This volume examines the inherent interrelation of language and identity in migrant and diasporic contexts across the world. Adopting social constructivist and post-structuralist views of identity as being a fluid, emergent, contingent, social, and multilayered phenomenon, which is deeply interconnected with language, the fifteen contributors provide interdisciplinary analyses of migration discourse, language practices and education, and their embedded ideologies. They amass expertise and contemporary research findings regarding diverse geographical and demographic contexts (e.g. (second-generation) migrants, heritage communities, returnees, and/or refugees) via varied interview methods (chapters 2, 6–12), the Verbal Guise Technique (chapter 3), and ethnographic fieldwork (chapters 4, 5).

Several chapters show the importance of the interactive aspect of integration and establishing community. Communicative skills, rather than formal high proficiency, are vital for functional linguistic and sociocultural integration, as well as intercultural awareness. Communicative competence can be achieved via grassroots initiatives such as informal language cafes (Karolina Rosiak). Such habitual language use in informal settings is also a key component of language revitalisation and identity formation of minority languages (Stuart Dunmore), while shared indexicalities and diaspora-specific communicative situations are vital for the establishment of diasporic speech communities (Anh Khoi Nguyen). Additionally, a connection with not only other speakers but also one’s Native American (language) land(scapes) is essential to (socio)linguistic resilience and native heritage identities (Aresta Tsosie-Paddock, Elizabeth A. Redd & Robert William Autry).

Some contributors expand on the connection between one’s language environment, identity formation, and life course. They show that the multi-layered relationship between L1 and L2 perception, identity, and language attitudes at different integration stages (Zuzana Elliott), such as after returning home (Yue Teng), or being second-generation (Sviatlana Karpava; Alma Salem & Isabella Chiari), is dependent on a variety of educational and identity-based factors (e.g. age of arrival, years of language instruction, social networks, and identification with the host/home country).

Other contributions then reveal how agentic double-identification and feelings of double (un)belonging to a place are shaped not only by the languages you speak, but also how they sound and are received. These chapters discuss accents and the concept of ‘realness’ for second-generation returnees in countries where there is no need to acquire a second language (Sara Hannafin), the emotional and cultural function of a mother-tongue, double belonging for children of migrants (Salem & Chiari), agentic language shift, acquisition, loss, and maintenance among different generations of immigrant families (Naashia Mohamed), and refugees’ linguistic performances of agentic hybrid identities that counter pervasive victim frames (Iain Philip).

Overall, this collection emphasises that language is a ‘key determinant for cultural investment, successful integration […] identity maintenance and (re)articulation’ (183) as well as belonging. An understanding runs through this work that there is an imperative need for the recognition of language within inclusive and dynamic integration policies by migration scholars and policymakers alike. This volume will appeal to researchers in a wide variety of fields (e.g. migration, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, bi/multilingualism, and heritage language learning), and those interested in interdisciplinary approaches, interview techniques, and under-researched migrant populations.