Abstract
This paper aims at questioning the rationale for language testing in immigration policies. Although we consider knowledge of the host country’s language(s) useful and desirable for both the migrant and the host society, we argue that mandatory language testing cannot be justified. Our purpose is to offer justifications for rejecting language as a legitimate tool for controlling state borders and to regulate (access to) citizenship of a liberal democracy.
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- 1.
We do not discuss the sovereign right of states to legalize or constitutionalize official or national languages; that is part of another debate on language rights, for “new minorities” or “historical nations” in particular Kymlicka (2001) and Kymlicka and Banting (2006). Our empirical starting point is a “conventional view,” namely, the current situation in which most states have official or national languages and legitimately control the access to public institutions, citizenship, and territory. These are considered as “club goods,” e.g., excludable while not necessarily rivalrous goods (Carens 2013; Buchanan 1965). We however question the legitimacy of states, when languages are considered as excludable club goods. See n. 6.
- 2.
The most recent and convincing attempt to bridge the gap between immigration and citizenship is De Schutter and Ypi (2015).
- 3.
We are concerned only with democracies in this chapter.
- 4.
Much has been written about the fairest balance between official and minority languages and about the services immigrants, residents, and minorities can and should expect from the state. This is not the place to discuss these matters. For an overview of the literature, see Kymlicka and Patten’s Introduction to their Language Rights and Political Theory (2003); more recently, see Alcade (2015).
- 5.
And the literature on global justice of course; but again this is not the place to discuss this in a more thorough fashion.
- 6.
Languages are, in principle, non-excludable goods with positive network externalities (De Swaan 2001), but citizens and members of political communities may view their (national, official) language as excludable “club goods,” in other words restricted to a specific constituency or accessible only via cost-sharing, in our case the material and symbolic efforts (language acquisition) to be carried out by newcomers.
- 7.
- 8.
For instance, as reported by Brooks (2013), the first test expected immigrants to know the birth (1759) and death (1851) dates of Sake Dean Mahomet, credited with opening the UK’s first curry house in 1810. Participants were also required to know the name and nationality of his wife (Jane Daly, Irish) and the street where his restaurant was situated (George Street, London).
- 9.
The signature of the “contract” is supposed to be the necessary (but not sufficient) condition to obtain a 10-year residence card or to renew a temporary resident card. The contract clearly states what is expected from the migrant (which set of values she needs to accept) and the resources the state avails for integration. The contract lists the values of the French republic on the one hand (indivisibility, laïcité, gender equality, mandatory schooling for children under age 16, French language) and the requisites for integration on the other hand (civic instruction, language courses, medical checkup, professional skills assessment). There is no language test per se, but it is acknowledged that the newcomer has to learn the language, and the evaluation of this ability through official interviews will heavily count in the decision of the public official to grant a residence permit. There is in fact no need for an official test, since the entire process is based on the embeddedness of the “republican” values in French language, sometimes creating clear situations of discrimination. Hachimi Alaoui and Pélabay (2013) give the example of a veiled woman who, despite a flawless accent, will have fewer chances than “white” and apparently secular Canadians with a very heavy accent.
- 10.
As one anonymous reviewer argues, one could say that this linguistic barrier does exist only until the immigrants learn the common language. But this hints to yet another problem, relating to the social equality of members, not the inequality between immigrants and citizens. Forms of discrimination continue to occur even when the language is well known; foreign/regional accents or the mastery of linguistic repertoires will be met by social or cultural discrimination (Bourdieu 1982). We should therefore distinguish between inequalities at an early stage of entrance on the territory where the lawmaking citizenry has an impact on the design of immigration laws and structural inequalities within the citizenry, namely, between those who speak the normative tongue and those who do not.
- 11.
This is very much in line with a general consensus regarding refugees and asylum seekers, although there is an ongoing discussion about alternative destinations: refugees and asylum seekers have a right to enter a state but not necessarily the state they have chosen (Miller 2015).
- 12.
For the sake of thoroughness, we should also mention tourists who have to apply for a visa in order to visit a country. There is no need to argue that language proficiency cannot be a condition for obtaining such a visa, since it would defeat the purpose of an economically efficient tourism. As Robert Dahl argues (1989), transients have no claim to participate in local politics since they will not endure the consequences of their participation; the brevity of their stay and their own unwillingness to take part socially or politically in the society make any form of linguistic requirement irrelevant.
