ABSTRACT
While globalisation requires a reinterpretation of the traditional notions of multilingualism, migration and the mobility of citizens around the world has also put new demands on competence in the dominant language. This response is part of the production of new ways of regulating and establishing what counts as linguistic capital. This regulation and capitalisation of language (Duchêne 2009; Heller 2010) has, in some types of workplaces, led to the valuing of multi lingualism because it is profitable (Piller & Takahashi 2013). However, in the public sector and much of the private sector, the response to migration has been to standardise and raise the level of requirements in recruitment and selection (Allen 2013; Roberts 2013). This in turn produces new tensions between the standardisation of bureaucratised institutions and increasingly diverse societies.
