuguese communities abroad’. In 2006, the responsibility for the provision of Portuguese

language classes abroad as well as the promotion of Portuguese language and culture (hitherto,

shared between different governmental departments and organizations) becomes the sole

responsibility of Instituto Camões (under the umbrella of the Foreign Office) with implications

for its language partners.

When a number of language policies are implemented in the 2009 legislation, the official

text does not separate between communities located in Europe and elsewhere. The support

offered to community schools, migrant associations and complementary schools is posited within

a discourse that defines Portuguese as a modern, foreign and international language. It is

grounded in discourses of public administration around auditing, i.e. quality measurements,

efficiency and responsibility by the partners.

Compared to the 2006 Decree-Law, the 2009 Law changes the aim of Portuguese

teaching abroad from an educational mission for the communities in the diaspora towards

cosmopolitan rationalities in the new global market and under a new political economy, by

which the Portuguese language becomes one of the state’s largest items of export. Language

policy now aims at the integration of Portuguese in the education systems of the host societies, at

the normative assessment of linguistic competences based on the Common European Framework

for Languages and at the quantification of teacher appraisals.

Local contexts are inevitably affected by these changes. Barradas (2010) illustrates it by

considering Portuguese classes in the United Kingdom which started in the 1960s, organized and

paid for by the local communities and migrant associations, against the historical background of

a dictatorial regime and the exodus from Portugal as a way of escaping poverty and

unemployment, political persecution and colonial war in Africa. In the 1970s, with the Greater

London Council, these classes started to take place in school premises, after school hours, while

the teachers were still paid for by the Portuguese communities. Only after the April Revolution,

in 1976, did the Portuguese government take upon itself the responsibility of recruiting and

paying the teachers. What had begun as a grassroots initiative became an enterprise subsidized

by the Portuguese government, recognizing teachers as legitimate professionals and the classes

as part of the children’s educational pathway, albeit outside the formal education system and

mainstream hours.

The number of students taking exams of Portuguese as a Modern Language within the

British education system has risen steadily. A number of schools now offer Portuguese as a

language choice and protocols have been established with Jersey’s education authorities

(Channel Islands) where a significant proportion of the children’s population is of Portuguese

migrant origin, acknowledging the need to create a link between the languages used in the

domestic and mainstream education spaces. Barradas (2010) recognizes the growing visibility of

Portuguese simultaneously as a modern and European language as well as a community

language, in tandem with the promotion of partnerships between mainstream and complementary

schools, undoubtedly the result of policies between the Portuguese and the British authorities.

The institutional configuration for the provision of Portuguese in London is, therefore,

the product of both the Portuguese and British states’ intervention which culminates in/with a

strong regulation in the financing, provision of classes, and curriculum content. Firstly, it creates

symbolic capital regarding Portuguese as an official European language. Secondly, it affects

local schools in a way that may force them to abstain from informal pedagogical practices that

take into account children’s multilingual repertoire and language pathways that largely exceed

the demands of the multinational frameworks.

The impact of these decisions on the local contexts will certainly affect school life,

Portuguese education professionals and those who promote mother tongue schools. Equally

affected will be the alternative curricula and flexible multilingual teaching pedagogies, locally

tested for those contexts. Together with the British education policies, these regulations will

serve to reinforce another layer of institutionalization upon teaching and learning, the use of

language and the acknowledgement of different ways of knowing associated with multiple

repertoires, identities and multilingual resources.

Solovova, in her most recent research (Solovova, 2013), has identified a similar change in

complementary schools organized by Russian-speaking immigrants. From the locally established

parent-run initiatives,schools are being transformed into highly regulated settings provided by

the Russian state in terms of financial and material resources. Russian language across diaspora

is promoted as a modern world language, which in Portugal means positioning it alongside

Portuguese. As we will see in the next section, this language ideology may counteract the

positioning of Portuguese as a language of the host society.

