This themed section explores linguistic disadvantage as a specific form of structural-institutional disadvantage in contemporary welfare societies (Piller, Reference Piller2016). The individual articles represent a rich variety of national and cross-national research on how language policies, ideas about language, and language practices shape the access to services, rights and safeguards, and relational experiences of institutional encounters of service users with a migrant background.
The novel contribution of the team of authors with backgrounds in social policy, social work, sociology, and ethnology is to fill existing conceptual and empirical gaps by advancing a relational view of multilingualism and linguistic diversity. Language has typically been associated with individual properties, rights, and capacities without acknowledging the socially constructed and interdependent nature of language competence and institutional barriers (Blommaert et al., Reference Blommaert, Collins and Slembrouck2005; also Holzinger, Reference Holzinger2020). In contrast, the relational view highlights the critical importance of language in everyday encounters and relationships between service users, the welfare state, and its representatives: not only does it shape migrants’ social rights, access to services and experiences of (non-)belonging, (un)deservingness, and (non-)citizenship, but the language used in everyday encounters also reflects institutional policies and public discourses on migration.
Drawing on empirical case studies from Finland, Sweden, Belgium, and Canada, the articles combine analyses of welfare state restructuring, bordering on practices and everyday life (Yuval-Davis et al., Reference Yuval-Davis, Wemyss and Cassidy2018; Ratzmann and Sahraoui Reference Ratzmann and Sahraoui2021). In doing so, the texts shed light on the role of language in how social policies are implemented and negotiated at street level between institutional actors and migrants, as well as on the ways in which power structures and language hierarchies are enacted in the production of linguistic disadvantage. The empirical cases include children as users of public welfare and school services in Sweden (Gustafsson et al., Reference Gustafsson, Kaisso, Åberg and Norström2024; Jönsson, Reference Jönsson2024), adult migrant students in national integration programmes in Canada and Finland (Pötzsch, Reference Pötzsch2024), young EU migrants in Belgium and migrant ‘stay-at-home mothers’ in Finland (Nordberg and Simola, Reference Nordberg and Simola2024), and social workers and social advisors encountering migrant service-users at street level in Finland (Kara et al., Reference Kara, Nordberg, Jäppinen and Riitaoja2025).
Due to demographic shifts and changes in linguistic landscapes, the street-level welfare state institutions in the Global North are increasingly confronted with complex questions of language diversity (Lamb et al., Reference Lamb, Hatoss, O’Neill and Papa2020). While there are varying degrees of recognition of linguistic diversity at the political and policy level in different national contexts, undervaluing and underinvestment in multilingualism prevails at the street level (Schinkel, Reference Schinkel2017). Meanwhile, analyses that focus on the specific role of language in everyday institutional encounters are scarce (Holzinger, Reference Holzinger2020). This is despite the growing interest in the role of street-level institutional actors in producing social asymmetries in migration contexts (e.g., Simola, Reference Simola2018; Ratzmann and Sahraoui, Reference Ratzmann and Sahraoui2021).
Welfare institutions and street-level practitioners implementing social policies wield considerable power in conditioning migrants’ access to residency, labour markets, social protection, health care, housing, integration programmes, vocational and language training, among other services. In these contexts, migrants’ ability to communicate in the institutional language(s) and the measures taken by institutional actors to facilitate communication (e.g., providing plain language, multilingual, or interpreting services) impact the negotiation of social rights and citizenship (Gustafsson et al., Reference Gustafsson, Norström and Höglund2019).
Our common aim in this themed section is to advance specific and more systematic research on linguistic disadvantage from a structural-institutional perspective (e.g., Piller, Reference Piller2016) and consider what linguistic disadvantage means for migrants’ access to rights, protection, and life chances, as well as for their relational experiences of in/exclusion and belonging, all of which may be shaped by the goals and demands placed on language proficiency and fluency (Fleming and Morgan, Reference Fleming and Morgan2011).
The critical contribution lies in approaching questions of rights and relationality as entangled in the problematic of linguistic diversity, disadvantage, and injustice. In this view, linguistic practices in street-level bureaucracies are seen as linked to institutional social policy structures and thus highly politicised (Brubaker, Reference Brubaker2014; Holzinger, Reference Holzinger2020). To date, issues of language have been addressed at an instrumental rather than conceptual level in the social policy literature and in social research more generally. This themed section seeks to fill this gap by explicitly conceptualising linguistic disadvantage and injustice in the context of the diversification and restructuring of welfare institutions.
