Exploring Multilingual Pedagogies: Forced Migrants’ Learning Experiences in Luxembourg

While most societies are structured around diverse flows of people and complex linguistic repertoires, (language) education schemes are still dominated by monolingual instructional practices. This paper aims to contribute to current discussions on the affordances of multilingual pedagogies in contexts of forced migration. It draws on a range of linguistic ethnographic data (Copland & Creese, 2015) that was collected over the period of 2016-2017 in diverse settings of language learning and socialization. Our research sites in Luxembourg included language courses in French, English and German, mathematics courses, application and web development training, and diverse leisure activities.

Having followed the learning trajectory of five asylum applicants, we explored how they built on their old and newly-acquired language resources. Our findings confirm that in order to make their voices heard, the learners often drew upon elements from multiple languages, including those local languages they had no extensive competence in. This multilingual orientation enabled them to see the local languages as new functional resources in their growing repertoires (Kalocsányiová, 2017). This is of special relevance in contexts of forced migration, where learners need to become users of the languages they are learning from the first day onward.