III.3.2. Texts and discourses: “Português Lingua Não Materna” (PLNM) and linguistic

integration

We focus here on a textual analysis of the representations of language issues in legal texts

for speakers of other languages in Portugal, in particular those related to linguistic integration of

adults and children of migrant origin (PII (2007-2010) and (DGIDC, 2005)). These policies

emerge from the principles produced by supra-national European agencies, such as the European

Commission.

The 2007 Plano de Integração dos Imigrantes (PII) starts by recognizing mother tongue

provision needs for migrant children, yet assigns this space of action to migrant associations

within discourses about culture. In educational discourses, other mother tongues are seen as

interferences in the learning and acquisition of Portuguese as a second or foreign language:

Establish an inter-institutional dialogue with immigrant associations and other

partners, in order to improve the specific conditions of support to the teaching/learning

of students’ different mother tongues

Identify, in collaboration with those organizations, groups/pools of experts in the

different languages, to facilitate the process of recognition of interferences in the

processes of teaching/learning in Portuguese

Promote and encourage actions that give visibility and public expression to cultural

manifestations developed by migrant communities

Promote co-productions and other forms of collaboration between creative and other

cultural agents, especially in what concerns the areas of performative arts and visual

arts (Conselho de Ministros, 2007, excerpts, our translation).

In the 2010 PII, the argument of mastering the Portuguese language as the crucial factor

for social integration is further expanded and reinforced with the implementation of policy

projects in state-funded schools, such as “Ler + em vários sotaques” [Reading more in various

accents]. These projects acknowledge the existence of distinct language varieties and highlight

diversity and cultural integration, by means of Portuguese use only: “The knowledge of

Portuguese as a factor of integration (…) the programme «To read + in various accents» to be

developed by schools (Conselho de Ministros, 2010).

Possession and acquisition of competences in Portuguese as a factor of integration is

particularly revealing in the following excerpt of the educational guidelines in Português Língua

Não Materna no Currículo Nacional, produced by the Ministry of Education in 2005:

School is the privileged space for the development of social, cultural and professional

integration of newly arrived children and youth. Their academic success is intrinsically

linked to the command of Portuguese, the essential factor of this integration. To ensure

the effective integration is a duty of the State and the school.

[…] come forward with measures that allow for the effective integration of students in

the national educational system, by ensuring the sufficient command of Portuguese as a

vehicle for all school knowledge. This is the language in which students will advance in

their studies, but it is also the language that will guide them in a new space that cannot

be conquered without its consolidation”(DGI, 2005).

In the first fragment, the epistemic modality of certainty, accomplished in the use of the

simple present, leaves no space for questioning the truth of the statements that (1) school is the

privileged space for integration; (2) integration is intrinsically linked to the full mastering of the

language. This is corroborated by the use of intrinsically, or essential (as in ‘essential factor’),

and effective (as in ‘effective integration of students’). The last paragraph contains an explicit

statement that Portuguese is the only language of instruction and curricula, and the

presupposition that it is the only language for the socialization outside the classroom. A model of

linguistic immersion is thus invoked, one that does not involve changes in the national curricula

and deals with linguistic diversity by introducing complementary support in Portuguese in after-

school hours. Throughout the documents, the language (singular, definite) is used to denote

Portuguese, as opposed to languages (plural, indefinite) to refer to languages of immigrants. This

discursive mechanism helps construct otherness, which reinforces an understanding of

multilingualism in schools as a sum of separate monolingualisms, difficult to manage and with

no place for multilingual and discursive negotiation (cf. Rampton, 2008).

In line with the perspective of “Portuguese as a Non-Native Language”, family languages

spoken by immigrant children are seen as sources of errors in Portuguese. Consequently,

“native” speakers are assigned more symbolic power as these are summoned to identify

interferences in the ‘acquisition of Portuguese’. The use of medical and orthopedic terms such as

diagnosis and correction equally stems from the PLNM discourse of deficiency. When

associated with vocabulary choices such as credit units, they echo educational discourses based

on the development of competences as academic achievement, and point at correlations between

pre-identified social and linguistic variables in the development of language profiles, both

framed by the public administration audit discourses on quality measurement, efficiency and

responsibility.

