Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship: Rights, Access, Pedagogies

This volume explores the concept of citizenship, and argues that it should be understood both as a process of becoming and the ability to participate fully, rather than as a status that can be inherited, acquired, or achieved. From a courtroom in Bulawayo to a nursery in Birmingham, the authors use local contexts to foreground how the vulnerable, particularly those from minority language backgrounds, continue to be excluded, whilst offering a powerful demonstration of the potential for...
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This volume explores the concept of citizenship, and argues that it should be understood both as a process of becoming and the ability to participate fully, rather than as a status that can be inherited, acquired, or achieved. From a courtroom in Bulawayo to a nursery in Birmingham, the authors use local contexts to foreground how the vulnerable, particularly those from minority language backgrounds, continue to be excluded, whilst offering a powerful demonstration of the potential for change offered by individual agency, resistance and struggle. In addressing questions such as under what local conditions does "dis-citizenship" happen?; what role do language policies and pedagogic practices play? and what kinds of margins and borders keep humans from fully participating ? The chapters in this volume shift the debate away from visas and passports to more uncertain and contested spaces of interpretation."