ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I start by focusing on the policy context in Germany: The ways in which language appears in official policies concerning migrants. By looking at the policy representation of language in migration contexts, the first part of this chapter asks how language ideologies towards migrants’ language issues (host language acquisition and heritage tongue maintenance) are reflected in various policy areas. Analyses show that language ideologies imbued in current policies targeting migrants do not favour the cultivation of migrant multilingualism, which in part explains the lack of institutionalised efforts to help preserve migrants’ heritage languages as discussed in Chapter Seven. The second part explores possible ways to address this by mainstreaming multilingual education. In particular, I discuss the ways in which a successful existing bilingual immersion programme in Berlin could serve as a model to facilitate migrant multilingualism in public schools, with potential collaboration from migrant HEOs. In addition, I demonstrate that both migrants and the host society stand to benefit from increased migrant multilingualism in transnational endeavours: Migrants in terms of enhanced subjective wellbeing, and host societies in terms of economic competitiveness and sociocultural richness. Host societies therefore have too high a stake in ignoring migrant multilingualism in the public sphere (notably in schools).