A textual analysis of official discourses helps us identify what counts as legitimate

spaces, processes and actors in linguistic integration and how they adopt an assimilationist

discourse (Blackledge, 2005). The PII circumscribes separate spaces for (1) mother tongue

support for migrants (2) a certain type of visibility that acknowledges cultural and linguistic

diversity and (3) provision of Portuguese as a foreign language. The scope of social action of

migrants is confined to teaching family languages in community spaces and collaborating, as

‘informants’ and ‘native’ speakers, in the recognition of interferences in Portuguese acquisition.

Interest in multilingualism and language diversity, as well as knowledge-building on these

matters, assumes relevance under a Portuguese-only orientation, the common denominator that

again reinforces the hegemonic authority of the ‘native’ speaker of Portuguese.

We have seen how official discourses in Portugal silence and give ambiguous treatment

to linguistic diversity. They implement linguistic integration and a Portuguese-only approach to

linguistic policies, while acknowledging the existence of societal multilingualism and the need

for intercultural dialogue. They separate policies of “language” from policies of “culture” for

immigrant communities reinforced by a deeply ingrained monolingual approach to languages as

separate systems, framed by theories of language acquisition, learning and development that give

emphasis to decontextualized grammatical knowledge and do not focus on any kind of

socialization in multilingual practice.

These views are contrasted by the research in language learning and development that

underline the mutual construction of practices in family languages and in dominant languages as

well as in reciprocal ways of knowing under a rationale of “translanguaging as flexible bilingual

pedagogy” (García, 2009; Blackledge & Creese, 2010). They situate the speaker and the

speaker’s language trajectories at the center of learning process and consider language

boundaries as flexible spaces of negotiation.

Given the global discursive construction of Portuguese as a world language, the use of

Portuguese as a linguistic resource in different multilingual contexts, as well as the increasing

number of language-related policies implemented by the Portuguese government in the

lusophone world, the traditional definitions of Portuguese as a “mother tongue”, a “second

language” etc. are in need of critical reconceptualization (cf. Block, 2003 for a thorough revision

of such approaches).

III.4. Texts, trajectories and sociolinguistic spaces: tracking down possibilities of action

Two themes emerged from our comparative work: 1) the representation of Portuguese as

a knowledge system and a ‘target language’ in translocal discourses of assessment of both

communicative and cognitive processes, defined according to global models such as CEFR and

its application for Portuguese in QuaREPE (Quadro de Referência para o Ensino Português no

Estrangeiro); 2) explicit acknowledgment of multilingual resources across social domains and

spaces of socialization for Portuguese and other languages.

The co-existence of the two themes pointed to the ambiguous position of the Portuguese

government which does not acknowledge other languages apart from the official ones within its

national borders, yet calls for the recognition of the Portuguese language outside its territory.

This position can be understood by taking into account the history of lived experiences with

languages, multilingualism and literacy, here identified by means of the multi-sited comparative

focus on the textual and contextual trajectories. Our ethnographies are thus indicative of

coexisting contradictory regimes of linguistic authority. The pressure to fill the gaps in the

previous policies by means of new modernizing discourses imply a linguistic engineering

oriented to monolingualization, which runs the risk of erasing the epistemic possibility of

tackling multilingual use in hybrid contexts as a possible object of study, research and

pedagogical practice. The focus on trajectories and mobilities is our modest attempt to counteract

this process, by foregrounding the high complexity of multilingual use of Portuguese. We do this

by tracking down the possibilities of action and recognition for multilingual speakers and their

repertoires.

Given the situation of Portugal in the world system and the growing effects of the

financial crisis, such as massive flows of qualified Portuguese emigration, as well as

juxtaposition of speakers of multiple varieties of Portuguese in Europe (also non-European

deriving from multiple migrant, refugee and other formal and informal movements), the

celebration of ‘lusophone identity’ becomes a life-saving device inside and outside European

borders, in crucial need of critical analysis.

