ABSTRACT
In this chapter we will focus on the status of immigrant minority (henceforward IM) languages at home and at school from three different European perspectives.
The first section goes into the utilization, value and effects of different demographic criteria for the definition and identification of (school) population groups in a multicultural society. Given the decreasing significance of nationality and birth country criteria in the European context, it is argued that the combined criteria of ethnicity and home language use are potentially promising long term alternatives for obtaining basic information on the increasingly multicultural composition of European nation states, cities and schools.
