Language Requirement for Immigrants: An Indicator of the Civic Turn in Integration Policies or Sign of the Persistence of an Assimilationist Model?

In much of the recent literature, language testing is considered as part of the ‘civic model’ of integration that has come to prevail in most West European countries over the last years. As language can be acquired and is seen as ‘substantively and functionnaly relevant qualification for various positions, including citizenship’ (Brubaker, 2014), language testing appears as political acceptable in liberal states. My paper seeks to tackle the specificity of language testing in regard to other integration requirements related to the so-called ‘civic turn’ and will challenge the assumption that the emphasis on language testing is inherently civic. Through taking into account language policies relative not only to the access or status dimension of citizenship, but also to the rights and identity dimensions (Joppke, 2007), I will show that these policies do not only aim at encouraging immigrants’ proficiency in the national or official language of the host country, but also seek to limit the use of other languages in the public sphere and contribute to stigmatize migrants’ languages. Focusing on the cases of France and Germany as exemplification of states where language played a central role in the nation-building process, I will demonstrate that the underlying rationale of current policies of language testing is still a homogenizing and assimilationist one, and thus stands in contradiction with a more multiculturalist stance. In other words, language does not only play the role of a functional requirement allowing migrants to exercise citizenship in the host country, but contains a strong cultural dimension and functions as an identity marker and as an indicator allowing to assess immigrants’ assimilation into the national culture.