The aims of the Welcoming Languages: Refugee Languages in Scottish Education (henceforth: Welcoming Languages). project were: (i) to include Arabic in Scottish education as a concrete way to enact the promise of integration as a two-way process at the heart of the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy (Scottish Government, 2018); and (ii) to provide proof of concept for language diversification in education to include other languages spoken by recently arrived people seeking refuge.
The argument on which the project was premised is that discourse on integration invariably assume a one-way journey, in which new arrivals make all the effort to learn the language of the receiving context. While, of course, this is crucial to foster inclusion and guarantee independence and access to rights, there are no attempts, as far as we are aware, to work with local education staff so they can acquire a refugee language to 'move towards' people seeking refuge. A start in this direction was made by Phipps's (2012) autoethnographic reflections on linguistic hospitality and solidarity and by the critical analysis around Scottish language policy by Phipps and Fassetta (2015), which informed the project. Moreover, the project drew on critiques of a deficit approach to language learning (e.g. Valdés, 2003) and argued for the multilingualism from a 'language plenty' perspective (Frimberger, 2016). Based on these considerations, he Welcoming Languages project sought to address the gap identified through a very practical, hands-on approach: onterest from educators was gauged; their language needs analysed alongside those of Arabic speaking children and families; a tailored Arabic language course was designed, developed and delivered; and, finally, the project's outcomes were assessed.
The findings of the Welcoming Languages project are of relevance to language policy and practice in relation to diversifying languages in education to include languages spoken by people seeking refuge. Firstly, education staff recognise the importance of expanding their linguistic repertoires to offer linguistic hospitality to newly arrived children and families, and are open to learning their pupils' languages to improve children's wellbeing. Secondly, children, families and educators value both the practical importance of learning a language but also the huge symbolic role that this can have to make people seeking refuge welcome. Finally, the introduction of a refugee language in education has the potential to benefit everyone, by publicly acknowledging the linguistic expertise of children from refugee backgrounds and practically demonstrating that all languages are valuable.
Bibliography
Frimberger, K. (2016) Towards a well-being focussed language pedagogy: enabling arts-based, multilingual learning spaces for young people with refugee backgrounds. Pedagogy, Culture & Society 24(2): 285-299
Phipps, A. (2012) Voicing Solidarity: Linguistic Hospitality and Poststructuralism in the Real World. Applied Linguistics 33(5): 582–602
Phipps, A. and Fassetta, G. (2015) A critical analysis of language policy in Scotland. European Journal of Language Policy 7(1): 5–28
Scottish Government (2018) New Scots: refugee integration strategy 2018 to 2022. From: https://www.gov.scot/publications/new-scots-refugee-integration-strategy-2018-2022/documents/
Valdés, G. (2003) Expanding definitions of giftedness: The case of young interpreters from immigrant communities. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