Indeed, in addition to the challenges posed by demographic change, public service institutions have been subject to sweeping reforms that increasingly emphasise managerialism and individual responsibility and set new boundaries for recognising the rights and diverse needs of service users (e.g. Kamali and Jönsson, Reference Kamali, Jönsson, Kamali and Jönsson2018; Nordberg, Reference Nordberg, Hiitola, Turtiainen, Gruber and Tiilikainen2020). In some contexts, welfare institutions’ approaches to linguistic diversity have even been characterised by a deliberate ‘hostility’ towards migrants, with language being used as a tool in practices of ‘everyday bordering’ (Yuval-Davis et al., Reference Yuval-Davis, Wemyss and Cassidy2018; Innes, Reference Innes2021). Language is inherently linked to national and cultural affiliation, and constructs migrants’ social membership (Morgan and Ramanathan, Reference Morgan and Ramanathan2005; Toivanen, Reference Toivanen2014; (Sabaté Dalmau et al., Reference Sabaté Dalmau, Garrido Sardà, Codó and Canagarajah2017; Holzinger, Reference Holzinger2020). Nevertheless, as some of the articles show, in certain contexts, migrants and street-level practitioners have been able to enact various forms of resistance and agency in response to these disadvantages.
The themed section makes a significant empirical and conceptual contribution to the field of social policy by addressing issues of migrant service users’ disadvantage through the lens of language. The authors bring together different strands of research on social policy, the welfare state, social work, and migration into conversation with each other. This dialogue promotes a deeper understanding of both institutional policy structures and their implementation in street-level encounters by analysing language as a focal point of social, political, and cultural struggles.
An overview of the articles in the themed section
The article by Gustafsson, Kaisso, Åberg, and Norström analyses a multilingual service encounter in a Swedish youth clinic using Piller’s concept of linguistic (in)justice. The authors show that monolingual mindsets are reproduced, and practices of linguistic paternalism unfold in encounters shaped by intersecting layers of power asymmetries. They conclude that professionals and policymakers must recognise the unique conditions of multilingual settings and acknowledge children as a specific group of language rights holders.
The article by Kara, Nordberg, Jäppinen, and Riitaoja examines Finnish policies and practices of ‘integration’ from the perspective of street-level social work practitioners and with a focus on language and language skills acquisition. The findings suggest ambiguous but persistent ideals of monolingualism in which linguistic diversity turns into individual lack of skills and capacities through service-user responsibilisation. This creates unworkable situations for service-users, while also revealing service providers’ own struggles as practitioners within the monolingual service system.
Drawing empirically on qualitative data from Belgium and Finland, Nordberg and Simola explore migrants’ lived experiences of language barriers and discrimination and show how language policies and ideologies, intertwined with trends towards service user responsibilisation in welfare policies and ideologies, shape migrants’ relational experiences with welfare states and their representatives. The findings highlight both the material and emotional costs of linguistic discrimination for individuals.
Guided by Bourdieu’s theoretical approaches to symbolic capital and symbolic violence, Jönsson examines the institutional and everyday mechanisms of ‘otherising’ language practices in Swedish schools. The article discusses how belonging is defined in relation to the linguistic (symbolic) capital of Swedishness. Moreover, it shows how young people with migrant backgrounds are discursively racialised and otherised through imaginaries and ideologies building on colonial discourses.
Finally, Pötzsch’s article examines language hierarchies in national integration programmes in Finland and Canada and considers how discourses of civic integrationism framed around monolingualism and neoliberalism position adult immigrant students in the liminal spaces between belonging and otherness. The article also discusses liminality as resistance in transgressing and re-imagining essentialist integration policies and pedagogical goals, thus creating opportunities for transformation.
Relevance to policy and/or practice
Social inclusion policies have typically failed to promote language ideologies and practices that recognise and value diversity (Piller and Takahashi, Reference Piller and Takahashi2011). The contributions of the themed section provide a rich account of the key linguistic challenges facing contemporary welfare societies, and suggest conceptual and empirical approaches through which these challenges can be addressed in future social policy and research. Such approaches include challenging racist political and public discourses that conflate national identity and belonging with monolingual narratives and policies (Jönsson, Reference Jönsson2024). This extends to conceptualisations of ‘integration’ among street-level bureaucrats that reproduce the ideals of an ‘imagined monolingualism’, based on assumptions about the nature of integration policies, thereby limiting the discretion of practitioners while disempowering service-users (Kara et al., Reference Kara, Nordberg, Jäppinen and Riitaoja2025). The aim is to create an understanding of power and language whereby welfare professionals are prepared to recognise their linguistic advantage and act to balance the existing asymmetries (Gustafsson et al., Reference Gustafsson, Kaisso, Åberg and Norström2024).
Thus, we espouse the need to adopt a relational perspective that problematises how exclusionary policies enacted by street-level actors representing the welfare state are lived and experienced by migrants, and how these structurally entrenched linguistic disadvantages have serious repercussions for migrants’ future well-being and life chances (Nordberg and Simola, Reference Nordberg and Simola2024). Consequently, there is a need to support the multilingual identities of both migrants and practitioners and to promote plurilingual ways of knowing. This entails imagining new forms of co-created, reciprocal practices and learning, rather than reinforcing monolingual norms that fail to address the needs of either street-level practitioners or migrants (Pötzsch, Reference Pötzsch2024).
Funding
Please see the separate declaration of funding.
Competing interests
The author(s) declare none.
