Abstract
The phenomenon of international migration impacts receiving countries at different levels, while posing challenges and questions to the whole society. In particular, the resulting increase in plurilingual practices and multicultural belongings has a deep effect on the education sector. Accordingly, it has long been debated how, for instance, children of immigrants may learn the language of the receiving society while also maintaining their mother tongue (or heritage language). However, such issue has been so far mainly approached with both a monolingual bias and the assumption that migrants will eventually return to their countries of origin. Instead, the prevalent long-term nature of migratory projects and the dynamics of transnational labour migration require a rethinking of both existing conceptual and categorical divisions and language maintenance policies. Against this background, this paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, it criticizes the strict dichotomies often used when designing “mother tongue education”. It does so from an interdisciplinary perspective by combining a hybrid view of language with an adaptative approach to heritage language maintenance arrangements. This means going beyond static divisions such as those between home/host societies, immigrant/heritage/majority language, and territoriality/personality to recognise multilingualism as the norm. On the other hand, it identifies the main challenges and obstacles faced in the implementation of heritage language policies by analysing a small set of “significant practices” drawn from existing minority and heritage language arrangements adopted in Europe. The final aim of the paper is to indicate a path of inclusion that accounts for the complexities inherent to international migration and the resulting increase in linguistic diversity with a longterm perspective.