ABSTRACT
In this chapter we examine the resurgence of linguistic repression in our late modern age of increased mobility, European consolidation and accelerated globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Whereas the previous chapter looked at attempts to maintain heritage languages (both indigenous and immigrant) by teaching them within the school system, the present chapter looks at how institutional discourses on language and migration frequently contribute to the precarious situation of in particular immigrant heritage languages and their speakers. In the European Union member-states, official discourses usually claim that such policies are necessary for social unity and cohesion. In these discourses, people who speak immigrant minority languages are looked upon as being in need of ‘integration’. In line with the one nation-one language ideology, many states impose their national or official language upon these people through language testing. But behind such policies of integration, there often lurks not just a concern with social cohesion but also a deeper and more irrational fear of societal multilingualism and heterogeneity. We show this by first critically analysing the discourse of integration and then examining a number of language testing regimes.
