Urban multilingualism in the European Union: bridging the gap between language policies and language practices

The Research Project “Urban multilingualism in the European Union: bridging the gap between language policies and language practices” is intended as an opportunity to connect Belgian and international scholars from different disciplines to discuss the connection (or the lack thereof) between language policies and actual language practices across the European Union in different sectors of the public sphere (e.g. education, health, administration). Against a background of increasing migration-related forms of multilingualism in European urban contexts, language policy currently represents a highly topical issue of great societal value. The topics of discussion span numerous research fields, including linguistics, sociolinguistics, education, developmental linguistics, language policy and planning, cognitive linguistics, language acquisition and sociology. The discussion will specifically focus on the interface between language policy, language planning and actual practices in the current panorama of linguistic ‘superdiversity’ of the European Union. In particular, the Research project will reflect upon the constraints that current policy instruments impose upon languages practices at national level (e.g. classroom practices), and on the possible changes that might be brought about in order to valorize multilingualism and promote immigrants’ social inclusion and linguistic diversity. Given the lack of an over-arching language policy in the European Union, the Research Project “Urban Multilingualism in the European Union” will also serve as an arena to: - promote European cooperation in developing language policies. Members of the Contact Forum will discuss, compare and exchange best practices in the field of multilingual policies at local, national and transnational level. The existence of heterogeneous practices within the EU will be investigated contrastively, with a view to suggesting common reference models to be followed in different cultural/institutional/educational contexts; - promote new and practice-led methods of language teaching in multilingual schools, with specific reference to classroom practices, tools and linguistic repertoires; - develop international collaborations through the members of the Research project by means of partnerships and the organization of future workshops, all leading to the enhancement of team members’ competences and expertise; - raise awareness of European values and guiding principles, linguistic diversity being a key property of Europe’s identity and one of the founding principles of European integration.