Multilingualism and Multiculturalism: Transatlantic Discourses on Language, Identity, and Immigrant Schooling

INTRODUCTION In September 2010, an eye-catching article appeared on the front page of the New York Times "Arts" section. The headline read, "Cultures United to Honor Separatism." (1) Basque and Catalan nationalists, Sinn Fein leaders, and others were convening on the island of Corsica, not to chart out war strategies, as might have been expected, but rather to discuss cultural politics. As time would tell, pitched battles over sovereignty and independence seemed to be yielding to equally passionate calls for linguistic and cultural recognition. (2) Facing the pressure of English as the global lingua franca, historically militant groups were placing their political weight on maintaining, and in some cases, reviving their distinct languages and cultures. To most readers, the article was an interesting novelty especially for a section devoted to the arts. On the surface, it presented concerns politically and geographically remote from those weighing on the minds of most New Yorkers, and most Americans. Yet for linguistic minorities and for those attuned to their lives, it resonated deeply. Most strikingly, a nationalist party leader underscored culture and language to be "the essence" of Corsican identity. (3) While his heartfelt words evoked a truth often overlooked in public debates over European regional languages, they also rang true for immigrant languages on both sides of the Atlantic. Of course, one can easily distinguish between immigrant and regional language speakers. The former presumably are engaged in a voluntary process; the latter seek to recapture or sustain a legacy involuntarily lost. In Europe the distinction is especially noted. Various European Commission and Council of Europe declarations have weighed upon national governments to afford regional languages greater accommodations, (4) thereby giving those languages a degree of "cultural capital" not granted those spoken by immigrants. This obvious slight should not be lightly dismissed. Children from immigrant families in Europe, no less than those in the United States, feel the push and pull of competing forces as they simultaneously struggle to maintain ties with their family and community while gaining social acceptance and economic status in the mainstream of society. Unlike prior waves of immigrants for whom leaving the homeland was a painstaking and clear break, for this growing number of students, culture and identity are decreasingly grounded in locality. Though advances in technology, including discounted air travel, satellite TV, the Internet, and other media, soften the edges around cultural differences, they just as affirmatively promote transnational lifestyles that transport those differences to new destinations and render them borderless. Current controversies over multiculturalism and immigration have brought these realities to the political forefront. As immigrant groups, some more than others, maintain their language, cultural traditions, political affiliations, and economic ties to their home land, they lay bare notions of personal and national identity. The long-standing assumption, in countries like the United States and even more forcefully France, that immigrants should abandon their native language and culture and blend into the mainstream is now open to question. Transformed by migration, the mainstream increasingly defies definition. Meanwhile, countries like the Netherlands, and more affirmatively, Great Britain, which have promoted multicultural integration, now claim to assertively reject those policies in favor of assimilation. Cries of "Who are we?," often tied to calls for more vigorous immigration control, reverberate loudly across Western Europe and within certain corners of the United States. (5) Together these developments pose particular challenges for state-operated schools where the connection between language and identity bears individual and national consequences. …