IV. Polycentric visions, collaborative writing: exploring the dynamics of Portuguese in

the 21st

century

The collaborative exercise of writing has provided us with some insights that we would

like to pursue and incorporate in our research. We have assumed the value of the migrant

experience from the perspective of theory and practice. This has helped us to recognize the detail

involved in the discursive and language practice, and to find both actual and possible rhizomatic

lines of flight from constraints that open up a possibility of producing different versions of

language policies (Deleuze&Guattari, 1987; Garcia, 2005). Our comparative work has allowed

us to look at informal experiences and solutions by grassroot movements and trace the dynamics

of their recognition in different scales of institutional power. During this process, we also

identified which experiences were wasted, silenced or discarded. The recognition depended on

the language-related loyalties, hegemonical perceptions of normativity and investments in the

symbolic values of Portuguese.

Our work cannot be dissociated from our own pedagogical practice, so we looked for a

space of reflection that could help us a) develop ways of promoting dialogue and recognition of

both complementary schools and mainstream educational contexts; b) envisage teacher training

and life-long learning projects of teachers as critical ethnographers and activists in their own

contexts (Conteh & Brock, 2011), and c) assume the existing multiplicity of approaches and

ideologies in any educational space, when these spaces are perceived as groups of individuals

with multiple language biographies, migrant, professional and institutional trajectories and

experiences. In this light, the pedagogical encounter emerges as a complex network of

temporalities co-occurring in institutional spaces with histories of their own.

This joint work has also allowed us to track not only the global circulation of discourses

about language in Europe and other world regions, but also how they seem to be contested by

resilience and resistance, where both institutional agents and speakers adapt regulatory

discourses to their local, national, and supra-national interests.

By taking a combined perspective approach, by three authors with distinct institutional

identities – mainstream academia, action researchers and educational actors in migrant contexts –

this text represents an exploratory exercise. Using insights from a sociolinguistics of scales and

globalization (Blommaert, 2010; Collins et al, 2009; Zentella, 2007), it attempts to illustrate how

a multi-sited and longitudinal focus on one language such as Portuguese, distributed worldwide

in multilingual regimes with multiple temporalities and configurations, may open up the

possibility of understanding polycentric subjectivities, i.e., multiple and overlapping linguistic

hegemonies associated to the same ‘language’.

In so doing, our comparative work is not confined to institutional action. It acknowledges

the rhizomatic nature of language and languaging, habitually overlooked by language policies

and planning, moving from a focus on the informal uses of language in contact zones to

identifying how this experience has been appropriated by the multilingual regimes at play in our

contexts.

iWe acknowledge the financial support of FCT and POPH-Fundo Social Europeu in Portugal and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in the research projects developed by Olga Solovova and Clara Keating. iiPolycentricity has been used by discourse analysts and sociolinguists to describe the existence, in the same space,

of “differentiated regimes of multilingualism perceived as acceptable resources instigated by different places” (cf. Blommaert et al. (2005a). Zentella (2007) also focuses on the polycentricity of the Mexican border and the co-habitation of distinct regimes of bilingualism in the same place. This is a distinct approach from that of pluricentric languages, a sociolinguistic and sociocognitive term already applied to Portuguese by Baxter (1992), and recently developed for the lusophone context of Timor-Leste by Batoreo & Casadinho (2009).

iiiThe “Slavic period” in Feytor-Pinto’s work ends in 2004 as his research spans this period. Solovova suggests that

this period should be extended to 2009 – the year in which the Eastern European migration decreases significantly. ivIn Ribeiro’s words: “When we talk today about Portuguese in its European, Brazilian, African dimensions, as well

as the existing diasporas in contexts of migration and mobility, we need to reflect upon the collection of pasts with their own specific origins and temporalities, the ones that have generated the external plurality of Portuguese colonialism and its great internal diversity” (Ribeiro et al, 2010).

References

Alasuutari, P. (1995).Researching culture: qualitative methods and cultural studies. London:

Sage.

