Linguistic rights and duties of immigrants and national identity in Catalonia: Between accommodation and transformation

Abstract

In 2018, the Government of Catalonia redefined its educational language policy through a programmatic document entailing a relevant shift: instead of highlighting the protection of Catalan as the national language, it stressed multilingualism and interculturalism as educational pillars. In doing so, it widened the scope of linguistic rights and duties of immigrants (LRDI). The exceptional growth of international immigration in Catalonia over the last two decades is at the root of this change. This article addresses LRDI from a theoretical and empirical perspective. First, it contributes a categorisation of approaches to LRDI (adjustive, accommodative and transformative) based on a comprehensive analysis of contemporary linguistic justice theories. Second, it analyses the challenging position of minority nations in managing LRDI and suggests that their explicitness in language policies has often been misinterpreted as monist by the literature. Finally, it documents a trend in Catalonia, in terms of rationale and policies, towards a pluralist reframing of national identity and the recognition of immigrants' languages.