Over the past decades, as a reaction to migration flows and cultural diversity, many European countries have implemented what political scientists call “civic integration” tests i.e., language tests and knowledge of society tests as prerequisites for citizenship and also permanent residency. These tests have been subject to both societal and scientific debates. Coraline Pradeau is right, as the title of her book suggests, that it may be more accurate to speak of language policy related to “immigration” than “integration”, since there are to date no consistent findings indicating that these policies actually contribute to the “integration” of newcomers.
Pradeau chooses, in her book, to focus on the emergence of these languages policies in the French-speaking world, comparing France, Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec, and using a discourse analytic method focusing to a large extent on policy documents and institutional discourse. This comparative approach promises to be fruitful, since, as Pradeau herself acknowledges, comparisons allow for new questions to emerge. The book is based on her doctoral dissertation and aims, on the one hand, to understand the historical and ideological basis for current language policies and, on the other, to investigate whether these language policy measures have any effects on language education as a scientific discipline and also on the practical education of future language teachers. The title of the book illustrates this twofold aim very well, but the reader should be aware that this book is mainly concentrated on language policy and not on language education. The concentration on language policy is also visible in the division in chapters, where the first four chapters are devoted to different aspects of language policy and only the last, and shortest, chapter, is devoted to implications for language education. This is likely due to the fact that the book is based on a doctoral dissertation, where there was perhaps insufficient space to pursue ideas that were originally planned to be more central to the thesis. The ambitious design of the study, covering both the past and present status of languages policies in the selected French-speaking countries, does indeed require substantial space.
Although conducted in a framework of discourse analysis, Pradeau’s work has many descriptive elements, which is a welcome contribution to the field. As she herself acknowledges, scholarly work on civic integration within applied linguistics can be divided into two main strands: 1) work in language testing which is mainly concerned with the validity and fairness of language tests; 2) work in critical sociolinguistics, which argues against the purported discriminatory nature of such tests. This latter strand is labeled as “activist” by Pradeau (p. 176), who also refers to French didactician Emmanuelle Huver (Reference Huver and Leconte2016) for a similar viewpoint. Pradeau’s work accordingly differs from much research that is currently being done in applied linguistics on the same topic and as such constitutes an important reading for anyone who is interested in gaining a deeper of understanding of language policies – without ideological signposting. The historical overview as well as the description of current language policies is a rich source of information and many interesting avenues emerge.
It becomes clear that in all of the examined French-speaking countries, a connection is generally made between cultural belonging and language, although this link is articulated somewhat differentially in each context. As a consequence, the French-speaking countries definitely constitute a stark contrast to the Anglo-Saxon model of multiculturalism. Nevertheless, the potential of the comparative design is not very well-explored – four different contexts are studied, but too little space is dedicated to the actual, analytic comparison of these contexts. Since the contexts have many common characteristics, it might have been more advantageous to compare a French-speaking context with an Anglo-Saxon context – or indeed the Swedish context where I am based – a country which is an outlier in terms of civic integration, with no tests in place, either in language or knowledge of society.
Another important point made by Pradeau is that we do not, to date, know enough about the actual outcome of civic integration on integration. She makes a call for more empirical studies investigating this question. However, such a question directs us towards the difficulties surrounding the term “integration” which is also acknowledged by Pradeau. In spite of being aware of the complex character of what is meant by integration, Pradeau’s observations seem mostly informed by French sociologist Dominique Schnapper (Reference Schnapper, Archibald and Galligani2009), omitting important work in political science and economics, where a difference is often made between economic and social integration (cf. Wallace Goodman & Wright, Reference Wallace Goodman and Wright2015). The omission of such work may be why Pradeau has not been able to find any observable link between host language proficiency and integration. The fact is that one of the most consistent findings in economics is the relationship between the language proficiency of immigrants and their economic integration (cf. Chiswick, Reference Chiswick1991; Dustmann & Van Soest, Reference Dustmann and Van Soest2002; Lochmann et al., Reference Lochmann, Rapoport and Speciale2018). However, similar relationships are indeed yet to be found between civic integration tests and economic integration, although Neureiter’s (Reference Neureiter2019) study points in this direction.
These above-mentioned shortcomings are, however, understandable when aiming to cover such a complex and wide area as the topic of Pradeau’s thesis, requiring significant transdisciplinary investigations. In sum, Pradeau’s work makes an important contribution to our understanding of language policies – and the French-speaking approach definitely deserves such particular attention.