Alpatov, V.M (1997). 150 yazykov i politika. [150 languages and the policy]. Moscow: Institute

of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Ataíde, J., Dias, P. (Eds.).(2011). Relatório de Imigração, Fronteiras e Asilo. [Report on

immigration, borders and asylum]. Lisbon: Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras. Available

online at: http://sefstat.sef.pt/Docs/Rifa_2011.pdf. Last accessed 08.01.13.

Baganha, M. I. (2001). A cada Sul seu Norte’: Dinâmicas Migratórias em Portugal, [A North to

every South] in Santos, B. S. (Ed.), Globalização: Fatalidade ou Utopia? [Globalization:

Fatality or Utopia?] (pp. 135-159). Porto: Afrontamento.

Baganha, M. I., Marques, J.C., Góis, P. (2004). Novas migrações, novos desafios: A imigração

do Leste Europeu. [New migrations, new challenges: Immigration from Eastern Europe]. Revista

Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 69, 95-115.

Barradas, O. (2004). “A disappearing act”: Portuguese students – social inclusion and academic

attainment. In Abreu, G., Cline, T., Lambert, H. (Eds.) The Education of Portuguese Children in

Britain: Insights from Research and Practice in England and Overseas (pp. 51-71). Lisbon:

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Barradas, O. (2007). Learning Portuguese: a tale of two worlds. In Conteh, J., Martin, P.,

Robertson L.H. (Eds.) Multilingual Learning: Stories in Schools and Communities in Britain (pp.

87-102). Stoke-on-Trent:Trentham Books.

Barradas, O. (2010). Linking Community and Mainstream Schools: Opportunities and

Challenges for Portuguese Language and Culture Classes. In Lytra, V., Martin, P. Sites of

Multilingualism: Complementary schools in Britain today (pp. 135-147). Stoke-on-Trent:

Trentham Books.

Batoreo, H.& Casadinho, M. (2009). O Português – uma língua pluricêntrica: O Caso de Timor-

Leste [Portuguese – a pluricentric language. The case of East Timor]. Revista Portuguesa de

Humanidades, Estudos Linguísticos, 13 (1), 63-79. Braga: Universidade Católica.

Baxter, A. (1992). Portuguese as a pluricentric language. In Clyne, M. (Ed.) Different Norms in

Different Languages (pp. 11-44). Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Blackledge, A. (2005). Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins.

Blackledge, A., Creese, A. (2010). Multilingualism. London, New York: Continuum.

Block, D. (2003). The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition. Washington, D.C.:

Georgetown University Press.

Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Blommaert, J., Collins, J., Slembrouck, S. (2005a). Polycentricity and interactional regimes in

‘global neighborhoods’. Ethnography, 6 (2), 205 – 235.

Blommaert, J., Collins, J., Slembrouck, S. (2005b). Spaces of multilingualism. Language and

Communication, 25 (3), 197–216.

Butler, J. (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London: Routledge.

Capinha, G., Galano, A. M. (Eds.). (1996). de Língua-Mar. Criações e Confrontos em

Português. [Of the language-sea. Creations and confrontations in Portuguese]. Rio de Janeiro:

National Art Foundation.

Collins, J., Slembrouck, S., Baynham, M. (Eds.). (2009). Globalization and Language in

Contact. London: Continuum Press.

European Commission (2006). High Level Group of Multilingualism. Final Report. Brussels:

European Commission. Available online at :

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/1221

Conselho de Ministros (2007), Plano para a Integração dos Imigrantes [Plan for immigrant

integration], Diário da República, 1ª série, nº 85, May, 3.

Conselho de Ministros (2010), Plano para a Integração dos Imigrantes. [Plan for immigrant

integration]. Available at:

http://www.acidi.gov.pt/_cfn/4d346c9b80687/live/Consulte+a+vers%C3%A3o+do+Plano+2010

-2013+em+portugu%C3%AAs. Last accessed in January 2013.

Conteh, J., Brock, A. (2011). “‘Safe spaces’? Sites of bilingualism for young learners in home,

school and community”. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14 (3),

347-360.