- 13.
We referred to Buchanan’s argument about excludable club goods earlier (see n. 1 and 6). The nationalistic logic we address here neatly fits his model.
- 14.
As Carens (2013: 188) puts it: “Both the immigrants and the wider community will be much better off if the immigrants learn the official language. But these considerations do not justify the creation of barriers to the entry of immediate family members. The right of human beings to live with their immediate family members imposes a moral limit on the state’s right simply to set its admissions policy as it chooses.”
- 15.
The issue of translation policies or of “translational justice” (Meylaerts 2011) is too far reaching for the scope of this chapter. The debate about rights (and accompanying public policies) to translation services has been going on for a while and has not been settled. Reine Meylaerts (2011) is right when she writes that “there is no language policy without a translation policy,” and this is true in multilingual polities as well as for immigration policies. Translational justice is relevant for participatory democracy and non-domination because citizens should have a right to effectively communicate with the official authorities. Demands for translation services classically include legal translators (a claim must be properly heard) or multilingual ballots (participation). Current debates include linguistic challenges faced on a daily base: access to bureaucratic services healthcare, interaction with schools for parents with children, etc.
- 16.
One could say, as one reviewer did, that there is no such thing a “free language training.” But the same way public school is generally free of charge and financed by taxes, we argue that language training could equally be free and paid by the taxpayers who are the future citizens taking these classes. Expecting migrants to “give something back” for these courses would actually be like preventing emigration for citizens who have been trained in public schools. Distributional systems are not based on a strict reciprocal relation; there is room for delayed forms of loyalty and gratitude. Another argument could be made based on the idea of basic interests: education and language training concern basic interests of individuals and may be more or less unconditionally provided. This is why France, for instance, has a universal healthcare coverage for all residents, and police forces protect anyone in danger on its territory, regardless of the identity of the victims and without inquiring whether she is a citizen or a taxpayer.
- 17.
The global lingua franca (English) is tempered by coercive territorial linguistic regimes in order to sustain more vulnerable national or regional languages. The reason for sheltering these languages, and the reason for language communities to “grab a territory” in Van Parijs’ words, is justice related: individuals feel attached to their native tongues and may feel disparaged by living in the shade of greater languages: “In a just society, people must not be stigmatized, despised, disparaged or humiliated by virtue of their collective identity” (Van Parijs 2011: 119).
- 18.
See Bauböck (2015a) on multilevel citizenship: birthright citizenship and residence-based membership.
- 19.
Because the alternative to mandatory citizenship, according to Helder De Schutter and Lea Ypi (2015: 15), “is not to have no linguistic or cultural others; the alternative is having a group of non-citizen linguistic or culturally others […]. Those who defend harsher citizenship acquisition rules oversee the result: not the absence of immigration, but the presence of more non-citizen immigrants […].” The authors also suggest that it is wrong to make democratic equality dependent on the contingency of immigrant’s interests. The duty to take up citizenship should be a general rule in order to avoid a “life as a permanent guest.”
- 20.
This again is a debate that goes beyond the scope of this chapter. Some scholars try to solve the dilemma by recommending strong territorial principles (Van Parijs 2011); others argue for free linguistic market principles (De Swaan 2001). Yet another worry which we have not addressed is intergenerational language transmission.
- 21.
This point is debatable: should formal evaluation be considered as a necessary incentive to learn? There is no way we can settle the question from a political theory perspective since social psychology and economic theory show the difficulties to control the effects of incentives on the behaviors they aim at modifying (for an overview, see Gneezy et al. 2011). The problem of evaluation is that it focuses the attention of the learner on the test rather than on the reasons to learn in the first place. Politically speaking, it is more interesting to convince people to learn a language in order to vindicate their interests and participate in public discussions rather than to succeed a test.
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von Busekist, A., Boudou, B. (2018). Language Proficiency and Migration: An Argument Against Testing. In: Gazzola, M., Templin, T., Wickström, BA. (eds) Language Policy and Linguistic Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75263-1_5
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