Decreto-Lei n.º 165/2006, de 11 de Agosto. Available at: http://legislacao.min-

edu.pt/np4/np3content/?newsId=1188&fileName=decreto_lei_165_2006.pdf. Last accessed

03.07. 2012.

Decreto-Lei n.º 165-C/2009, de 28 de Julho. Available at: www.instituto-camoes.pt/.../decretos-

leis-dp1?...165-c-2009...165. Last accessed on 03.07.12.

Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaux: Capitalism and Schizofrenia.

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

DGIDC [Direcção Geral de Inovação e de Desenvolvimento Curricular], (2005).Português

Língua Não Materna no Currículo Nacional. Documento Orientador [Portuguese as a Non-

Native Language in the National Curricula. Guidelines]. Lisbon: Ministry of Education.

Feytor-Pinto, P. (2008). Política da língua na democracia portuguesa (1974-2004) [Language

policy in the Portuguese democracy]. Unpublished PhD thesis. Lisbon: Universidade Aberta.

García, O.(2005). Minority Language Education. In Brown, K. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Language

and Linguistics. Vol. 8, pp. 159-163. Oxford: Elsevier,.

García, Ofélia (2009), Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective.

Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Holland, D., Lave, J. (2001). History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice,

Intimate Identities. New Mexico: School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.

Johnson, D. C. (2009). Ethnography of language policy. Language Policy, 8, 139-159.

Keating, M. C. (2005). The person in the doing: negotiating the experience of self. In: Barton,

D., Tusting, K. (Eds.). Beyond Communities of Practice (pp. 105–138). Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Keating, M. C. (2009). Changing Participation in Changing Practice: Uses of Language and

Literacy among Portuguese Based Migrant Contexts. In Baynham, M., Collins, J., and

Slembrouck, S. (Eds.). Globalization and Language Contact: Spatiotemporal Scales, Migration

Flows, and Communicative Practices. (pp. 233-251). London: Continuum.

Keating, M. C., Solovova, O. (2011a). Multilingual dynamics among Portuguese-based migrant

contexts in Europe. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1251–1263.

Lytra, V. and Martin,P. (2010). Introduction. In Lytra, V. and Martin, P. (Eds.). Sites of

Multilingualism: complementary schools in Britain today. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.

Marcus, G.E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited

ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95-117.

Mateus, M. H. M.(2011). Diversidade Linguística na Escola Portuguesa. [Linguistic diversity at

Portuguese school]. Revista Lusófona de Educação, 18, 13-24.

Rampton, B. (2008). Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Ribeiro, M. C., Keating., M. C., Santos, H., Solovova, O. (2010). Português na palma da mão:

Formação de professores. Língua Portuguesa no Estrangeiro, Pré-Escolar e 1º ciclo.

[Portuguese at the palm of your hand. In-service teacher-training. Portuguese language abroad,

preschool and primary school]. Unpublished report presented at Instituto Camões. Coimbra:

Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, January, 2010.

Santos, B. S. (1994). Pela Mão de Alice: O Social e o Político na Pós-Modernidade. Porto:

Afrontamento.

Santos, B. S. (1995). Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in the

Paradigmatic Transition. New York: Routledge.

Santos, B.S. (2004). A Critique of Lazy Reason: Against the Waste of Experience. In

Wallerstein, I. (Ed.). The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée(pp. 157-197). London:

Paradigm Publishers.

Solovova, O. (2013). (In)-Between a rock and a hard place: notes for an ecology of language

policies from a complementary school for Eastern European immigrant children in Portugal.

Unpublished PhD thesis. Coimbra: University of Coimbra.

Wei, L. (2011). Moment Analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of

identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1222-1235.

Zentella, A. C. (2007). “US-Mexico border crossers: polycentric identities and conflicting

constructions of bilingualism”. Paper presentation at the 1st International Seminar “Language and

Migration”, AILA. Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, 19 September, 2007.

View publication statsView publication stats